> On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare?
I don't know, it seems like parenthood asks for a lot to be given up. Younger people like myself are already struggling to live on their own where I am. There's not a lot that can be spared by most of us.
To me, having a child means heavily straining your financial safety - here, care for this other person that can't do anything and has some of the most expensive needs in society. Not only that, but you need to be sure that you can provide for the child for the next 5, 10, 15 years. Who has that sort of confidence? Then there's the part where all your free time is sacrificed to care for the child. The time burden decreases, but it's always a lot of time. And you always have to be extremely risk-averse - if you were just responsible for yourself before, now you have someone you need to take into account for every thing you do in life. Moves, job changes, major risks or investments, career changes, taking on additional responsibilities. All of these things probably become much less doable for parents. And this is a one-way road with no backing out, you commit to it and are stuck with that choice for several decades. By the time your child lives on their own, you've already spent a large portion of your adult life. And there's no guarantees that your child is someone you like, or that your parenthood isn't soured by something else. There's plenty of parents who are stuck in parenthood and hate it.
The thought of having a child scares me. I'm happy that the author is content with how his life turned out, but I'm okay with just watching from the sidelines. Maybe the biological instinct (forced coping mechanism?) is so strong as to justify living through the horrors above in exchange for watching your kids play and participating in similar things. But I don't want to learn what that's like.
Before kids it was easy to judge bad parents. Then one day with child I found myself due to circumstances in a store way past my child’s bedtime. She was screaming and crying, because it was way past her bedtime.
Then I realized… I was now “the bad parent” I had so easily judged.
Then it was easy to judge parents with children younger than mine.
Until I learned that not all children have the same issues in the same order.
I still judge parents, because I compare them to other parents.
Good parents = kids not 100% glued to phones/tablets, social around friends and family, not throwing tantrums at 8-16 yrs old.
Bad parents = kids always throwing tantrums, kids basically always getting their way because they've learned parents will always give in, parents and kids 100% ignoring each other.
One set of friends - I go to visit, I play with their kids - we go out to dinner, we interact with both adults and kids
Another set of friends - I go to visit, they sent their kids to their room - we go out to dinner, they give the kids tablets and they're entirely ignored for the whole time.
Yes, when you have a toddler undergoing a public meltdown, it is easy to see who around you is an experienced parent, and who is not. Just by the look on their faces.
> Then I learned it’s easier not to judge at all.
A skill we should all cultivate, IMO. Life is happier when you do not waste it constantly judging.
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.
Before kids, you take a look around a diner or a store or a playground and you see little ones happily eating some chips or browsing the foodstuffs or playing on a slide.
You think that this is what kids are like. They sit there, they walk a little, they giggle on the playground, they look cute as all get out, etc.
Then you have kids and you know.
You know.
Those kids sitting there in the booth sipping on their milk quietly while mom and dad happily eat their lunch? Those are the top 5% most calm kids out there. The other 95% of kids are with their adults screaming and throwing fits and covered in who knows what.
Life lied to you. It did it directly to your face, unashamed. The bias is real.
Plenty of truly bad parents shrug responsibility off by making the "technically correct" claim that all kids throw tantrums, therefore they're not a bad parent. They then proceed to provide an unstable environment to raise their kids and the tantrums don't end until well into adulthood.
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, to make sure I'd stocked away a lifetime supply of it. After all, I'd probably never get another chance to travel for long periods, keep up with climbing, and all that other stuff that Independent Jason could do.
But it was all for naught. We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
Life is just as much fun as ever. But now we have some kids to play with.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Had a very similar feeling. When my wife told me the "getting pregnant" worked I mourned a little bit. I recognize we were exceedingly lucky to have had such a wonderful kid, and it has worked out very well.
For the first 6 mos. a lot did change, but after that things seemed to skew back to a new "normal".
It will be 13 years in May since we had our daughter. I'm so glad we did it.
I know that it could have gone a lot differently, though. I'd never suggest that it'll be great for everybody.
> He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
I was raised overseas (Dad[0] in the CIA).
Both good and bad. First, if it's just "traveling," and not "living" overseas, I suspect that it's not so bad, but military brats have common quirks, for a reason. Our lives get torn up and replanted regularly. It's hard to make friends, and we often end up having a difficult time, retaining long-term relationships, later in life.
But, man, the life story that it gives you. There's few cures for xenophobia, better than immersion.
It happened to me and now, after more than 8 years, I find myself still in the situation where I am serving my children's needs and not having time to satisfy my personal ones.
They go to bed when I am also tired. Trying to having an hobby past their bed time means sacrifying sleep time.
Travelling is also a challenge, since they lack interesting in seeing something new, but just want to have fun playing, especially playgrounds.
> We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
How do you keep a baby happy and quiet on long international flights? I currently have no kids but I may find myself in this situation in the next couple years. I'm dreading being the guy with a screaming infant on a 13-hour trans-Pacific flight that keeps everyone from sleeping.
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 :)
That doesn't appear to be a common story. I now have to schedule phone calls with my retired mother because between my sister and her partner who both work, and her, with 2 kids - one small but active that needs constant minding and one that needs chaperoning to activities - she often doesn't have one uninterrupted hour in the evening for an entire week.
Nearly everyone I know with kids is more similar to this story than yours.. to each their own but it's certainly not for me:)
Absolutely. Also, kids end up helping you focus on the travel, experiences and things that are truly worthwhile. You drop a lot of activities and TV and other activities that was frankly a waste of time anyways.
I think people struggle with losing their identity when they no longer get long periods of focus time or can participate in their hobbies with the dedication they would like.
I often wonder in these threads what proportion of the commenters is male. HN skews heavily male, and statistically speaking, fathers are spared a huge chunk of the physical and mental burdens of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. Being a mom and being a dad are not equivalent, and I have a feeling that not many male HNers would readily swap places if such thing were possible.
I don't mean to inject politics, but there's a huge mental burden on fathers with more conservative values that take their role seriously.
Unfortunately, there's no way to elaborate what I mean on HN or much of the web without stirring up a ton of pointless argument. People will just get defensive and refuse to consider perspectives they can't agree with.
Caveat emptor. I am a grandparent now, so I think I have some perspective on this.
Of course we love our kids, and we had (and still have) a lot of good times with them. But kids can really break your life and marriage, too - amongst my peers I can't tell you how many have a struggling young adult kid or two (with relatively serious mental or physical health problems), with no resolution in sight.
So stay lucky - having a child is a wild act of optimism. And if you want kids, don't wait too long. There is never really a good time to have a kid (just different trade-offs), so for the best chances for health, be as young a parent as possible. And men have a biological clock, too: e.g.: https://neurosciencenews.com/genetics-sperm-mutation-neurode...
The serious mental and physical health problems are real and a societal concern. Everyone "notices" the trends, but maybe it's not you so you just think there's nothing you can do about it and do your best to stay healthy.
Then you have a child and you are suddenly hyper-aware of everything going into the body and brain. Everything they eat, every doctor visit, every time they get sick and what could have exposed them, every word spoken on TV, every friend they have and how they act or how that friend passes along their parents influences, etc.
And suddenly you're very concerned about societal level macro influences on food, medical, etc because those influences are going to affect your child's life.
This is one of my favourites from PG, not least because it's a bit antithetical to what I perceive as a growing trend among smart, ambitious people (for whom children might represent friction, inconvenience, etc)... as well as folks for whom COL is making the question irrelevant due to practical concerns.
Actually, it's really striking that even in America -- the developed country with the #1 highest birthrate -- still falls below the replacement rate. What is it that's inversely correlated between growing wealth and having children? Especially since it was likely to opposite for most of human history? (i.e. large families were a sign of wealth and power).
PS - I can't resist offering my own experience as a parent - what a treasure to have discovered that I'm capable of such love, and to get to watch this love transform me into a better person than who I was before. This kind of love demands everything of you, but through it you discover a truer and stronger version of yourself too.
More wealth and education gives people the option to choose which I think is a good thing. People who don't want kids shouldn't be forced to have them. Before, people had kids because they needed them to work on their farm or it's what was expected of them as a housewife. Now that we have a choice, less people want to commit to taking care of a human for 18+ years. It's great so many people want to be parents but having a kid doesn't automatically make someone a great parent.
