The Art of Decision-Making
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The Art of Decision-Making
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Re: The Art of Decision-Making
#2> Before having children, you may enjoy clubbing, skydiving, and LSD; you might find fulfillment in careerism, travel, cooking, or CrossFit; you may simply relish your freedom to do what you want. Having children will deprive you of these joys. And yet, as a parent, you may not miss them. You may actually prefer changing diapers, wrangling onesies, and watching “Frozen.” These activities may sound like torture to the childless version of yourself, but the parental version may find them illuminated by love, and so redeemed. You may end up becoming a different person—a parent. The problem is that you can’t really know, in advance, what “being a parent” is like. For Paul, there’s something thrilling about this quandary. Why should today’s values determine tomorrow’s?
I hate arguments like this, PARTICULARLY when the topic is becoming a parent. Sure, you might become a new person and love being a parent far more than missing the aspects of life you sacrificed to be there. OR you might hate it - I have at least one friend that told me "I love my daughter, but I hate being a parent" in a terribly gut-wrenching way. To say you don't know - that you CAN'T know - what it's like to be a parent without being one doesn't mean you should just shrug and give it a try. Ditto the same rationale for other arguments - there are many things you can't know if you'll like until you try it, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to decide if you will in advance.
Of course you'll never know if you'll love being a parent, you won't know how it can change you, and EVERY parent has moments of frustrations that are not the same as regretting having a child/children. But if you become one, there's at least two lives that can really really suffer if you hate it, so it's worth dedicating some effort to thinking about in advance.
Finding parenthood worthwhile is a very very common state for humanity (for good reason!) and most of us have benefited from that. But we shouldn't assume that it will just work out that way, for ourselves or for others.
Re: The Art of Decision-Making
#3> Before having children, you may enjoy clubbing, skydiving, and LSD; you might find fulfillment in careerism, travel, cooking, or CrossFit; you may simply relish your freedom to do what you want. Having children will deprive you of these joys. And yet, as a parent, you may not miss them. You may actually prefer changing diapers, wrangling onesies, and watching “Frozen.” These activities may sound like torture to the…
I think you may be missing the point here. It's not don't think about whether you should or should not and plan as much as you can accordingly – your ambitions. I think it's actually don't expect you can know how you will feel – your aspirations. And more importantly don't deterministically tell yourself how you should feel about what you aspire to become.
Allowing your aspirations to more flexibly become whatever the situation requires is important. As described in the finish with respect to the time between we aspire to do something and work toward those aspirations: > “what happens in the meanwhile is also life.”
Life gets in the way, and as people we certainly can change for good and bad.
Re: The Art of Decision-Making
#4> Before having children, you may enjoy clubbing, skydiving, and LSD; you might find fulfillment in careerism, travel, cooking, or CrossFit; you may simply relish your freedom to do what you want. Having children will deprive you of these joys. And yet, as a parent, you may not miss them. You may actually prefer changing diapers, wrangling onesies, and watching “Frozen.” These activities may sound like torture to the…
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Re: The Art of Decision-Making
#5Do we have any real data on real-time parental happiness vs intentionally childless folks?
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Re: The Art of Decision-Making
#6Do we have any real data on real-time parental happiness vs intentionally childless folks? reply
What do you mean by real-time here?
I beleive the prevailing studies are that parenthood is associated with less joy but more meaning in life compared with voluntary childlessness. (Involuntary childlessness is not associated with increased joy or meaning, and is more associated with increased loneliness)
Re: The Art of Decision-Making
#7I always look at it this way.
Both parents and non-parents are trapped on their own side of ignorance.
The childless because they haven't tried to the experience of having a child and the love that most feel.
The parents because they forget how it was to not have the obligations of a child.
My personal opinion on the matter is that children are 49% horrible and 51% of pure bliss and it's that 1% which makes the whole difference.
Re: The Art of Decision-Making
#8I always look at it this way. Both parents and non-parents are trapped on their own side of ignorance. The childless because they haven't tried to the experience of having a child and the love that most feel. The parents because they forget how it was to not have the obligations of a child. My personal opinion on the matter is that children are 49% horrible and 51% of pure bliss and it's that 1% which makes the whole…
Well put. That also strikes me more broadly as the dynamic between youth and age, or inexperience and experience. The BEFORE phase is always ignorant by nature, but the AFTER phase is remarkably good at forgetting what it was really like.
Re: The Art of Decision-Making
#9I always look at it this way. Both parents and non-parents are trapped on their own side of ignorance. The childless because they haven't tried to the experience of having a child and the love that most feel. The parents because they forget how it was to not have the obligations of a child. My personal opinion on the matter is that children are 49% horrible and 51% of pure bliss and it's that 1% which makes the whole…
> My personal opinion on the matter is that children are 49% horrible and 51% of pure bliss and it's that 1% which makes the whole difference.
In my head I think of it similarly: the mean of the experience of living before and after having a child is roughly the same, but the variance is much higher after. Which side of the mean I'm on varies, and I honestly don't know where it will end up over time. That's why it's so hard to know whether I regret it or not. Given all the positive stuff (ya know, the unconditional love and all that), I can never say that I regret it, but in so many ways life is also just objectively so much worse now.
Re: The Art of Decision-Making
#10Ruth Chang has by far the best approach to decision-making I've ever heard. Her TED talk is linked below. The key take away is determining first: "What do I stand for". And, afterward putting all your focus and energy behind your decision. In the end, if you lose, you lose. On that score I find Jordan Peterson tremendously helpful, and also linked below.
https://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choice...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP5ohTF4epE
About parenthood I might add this... our brains are wired to minimize the negative where our children are concerned. All manner of rationalizations, identification, and denial works in favor of maintaining the parental bond. Its more important to decide what you stand for, than it is walk in the path of those of us so afflicted by the bias of being parents. It is great. It is also brutally hard and in the end, one way or another, you have to let go.