Having Kids • Hacker News Board

Re: Having Kids

#891

Post by aniketpanjwani » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

citizenkeen wrote: post #511

triangleman wrote: post #131

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…

My wife did research for grad school related to this, so we went in to this eyes open. Her studies showed that people who have a kid 3 or younger were less happy than equally situated peers. Their first smile is nice, but it's a lot of poop and your peers are going to Europe. If your youngest is 4 or older, there's literally no difference in happiness. Europe is nice. Their first play, them as actual human beings - a…

Your wife's research is almost surely correlational, not casual - I'm assuming it's some sort of OLS using the NLSY or some similar dataset.

The fact that happiness and health goes up dramatically when parents are north of 60 just reflects that in the past - if you didn't have kids - it's because you didn't get married. If you didn't get married, it was far more likely to be because you were somehow unviable as a marriage partner than because you didn't want to get married.

So, you're going to get a spurious, strong correlation between happiness/health and the interaction between age > 60 and having kids. If you run the same regression among Americans in 30 or 40 years, that same relationship will not hold, since whether to get married and whether to have kids are to ever-increasing degrees explicit choices.

Re: Having Kids

#892

Post by HappyDreamer » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:20 AM UTC

winrid wrote: post #830

hodgesrm wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you decide to have kids? This is a serious question.

It makes your life meaningful in a way nothing else can.

But you cannot know about that before you have kids? Instead, that's something you discover afterwards?

(And I think the question was about before :-))

Re: Having Kids

#893

Post by DrAwdeOccarim » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

all_usernames wrote: post #887

DrAwdeOccarim wrote: post #867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My life goals are to take care of my family and have a material positive impact on human health, in that order. I guess what worries me is that both of these are long-haul, compounding-type efforts when I've spent my entire life pursuing short-term goals like finish school-grade, finish college, finish grad school, finish post doc, start job. Now that I've been working in my career for the longest stretch of my life…

Pro tip: Pick 'values' that don't require unlocking experience points, hitting milestones, or achieving things in this transitory world. Values that you can just do, now. E.g., love well.

I appreciate that, and I've understood the sentiment for my entire life. I guess I'm just unable to grasp doing something that I can't follow my progress on. I think it's a personal fault of mine. Kind of like when people say you shouldn't compare yourself to others. How do you actually only compare yourself to who you were yesterday and only strive to be better than them? The whole mindfullness movment of recent makes me feel 'less than' because so much of my mental time is spent comparing myself to others' success...So when you say, "love well". Love well compared to what? What's the reference to compare against? I feel like at some point I'll hit a zen moment where I'll see with eyes crosses outward some inner "ah ha" and then I'll get it. But I'm not there yet.

Re: Having Kids

#894

Post by foolinaround » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #527

bryanmgreen wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No clue why you're being downvoted. I too wonder why anyone would want children if they don't actively want to spend time and raise them.

Raising children is not about being a helicopter parent like many Americans understand it. It wasn't even in the US like that, until the 80s or so, when media people and book authors inspired profitable guilt to parents, and the boomers started making pandering and spoiling their kids the norm. If we're talking about kids less than school age, then sure, parents are with them most of the day. After school age however…

> It's up there to messing up your kids with homeschooling...

Presumptuous much? Have you met a wide range of homeschooled kids?

Re: Having Kids

#895

Post by ludwigvan » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

anon9001 wrote: post #667

lutorm wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think your kids will have to toil more than you? Achieving financial independence is more about prioritizing your wants than having a huge income, and that's definitely something you can pass on to your children. I think it would be a lot healthier to grow up like that than as a child who could have whatever they wanted (monetarily.) Sending the signal to your children that things in life just come for fre…

> Achieving financial independence is more about prioritizing your wants Except that's not true... Life in the US is expensive. If you stop earning money, you go homeless and hungry. I'd like to opt out of all of this and I'm in my 30s. Unless you're counting healthcare, food, and shelter as "wants", you need to work. I'm lucky enough to still have my parents, and their advice on this is that I can stop working when…

> Except that's not true... Life in the US is expensive. If you stop earning money, you go homeless and hungry.

Have you ever considered moving abroad? Maybe you could give a try.