Due to the extremely competitive nature of the US economy, a lot of people have to choose between career success (having money) and starting a family (which is expensive). I know a lot of women who want to have a family, but have struggled to get to a comfortable economic position where they can actually do it. Compounded by the wage stagnation, which makes it hard for most people to support a family on a single income. We have hollowed out our third spaces, so its difficult for people to relax and socialize. Even vibing ends up being a kind of competition because of the high costs. Not to mention the perverse incentives in the housing market.
> Actually, it's really striking that even in America -- the developed country with the #1 highest birthrate -- still falls below the replacement rate. What is it that's inversely correlated between growing wealth and having children?
I think a lot of people miss the simple fact that some people just don't want kids and are unable to reconcile their personal experience with anyone else's.
My partner and I are both wealthy enough that we could both afford children and we can afford to not have children. But neither of us think our lives would be improved by having them.
I think that's really, really hard to understand for a lot of parents and people who want to be parents: being (relatively) wealthy creates choice, and that a growing number of people are choosing different things now that they have the ability to do so.
Kids cost time, not money. So the wealthier you are, the more difficult it is because you probably have less free time. You can pay someone else to raise your kids (daycare/etc.) but then you lose a lot of the value of having kids.
This bullshit excuse that somebody can't afford to have kids is proven wrong by the fact that poorer people have more kids than rich people. You can even be unemployed. Gone are the days of destitute single mothers having to give up their child to the church and work in the poorhouse. We have social welfare for that.
Maybe the fact that poor people can have lots of kids has taken away their value as a status symbol for wealth?
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 analytical, detached, ambitious, and a bit obsessive. Not the sort of touchy-feely person who chases a two year old around with a smile on my face and likes watching videos of cute babies. Yet here I am. I enjoy it so much I’ve even tried to figure out if there’s a way I can take a sabbatical from work to spend the last two years with my youngest at home before he goes off to school (seems unlikely given how questions about a random two year gap on my resume might affect my long-term career).
It’s funny that as a kid I always wanted to work at a tech company for the interesting tech, but now as an adult my favorite thing about it has been the 4 months of parental leave I was able to have with each newborn.
You just write "spent two years raising my youngest kid [building tree houses and whatnot]". If you keep a bit up with tech, why would anyone think twice about that? They wouldn't where I live.
Reading the post and >100 comments I've just realized there are differences between dad and mom mental experience.
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.
My problem with that wording is that it comes across a bit arrogant or "I know better". I think many people _do_ understand what you mean even if they don't have kids, they're just not that interested in those parts of life, which also should be fair.
Each one's a reverse-lottery-ticket, though. Get the wrong draw and it's not a gift. Can easily massively reduce the QOL for everyone around, including other siblings.
Mostly due to chronic illnesses, of either the physical or mental variety.
A good friend of mine holds the belief that "having friends with kids is better than having kids of your own", and I definitely feel the "can't explain" part - there is an unexplainable reality when you have kids of your own.
Great way of putting it. It's the sort of thing you just have to trust others and jump into. If you think about it too much it just doesn't make sense.
My big learning from having a kid, was that there was more maturing and growing up for me to do (A ton to be honest). Once there was somebody else I had to keep alive and care for and think about I learned to better de-center myself in the universe. I am sure you can get to this perspective many other ways, but having children seems to be the easy mode for getting into the mindset of "it's not about me any more."
I also had kids, and while I love my kids I haven’t loved spending time with my kids. This will hopefully change as they age, but the first six years have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else. They haven’t provided fulfilment, and they haven’t provided satisfaction. Some joy is there from time to time, definitely, but nothing in the way the author describes. Happiness for me typically starts after my kids are in bed or when I can escape them during work hours. My wife finds great happiness in our children, and I find happiness in that, but I’m desperately waiting for my kids to be old enough that I only need to spend time with them instead of constantly caring for them. Sorry if this is a bit of a dark comment, but I just wanted to say it’s not always the experience this author had, even if it seems common. Edit: Generally, I regret having kids (because of the impact on my life, not the kids themselves), but I also can’t change that decision and I would never back away from my choice - that’s completely unfair to them, as well as my wife. Such is life. I try to keep looking forward to when they’re older as a way of staying positive.
I truly do give my kids my all though, and they have a wonderful life and are loved and cared for in all senses of those words. They’re great kids and I give them everything necessary to be a great dad.
The curse of parenting is that when they're small you can't wait for them to grow up so you can get more time for you, and when they grow up you're nostalgic of their childhood when they were willing to spend more time with you.
So my advice is: find activities to do with them that you would both enjoy. Maybe going to parks, museums, have them help you on house chores... You only have a few years left under they get to middle school and start becoming more distant.
I can definitely relate. There's nights my wife and I get to bed and sorta just look at eachother and go "what the hell was that". Those days are hard.
I find the days that I forget myself and throw myself into trying to be a good dad are the days I find joy in fatherhood. Weekends especially I try to forget the stresses of work and productivity and everything else and try to spend as much time with them as possible. Playing, teaching, and learning with them.
Not saying it's universal. Just a datapoint from me.
If it makes you feel any better, you're not the only one that feels that way. I don't think it's said very often because it almost feels taboo to say it.
I would like to hear in what sense you love your kids, given that "he first six years have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else. They haven’t provided fulfilment, and they haven’t provided satisfaction. (...) Happiness for me typically starts after my kids are in bed or when I can escape them during work hours."
Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?
EDIT: Just to be 100% clear: I mean absolutely no judgement. I'm not going to tell you off or try to change your mind. I ask out of pure curiosity.
Interesting, my experience has been the opposite. Before getting kids, I thought that I would only enjoy having kids once they were the age where you could have conversations with them, etc., that the first one or two years were more something that mothers would like. But for me it was not like that at all, aside from some sleepless nights, it's so cool to be part of them discovering the world.
have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else
At some point when our kid was still young, I started working 4/5 FTE, taking the afternoons off after ~14:00. I feel like that provided a lot of mental space. Since I was working part-time, I did not feel bad/guilty about not working the afternoons and I would be focused on being very productive from 8:30 to 14:00. The free hours were for doing stuff together or accommodating their playdates (picking up from school, ensuring the house doesn't get torn down).
Now they are an age where they want to do things without parents, so I am working full-time again, but do miss those early days where she would be with me in her seat on my bike and we'd cycle to the city and she'd be singing aloud from joy.
But every person is different and I think that there are also parents that start enjoying having kids more when they are older. So, your years may still come :).
dark comment
My dark comment would be: we are all learning on the job and I feel like I could do some things better with the experience I have now.
I have a few kids, raising them is a mix of good and bad, like everything else. it took a toll on my career, pushed my temper to the edge, and stressed me out all these 20+ years, but I also enjoyed many moments. it does not go away when they got older by the way, it's a life long strong bond, at different phases there are different challenges.
If I have a second life, I don't know what to do though, I probably will first make enough money before having kids at least.
While I have always loved being a dad, I can certainly relate to the things you describe.
I will say that a lot of those issues have gotten better as they have gotten older (they are now 10 and almost 7). They don’t require the same level of constant attention that they used to, they are getting more and more interesting to talk to, and have developed interesting personalities and senses of humor.
I think it's important to share the difficult / hard experiences of having kids as much as the good ones. I've noticed that there is a huge bias towards only sharing the good moments and white-washing all of the bad as something you can "laugh about later." To be frank, not enough people were honest with me about what it would be like having kids before I had them - and I was incredibly upset when I realized that (several years into being a parent).
I now make it a point to be honest with people when they ask "Should we have kids?" and tell them about how hard it can be, etc. Most importantly, I tell people that they shouldn't have kids unless they would still want to do it if their experience doesn't land in the middle of the bell curve. We tend to romanticize the decision, and expect that everything "just gets even better" with kids. There are all sorts of ways your experience can be less than ideal. Unless you're evaluating your decision with those potential outcomes in mind, you're doing yourself, your partner, and even your future children a disservice.
