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> It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc.

No, it doesn’t actually, as any kind of even approximately universal effect, force any of that, and even a casual look around at society would demonstrate that pretty clearly. It may or may not have motivated that in you – but plenty of people who would describe themselves as having those traits in their own relationships / parenting objectively don’t, so self-assessment is pretty clearly not a reliable gauge here. I would agree that there are people whose combination of innate personality, life experiences, etc., will lead them to actually be nudged in those directions by having children, but there are plenty who won’t be. And there are plenty of people who will be nudged in much more negative directions by the experience.

As a parent myself, it amazes me how many people who are parents are drawn into a bizarre evangelization of parenting as some kind of universally ideal vocation, with stories about the effect it will have that are trivially refutable by looking outside of one’s own internal narrative of their own experience with their own kids at the rest of the world around them.



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