481–490 of 902 posts
I don't like kids. I don't want kids. I'm 46 and single and I don't want to date someone with kids. It drastically reduces my dating pool but I'm willing to live with that. There are enough people on earth as it is. I don't feel like I need to increase that number.
Hey guys. Anyone else have the experience of having kids, getting a burst of energy, but of course all that energy goes directly back into the kids and house, and you have absolutely no life for 3-5 years or more? Because my kids are 2 and 4 and so far it's been 4 years of no life, no freelance clients, almost no learning/hobbies, just 35-40 hours a week of working as much as I can at the office and then everything i…
As for whether you have no life, well, I think this is life. It's far more fulfilling than when I spent my time outside of the office futzing around on somewhat productive hobbies that were ultimately not life changing.
The hardest part has been staying close with friends. I'm lucky there in that a bunch of my friends had kids at the same time so we all made the transition at once. Suddenly instead of going out to bars we all want to hang out on a Saturday afternoon with our kids. Without that I genuinely don't know how we'd keep our adult social life going.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep i was there. Picked up bike commuting to work because it replaced time driving, not required more time. I also started drawing because you can do it in short spurts, and you can do it anywhere. The time commitment has changed for me but not quite enough where i can sit for hours and code something outside of work. My kids are 5 and 7
Guessing by your name that you are a climber. How did having kids affect that part of your life? I am a pretty devoted climber at the moment, to the point that I left my job to pursue it more. Eventually I want kids though. Obviously I know that will affect how much time I can spend climbing but I'm curious to what degree it affects most climbing parents.
I do plot a return to fitness one day! Although I primarily used to climb outdoors (and now have a crag within walking distance of the house) I do miss living near an indoor climbing wall for the convenience of climbing any time of day, any weather, partner or no. It's all about the convenience when you have to fit it around job and parenting. Mountain biking as one sibling comment said is far easier logistically (and right now I'd rather teach the little one to mountain bike - lower consequence I think - climbing can wait a bit). Caving as well as it's a proper adventure I can do on dark wet evenings near home.
One climbing couple I know I saw in the wall for years taking turns child minding / bouldering. Anything can be done with enough dedication, it's just harder. Hey, Dave McLeod still pushes e11/12(?) with parenting responsibilities so honestly operating many rungs below that I have little excuse.
Paul's line in the op about not actually using all those freedoms before I had a child really resonates with me though. I went to a lot of amazing places and did amazing things but only for like 10 percent of my leisure time in the average year (maybe 70 percent in a keen one). The years when I was climbing my best came to an end long before we had a child purely because I got bored of maintaining the necessary fitness.
One thing I will emphasize is having a child ties you to a location more than ever before in terms of jobs, friends, support networks and before long, schools. I'd love to live somewhere more mountainous than the UK one day but now it's not the right time for the family. Will it ever be the right time before I'm too old to climb the routes I want? Who knows. If I relived the last 20 years I'd have done more of it in different places and possibly picked a different place to raise a family. But things are rarely that simple of course.
Would I change our child for anything though? No way :-)
Once you have that answer, you can deal with the rest (emotional/financial/relationship/time stability and security [sorted alphabetically for no reason]).
Also, props to PG for writing one of the more coherent articles on having children.
Hey guys. Anyone else have the experience of having kids, getting a burst of energy, but of course all that energy goes directly back into the kids and house, and you have absolutely no life for 3-5 years or more? Because my kids are 2 and 4 and so far it's been 4 years of no life, no freelance clients, almost no learning/hobbies, just 35-40 hours a week of working as much as I can at the office and then everything i…
In the other hand, I never had such a fruitful experience. I can teach my kids. I can make them respect my daddy time. And I can let them help with the chores.
It all comes down to honesty. Honesty bro yourself, your partner, and your kids. If a side project is what you want to do. Tell everyone and make a schedule. The thing is, even if kids are the most fragile and beautiful part of a family they are but a part and need to understand that at some point.
One clear change that happened with me, once having a child -- is that I understood my Dad much more. I understood what made him upset, and I understood how he reacted and why... I started showing same behavioral traits as him. But it was only after I had our first child. Stuff that I took for granted when my Dad was doing it, now I understood, was actually meant to take an effort, on behalf of a parent. Unfortunatel…
That's my concern, I never want to become my father given my own painful upbringing. Even further, I worry that if i ever have kids i'd have to distance myself from parents as I do not approve on how they live or manage their lives. As their child i can manage via effective boundaries and I'm able to ignore their stupidity. If i ever have kids though, they will want to be part of their lives and I can't really say no…
Others, might not have been so lucky.
For me, caring about my own children's health/well-being/future was bit eye opening, in the sense that I was a lot more egoistic, before becoming a parent.
I also think that recognition improved my spousal relationship.
And that's what I wanted to tell my Dad... but I missed that opportunity...
There is a lot of materials out there about family dynamics that get passed through generations. [1]
It is exceptionally difficult for an individual to recognize negative traits that must be filtered out, if he/she is to have a more normal relationships with their spouse and their children.
Most families have traits, that overtime, should be filtered out. But not forgotten.
Significant portion of my parent's upbringing was dictated that their parents went through (physical torture, captivity, war, loosing loved ones, loosing first families during war, real famine, property taken away, ridicule and persecution at work and otherwise, for their ethnic background and so on ).
My parents, filtered out lot of the family dynamics that was passed on to them due to the above.
But we did not forget what my grand parents went through..
And just like my parents, I do not excuse my own actions by saying 'well, my parents that that to me...' or anything like that.
It is a conscious act, not 'natural' (at least not for me), and I work on it with my spouse, recognizing that there is nothing wrong in improving what we learnt in our upbringing.
[1] https://blogs.psychcentral.com/family/2012/03/family-dynamic...
I'd even go further and say it's irresponsible these days to post things like this. If nothing else, because we know the Earth cannot support many more people. Or at least it's looking that way. I think as a society we need to get away from sappy Hallmark channel stuff like this and celebrate the individual. We should not be made to feel like having kids is some transcendental thing. Studies consistently show childle…
...most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used. I paid for it in loneliness, but I never used it. Paul's written a lot of smart stuff, but this might be the smartest. I took a lot of steps to protect my freedom before getting engaged to my partner, and I realize now that was a shitty tradeoff. Freedom was an unexercised resource I had, which is to say it was largely wasted on me. I spent a lot of time being l…
Taken literally, it sounds like he's dismissing his relationship/marriage and saying he was lonely while in it, pre-children. I'm not going to try and extrapolate if that's what he truly meant or what the implications of such a statement would mean.
The sentiment, I think, would improve from removing kids and saying "I didn't take advantage of my pre-children freedoms and was lonely because of that."
It also raises an interesting question... If he had maximized those freedoms, how would that have affected his decision to have a child?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your kids are at the age before school where they are the hardest to deal with. Once a kid gets to school, magic happens. I mean it. - They get tired from learning stuff. And the teachers know how to deal with them. - They learn how to behave in a group. They start having actual friends. - You get a bunch of friends who are in the same situation as you, and you can use their kids to cancel out yours. (AKA playdates)…
> my kids started school at 4. I've put them in full time after school care as well, ending at 6pm > you get them asleep before 8pm > you can give them a book and that will keep them quiet And then people wonder why kids don't listen to and respect their parents when they grow up. You're basically just giving school teachers full control to raise your kids at age of 4, and they only interact with you for 1-2 hours du…