Thank you for posting this. It’s totally understandable and believable that you simultaneously love them and regret some things about it. There’s this insane pressure in our society to never acknowledge the toll that kids have and to never speak out about this. I remember when this article was first posted and how I received it, like I was wrong for not being sure about kids, and that some change would come over me when I had them. Truth is, that doesn’t happen with everyone. Then the world tries to gaslight those people who don’t feel that way into feeling like they’re broken somehow.
I’m sure you love your kids and take great care of them, and it’s not your fault that you feel this way.
It would benefit all of us if this taboo was lifted, so that we could speak truthfully about the impact of kids on families, and maybe then we’d have to provide more support and encouragement to convince people to have them. Not everyone has free daycare from their grandparents or a large social network to babysit or the finances that make having a child less of a burden.
Everyone is different, and even though I don't share your experience, I don't view yours as either good or bad, it just is what it is. My experience is different but I'm not planning on ever telling anyone "Oh don't worry about it just have kids it'll be the best experience of your life" in blind faith.
I can't wait to play with my 3 year old and 1 year old. I get so mad at work when I have an odd late meeting because it is keeping me from them.
My three year old helps me build furniture (he gets screws started, counts out parts, helps apply glue). I love showing him synths and instruments and seeing his face light up.
My one year old is a cuddle monster who likes listening to jazz with me. She also really enjoys when the cat climbs up on our lap and she gets to pet it.
I don't know your situation, but most miserable parents I know see their kid as something to manage, like some kind of annoying work underling.
I see my kids as little detectives.
My goal isn't to solve their case or even help them approach it in the right way. It's to give them an occasional hint (or step stool), keep them from danger, and help them discover the correct way to behave.
Having kids becomes a lot easier if you can do the things you enjoy with them. For me that includes all sorts of stuff such as D&D, warhammer, painting miniatures, drawing, magic the gathering, board games, etc. I also include them when I have to fix something around the house or some random electronic device that broke.
If the only thing you can enjoy is adult stuff or working then you might have a rougher time at it if you don't find joy in the pure act of raising a kid. For me the first few months were meh, but once they started to get a personality I found it more entertaining.
It's mysterious to me that you write all this _and_ that you do truly love your kids and are great. If I was in your position I'd at least concede that people do deserve parents that don't regret them. Do their thoughts toward it even matter?
Do not despair, I felt the same. Mine are halfway to 18, still feel the same, unsure if it changes. I love them, just not the experience. I have friends who feel the same, so I/we are not alone.
I tell others not to do it unless they are prepared to suffer. You won't know if its for you until you've already gone through the one way door. I wish others luck. For the unlucky, I wish grit and stoicism.
Please don't ever, ever let them know this, or even allow them to figure it out. Especially before they're at least ~30 and able to begin to understand.
I have a ~6 years old boy and I'm quite neutral about that -- that is, if I somehow go back to a few years ago, I may or may not go forth for a kid -- which was my attitude back then anyway.
There are some upside, but they are...tangible. The downside is concrete and solid. From hindsight, having a kid has nothing to do with my long-term objectives, but since I can’t dial back in time, I'll try to be at least a median good father -- I have gotten the financials covered, and I'm pretty sure in that part I'm better than the median, but for the focus part I'm not sure.
As a female founder I want children, but I know that I'll be seen as less ambitious if I have them. I will be seen as less, and will be more overlooked for opportunities than I already am now. I will have them one day, but they'll be in secret. People won't know until the business reaches a certain revenue and level of success. It is like this for women and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.
My 2c is that it is not 'joy' or 'happiness' that kids bring to parents universally (although they might bring those things for some parents), but 'meaning'. Meaning is harder to define than joy/happiness, perhaps because it is less objective and more subjective.
I would really like to have kids, but I don’t have my act together. I also feel like my partner is not suitable or capable of properly taking care of our kids. Feels pretty awful and am scared to not have any kids as I grow older. I worked hard to get a good relationship with my partner, and now that we have one I worry kids will only ruin what we have now
I hope you’re in a position where you can have an honest conversation about it with your partner. I’ve come to realise over time that honest and open communication is the most critical thing in any relationship. I really hope it works out for you both!
This is an easy perspective to have if you are of the generation that got into a home purchase before they went out of control. Gen Z is being priced out of creating families.
Hacker news has a bias because most people here are working in software and probably make more than the median household income (solo).
Kudos to you! I have one and it's been the hardest thing I've ever done and it has broken us entirely. We can never imagine having more than one given the difficulty, and are now finished at one 100%. Very huge admiration for parents of > 1. It's 10x the work and not just 2x the work
I'm in the thick of it right now as a serial founder with a 5 and a 1 year old. One thing I'm surprised paulg didn't touch on is how much it can evolve your relationship with your partner (for the better!).
Watching my wife have special moments with our kids fills my heart like nothing else.
Seeing her be an amazing mom is like watching your cofounder take on a completely new role outside of their previous experience and crush it. Except it's even better since you're in love with them and have all these biological/chemical signals to help kick that in high gear.
I see a lot of different opinions here, from very positive to very negative.
I think the answer is, it's both.
When I was an employee sometimes I was happy, like when a promotion was lurking, and sometimes I was unhappy and stressed, when getting fired, when facing deadlines, ....
But when I started working for myself the amplitude of emotions became way stronger, every week I would fluctuate between feeling doomed forever or feeling like a genius.
Life with and without kids is the same: The emotional highs of having kids are way higher than anything I experienced without kids, but sometimes the lows are very low.
People can also have very different experiences because kids can be very different.
My kids have been really easy, no big problems, but sometimes I see other parents dealing with really serious issues with their kids.
It starts with babies, some of them sleep easily while other cry all the time, to teenagers who can be nice kids with no problem at school to being called to the director's office all the time and have to seriously worry about their future.
While there are always those lows, when the kids are sick, scream, have tantrums, do something stupid, I would not trade a second of that away. A lot of happiness and laughs as well, along the way.
They grow and you're privileged to live with them for a while. Also you'll grow with them.
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 end our lives like it does in the USA.
With that out of the way, let's get to all the other points:
How much do I want children? Personally, I don't get it. If my wife wasn't dead-certain she _must_ have at least one child, I would never, ever consider it. I hate noise and chaos. I even find co-habitation challenging.
I was an only child and I think I'm mildly autistic. To me, 'alone time' and 'quiet time' are sacred and required for my sanity. Well, I know that goes out the window with children. My wife is the opposite: Many siblings, has always been around noise and chaos. Loves giving love. To me, the dog, to anyone. And that is why she seems to have this need. So, the decision is: Do I give up what I want, to make her happy?
Her happiness is about as important to me as my own. So that's a stalemate. She keeps saying how worried she is that it will ruin my life. But I also don't want us to split up over this, knowing that I have 'taken' her fertile years. She won't have a kid except with me. So that's also a stalemate.
I have had a pretty terrible childhood. So I know I'm biased. I don't want to let fear dictate my life.
Almost any occasion where I've stepped outside my comfort zone or done things I didn't want to do out of fear turned out to be things I was grateful to have done.
I can also see how raising children could be very rewarding. Even my therapist said it can be very healing to have children. It's an opportunity to do better than my parents. That's valuable, for sure.
And then I think of the state of the world. Awful. I wouldn't want to bring children into this. I'd even probably say to my own mother 'don't bother' if she'd come to consult me about whether to have me first. But then I spoke to my granddad, who was a teenager during the 2nd world war. He is also probably mildly autistic. He said it was the best thing he ever did. Had multiple kids.
If I look at my wife's family, they are all happy, successful, harmonious people (now). I look at my wife's parents and think "what a blessing". The richness of life they get to experience is just magical. If I could somehow guarantee that it'd go that way for me as well, then I'd have kids already.
But there are no guarantees, just uncertainty. Uncertainty of the "life changes forever, irrevocably" kind. That is brutal and scary.
The last time I made a similar decision was when starting a business. I knew I went down a road that would require stability and dedication. I'm a volatile person who quickly gets bored of things and wants to move on to other things.
Thanks to my wife I've done a bunch of things I never thought I'd do, because they require dedication and consistency. Something I don't really have. Renovating houses, starting businesses. I surprised myself with what I was capable of. All thanks to my wife.
