> 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.
> I think that becoming a parent fundamentally changes who you are
All major life decisions you make changes who you are. That's what makes them "major".
> The parent who can let go of their old self gracefully, and drop many ambitions (which in retrospect seem childish) is able to transform.
What kinda self-serving sophistry is this? I can easily argue that the world would benefit a whole lot more if people remained childishly curious. It is the moment you let go of that child inside that you die if you ask me. Stay curious, stay hungry and keep improving. That's just a no-brainer. The idea that dropping ambitions is somehow a transformative experience to strive toward is such a weird thing to say.
> Those who cling to the desire to remain "able to stay up all night playing with new technologies" will surely find regret and fail to take advantage of the enormous perspective change that parenthood bestows.
What perspectives are these exactly? this reads to me like self-aggrandizing at best. Are you gonna tell me that people can't possibly have an understanding for "what truly matters in life" unless they have kids? What about the perspective you lose by becoming a parent and giving up on your dreams? It is a trade-off you are making. You are losing one perspective to gain another. But the idea that "people who chose otherwise will surely find regret" is just laughable. How could you possibly know that? You can't really run the experiment N times to compare the results? I can literally copy the text of your post and make the opposite argument.
In summary, let me see if I got this right: expanding your horizons by constantly learning and _acquiring new perspectives_ is considered a childish ambition that must be shed in order to metamorph into a parent so that you can take advantage of your newly _acquired perspective_... How do you square this circle exactly?
> Is it possible you are inferring it a certain way because of your bias? For instance, I complain about having kid all the time, but I wouldn't give him up for anything.
Not being happy with parenting doesn't imply wanting to give up your child. It just means that you made a bad decision that you're now stuck with / making the best of.
It could be that I was simply reading into things, but I have been told directly by someone that it had been a bad choice. But as people do, they adapted and moved on, though their life is very different now and I barely recognize them anymore.
I've also known happy parents. It's just silly to say that parenting is automatically a happy event. Nothing in life is going to be enjoyable for every person.
>> having kids [does not make] one uniquely qualified
That is true. But the reverse is not. NOT having kids pretty much guarantees you have mostly romanticized notions about how things should be, and vastly underestimate the issues that parents have to face on a daily basis. Non-parents also seem to universally think that all kids are the same and merely talking to them is enough discipline. It will be enough for a small minority of kids, and nowhere near enough for most. Left to their own devices (if you pardon the pun) most kids will totally veg out and they will be unprepared to face the challenges of adulthood. The goal of a good parent is to make sure it doesn’t happen, even if the kid hates everything you do to make sure of it. Good parents don’t play “friends” with their kids. They’re more of a mix between a close confidant and a demanding manager who is totally prepared to make their kids lives unpleasant if it helps them in the long run.
You will be very quickly disabused of your romanticized notions when you have a child of your own. Until then you should probably refrain from giving parenting advice.
> Yeah, parenting is more work than not being a parent, but people who pretend like it’s the end of their lives or the worst thing in the world are just unnecessarily cynical or have a martyrdom complex.
Probably. But also seems to me very likely to be a lack of proper orientation in what considers good, ascribes value to, etc.
>> It might be rooted in the fact that I don't have kids
> As a parent: nope, it's definitely not that.
As a parent, I'm not so sure. I think every person is different, and some people (myself) respond really well to having kids. They give you a purpose in life and make everything seem more meaningful.
Other people absolutely do not get as much out of having kids, and it feels like a grind to them.
People are just different, nothing wrong with that at all. IMO problems may arise when your reality is misaligned with the kind of person you are.
> For me personally, having kids has resolved the nature vs nurture debate squarely in the "nature" side.
Amen to that. I have 3 boys. We put in the same ingredients and got wildly different results with all three. I'm convinced that parenting is more about working with what comes factory installed than it is about moulding some ideal human from a formless block of potential.
