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Comment by notduncansmith | Hacker News Reader

Another guy here.

I've found that as I age, I've become more emotional (and simultaneously better at dealing with it). I never cried in movies as a child/teenager, but nowadays I find myself choking up during particularly emotional moments in movies, shows, and life. Sometimes I just look at my son for a minute and the same thing happens. I try not to cry around people, even my family, but more because I'm conscious of the effect it has on them (upsetting or, in the case of other people, just awkward).

My theory is that, as I've developed a stronger sense of empathy and experienced more things in my life, I have a more direct emotional connection to events I witness. From what I've read based, this seems to be fairly common.

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Having a kid did that to me, too. I've always been a bit of a crybaby, but now I kinda lose it when children-related kidnappings or deaths happen in movies or TV shows or the news.

Tycho, from Penny Arcade, said it best: "When I was younger, I would have resented some of this stuff - it would have seemed ham-handed. Manipulative. I could have discern what they wanted me to feel and valiantly refused, or (if it were executed especially well) felt a version of it which might have been similar in color or shape. I would feel it in deference to their craft.

That’s not really how it works now. Children carve something out of you, a place for themselves; people can twist the knife in that spot, and it just bleeds and bleeds."

Exactly same experience, I also became a crybaby about children related incidents after becoming a parent.

This explains why "think of the children" is such an effective trick; its users are abusing the most fundamental emotions of parents.

For me it seemed to correlate directly with the birth of my son. My theory is that his birth, the emotions of it, the sleep deprivation, and the neuro-chemical onslaught that most likely happened during that same time (it was easily the most emotional period of my life), have fundamentally rewired my brain to be more emotionally reactive (my wife would balk if I used the term "sensitive").

It's a good thing.

There is apparently hormonal changes in fathers-to-be including lowering of testosterone levels that could account for these anecdotal changes in mood response to stimuli.

So probably you're experiencing being a bit more female in your hormone levels.

(Best source I've seen on this is probably an endocrinologist doing a BBC program, which sorry I can't cite for you).

> So probably you're experiencing being a bit more female in your hormone levels.

This is a little loaded..

That's a nice theory, but it seems to be common to get emotional with age - senile lability if you want to google it.

My first introduction to the term as a teenager was in Earthly Powers[1]. Didn't get it then, but as I get older (and like you after kids), I find I tear up at stories of sacrifice and generosity.

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=PsJyuYIL-_MC&pg=PT6&lpg=PT...

[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=RRV0DbfOsqUC&pg=PA207&lpg=...

I've noticed this in myself, and had put it down to getting lonelier as i get older. When i was talking to school or university friends every day, i was grounded in reality, somehow; now i only see real close friends every week or few weeks, i'm off in a little emotional world of my own where any little thing can take on subjectively huge proportions.

I think there is a difference between senile decay, and the fact that when you are getting older, you have witnessed the fragility of life in ways that most teenagers luckily have not.

I think my empathy is growing as I'm getting older.

I am aware that some people just hardens up or getting more or less traumatized if they experience really traumatic events or periods and I don't think it is that useful to look at war-like events as it kind of go outside a useful scale, but in personal tragedies a lot of people people seems to go softer.

Maybe you have to learn empathy. There are many signs that says it's at least partially so.

Empathy definitely has to be exercised and trained regularly to work well. As I understand it (not an expert but I've read up on it on the Internet), children are pretty much incapable of it until ~4 as there's some mental development necessary. If you spend lots of time in an environment where you're not conscious of building your empathy and remembering to use it, your ability and tendency to do so will wither.

Interesting. I too have noticed a similar thing as I have aged. I developed the theory though that when it started happening things that did not impact me directly (such as movies) that it was more a case that I was feeling emotional about something else in life and that this was emotions seeping out where they could. I especially thought this because it didn't seem to always happen.

Your view bears merit though and I will have to consider it. Thank you for sharing it.

And my kids still make fun of me for crying at the end of "Winnie the Pooh", but I've always done that. And I maintain that Christopher Robin leaving Pooh and his childhood behind is cry worthy... even more for Pooh than Christopher Robin.

Having a kid. That did it for me.

I've always been an empathic person, but some chemicals changed when I had a child, and now a crappy movie trailer with the right cuts and a soaring soundtrack can get me teary.

This x 1000!. I can't believe how much my children changed me- and I am a pretty tough guy otherwise. Glad to hear I am not the only one.

Definitely Not. Me likewise. Something does change when you have kids, it's not just exclusive to the mothers, us fathers get it too.

Replying to myself since I can't edit: looks from HN like maybe my son's birth did it :) A lot of things changed then, that could well have been one of them.

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