I also think it's basically a crime to not let her raise a human being. I am certain anyone raised by her would be a net positive to society.
But then there's me and my issues. I don't know how I'll deal with it. I don't know what will happen. There's a chance I can't do it. And what then? Divorce? Repeat the cycle of putting children into the world and abandoning them, like my parents did, because they also couldn't handle it?
They were very young and had no money or support. Their relationship was also broken. My wife and I are 'old' and we have money and we have been an unbeatable team for well over a decade. We also have support. Grand-parents are basically next door and dying to help with raising a kid. So we are in a privileged position.
But my fear of taking this step is not going away. And I won't know what it'll be like. Parents look so tired. Many of my friends are parents. They all seem to offer the same advice "it's hell on earth, I hate every moment of it, it's the best thing I've ever done".
Awesome. What am I supposed to do with that? It's useless advice. It seems nobody can really tell you whether to do it or not.
Any people here who were equally fearful and then did it, NOT regretting it? And I mean truly. I don't want to hear the "I love my kids"-mantra. It's an automated thing everyone has to say. I mean truly.
You can talk to the foremost mango growers on cultivating mango trees and learn everything there is to know about making mangoes. You can consult with the best chefs about how to make the best mango dishes and desserts and learn the absolute best way to prepare and eat mangoes. You can learn from the masters of how to paint a mango so lifelike that you'd think the painting was real. Etc. You can learn and truly master everything surrounding the act of eating a mango.
But until you sink your teeth into a mango and actually eat it, you've no idea what you're talking about.
So, until you actually have the kid, all this worrying is for naught.
You will be just fine, the kid will be just fine (they have their own agency too, you know), the world will keep turning and you have the agency to put a person in it and teach them what they need to know.
The real question is if you want to eat a mango or not.
There is a politically correct thing to say about having kids. It is wonderful, I love them, it made me want to be a better person. That's all true.
I'm not going to be politically correct. I'm going to be honest. For some of us, it is a hard reality check.
As children, many of us had various kinds of hard experiences. You can get a rough idea of how hard your background likely was by tallying up the different kinds of Adverse Childhood Experiences that you had. The result is your ACE score, and it is a standard risk assessment tool. You can find the list near the end of https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/24875-adverse....
My ACE score is 9/10. Most of you won't have had that level of challenge, but a lot of you had problems. I've done a lot to deal with my background, work on my mental health, and so on. I swore to break the cycle, to give my children a better start than I had.
I mostly succeeded. Only mostly. The impact of my failures became obvious when COVID turned many homes into hothouses for mental illness. My kids were not unique in their struggles. But within their peer group, it was my kids that were hit first and hardest. And then I did not cope well with the result. As a result I, also, have been having mental health problems.
For people like me, I recommend a long and hard think before having children. If you do have children, you will naturally try to do your best. I certainly did. You are extremely unlikely to succeed as well as you'd like. I certainly didn't. And so you should also prepare to give yourself grace for the ways in which you might fail. If I had done better on that, then I would have been better able to carry on and try to pick up the pieces when the shit hit the fan.
To everyone who is beginning on this journey, I wish you luck. Cherish what you have. Do your best.
And if your best did not turn out to be as good as you wanted, you have my sympathy.
I'm 36, and unlikely to ever have kids. I'm both very grateful for the freedom that's afforded me in life, and occasionally feel grief for parts of the human experience I'll never feel.
I have a kid and it's the greatest joy ever but I am very lucky. It's totally okay to grieve that, but I often tell other childfree folks: there are many things you can do to feel a similar kind of joy. Mentoring, volunteering, caring for friends etc. Having the joy of working for others and emotionally investing doesn't have to be exclusive.
I once had neighbors above me whose kids yelled all the time. all the time. and sometimes they were sick of the yelling and they put their girls outside of the apartment door. and she was just punching hard the door over and over and yelling “MAMAAAA!”.
Sure I feel sorry for the kids being distressed for one reason or another. but these guys did literally nothing.
There just has to exist someone on the planet for which the title “shit parents” does objectively apply no matter how you look at it.
> The fact is, most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used.
That just seems like close to the definition of freedom. I have the freedom to go outside right now and eat dirt. I've never used it.
If you didn't do something then I guess you didn't want to, more than the things you did choose to do instead.
The only way you'd have enough life to do "most" of the things you'd be free to do, is if you're not free to do but a tiny thing.
> See what I did there?
Yup. Made no sense at all, is what. A UAE passport makes you free to visit 181 countries either visa free or visa-on-arrival. It's still freedom even if you don't take the time to visit all 181 countries.
It's not even an interesting paradox. It's just an obvious part of freedom.
Most people don't visit more than 35 countries. An Afghanistan passport gives you access to 35 countries.
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.
As a 52 year old I specifically avoided having kids.
For decades I have been convinced that we are speed-running into a global environmental crisis that we will continue to ignore until it is far too late and this will result in associated resources wars and I never wanted to doom other people into having to live through that.
I sincerely hope for the sake of those of you who made a different choice that I turn out to have been overly doomerist, but watching the Trump 2.0 years play out I now think that I wasn't doomerist enough.
> people who choose to be child free are not complete human beings
Hmm, this seems pretty condescending, but hopefully it is just in jest.
With four kids I understand there is a unique set of skills and emotions that come along with it and I am personally grateful for, but there are also a lot skills and emotions you won't have and experience if you never go to war, never become a leader, never experience losing a parent when you are young, never win a gold medal in a team sport, never live in a different culture, never volunteer, etc. It seems short sighted to claim someone is an incomplete person if they can't experience one of those things, because likely no single person can.
There is a great tapestry of human experience and we can only experience most of it second or third hand (and probably not even that in most cases).
> On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare?
I don't know, it seems like parenthood asks for a lot to be given up. Younger people like myself are already struggling to live on their own where I am. There's not a lot that can be spared by most of us.
To me, having a child means heavily straining your financial safety - here, care for this other person that can't do anything and has some of the most expensive needs in society. Not only that, but you need to be sure that you can provide for the child for the next 5, 10, 15 years. Who has that sort of confidence? Then there's the part where all your free time is sacrificed to care for the child. The time burden decreases, but it's always a lot of time. And you always have to be extremely risk-averse - if you were just responsible for yourself before, now you have someone you need to take into account for every thing you do in life. Moves, job changes, major risks or investments, career changes, taking on additional responsibilities. All of these things probably become much less doable for parents. And this is a one-way road with no backing out, you commit to it and are stuck with that choice for several decades. By the time your child lives on their own, you've already spent a large portion of your adult life. And there's no guarantees that your child is someone you like, or that your parenthood isn't soured by something else. There's plenty of parents who are stuck in parenthood and hate it.
The thought of having a child scares me. I'm happy that the author is content with how his life turned out, but I'm okay with just watching from the sidelines. Maybe the biological instinct (forced coping mechanism?) is so strong as to justify living through the horrors above in exchange for watching your kids play and participating in similar things. But I don't want to learn what that's like.
Before kids it was easy to judge bad parents. Then one day with child I found myself due to circumstances in a store way past my child’s bedtime. She was screaming and crying, because it was way past her bedtime.
Then I realized… I was now “the bad parent” I had so easily judged.
Then it was easy to judge parents with children younger than mine.
Until I learned that not all children have the same issues in the same order.
Then I learned it’s easier not to judge at all.
I still judge parents, because I compare them to other parents.
Good parents = kids not 100% glued to phones/tablets, social around friends and family, not throwing tantrums at 8-16 yrs old.
Bad parents = kids always throwing tantrums, kids basically always getting their way because they've learned parents will always give in, parents and kids 100% ignoring each other.
One set of friends - I go to visit, I play with their kids - we go out to dinner, we interact with both adults and kids
Another set of friends - I go to visit, they sent their kids to their room - we go out to dinner, they give the kids tablets and they're entirely ignored for the whole time.
I was the worlds best parent...before I had kids.
Yes, when you have a toddler undergoing a public meltdown, it is easy to see who around you is an experienced parent, and who is not. Just by the look on their faces.
> Then I learned it’s easier not to judge at all.
