Having Kids (2019)

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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...

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.

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.

Such a corny take. People should have kids when they know for sure they want to become parents. If they are unsure because the life they want for themselves seems incompatible, then it becomes a gamble. So many miserable parents out there who hide their experiences because they are afraid of social punishment or because they need to convince themselves that this permanent life-altering decision was the right one. That's my take as someone who for 35 years didn't want kids and one day woke up knowing for sure I wanted a kid in my family.

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.

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 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"

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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

As a father of 3, nothing is more satisfying than raising kids.

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 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.

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.

One of the most challenging aspects of being a parent (at least for me) is dealing with the kids not interested in cooperating or listening/learning. Their mother and I spent a great deal on music lessons and it was a challenge to get them to practice, and I was unable to coerce them to practice so they could reap the rewards of being able to create music themselves.

And just in general, giving guidance and seeing that look on their faces that means they're just waiting for you to stop talking so they can go on with their lives.

“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

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.

I am am so scared of losing my job in tech due to ai and not being able to support my family.

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?”

> Partly, and I won't deny it, this is because of serious chemical changes that happened almost instantly when our first child was born. It was like someone flipped a switch. I suddenly felt protective not just toward our child, but toward all children. As I was driving my wife and new son home from the hospital, I approached a crosswalk full of pedestrians, and I found myself thinking "I have to be really careful of all these people. Every one of them is someone's child!"

One thing Ive observed about Americans is how less of this feeling exists, without having kids etc. Like why the f does he not care for pedestrians before having a kid? Did he believe that adult humans just apparated out of nowhere? I see this a lot in how people drive, too.

I believe it is a result of the hyper-indivialistic and hyper-capitalist society rather than something innate in the people. I do think Americans deserve (and should demand and build) a better system.

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.

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.

You know what I hate? Those reels on social media telling parents how to raise kids, while using perfectly timed video clips of kids behaving themselves, sitting nicely on a highchair, picking freshly chopped fruits, etc.. good for them. In real life, I have to repeat myself 1000 times everyday they have to sit at the table and eat!

But at the end of the day, there’s nothing better than having kids.

he is coping so hard

How come this article by PG is trending today?