111–120 of 902 posts
I can't help but wonder how far removed pg's experience of parenting is from those without his resources, which is most people. The lows of parenting probably hit a lot less hard when you don't have to worry about money or work multiple jobs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I endorse looking at data like this, but I think there is much better way to estimate how kids would affect your happiness: do activities that put you in extensive contact with kids, e.g., volunteer to baby sit for your friends/family, offer to tutor/advise neighborhood kids, and coach youth sports. (In addition to learning about yourself, you're helping out parents and kids when you do this, so win-win.) Obviously t…
This might work for some people, but for me it would have been a worthless and tragically misleading signal. I got modest-at-best enjoyment from being around kids before I had one, but the past 10 years with our son has held many of the best experiences of my life. Your own kid is a very different thing than all the other kids you might spend time with. My experience is more like pg describes, where I had a lot of tr…
>Having kids is one of those intense types of experience that are hard to imagine unless you've had them. But it is not, as I implicitly believed before having kids, simply your DNA heading for the lifeboats. But it is, because your entire biology has evolved for billions of years with the sole purpose of reproducing effectively. No amount of "I feel like I enjoy it" negates that it is programmed into you as an organ…
I don’t think it’s programmed into me. I am actively repulsed by children, the thought of reproducing, the concept of adding more humans to society, or increasing the resource consumption of my leaf node’s subtree.
The whole thing seems disgusting and self-centered and self-indulgent and selfish and irresponsible to me.
That said, I think that myself and others that feel this way stand in contrast to your claim that we are simply programmed to reproduce. We are not—only a subset of us are.
The decision to have kids is a lot like the decision to continue living. There is no logical basis for it. Or rather, any latticework of logic you erect to justify this choice is based on a foundation that has nothing to do with reason. It is an emotional and spiritual desire to live and love, and give more life and more love to the world. That's why I when see people engage in complex rational calculations about the…
Agree. In many ways I wonder if we're seeing a couple compounding forces at play: * The introduction of birth control and giving people (yes both men and women) too much control over procreation without having to control the impulse for procreation. * Seeing people solely as material beings as a consequence of the Enlightenment. After all, if you're just the matter you're composed off then you're no more special than…
There is this enlightenment western philosophy that everyone is an atomized, isolated blank slate acting only in their own self interest, severed from any ties to the past... it goes against long standing views of having inherited legacy, and responsibility to continue this legacy which applied much social pressure to having children, even many children like in more traditional/religious cultures, and this has been abandoned in a very short period of time (seen in declining birth rates, marriage rates, increasing age of having children etc.)
As someone who has wrestled a lot with the question of whether I ever want kids, I've sought out data. One thing I came across was this: https://www.salon.com/2017/05/09/google-confessional-your-se... > Adults with children are 3.6 times more likely to tell Google they regret their decision than are adults without children. I'd be curious if others have data on this. I'm especially interested in how many people have…
I endorse looking at data like this, but I think there is much better way to estimate how kids would affect your happiness: do activities that put you in extensive contact with kids, e.g., volunteer to baby sit for your friends/family, offer to tutor/advise neighborhood kids, and coach youth sports. (In addition to learning about yourself, you're helping out parents and kids when you do this, so win-win.) Obviously t…
I strongly disagree that this gives good evidence whether you'll enjoy having kids yourself. I never liked dealing with kids of any age; the experience with my own kids, however, is vastly different, and I really enjoy their company.
Uhh. Just going to chime in here. It is absolutely OK if you don’t experience the emotions he writes about here. You aren’t broken. I write this because I read and it immediately messaged a few friends who respect Paul as well asking them if I was broken. Everyone experiences parenthood differently. I never had the chemical changes in my brain and often over the past 3 years have realized just how selfish I am when i…
Three kids later and I definitely have strong feelings around my kids, but it's not some kind of revelation. They're people just like me, they just have less experience. It's my job (legally and ethically) to make sure they have a reasonably well informed, if biased, framework to examine, test and act in the world.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-ebook/dp/B0...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To paraphrase Jordan Peterson: "No one ever walked into my psychology practice because their parents made them too emotionally independent." There are some parents out there who continually martyr themselves because they think it makes them a good person (I get 4 hours of sleep a night to make sure my kids have everything! I'm awesome!) but are in fact overinvolved and setting a bad example for the kid by not taking…
American parenting is a cancer. I was raised in Europe and had a kid in California, I hate how most kids are raised here and I hate the expectations put on parents. Most people think you gotta stop having fun, you can’t go out because kids and you have to constantly hover them. I took my son out when he was 5 days old and I brought him everywhere since. He knows he needs to be quiet when we go in public and we will n…
Generally, this is advised against to minimize chances of the child contracting a virus or bacteria while there are no good treatment options in the first few months of life. Also, putting them in a vehicle increases their risk of being in a collision, which has the same problem of having few good remedies, so playing it safe is considered OK.
My cynical take: certainly, for people with sufficiently stressful jobs, having kids is going to be less stressful. Still, it's far easier to switch jobs, or take up meditation. Plus, then I won't have that old stressful job!
> On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare?
This definitely reads like it was written by someone who made a lot of money, and then had kids. 13 years ago, he wrote: "Young startups are fragile. A society that trims its margins sharply will kill them all." You just need to have so much ambition you can afford to spare it, even though you're doing something where the margins are so thin they mean the difference between life and death!