A skill we should all cultivate, IMO. Life is happier when you do not waste it constantly judging.
Louis C.K had a routine about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr1aAYOhFsQ
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.
Before kids, you take a look around a diner or a store or a playground and you see little ones happily eating some chips or browsing the foodstuffs or playing on a slide.
You think that this is what kids are like. They sit there, they walk a little, they giggle on the playground, they look cute as all get out, etc.
Then you have kids and you know.
You know.
Those kids sitting there in the booth sipping on their milk quietly while mom and dad happily eat their lunch? Those are the top 5% most calm kids out there. The other 95% of kids are with their adults screaming and throwing fits and covered in who knows what.
Life lied to you. It did it directly to your face, unashamed. The bias is real.
I'm glad you at least determined the root cause.
Plenty of truly bad parents shrug responsibility off by making the "technically correct" claim that all kids throw tantrums, therefore they're not a bad parent. They then proceed to provide an unstable environment to raise their kids and the tantrums don't end until well into adulthood.
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, to make sure I'd stocked away a lifetime supply of it. After all, I'd probably never get another chance to travel for long periods, keep up with climbing, and all that other stuff that Independent Jason could do.
But it was all for naught. We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
Life is just as much fun as ever. But now we have some kids to play with.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Had a very similar feeling. When my wife told me the "getting pregnant" worked I mourned a little bit. I recognize we were exceedingly lucky to have had such a wonderful kid, and it has worked out very well.
For the first 6 mos. a lot did change, but after that things seemed to skew back to a new "normal".
It will be 13 years in May since we had our daughter. I'm so glad we did it.
I know that it could have gone a lot differently, though. I'd never suggest that it'll be great for everybody.
> He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
I was raised overseas (Dad[0] in the CIA).
Both good and bad. First, if it's just "traveling," and not "living" overseas, I suspect that it's not so bad, but military brats have common quirks, for a reason. Our lives get torn up and replanted regularly. It's hard to make friends, and we often end up having a difficult time, retaining long-term relationships, later in life.
But, man, the life story that it gives you. There's few cures for xenophobia, better than immersion.
[0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm
It happened to me and now, after more than 8 years, I find myself still in the situation where I am serving my children's needs and not having time to satisfy my personal ones.
They go to bed when I am also tired. Trying to having an hobby past their bed time means sacrifying sleep time.
Travelling is also a challenge, since they lack interesting in seeing something new, but just want to have fun playing, especially playgrounds.
> We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
How do you keep a baby happy and quiet on long international flights? I currently have no kids but I may find myself in this situation in the next couple years. I'm dreading being the guy with a screaming infant on a 13-hour trans-Pacific flight that keeps everyone from sleeping.
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 :)
That doesn't appear to be a common story. I now have to schedule phone calls with my retired mother because between my sister and her partner who both work, and her, with 2 kids - one small but active that needs constant minding and one that needs chaperoning to activities - she often doesn't have one uninterrupted hour in the evening for an entire week.
Nearly everyone I know with kids is more similar to this story than yours.. to each their own but it's certainly not for me:)
Absolutely. Also, kids end up helping you focus on the travel, experiences and things that are truly worthwhile. You drop a lot of activities and TV and other activities that was frankly a waste of time anyways.
You have just the one kid, right?
We were the same ;-)
Travel with a baby isn't that bad.
I think people struggle with losing their identity when they no longer get long periods of focus time or can participate in their hobbies with the dedication they would like.
I often wonder in these threads what proportion of the commenters is male. HN skews heavily male, and statistically speaking, fathers are spared a huge chunk of the physical and mental burdens of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. Being a mom and being a dad are not equivalent, and I have a feeling that not many male HNers would readily swap places if such thing were possible.
I don't mean to inject politics, but there's a huge mental burden on fathers with more conservative values that take their role seriously.
Unfortunately, there's no way to elaborate what I mean on HN or much of the web without stirring up a ton of pointless argument. People will just get defensive and refuse to consider perspectives they can't agree with.
Caveat emptor. I am a grandparent now, so I think I have some perspective on this.
Of course we love our kids, and we had (and still have) a lot of good times with them. But kids can really break your life and marriage, too - amongst my peers I can't tell you how many have a struggling young adult kid or two (with relatively serious mental or physical health problems), with no resolution in sight.
So stay lucky - having a child is a wild act of optimism. And if you want kids, don't wait too long. There is never really a good time to have a kid (just different trade-offs), so for the best chances for health, be as young a parent as possible. And men have a biological clock, too: e.g.: https://neurosciencenews.com/genetics-sperm-mutation-neurode...
The serious mental and physical health problems are real and a societal concern. Everyone "notices" the trends, but maybe it's not you so you just think there's nothing you can do about it and do your best to stay healthy.
Then you have a child and you are suddenly hyper-aware of everything going into the body and brain. Everything they eat, every doctor visit, every time they get sick and what could have exposed them, every word spoken on TV, every friend they have and how they act or how that friend passes along their parents influences, etc.
And suddenly you're very concerned about societal level macro influences on food, medical, etc because those influences are going to affect your child's life.
This is one of my favourites from PG, not least because it's a bit antithetical to what I perceive as a growing trend among smart, ambitious people (for whom children might represent friction, inconvenience, etc)... as well as folks for whom COL is making the question irrelevant due to practical concerns.
Actually, it's really striking that even in America -- the developed country with the #1 highest birthrate -- still falls below the replacement rate. What is it that's inversely correlated between growing wealth and having children? Especially since it was likely to opposite for most of human history? (i.e. large families were a sign of wealth and power).
PS - I can't resist offering my own experience as a parent - what a treasure to have discovered that I'm capable of such love, and to get to watch this love transform me into a better person than who I was before. This kind of love demands everything of you, but through it you discover a truer and stronger version of yourself too.
More wealth and education gives people the option to choose which I think is a good thing. People who don't want kids shouldn't be forced to have them. Before, people had kids because they needed them to work on their farm or it's what was expected of them as a housewife. Now that we have a choice, less people want to commit to taking care of a human for 18+ years. It's great so many people want to be parents but having a kid doesn't automatically make someone a great parent.
Due to the extremely competitive nature of the US economy, a lot of people have to choose between career success (having money) and starting a family (which is expensive). I know a lot of women who want to have a family, but have struggled to get to a comfortable economic position where they can actually do it. Compounded by the wage stagnation, which makes it hard for most people to support a family on a single income. We have hollowed out our third spaces, so its difficult for people to relax and socialize. Even vibing ends up being a kind of competition because of the high costs. Not to mention the perverse incentives in the housing market.
None of this is conducive to starting a family.
When someone asks me if starting a family is worth it, I borrow words from Agent K and tell them, "Yes, if you are strong enough"...
But as you say, I suppose everyone ends up becoming strong. Because there is no other way...
> Actually, it's really striking that even in America -- the developed country with the #1 highest birthrate -- still falls below the replacement rate. What is it that's inversely correlated between growing wealth and having children?
I think a lot of people miss the simple fact that some people just don't want kids and are unable to reconcile their personal experience with anyone else's.
My partner and I are both wealthy enough that we could both afford children and we can afford to not have children. But neither of us think our lives would be improved by having them.
I think that's really, really hard to understand for a lot of parents and people who want to be parents: being (relatively) wealthy creates choice, and that a growing number of people are choosing different things now that they have the ability to do so.
Kids cost time, not money. So the wealthier you are, the more difficult it is because you probably have less free time. You can pay someone else to raise your kids (daycare/etc.) but then you lose a lot of the value of having kids.
This bullshit excuse that somebody can't afford to have kids is proven wrong by the fact that poorer people have more kids than rich people. You can even be unemployed. Gone are the days of destitute single mothers having to give up their child to the church and work in the poorhouse. We have social welfare for that.
Maybe the fact that poor people can have lots of kids has taken away their value as a status symbol for wealth?
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 analytical, detached, ambitious, and a bit obsessive. Not the sort of touchy-feely person who chases a two year old around with a smile on my face and likes watching videos of cute babies. Yet here I am. I enjoy it so much I’ve even tried to figure out if there’s a way I can take a sabbatical from work to spend the last two years with my youngest at home before he goes off to school (seems unlikely given how questions about a random two year gap on my resume might affect my long-term career).
