Having a kid is the most fun I’ve ever had. Used to go to raves, done bunch of crazy sexual stuff, as well as most drugs under the sun. There’s nothing close to chasing a toddler in a circle for an hour.
Complete disagreement. Toddlers were completely uninteresting to me, nothing but hassle and pain and sorrow. Around 6 years old they get much more interesting and less awful to deal with.
I'm just the opposite: the toddler stage is far and away my favorite stage of my kids' development. They are old enough to communicate with, but young enough that they discover something new and amazing in the world every single day. Getting to see the world through the eyes of a toddler really clarifies your world view.
Same here. On Friday afternoon I'm already looking forward to Monday.
I'm ok to play with a toddler for couple o hours, but entertaining a small but very active child for two days is really exhausting. I wish day care was opened on the weekends too, at least for few hours.
This is so true. I can’t believe how much I love having a kid. And mine’s only 6 months old. I’m beyond excited to actually do things with him, like run around with him, or go skiing/ride bikes.
I wanted to say—these two lifestyles you describe (raves and toddlers) are not incompatible. I’ve had to get better at scheduling and communication, that’s all.
For me, it was really helpful to develop concrete agreements with my partner. (E.g., I get to travel 8 weeks a year, I have to schedule 1 month in advance, and it can be for any reason). I don’t like the view that having kids means giving up on what you love to do in life.
4th kid is on the way. Seems nutso to me, but because my wife really wanted another. And if that is her dream, I am not going to stand in her way.
> I don’t like the view that having kids means giving up on what you love to do in life.
Is there anyone other than you and your spouse helping raise the children? Does your spouse work?
Lots of people do not have support from friends or family. Being able to take off while spouse is pregnant and taking care of 3 other kids is surely an abnormal situation.
A parent being able to travel for a few days while one parent manages the kids is not abnormal.
She took a weekend recently and left me with the 3 kids. It was fun and honestly more relaxed than most weekends. Maybe importantly is our spacing — 13, 10 and 3. Not saying 3 toddlers.
I have a video recording of one irrationally happy time, I recorded it because I had a nifty new camera that could do it... the subject... me and my daughter in her car seat, waiting for my Wife to do some shopping.
It's simply half an hour of "Where's Daddy?... oh oh... There's Daddy... " peek-a-bo with laughter all around.
That was an insanely happy time. There's been lots of other fun, but that was peak pure bliss.
Is this satire? I have a child and the monotonous boredom of dealing with a toddler forces me to suppress the distant memories of freedom to go to raves, fight in foreign militia, get lost in stormy mountains, hitchhike across the plains...
Chasing your toddler for an hour is fun. Chasing your toddler day after day, hour after hour because you have no one else to help you might not be so fun.
There is distinct difference in the fun of raising children in a village where there are tons of other kids with low risk of cars so they can play outside freely, and raising children 24/7 because they cannot be left without supervision and there are few other kids on the street and the adults do not trust each other enough.
Just having functional grandparents or aunts/uncles to take them off your hands once in a while would probably make a big difference.
The bit of advice I got from another parent before I had kids was golden: parents need time off the clock. Sometimes you need to hear your kid screeching about something and know it's someone else's problem. We don't have family around, so we give each other breaks on the weekend, usually one day where my spouse and I give each other half-day breaks. Idk what it's going to be like when he's older, but for now it works.
Same here. My wife likes to sleep in, I like to wake up early.
Our typical Saturday involves me and my son spending 7A-nap time together outside the house while my wife sleeps in, lounges around and does her hobbies.
When we get home, she’s totally refreshed.
Another thing we do sometimes is drop him at daycare and we take an afternoon off to do something together.
Works great for us. We don’t have any family within 3000 miles of us, so solutions were needed.
Exactly. It seems that most of the "childfree" arguments are based on this terrible modern, industrial, low-trust worldview that assumes that parents are solely responsible for their kids.
Unless both parents come from a really dysfunctional family, this should never be the case.
>Unless both parents come from a really dysfunctional family, this should never be the case.
Why? Many people immigrate away from their families for a variety of reasons other than them being “dysfunctional”. For example, economic opportunities.