Re: Having Kids

#896

Post by exclusiv » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:28 AM UTC

yitchelle wrote: post #885

exclusiv wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that definitely makes it even more challenging then. Thanks for sharing. I'm kind of similar with regard to stress. My problem is I rarely share any stress and I rarely show it, so my wife used to assume I'm never stressed. So sharing more has helped. She then understands why I might need some of my hobby time to maintain a clear mind and sanity. I also try to help her get time away from the kids because I know…

In regards to taking time away from the kids, I would judge her resistance no more than typical when compared to other mums in similar situations. She sees it as a chance for father-child bonding time, so she does not feel any guilt from being away from the kids. Have you found a way to balance family life against hobby life against work life for you and family? I am still searching.

That's great! So if you take more time solo w kids then she will get recharged away from them and get more friend or solo time. That opens you up for the same.

I do that to give me balance and help my wife out. I'll take a full Sat or Sunday with the kids. Then I just make sure to express in advance that I want to golf/kayak/fish/bowl/etc and she's very understanding now.

Golf and fishing are easier to balance because I can do them really early in the morning. So if I can make that work I do it. Then you can nap w the kids later. :)

I also hit the driving range on my lunch break which is nice. Or do a short par 9 during work time.

Actively encouraging your wife to do solo or friend time will open your game up. :)

And then just fitting it in when you can haha. Worth sacrificing some work output when you need it IMO, but I run a small company so I have some flexibility others may not

Re: Having Kids

#897

Post by motorolnik » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

nickreese wrote: post #11

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…

Hi, Nick, can I ask you about that your 2017/2018 HFT project from another thread?

Re: Having Kids

#898

Post by riversflow » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:50 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #399

paxys wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is funny because the average neighborhood is safer than ever before. What has gone way down is our tolerance for accidents (which I guess is a good thing, but certainly has its tradeoffs).

I'm not sure that's true, when comparing cities to towns (and parent specifically mentioned this was a city-centric view of kids.) While there is less crime, there is a lot less space for kids to just run around, mostly because there's cars everywhere, which are obviously extremely unsafe for kids.

Just move to some place more rural. Kids will stay off the road if they have woods to explore. Good way to get away from pollution too.

Re: Having Kids

#899

Post by basilisks » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:09 AM UTC

ev0lv wrote: post #889

basilisks wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. My son is 2 and legally blind, so needless to say we have no life outside of him for now, but he is a joy. I would trade none of this for nothing. Often I feel like I will never again be able to have a life, read a book, finish a project, have an idea. I know that it gets better and that I should cherish the moments we have while he is so young (and I do), but it’s hard to see more than a foot in…

Did you by chance have any cats in the house when your wife was pregnant? Looking for anecdotal evidence relating to something I've read about.

Yes, one cat. My wife never changed the box, fwiw. What’s your theory?

Re: Having Kids

#900

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

triangleman wrote: post #131

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…

I hear you, and I'm still at the beginning.

I have a 1-and-a-half year old. I'm very lucky because I work from home, my wife doesn't work and I'm in a good work-life balance situation (good company). The incredible advantage of working at home and being a Software Developer is that I don't need to sit at a computer all the time to do my job. Good chunk of it is thinking through a problem, I can do that while I lay on the floor and let my baby crawl on me ;)

That being said, I can relate. I end up an entire week where all I did was work, get groceries, get other stuff from somewhere else.

I did try to optimize my time though: when I'm in the washroom, sitting on the throne, I read 5-10 pages of a book instead of my RSS feed (I leave that to the moments when I'm too tired). That over the course of 1 years adds up, I almost finished 4 books, which is a lot with a kid!

I got a tablet to stream my PC there, so that I can play a few videogames when in bed, however most of the time I just fall asleep or play 30 minutes at most. I need 10 hour to get decent rest (the baby moves/do stuff during the night. Yes she sleeps with us, otherwise we would get 1 hour of sleep).

Audiobooks have proven very helpful, I listen to those when going to buy groceries, I manage to keep growing while I wait to get back my time.

What I'm missing the most is time with my wife. I mean, we stay all day together, but we rarely get to play something together. We recently made a big purchase: a board game table. This should allow us to play when the baby naps and keep the board game set, so hopefully we can go back to play board games without having to wait 4-5 years.

That's all the "wisdom" I have to offer. I bet you already figured out all of it since you are further in the parenting voyage, but in case you missed it, that's my 2-cents, hope it's of some help.

That being said, I do love my baby. Some weeks I really need that 1 hour of gaming or reading, otherwise I go crazy, but most of the time is either work or kids.

Some weeks I just need 10 minutes hugging with my wife, to recover lack of "us" time