It’s funny that as a kid I always wanted to work at a tech company for the interesting tech, but now as an adult my favorite thing about it has been the 4 months of parental leave I was able to have with each newborn.
You just write "spent two years raising my youngest kid [building tree houses and whatnot]". If you keep a bit up with tech, why would anyone think twice about that? They wouldn't where I live.
Reading the post and >100 comments I've just realized there are differences between dad and mom mental experience.
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.
Having kids is a gift. But this is one of these kinds of knowledge that once you know you immediately can't explain to others who don't.
My problem with that wording is that it comes across a bit arrogant or "I know better". I think many people _do_ understand what you mean even if they don't have kids, they're just not that interested in those parts of life, which also should be fair.
Each one's a reverse-lottery-ticket, though. Get the wrong draw and it's not a gift. Can easily massively reduce the QOL for everyone around, including other siblings.
Mostly due to chronic illnesses, of either the physical or mental variety.
A good friend of mine holds the belief that "having friends with kids is better than having kids of your own", and I definitely feel the "can't explain" part - there is an unexplainable reality when you have kids of your own.
I understand the idea but I take issue with the wording.
I CAN explain to others who don't. It's just that most of the time others aren't interested in hearing.
Great way of putting it. It's the sort of thing you just have to trust others and jump into. If you think about it too much it just doesn't make sense.
Love. Kids. Marriage. Divorce. Heartbreak. Death of a close partner.
Things you can’t explain to other people. But others with the experience just know.
Having kids may not be for everyone, but it is the best thing that I have ever done in my life.
Love seinfield's quote about kids -
"One of the nice things God does, is that he doesn't let people who don't have kids know what they're missing"
One of the nice things about not having teenage daughters is you don't have to worry about Jerry Seinfeld hanging around.
Having kids is a 4 billion year old life function (instinct). Simultaneously it is a highly sofisticated behaviour with multiple dimensions (raising).
Genetics play a decisive role in kid's behaviour and powers/weaknesses. Next comes the mother, next the father and later the society.
Let's not forget that parents are "kids" of the society that heavily influence their behaviour that eventually shapes their kids.
My big learning from having a kid, was that there was more maturing and growing up for me to do (A ton to be honest). Once there was somebody else I had to keep alive and care for and think about I learned to better de-center myself in the universe. I am sure you can get to this perspective many other ways, but having children seems to be the easy mode for getting into the mindset of "it's not about me any more."
I also had kids, and while I love my kids I haven’t loved spending time with my kids. This will hopefully change as they age, but the first six years have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else. They haven’t provided fulfilment, and they haven’t provided satisfaction. Some joy is there from time to time, definitely, but nothing in the way the author describes. Happiness for me typically starts after my kids are in bed or when I can escape them during work hours. My wife finds great happiness in our children, and I find happiness in that, but I’m desperately waiting for my kids to be old enough that I only need to spend time with them instead of constantly caring for them. Sorry if this is a bit of a dark comment, but I just wanted to say it’s not always the experience this author had, even if it seems common. Edit: Generally, I regret having kids (because of the impact on my life, not the kids themselves), but I also can’t change that decision and I would never back away from my choice - that’s completely unfair to them, as well as my wife. Such is life. I try to keep looking forward to when they’re older as a way of staying positive.
I truly do give my kids my all though, and they have a wonderful life and are loved and cared for in all senses of those words. They’re great kids and I give them everything necessary to be a great dad.
The curse of parenting is that when they're small you can't wait for them to grow up so you can get more time for you, and when they grow up you're nostalgic of their childhood when they were willing to spend more time with you.
So my advice is: find activities to do with them that you would both enjoy. Maybe going to parks, museums, have them help you on house chores... You only have a few years left under they get to middle school and start becoming more distant.
I can definitely relate. There's nights my wife and I get to bed and sorta just look at eachother and go "what the hell was that". Those days are hard.
I find the days that I forget myself and throw myself into trying to be a good dad are the days I find joy in fatherhood. Weekends especially I try to forget the stresses of work and productivity and everything else and try to spend as much time with them as possible. Playing, teaching, and learning with them.
Not saying it's universal. Just a datapoint from me.
If it makes you feel any better, you're not the only one that feels that way. I don't think it's said very often because it almost feels taboo to say it.
I would like to hear in what sense you love your kids, given that "he first six years have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else. They haven’t provided fulfilment, and they haven’t provided satisfaction. (...) Happiness for me typically starts after my kids are in bed or when I can escape them during work hours."
Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?
EDIT: Just to be 100% clear: I mean absolutely no judgement. I'm not going to tell you off or try to change your mind. I ask out of pure curiosity.
Interesting, my experience has been the opposite. Before getting kids, I thought that I would only enjoy having kids once they were the age where you could have conversations with them, etc., that the first one or two years were more something that mothers would like. But for me it was not like that at all, aside from some sleepless nights, it's so cool to be part of them discovering the world.
have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else
At some point when our kid was still young, I started working 4/5 FTE, taking the afternoons off after ~14:00. I feel like that provided a lot of mental space. Since I was working part-time, I did not feel bad/guilty about not working the afternoons and I would be focused on being very productive from 8:30 to 14:00. The free hours were for doing stuff together or accommodating their playdates (picking up from school, ensuring the house doesn't get torn down).
Now they are an age where they want to do things without parents, so I am working full-time again, but do miss those early days where she would be with me in her seat on my bike and we'd cycle to the city and she'd be singing aloud from joy.
But every person is different and I think that there are also parents that start enjoying having kids more when they are older. So, your years may still come :).
dark comment
My dark comment would be: we are all learning on the job and I feel like I could do some things better with the experience I have now.
I have a few kids, raising them is a mix of good and bad, like everything else. it took a toll on my career, pushed my temper to the edge, and stressed me out all these 20+ years, but I also enjoyed many moments. it does not go away when they got older by the way, it's a life long strong bond, at different phases there are different challenges.
If I have a second life, I don't know what to do though, I probably will first make enough money before having kids at least.
I think this is a fairly common experience but many people are afraid to admit it.
While I have always loved being a dad, I can certainly relate to the things you describe.
I will say that a lot of those issues have gotten better as they have gotten older (they are now 10 and almost 7). They don’t require the same level of constant attention that they used to, they are getting more and more interesting to talk to, and have developed interesting personalities and senses of humor.
I enjoyed much more the first 6 years than the following 6 ones.
Seeing them grow was fun, seeing them turning teenagers is a pain.
I think it's important to share the difficult / hard experiences of having kids as much as the good ones. I've noticed that there is a huge bias towards only sharing the good moments and white-washing all of the bad as something you can "laugh about later." To be frank, not enough people were honest with me about what it would be like having kids before I had them - and I was incredibly upset when I realized that (several years into being a parent).
I now make it a point to be honest with people when they ask "Should we have kids?" and tell them about how hard it can be, etc. Most importantly, I tell people that they shouldn't have kids unless they would still want to do it if their experience doesn't land in the middle of the bell curve. We tend to romanticize the decision, and expect that everything "just gets even better" with kids. There are all sorts of ways your experience can be less than ideal. Unless you're evaluating your decision with those potential outcomes in mind, you're doing yourself, your partner, and even your future children a disservice.
Thank you for posting this. It’s totally understandable and believable that you simultaneously love them and regret some things about it. There’s this insane pressure in our society to never acknowledge the toll that kids have and to never speak out about this. I remember when this article was first posted and how I received it, like I was wrong for not being sure about kids, and that some change would come over me when I had them. Truth is, that doesn’t happen with everyone. Then the world tries to gaslight those people who don’t feel that way into feeling like they’re broken somehow.
I’m sure you love your kids and take great care of them, and it’s not your fault that you feel this way.
It would benefit all of us if this taboo was lifted, so that we could speak truthfully about the impact of kids on families, and maybe then we’d have to provide more support and encouragement to convince people to have them. Not everyone has free daycare from their grandparents or a large social network to babysit or the finances that make having a child less of a burden.
The quip I keep going back to is: "All joy, no fun."