I know a quite a few couples that moved from places with low economic opportunities to places with better opportunities, and one of the downsides is that they have to navigate parenting by themselves. It is a cost they are incurring to give their kids a higher probability of success when they grow up.
I'm from Brazil, my wife is from Greece. We are both living in Germany. So I'm well aware of what you are talking about.
Yet:
> one of the downsides is that they have to navigate parenting by themselves.
That's not true. Our families may be away most of the time, but we have a constant rotation of our parents (and my wife's Giagia) coming to stay with us. When our second kid was born, I don't think we were by ourselves for the first six months. Even today, we get someone visiting us at least every other month.
> kids a higher probability of success when they grow up.
This is increasingly becoming something we are asking ourselves. I think our kids would benefit more from being able to grow up close to their families than in a place with a culture and values that we don't really share. For us (and me specially) living in Germany has been more of a "tolerable" than a "desirable" situation. With remote work becoming a reality, I think we can have our cake and eat it too.
>That's not true. Our families may be away most of the time, but we have a constant rotation of our parents (and my wife's Giagia) coming to stay with us. When our second kid was born, I don't think we were by ourselves for the first six months. Even today, we get someone visiting us at least every other month.
I would guess money is a frequent issue, plus visa and other family obligations such as other siblings great grandparents. Health issues too since grandparents are older than in previous times.
Apologies in advance for the (slight) moving of the goal posts, but to me the problems you mention do point to very dysfunctional aspects of modern life and common family structures:
- "Older grandparents" is a sign that people are waiting too much to have their own kids.
- "Other family obligations", like what... Work? Perhaps we should rethink our globalized, modern economy that makes dual-income families a necessity. I really hope that by the time my kids get to have their kids, my wife and I are in condition to dedicate ourselves to help them as much as our own parents helped us.
- "Visa issues" is mostly an American thing, which unfortunately I also I am very familiar with (lived in the US before coming to Germany). The US is only going to sort this out after it solves the Milton Friedman dilemma: it can be either a country of Open Borders, or it can be a Welfare State. Until it tries to be both, it is doomed to these catastrophic policies.
Yeah Brazil at least has Mercosur. It's pretty crazy North America doesn't have something similar considering capital can mostly freely flow between NAFTA countries. (although we do have something similar with compact free association i.e. micronesia / palau / marshall islands)
Why do you assume "dysfunctional"?
Flying costs money. Having apartment big enough to accommodate 3 adults plus one or two kids costs money. Family members have to work too.
There is no black and white here.
- go grocery shopping, discuss what foods we like/don't like, practice remembering something I'm supposed to get
- play with model trains and make up Thomas stories
- go to the aquarium store and talk about the fish
- go to the park (One time we stopped on the way for fast food and ate it at the park, which was fun, but it created an expectation for a while that there would always be chicken and fries at the park.)
There's just a lot of variation between people and families.
I would prefer hanging out with my children over doing most anything else. That comes down to who I am and who my children are, and probably other circumstances.
It's also worth recognizing that the early childhood years (0-3) can be difficult and super isolating. We had fun during that time, but it got way more fun as they got out of that age and became fully interactive.
As the downvotes for your comment shows, it isn't acceptable to express dislike for having children. With this in mind we ought to take all positive things people say with a grain of salt, since a lot of those things will be said to get social points and many people avoid complaining since it isn't acceptable.
Its like in discussions about exercise, if you just read discussions online you'd think that everyone loves to exercise, but most people really hate it or at least don't like it.
This entire post is people talking about not wanting children. Not wanting and not having children has been a way to signal group membership in the PMC class for decades now. Social media is full of people complaining about kids on airplanes, in restaurants etc.
I'm over it, and I'm over the PMC signaling in general. The happiest people I know enjoy things without irony, love their kids, and aren't afraid to look stupid. The most miserable detest children and only care about trends.
Well, if you grow up with abusive parents who were miserable and constantly depressed, you likely don't want kids to avoid going down the same route. But that sort of upbringing likely means you are miserable as well.
Happy people ought to have kids, since likely they will have happy kids. Unhappy kids ought to not have kids, since they will likely have unhappy kids, and would make themselves unhappier for it. How is this strange? Do you think that miserable people shouldn't be able to express their misery? do you think that hating those miserable people will help in any way?
