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Comment by tomsaffell | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak for anyone else's circumstances, but I can't imagine ever opting for my two year old son to be away from his mother for three months. Happy to elaborate, if people are interested.

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I've only been a father for nine days (and only out of the hospital for two), but I absolutely feel the same way.

Please. I have no kids, hope to someday, but it seems to me that being separated from either parent for three months sucks equally for the parent, but the kid probably won't notice that much. It's not like he's breastfeeding or anything. I'm interested to learn how I might be wrong though.

*Yo, I asked a legitimate polite question in the interest of learning more, stating my preexisting assumptions and inviting people to educate me. The parent comment gave a very nice and informative reply which was helpful to me and likely others. I don't think that rates downvotes.

At two years old most children will have a stronger bond with the mother than the father because generally the bulk of care, including breastfeeding, has been administered by the mother up until this point in their life. There are likely genetic/chemical/evolutionary forces at play here too.

Even at three years old, my daughter would unquestionably choose to spend three months with my wife rather than me (I'm not hurt or offended by this!).

edit:

"but the kid probably won't notice that much"

The kid will definitely notice :)

Being separated from a kid for three months would also be much harder emotionally on my wife than it would for me.

In my experience this is not true when the father is also doing a lot of the care, so I am skeptical of the importance of "genetic/chemical/evolutionary forces."

Yes, that is somewhat speculative on my part although the "chemistry" part behind the bond created by breastfeeding is very well established.

I was thinking that since kids mostly don't remember anything from before age 2-3, it wouldn't matter. But then again, it probably would matter to the parents, who wouldn't want to distress their kid regardless of whether he remembers.

It probably doesn't matter too much in the long-term, but you can't use childhood amnesia to justify ignoring the way a toddler feels right now!

Will not remember is not the same as will not affect, core emotional and psychological growth happens prior to 3, just because a child has poor recall does not mean they are not the sum of their experiences up to that point in time.

[citation needed]

The kid will definitely realize mom and dad are gone at two, they're not vegetables, but whether that has any impact on them later is not something that's been established by evidence. The idea that kids are the "sum of their experiences up to that point in time" is an old wives' tale.

I thought there was some evidence related to stress hormones, and the toll of being in a constant state of arousal due to stress. But that may be on older children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_childhood_stress_and_neu...

The trauma still happened to the kid, whether he remembers it or not. If there are clinical studies that show psychological trauma at age 2 or 3 does not matter because of memory, I'll gladly be wrong, but I don't want to inflict distress in my kids. Not to mention seeing your kids being miserable crushes your spirits as well.

We dont fully understand childhood memory. The "skeptic" community is often fast to quote that kids remember nothing and be very reductionist but these hasty conclusions aren't justified by the evidence. Children do have early memories, the question is what quality are these memories and how do they affect them. There's no magical amnesia that happens or some pathways that light up on your third birthday that lets memory work. Its all a long and gradual process.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2012/04/children_s...

Far from having no memories at all, very young children remember a lot like adults. In early infancy, the neural structures crucial for memory are coming online: the hippocampus, which is, very roughly, in charge of storing new memories; and the prefrontal cortex, which is, very roughly, in charge of retrieving those memories.

But these neural regions and their connecting pathways are still developing. And they capture only part of the present as it flows by.

My wife and I are equally busy, and I operate better on less sleep than my wife. So with our daughter I did a lot of the "mom" things the first two years. She woke up like clockwork for a feeding every three hours for more than a year. Now, at two and a half, if she wakes up in the middle of the night she'll cry for "daddy" not "mommy."

I really doubt there's any chemical forces. My brother is a stay-at-home dad and his daughter far prefers him to her mother.

I can't speak for all kids, but some kids will most definitely notice being away from a parent at that age. Especially if that parent is the primary caregiver.

They absolutely notice it. I'm a father of two, ages 3 and 12 weeks. When I'm gone, my oldest acts out in a big way. Toddlers are naturally very selfish. They know that the remaining parent is stressed and they'll use this to get their way. It's incredibly stressful for both the kid and parent left behind.

I would love to someday participate in an incubator such as YC but I just can't imagine how my family would handle it--we're dual-income and my wife is active duty military.

It depends on a lot of factors. I was a military wife. My husband was gone a lot. At one duty station, he was gone about six months out of the year, every year. He mostly wasn't a very involved father. Our oldest son mostly didn't care or even preferred for his father to be gone. Our younger son really missed daddy, in part because he was a more involved parent with our second child and in part because each child has their own personality.

Plenty of two-year-olds do still breastfeed, actually. The story doesn't mention if Adam was breastfeeding but it's quite possible. Toddlers that age don't need breast milk nutritionally (at least in developed countries) but it's great for comfort and bonding. Best way there is to calm a kid down after a bump on the head.

A 2-year-old might very well be breastfeeding still, actually. It's my understanding that from a biological standpoint, it's pretty natural for a child to breastfeed up until 3-6 years old, rare as that is nowadays. One benefit of breastfeeding is that it acts as a natural form of (unreliable) birth control that helped to space out children before the advent of artificial birth control pills.

Attatchment parenting[1] which has some mild evidence base would suggest that separation from a parent should be handled carefully. A sudden three month break probably isn't compatible with attachment parenting.

[1] attachment parenting should not be confused with helicopter parenting, which has some superficial similarities but which is different and which has mild evidence of long lasting harm.

"Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Parenting is not an engineering exercise. Relationships aren't all that amenable to those approaches either. There aren't universal answers or optimal algorithms (from a scientific perspective, systems of thought based on revelation are another matter). Putting a two year old in daycare may not be better for the child than an adventure in California...and that's assuming that daycare is even available on demand, which in many places (such as the US) it usually isn't.

Parents stand in line when sign-ups begin. They get on waiting lists before their child is born. Demand exceeding the supply of affordable daycare is typical in the US. I don't even want to imagine what it's like in the Valley. When you have children, brace yourself.

Sorry I didnt come back in time to elaborate (as offered). The other comments said what I would say and more.

One thought on you getting down voted: Your comment started with 'Please.', which could be interpreted to mean, 'yes, please do elaborate', or it could be interpreted as confrontational / disbelieving, as is sometimes the case when people just say 'Please!'. Just a thought.

Sorry, I had hoped the rest of my comment would make my intention clear. I see it didn't.

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