Everyone is different, and even though I don't share your experience, I don't view yours as either good or bad, it just is what it is. My experience is different but I'm not planning on ever telling anyone "Oh don't worry about it just have kids it'll be the best experience of your life" in blind faith.
Your experience is the opposite of mine.
I can't wait to play with my 3 year old and 1 year old. I get so mad at work when I have an odd late meeting because it is keeping me from them.
My three year old helps me build furniture (he gets screws started, counts out parts, helps apply glue). I love showing him synths and instruments and seeing his face light up.
My one year old is a cuddle monster who likes listening to jazz with me. She also really enjoys when the cat climbs up on our lap and she gets to pet it.
I don't know your situation, but most miserable parents I know see their kid as something to manage, like some kind of annoying work underling.
I see my kids as little detectives.
My goal isn't to solve their case or even help them approach it in the right way. It's to give them an occasional hint (or step stool), keep them from danger, and help them discover the correct way to behave.
The single folk envy the married and the married envy the singles. Life is suffering either way.
Having kids becomes a lot easier if you can do the things you enjoy with them. For me that includes all sorts of stuff such as D&D, warhammer, painting miniatures, drawing, magic the gathering, board games, etc. I also include them when I have to fix something around the house or some random electronic device that broke.
If the only thing you can enjoy is adult stuff or working then you might have a rougher time at it if you don't find joy in the pure act of raising a kid. For me the first few months were meh, but once they started to get a personality I found it more entertaining.
It's mysterious to me that you write all this _and_ that you do truly love your kids and are great. If I was in your position I'd at least concede that people do deserve parents that don't regret them. Do their thoughts toward it even matter?
I mean, the birth rate is decreasing everywhere for a reason.
Do not despair, I felt the same. Mine are halfway to 18, still feel the same, unsure if it changes. I love them, just not the experience. I have friends who feel the same, so I/we are not alone.
I tell others not to do it unless they are prepared to suffer. You won't know if its for you until you've already gone through the one way door. I wish others luck. For the unlucky, I wish grit and stoicism.
I admire your frank honesty
> Generally, I regret having kids
Please don't ever, ever let them know this, or even allow them to figure it out. Especially before they're at least ~30 and able to begin to understand.
Before having kids, you think everything will change forever.
After having kids, you realise that things only appear different for a while, and you simply flow into the new reality.
Everything really changed forever, but not as drastically as you might have thought.
Remember how everything changed when you got or lost a job? Yeah. Well, maybe not exactly, but you get the point.
Kids aren’t for everyone. Please don’t guilt-trip people for not having them. (I know this article isn’t doing that.)
https://wearechildfree.com/
Disclosure: Zoë is my cousin.
Of course people are free not to have kids... But I've always find it weird to "celebrates childfree lives".
And I'm frankly annoyed by the growing activism to ban kids from public places in the name of "adults quietness".
> Tired of doing this alone?
That's some pretty ironic copy xD
I have a ~6 years old boy and I'm quite neutral about that -- that is, if I somehow go back to a few years ago, I may or may not go forth for a kid -- which was my attitude back then anyway.
There are some upside, but they are...tangible. The downside is concrete and solid. From hindsight, having a kid has nothing to do with my long-term objectives, but since I can’t dial back in time, I'll try to be at least a median good father -- I have gotten the financials covered, and I'm pretty sure in that part I'm better than the median, but for the focus part I'm not sure.
As a female founder I want children, but I know that I'll be seen as less ambitious if I have them. I will be seen as less, and will be more overlooked for opportunities than I already am now. I will have them one day, but they'll be in secret. People won't know until the business reaches a certain revenue and level of success. It is like this for women and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.
My 2c is that it is not 'joy' or 'happiness' that kids bring to parents universally (although they might bring those things for some parents), but 'meaning'. Meaning is harder to define than joy/happiness, perhaps because it is less objective and more subjective.
I would really like to have kids, but I don’t have my act together. I also feel like my partner is not suitable or capable of properly taking care of our kids. Feels pretty awful and am scared to not have any kids as I grow older. I worked hard to get a good relationship with my partner, and now that we have one I worry kids will only ruin what we have now
I hope you’re in a position where you can have an honest conversation about it with your partner. I’ve come to realise over time that honest and open communication is the most critical thing in any relationship. I really hope it works out for you both!
your world will change in that hospital room the first day or two together with the new person in your family. it really is seismic.
You'll never feel ready but you will always be ready. One of my biggest regrets is not having kids sooner
just go for it. there is never a really good time to have a kid.
This is an easy perspective to have if you are of the generation that got into a home purchase before they went out of control. Gen Z is being priced out of creating families.
Hacker news has a bias because most people here are working in software and probably make more than the median household income (solo).
As a father of 3, nothing is more satisfying than raising kids.
Kudos to you! I have one and it's been the hardest thing I've ever done and it has broken us entirely. We can never imagine having more than one given the difficulty, and are now finished at one 100%. Very huge admiration for parents of > 1. It's 10x the work and not just 2x the work
Father of three here as well, amen to that. Soo hard, but oh so amazing.
As a father of 2, that really depends on a few factors.
I'd wager that you picked a good wife and that your kids are healthy and bright.
Things can go from satisfying to draining real quick.
I'm in the thick of it right now as a serial founder with a 5 and a 1 year old. One thing I'm surprised paulg didn't touch on is how much it can evolve your relationship with your partner (for the better!).
Watching my wife have special moments with our kids fills my heart like nothing else.
Seeing her be an amazing mom is like watching your cofounder take on a completely new role outside of their previous experience and crush it. Except it's even better since you're in love with them and have all these biological/chemical signals to help kick that in high gear.
I see a lot of different opinions here, from very positive to very negative.
I think the answer is, it's both.
When I was an employee sometimes I was happy, like when a promotion was lurking, and sometimes I was unhappy and stressed, when getting fired, when facing deadlines, ....
But when I started working for myself the amplitude of emotions became way stronger, every week I would fluctuate between feeling doomed forever or feeling like a genius.
Life with and without kids is the same: The emotional highs of having kids are way higher than anything I experienced without kids, but sometimes the lows are very low.
People can also have very different experiences because kids can be very different.
My kids have been really easy, no big problems, but sometimes I see other parents dealing with really serious issues with their kids.
It starts with babies, some of them sleep easily while other cry all the time, to teenagers who can be nice kids with no problem at school to being called to the director's office all the time and have to seriously worry about their future.
The great thing about kids is that just when you start to miss their toddler temper tantrums, they start having teenage temper tantrums!
While there are always those lows, when the kids are sick, scream, have tantrums, do something stupid, I would not trade a second of that away. A lot of happiness and laughs as well, along the way.
They grow and you're privileged to live with them for a while. Also you'll grow with them.
Having kids was my best decision ever. Thrice.
Parents were uncool, but surely Paul Graham has always been uncool too?
My favorite part is how pg says how kids made him less ambitious, but then:
“On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare?”
It’s called having kid while rich so you can hire nannies, tho
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 end our lives like it does in the USA.
With that out of the way, let's get to all the other points:
How much do I want children? Personally, I don't get it. If my wife wasn't dead-certain she _must_ have at least one child, I would never, ever consider it. I hate noise and chaos. I even find co-habitation challenging.
I was an only child and I think I'm mildly autistic. To me, 'alone time' and 'quiet time' are sacred and required for my sanity. Well, I know that goes out the window with children. My wife is the opposite: Many siblings, has always been around noise and chaos. Loves giving love. To me, the dog, to anyone. And that is why she seems to have this need. So, the decision is: Do I give up what I want, to make her happy?
Her happiness is about as important to me as my own. So that's a stalemate. She keeps saying how worried she is that it will ruin my life. But I also don't want us to split up over this, knowing that I have 'taken' her fertile years. She won't have a kid except with me. So that's also a stalemate. I have had a pretty terrible childhood. So I know I'm biased. I don't want to let fear dictate my life.
Almost any occasion where I've stepped outside my comfort zone or done things I didn't want to do out of fear turned out to be things I was grateful to have done.
I can also see how raising children could be very rewarding. Even my therapist said it can be very healing to have children. It's an opportunity to do better than my parents. That's valuable, for sure.
