Jeff Atwood On Parenthood

Yes, except it never ends.

My elderly father's last conversations were filled with concerns about my siblings. The more limited his mobility, the more exhausted he seemed, the more he worried about how they would get along.

I tell people that there are switches in the brain - that when you first hold your child (or any child should you hold it long enough), those switches turn on. You have no control of the switches; they are genetically-controlled hardware passed down from your parents. They have lain dormant for the several decades of your life, awaiting this moment. Once they turn on, they will not turn off.

The "switches" change your behavior radically: you will now react to the child's cry to sooth it, you will protect the child at all costs, you will grieve if it is harmed, etc.

Here's an example. One friend, an animal lover, upon entering her home with her first newborn instinctively commanded "Get the animals outside, all of them, outside, NOW!!" and to the bewilderment of all present, four previously beloved and sheltered pets were cast out into the frozen dark backyard (we did improvise shelter). To this day she remains amazed at what she did. The pets were allowed indoors 18 months later.

When I was young I didn't understand this. I was taught that we were tabulae rasae. Once I started to understand evolution, I saw that it only makes sense from an evolutionary perspective: what could be more important to a gene than producing another copy of related genes? What better way to do this than to program the organism to protect its young at all costs?

But there's another level of understanding: standing there, holding a child as the switches turn on. The experience itself.

I had twins born just over 10 years ago, and can clearly remember the doctor pulling up the ultrasound and circling a little dot and calling it a baby. There was another dot just like it on the other side of the screen, and I thought "this guy has no idea what he's doing", because he was missing the other dot.

Then he said, "here's another one". I said "another what?" He looked at me, and calmly replied, "there are two babies in here. You're having twins."

At that point, everything changed. Nobody believes me, but I bet you do. And everyone else on this thread who has kids gets it, too.

I had a boy and girl; the boy is named Henry. Small world, brother.

Keeping with the hacker theme, my kids are easily the best products I have ever shipped. :-)

I meant my comment to be more along the lines -- 'if you think crying and diaper changing is difficult, wait till you have to start worrying about them crashing your car, getting a call from the police when they are out with friends at night, or getting someone pregnant'.

My wife and I have an 8-month old, and she's a reasonably 'easy baby'. But even so, from a coding perspective, the non-maskable interrupt thing is an absolute brain killer. And it's more difficult to get in the groove because of the sleep deprivation.

From what I see above, there's a lot of encouragement here that the instant love/bonding thing will make the whole experience worthwhile. That may be true. But there's also a lot of self-censorship (or even explicit censorship : search for the word 'disgusting') about how draining the whole thing can be. And that having a baby is not a choice that suits everyone : Think long and hard about whether you really want to give up two thirds of your usable free time...