Incentives and punishments that work with one don't work with the others; we have to really become students of our children to understand what they do and don't respond to, and to parent them accordingly. If my sample size of 3 is any indication, trying to fit children through a one-size-fits-all mold is going to fail miserably.
> Spot on, I’m so different now than I was then I disregard anything anyone without kids says.
I would posit this is universally correct. Us not-parents can "believe" we can accurately imagine what you go through or what we would do in your place. Theoretically speaking, the theory matches reality :)
Yet imagining is literally not enough! People without children do not viscerally know what it is to parent, 24/7 for the rest of your days for the foreseeable future. How the accumulated indescribable-joy and the mounting exhaustion that you simultaneously carry influences slash impacts your decision-making and relentlessly molds the options you'll choose to make for the rest of your life.
Good luck explaining how different this parenting experience can be for every person and child, even within the same family in the same environment two children can be polar opposites with no obvious reason other than "life finds a way".
> I feel like they’re not real adults too.
I say this with all my empathy: the fact that for you parenting is such a core part of the adult experience is not only correct but beautiful, and anybody who tries to invalidate that is extremely wrong.
That said, there is another layer of unkindness in your position that you must unpack yourself, if you wish to have adult-level relationships with people with a different set of adult-core concepts.
> I think that becoming a parent fundamentally changes who you are.
Agree 100% by adding “can” in there. The OP’s feelings are very similar to my own early on. I still have those nagging thoughts now and then but I know now what to focus on.
Fact is, young children are thankless, selfish, and inconsiderate little parasites that could give 2 shits about their parents desires. The parents that can look past all that and see the little spots of joy, look forward to the fun stuff like sharing a hobby, and letting go of your original picture of life seem to have the best experience with it.
That perspective change is NOT guaranteed, though. I know plenty of parents who seemed to naturally have this figured out right away. It’s taken me several years to even just see the light but I’m getting it now. We had a particularly tough first kid but she’s grown out of a lot of those challenges and we’re finding it easier to find the fun stuff together.
> the biggest flaw i see in the planning of most prospective parents is that they fail to acknowledge their children will not be confined to their little garden of eden
That doesn't mean I don't believe my kids are going out to experience(and develop their own) moral codes. What it means is that as long as they are in my house, they will abide by my rules, as they will have to when they will abide by their landlord's rules. This is coming from a former kid who went over to his friend's houses to play FPS games, downloaded porn then erased the internet history, and visited anarchy websites teaching me how to build bombs and the like. I know what children are liable to do outside my range of vision.
The problem I have with your perspective is that it can be taken to any end and doesn't teach children that different people have their own values, or that parents have a duty to their children's wellbeing. It takes moral relativism to such an extreme that, given the possibility that your premises are true, I'd have to question whether parents are even necessary.
The reason that I would instill my values in my children is so they can enter a world where not everyone sees my moral codex as valid, thus they are given something to think about when they come to an age where they're forced to wonder whether I as a parent am being reasonable. They can choose to rebel, which they almost certainly will, and they can also choose to respect at least some of my values. In my experience, the kids who grew up in households whose parents let their kids do whatever they wanted turned out to be dependent little shitheads. I know of only one exception, and in that case the dad was such a negligent jerk that the kid had to raise himself; he turned out pretty well in the end, but that's not without the psychological drama of having shitty parenting and other mistakes he made because he had no moral guidance.
Sorry, but I'd rather be an actual dad and play some role in how a child gets raised. Allowing children, especially under the age of 12, to do whatever they want, is absurd.
> what I find fascinating is how the author seems to inadvertently be displaying the very behaviour the article is describing, even though with all their research you'd expect they'd be best equipped not to.
The article is about how parenting is stressful but (ultimately) rewarding, and you're surprised that the author of it finds parenting stressful but (ultimately) rewarding? Did you expect she'd find it not stressful, or that she'd find it not rewarding?