And then I think of the state of the world. Awful. I wouldn't want to bring children into this. I'd even probably say to my own mother 'don't bother' if she'd come to consult me about whether to have me first. But then I spoke to my granddad, who was a teenager during the 2nd world war. He is also probably mildly autistic. He said it was the best thing he ever did. Had multiple kids.
If I look at my wife's family, they are all happy, successful, harmonious people (now). I look at my wife's parents and think "what a blessing". The richness of life they get to experience is just magical. If I could somehow guarantee that it'd go that way for me as well, then I'd have kids already.
But there are no guarantees, just uncertainty. Uncertainty of the "life changes forever, irrevocably" kind. That is brutal and scary.
The last time I made a similar decision was when starting a business. I knew I went down a road that would require stability and dedication. I'm a volatile person who quickly gets bored of things and wants to move on to other things.
Thanks to my wife I've done a bunch of things I never thought I'd do, because they require dedication and consistency. Something I don't really have. Renovating houses, starting businesses. I surprised myself with what I was capable of. All thanks to my wife.
I also think it's basically a crime to not let her raise a human being. I am certain anyone raised by her would be a net positive to society.
But then there's me and my issues. I don't know how I'll deal with it. I don't know what will happen. There's a chance I can't do it. And what then? Divorce? Repeat the cycle of putting children into the world and abandoning them, like my parents did, because they also couldn't handle it?
They were very young and had no money or support. Their relationship was also broken. My wife and I are 'old' and we have money and we have been an unbeatable team for well over a decade. We also have support. Grand-parents are basically next door and dying to help with raising a kid. So we are in a privileged position.
But my fear of taking this step is not going away. And I won't know what it'll be like. Parents look so tired. Many of my friends are parents. They all seem to offer the same advice "it's hell on earth, I hate every moment of it, it's the best thing I've ever done".
Awesome. What am I supposed to do with that? It's useless advice. It seems nobody can really tell you whether to do it or not.
Any people here who were equally fearful and then did it, NOT regretting it? And I mean truly. I don't want to hear the "I love my kids"-mantra. It's an automated thing everyone has to say. I mean truly.
the easiest way to bypass all that existential anxiety is to have it happen on accident :)
Having kids is like eating a mango.
You can talk to the foremost mango growers on cultivating mango trees and learn everything there is to know about making mangoes. You can consult with the best chefs about how to make the best mango dishes and desserts and learn the absolute best way to prepare and eat mangoes. You can learn from the masters of how to paint a mango so lifelike that you'd think the painting was real. Etc. You can learn and truly master everything surrounding the act of eating a mango.
But until you sink your teeth into a mango and actually eat it, you've no idea what you're talking about.
So, until you actually have the kid, all this worrying is for naught.
You will be just fine, the kid will be just fine (they have their own agency too, you know), the world will keep turning and you have the agency to put a person in it and teach them what they need to know.
The real question is if you want to eat a mango or not.
There is a politically correct thing to say about having kids. It is wonderful, I love them, it made me want to be a better person. That's all true.
I'm not going to be politically correct. I'm going to be honest. For some of us, it is a hard reality check.
As children, many of us had various kinds of hard experiences. You can get a rough idea of how hard your background likely was by tallying up the different kinds of Adverse Childhood Experiences that you had. The result is your ACE score, and it is a standard risk assessment tool. You can find the list near the end of https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/24875-adverse....
My ACE score is 9/10. Most of you won't have had that level of challenge, but a lot of you had problems. I've done a lot to deal with my background, work on my mental health, and so on. I swore to break the cycle, to give my children a better start than I had.
I mostly succeeded. Only mostly. The impact of my failures became obvious when COVID turned many homes into hothouses for mental illness. My kids were not unique in their struggles. But within their peer group, it was my kids that were hit first and hardest. And then I did not cope well with the result. As a result I, also, have been having mental health problems.
For people like me, I recommend a long and hard think before having children. If you do have children, you will naturally try to do your best. I certainly did. You are extremely unlikely to succeed as well as you'd like. I certainly didn't. And so you should also prepare to give yourself grace for the ways in which you might fail. If I had done better on that, then I would have been better able to carry on and try to pick up the pieces when the shit hit the fan.
To everyone who is beginning on this journey, I wish you luck. Cherish what you have. Do your best.
And if your best did not turn out to be as good as you wanted, you have my sympathy.
he is coping so hard
Taking drugs is great too. But I know not everyone will do it. You won't get to experience everything so just be glad about the things you do get to.
I'm so glad I've avoided kids.
I'm 36, and unlikely to ever have kids. I'm both very grateful for the freedom that's afforded me in life, and occasionally feel grief for parts of the human experience I'll never feel.
I have a kid and it's the greatest joy ever but I am very lucky. It's totally okay to grieve that, but I often tell other childfree folks: there are many things you can do to feel a similar kind of joy. Mentoring, volunteering, caring for friends etc. Having the joy of working for others and emotionally investing doesn't have to be exclusive.
I once had neighbors above me whose kids yelled all the time. all the time. and sometimes they were sick of the yelling and they put their girls outside of the apartment door. and she was just punching hard the door over and over and yelling “MAMAAAA!”.
Sure I feel sorry for the kids being distressed for one reason or another. but these guys did literally nothing.
There just has to exist someone on the planet for which the title “shit parents” does objectively apply no matter how you look at it.
How come this article by PG is trending today?
there was a twitter exchange (I don't have a link) where someone said the YC mindset is to not have kids and PG replied with this essay
It's a well written post, but this:
> The fact is, most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used.
That just seems like close to the definition of freedom. I have the freedom to go outside right now and eat dirt. I've never used it.
If you didn't do something then I guess you didn't want to, more than the things you did choose to do instead.
The only way you'd have enough life to do "most" of the things you'd be free to do, is if you're not free to do but a tiny thing.
> See what I did there?
Yup. Made no sense at all, is what. A UAE passport makes you free to visit 181 countries either visa free or visa-on-arrival. It's still freedom even if you don't take the time to visit all 181 countries.
It's not even an interesting paradox. It's just an obvious part of freedom.
Most people don't visit more than 35 countries. An Afghanistan passport gives you access to 35 countries.
“most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used. I paid for it in loneliness, but I never used it.”
I will add to this that the first five years are tough, but it is great after that
I am am so scared of losing my job in tech due to ai and not being able to support my family.
Take a deep breath and just learn whatever you need to learn. AI or otherwise.
You'll be fine. Being responsible for someone else gives you quite a bit of boost.
> And while having kids may be warping my present judgement, it hasn't overwritten my memory. I remember perfectly well what life was like before.
It's funny that he actually believes this.
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.
Probably good you are taking yourself out of the gene pool
haha okay you definitely couldn't hack it
As a 52 year old I specifically avoided having kids.
For decades I have been convinced that we are speed-running into a global environmental crisis that we will continue to ignore until it is far too late and this will result in associated resources wars and I never wanted to doom other people into having to live through that.
I sincerely hope for the sake of those of you who made a different choice that I turn out to have been overly doomerist, but watching the Trump 2.0 years play out I now think that I wasn't doomerist enough.
having kids and raising them unlocks completely new human skill trees that were previously hidden from you
people who choose to be child free are not complete human beings
> people who choose to be child free are not complete human beings
Hmm, this seems pretty condescending, but hopefully it is just in jest.
With four kids I understand there is a unique set of skills and emotions that come along with it and I am personally grateful for, but there are also a lot skills and emotions you won't have and experience if you never go to war, never become a leader, never experience losing a parent when you are young, never win a gold medal in a team sport, never live in a different culture, never volunteer, etc. It seems short sighted to claim someone is an incomplete person if they can't experience one of those things, because likely no single person can.
There is a great tapestry of human experience and we can only experience most of it second or third hand (and probably not even that in most cases).
What a sad and egotistical thing to say.
i used to not think this, but then i had a kid and realized it's very true
what a silly definition of complete :)
> having kids and raising them unlocks completely new human skill trees that were previously hidden from you
Holy mother of autism. “my life is like a video game”. Please tell me you don’t have kids. They’re doomed if so.