11–20 of 54 posts
If you do have kids, there may not be an immediate attachment and that’s ok too. I was attached but everyone is different.
I did just realize the monthly price of day care is more than the price of a small private plane, so it definitely changes priorities. But I would rather have a kid than a plane.
That's what I regret. Not the kids, but my selfishness with my time and attention while they were growing up.
If you're going to have kids, have them. Go all in. Don't withhold yourself from them.
(The opposite can be a problem, too. The kids take almost all your time, but they can't become your identity or your life. That leaves you becoming the little-league parent who's yelling at the coach, or the parent who can't let their kids be adults once their grown. But the way my selfishness showed up was in trying to keep my time for myself.)
Don't have kids so no direct experience but I read the book Everybody Lies which looked at google search trends and was just fascinating and I do think mentioned that many people actually do regret having kids (and also a lot of women wonder if they're male partners are gay). So, if you regret having kids, you're probably less alone than you think!
Yes, regrets: I don’t sleep properly because of them, my self-care has gone down the tubes, and they brought out a temper in me that I never knew that I had (probably a side-effect of the sleep deprivation). Life is generally much harder.
No regrets: I love them dearly…I guess everybody says that. If you’ve ever had that “struck by lightning” falling-in-love, it was like that for me for each of my kids. It’s a deep, lizard-brain bond and I know I will love them with my whole heart until my dying breath. Perhaps more useful to hear, though, if you don’t have kids already: it has permanently changed who I am, in every way. I really much prefer the person that I am now than who I was before having kids.
They say you shouldn’t have kids for the following reason, but dammed if I can figure out why: children have given my life purpose.
That purpose infected me and begat many other purposes; I changed careers, I took up new hobbies, I developed skills I previously had no interest in, all of which have contributed to a much richer and more meaningful life, albeit more difficult as well.
It is also often said that kids are very expensive (and they really are, in both time and money). However, at least for me, many of the life choices that have made me significantly more financially secure, I never would have made if I hadn’t had kids. And although I have far less time, my time now feels valuable to me. Psychologically, I feel much better grounded and happier in general. My kids have made me richer in every respect, including the counter-intuitive ways.
Sometimes I joke with my wife that the above sentiments are Stockholm syndrome. Maybe so, but that doesn’t make the sentiment any less real, even if it is born out of a fundamental irrationality. Keep that in mind while reading folks who say they have no regrets: their past selves might have regretted it, but now that they are living it, they _really don’t have regrets_.
Kids take your time. Like, a lot. Almost all of it, and sometimes more than that. It's easy to resent the lost time. It's easy to try to carve out some time for yourself, but too often it gets carved out of the kids' needs. That's what I regret. Not the kids, but my selfishness with my time and attention while they were growing up. If you're going to have kids, have them. Go all in. Don't withhold yourself from them.…
If he had given up those passions to just interact with me 24x7 I think I would have felt a little suffocated.
Kids take your time. Like, a lot. Almost all of it, and sometimes more than that. It's easy to resent the lost time. It's easy to try to carve out some time for yourself, but too often it gets carved out of the kids' needs. That's what I regret. Not the kids, but my selfishness with my time and attention while they were growing up. If you're going to have kids, have them. Go all in. Don't withhold yourself from them.…
Interesting. I think my dad having his own interests and hobbies (cars, woodworking, etc) that he was conspicuously excited about, could teach and share with me in limited ways, etc. was a big part of the person I became and of my relationship with him. If he had given up those passions to just interact with me 24x7 I think I would have felt a little suffocated.
YMMV though; my wife and I were planning on being DINKs for life and we had to make a conscious effort to decide to want our baby. We definitely accomplished that, but I have no idea what it’s like to want to have a kid, or what it’s like to accidentally have a kid and to end up not being able to enjoy it.