> Something feels off about this. I mean, it can go both ways, no?
man, it can go every way imaginable. Childhood is so short and no on worries like a parent does. Every parent wants to get it 100% right but that's an impossible task yet there's very serious consequences for your child when you get it wrong. Further, parents are just regular people who get misinformed or are ignorant of the path forward and have to just do their best at every crucial step in a child's development. Parenthood is an impossible task to get perfect and you have to give yourself grace but you have to work and learn from your mistakes and improve because a life is at stake.
> but I think there is much better way to estimate how kids would affect your happiness: do activities that put you in extensive contact with kids, e.g., volunteer to baby sit for your friends/family, offer to tutor/advise neighborhood kids, and coach youth sports
I strongly disagree that this gives good evidence whether you'll enjoy having kids yourself. I never liked dealing with kids of any age; the experience with my own kids, however, is vastly different, and I really enjoy their company.
> but this is not at all what many parents I know/encounter express to me (as a person who's openly childfree).
My experience as a parent and talking to other parents in my social circle couldn't be more different.
It's possible that your "openly childfree" status is biasing your conversations with others toward viewpoints that support your childfree identity. Personally, I learned long ago to avoid discussing anything about parenting with people who make childfree part of their outward identity, because it seems they only want to argue that my experience as a parent is somehow wrong or invalid.
> What I detest is the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude that, just because you have kids, you a superior or more evolved human being.
Is this in response directly to what manyxcxi wrote, or is this a response in general? I didn't pick up any such attitude in their writing, so I'm genuinely curious whether anything triggered it for you.
(I agree with you in general, and I'm a parent. For me, it's one of those things where I realized how much free time I used to have and squandered.)
You're exactly right. There's a lot of crap culture and values in the world.
> Children can adapt to and thrive in much worse environments than mostly only see Dad at the weekend.
True as well. Doesn't make it any less horrible.
Rationalizing away being a good parent is selfish. My mother died when I was 11 and my father (a director in his company) worked incredibly hard to manage the balance of the demands at work and taking the time and care to raise my sister and I. He did an extraordinary job and was very self-sacrificing, and so when I see comments along the lines of "I'm going to do what I want to do with my life and the kids will just have to adapt", it really kind of pisses me off.
> It’s sobering to think that we as parents are responsible not only for a slice of someone’s life but for its entire trajectory.
I don't agree (but I'm not sober!). Your kids will make their own lives, and their own mistakes. Once they're past 12, there's not a lot you can do to shape that trajectory.
My kids were stroppy and rebellious. One became a sort of underground environmentalist, the other became a rather conservative schoolmarm (which to me was a rebellion). They chose to be rebellious; I wasn't responsible for that (except possibly through genetics). At the time, I'd have preferred for them to be compliant, because it would have been more convenient. Now, of course, I'm glad that both my kids turned out to be assertive, confident adults that think for themselves.
Oh yes - kids turn into adults in about 15 years. By the time they're 20, they've either gone or they want to go. Raising kids will only ever be a small part of your life. Even if you find it hard, it's not a life-sentence.
> Especially anyone who doesn't have kids, or only has one kid.
People say this all the time even though it ignores the fact that virtually anyone has parents even if they don't have kids. Having a kid doesn't make you better at parenting. At best, it forces you to think about parenting but there was nothing stopping you from doing that before.
> This kind of attitude towards children baffles me. It was always very clear where the authority lay in my family, and it certainly was not in my childish hands.
The author here wasn’t talking about authority, she’s saying that the goal of parenting is ultimately to raise another human being. You can try to be the best parent you can be, but in the end, it’s not about you.
> Anything that challenges their authority over the kids (correct parenting, behavior, values etc) can be seen as a direct attack and people will get very rude and offensive.
I'll ignore parenting advice, even more from people without children. The thing is that everyone is different, and I don't believe that there is a better way or a miraculous method which will make your kids the greatest.
Secondly, it is a selfish reason: Being parent is a unique opportunity to grow a human to your values, and hopefully leading to success.
I don't see why I should adopt someone else's values.
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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