191–200 of 323 posts
There is nothing more narcissistic and selfish than having kids. There is nothing noble about fulfilling your biological imperative to leave a descendant. Quite the opposite, really, it's a rather primitive egoistical desire to somehow continue oneself after death.
Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs. But that didn't happen. We just carried on being Jason and his partner, but with a baby in tow. I had spent most of my 30s cramming in as much "living" as possible,…
I'm 6 months in and it has definitely ended my life as it was and nothing is the same. I'm pretty lucky that my wife gives me almost 16 hours of free time daily, from which 8 I work and 8 is for sleep. If I want to work out or do something else I need to steal it from the sleep time. It's pretty early though so I might be looking back in a few years and think that it was not that bad actually :)
I wish there was a way to make this decision rationally. My wife and I are coming up to the point of no return. We either do it now, or never. Now let's try to figure this out: Do we have enough money? Yes, probably. We could survive 10 years without making another dime. I don't know what kind of safety net is recommended, but people do it with a lot less. We live in a country with free health care, so illness won't…
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I’ve always wanted kids, ever since I was a kid myself, but I was never really sure what it would be like to be a parent. Turns out it’s quite strange, because my kids bring me more joy than anything else. I’ll sit there for hours watching them play. You may think “that’s not strange—tons of parents say that”, but for my sort of personality, it’s very strange. I’ve always thought of myself as sort of overly analytica…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there are many ways to connect deeply to humanity and you are being dismissive of those other experiences. Yours is just another anecdote amongst the ones I presented. Would you dismiss your kids experiences if they decide not to have kids? I would not.
name one that would make me care about what happens to earth after I depart?
Looks like many dads are changing mentally when their first child is born or a bit later. Mine changed somewhere during the second trimester.
Bonding is also almost automatic for mothers (especially who breastfeed), whilst it's delayed or never happens at the same level for fathers. My first child has never been close to father because he worked "9-9-6" and got 2 day leave. He could never really calm down crying baby or put her to bed. With the second child, thanks to large corp policy, he got 15 weeks bonding leave and it was a very different experience for father and child - baby didn't care on whose lap to fall asleep.
Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs. But that didn't happen. We just carried on being Jason and his partner, but with a baby in tow. I had spent most of my 30s cramming in as much "living" as possible,…
There are some huge changes.
The largest is a lack of the mental downtime where deep thought and problem solving could occur.
I can't get off work, hop on my car, and drive around for an hour mulling over technical work. I can't stay an hour past with coworkers and noodle solutions on a white board. I can't get up at 2 am to try something out that just popped into my head.
I need to be in bed by 10pm every day. I have to get up at 7am every day. On weekdays 2 meals a day need to be planned, on weekends 3 meals a day. I can't try experimenting with some random new recipe that may fail, my kid needs to eat lunch on time not 2 hours late.
Yes it is a lot of fun (theme parks! Trick or treating!), but I'm thankful I did a ton of amazing engineering work before I had a kid because there is no way I can dedicate the absurd amount of time to innovating/solving hard problems, that I used to.
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Badly behaved kids I am more understanding of now (at least the younger ones). But there are defintely easy ways out of problems some parents take that are not good for children.
Yeah, with a kid I still judge. I'd rather see kids running around and playing and being kids in public than on a tablet. Even grocery shopping I see toddlers on tablets sitting in the cart. My son has been actively involved with meal planning since he as a a year and a half old. "What type of bread today? What type of fruit in your yogurt tomorrow?" I won't judge kid's behavior, so long as they are acting like kids.…
On the other hand, no one has ever called the police on me for handing the kid a tablet and melting their brain inside.
When I was a kid either of those people would be practically thrown in a loony bin for saying anything, let alone taken serious by the authorities. Now the CPS investigates almost every accusation and is legally barred from even telling you who made it, so these anonymous shitstains can exercise their cowardice behind a curtain as much as they like with no risk to themselves but every risk to you.
It's difficult to let them live in the real world not because some evil guy with a white van is waiting to offer "free candy" but that the evil person in a white van is actually the Karen who sees a kid on the street or the park as an inconvenience for her or an unacceptable risk and they can be the coward they are and make an anonymous complaint and cause weeks of harassments by CPS with the cell phone they have next to them at the ready wherever they might see a child.