Having Kids

Last night I explained quicksort to one kid.

Now we are designing cards to laser cut.

The kids get interesting and independent quicker than you might imagine.

The days are long, but the years are fast.

The time commitment has changed for me but not quite enough where i can sit for hours and code something outside of work. My kids are 5 and 7

That was 21 months ago.

This week I was in bed before 9pm at least 3 nights and up at 7 am with the spawn to take her to day care. I get a shower and get her dropped off and get back home by 9am and immediately start work. I don’t get up from the chair till noon for a quick break and back to it for another 3 hours. My wife and kid get home around 4:30 or 5 and I slap together something frozen and barely healthy for all of us and then my wife does the bath routine and I read slack on my phone and think about how much I didn’t get done. We play for an hour or so and bed time is at 7:30pm. After that I try to wrap up loose ends and make notes for the next day and usually so tired I just go on to bed. I’m stuck in this cycle. It is so hard to stay up after bed time because I know I have to be up and at em first thing in the morning and can’t lay in bed till 8:30 or 9 because I stayed up till 2am.

I would work 2 or 3 side gigs on top of my job previously and now I have no mental room or energy for it. It’s a hard pill to swallow. I put a ton of stuff on my google calendar. Friends want to play a game on Friday night? It gets on the calendar and I usually can’t make it past 10:30pm. It makes me keep the value of my time in the front of my mind. Do I want to play video games or read and play with my daughter? Sometimes I choose the games for my own recharging. I want to start my own thing so bad and I just can’t get the courage to make the jump and don’t have the energy to do it on the side.

Your problem is not that your kids have blocked you from interesting work. In fact it sounds like quite the opposite: you are so passionate and rewarded by childcare that it has inspired you like never before.

It just sounds like you need to look for a more interesting day job.

Also, I don't subscribe to the notion that a parent needs to be playing with their kid every waking minute. My wife is more toward the opposite but getting more flexible. My son plays with Legos and other building toys by himself and I like that. I did the same when I was young. You have two kids so let them play with each other and you and your SO should dedicate more time as partners together. Get your date nights in.

Your kids are getting old enough that they should be playing with each other all day long soon and that will open up your time. Mine are younger than yours so I have a few more years but I hear having multiple is a game-changer for parents.

The other thing I would suggest is to just take your kids with you everywhere you can. I got a hiking backpack and I take him to music festivals, he's flown overseas and traveled around Europe, National Parks, etc. He doesn't make a peep in the hiking backpack and loves being able to see different things outdoors. I highly recommend!

As far as doing a side project, maybe do the planning/strategy for it while hanging out with them but when your kids are playing with each other. I can't code very well with kids around but I can still ideate.

The key to this is working remotely. Two major advantages that apply here:

1. Not wasting precious time on commuting (even 1 hour makes a huge difference)

2. Being way more flexible so I can run errands and house chores mid-day if I'm feeling unproductive and use the time I earned to catch up on work later.

If working for a distributed company is an option for you - I can highly recommend. If not - from what I see around me it gets way easier and more fun when your youngest is ~3 y/o.

I'd recommend just enjoying being a parent while they are young. They need you at this age. Play with them, read to them, and all that. Write down ideas you'd like to pursue in a couple years when your free time returns. And you can be confident that it will return.

Those "golden hours" in the night or in the morning where I got to read or learn or do what I wanted were precious. As others suggest, getting some alone time by trading with your partner (if possible) is rejuvenating. But it's ok for you to not be as productive as you were before, because you have less time to be productive.

I have older kids and can tell you that it gets better. The kids get more independent. They want to do stuff with their friends. I have friends with teenagers and at that age they rarely want to spend time with you and you can leave them alone at home for hours (or even days).

Yes, it's very different from the hobbies I used to have, but for my brain, making the kids a hobby/'project' works pretty well.

I do kinda agree with another commenter here that it does somewhat sound like you simply need more challenging / interesting work. My four day workweek is fun / challenging enough that I don't really need to do anything similar (i.e. write software) as a side project.

Most people don't have much left to give working those kinds of hours. Personally, I've had to dramatically cut back on hobbies and keeping up with various media, even, and all but drop some categories (I bet I spend 5% as much time gaming as I used to, for instance, and haven't even bothered to set up my gaming PC since a move about 1.5 years ago). I got a ton of reading done when each kid was young because you can just read them whatever, they don't know the difference, and you spend a lot of time feeding them or watching them in the bath so they don't drown or whatever, but now? Hahaha, so, so little reading.

Mostly I just watch movies or TV or read garbage on the Internet (ahem) because I don't mind as much being interrupted while doing those things.

For me, the toddler years were the nadir in terms of having my own time. Babies sleep enough to give you some time. Older kids are independent enough. But toddlers, man, it's like living with a pair of destructive monkeys that you're legally forbidden to cage.

It will get better.

-Potty training

-Social play with other kids

-Full time school

-Reading

-Interest in Legos and games

I am still coming out of an eight year productivity valley (and my wife's of course was worse), but as Paul says, it's worth it. For me two fun things are when they beat me at a game for the first time and when they say, "Look what I made!"

That said, I agree with others that it gets way better. Ages 5-9 with my kids have been great. The stuff they do is actually fun and interesting to me, and since I was such a damn good parent, the kids are dynamic and somewhat responsible for themselves. We have a lot of fun now and I have choices for myself once again.

Warning: I hear the teenage years can be just as daunting at the toddler/preschool years, but for different reasons.

- They get tired from learning stuff. And the teachers know how to deal with them.

- They learn how to behave in a group. They start having actual friends.

- You get a bunch of friends who are in the same situation as you, and you can use their kids to cancel out yours. (AKA playdates)

- Having friends in the same boat will help your confidence a lot. They can help you directly with the kids, plus some of them will have older kids too, and they can tell you it gets better.

- As for your own time, try to be disciplined about the kids' bedtime. It helps a lot that school is tiring them out, and use that momentum to not let them decide when to go to bed. If you get them asleep before 8pm, how much different is your day really? You had to eat anyway, and you have to keep the house clean regardless. Your real problem is if they keep you up to 11pm each night, then your life is gone, and they end up in a cycle of having not enough sleep. Make them sleep, then code up your side project.

For example my kids started school at 4. I've put them in full time after school care as well, ending at 6pm. Now they're tired but awake when they come home and can eat a meal, then bath, then bedtime. You can read something to put them to sleep, then go and do your own stuff.

--Edit

Forgot to mention, the kid will learn how to read. From there you can give them a book and that will keep them quiet. Remember to teach them how to code as well, so they have proper tools to explore the world.

Believe me, I know how you feel. I have a basement full of half-finished projects that stalled out seven years ago. But, I've replaced those things with two little mini-mes that love football and trucks and travel. Looking back on the last seven years, I wouldn't trade them for the world. It's been awesome and it's getting a lot better.

However as my kids grow older and they need less care for daily basic stuff, I find myself get more motivated. I have to provide for them so I am absolutely motivated to be more productive.

I’m usually up around 4:30 and have the dog walked by 5:30.

Summer in the Pacific Northwest means I’ve got plenty of light by 6 and I go hit the archery range or take the dog for a longer hike through the woods.

In the winter it’s pitch black til 7 so I go to the office earlier.

Go to my office between 5:30-7:30 where I’m going to focus on learning something new, side project, hobby project, etc. til 9:30.

Gym at noon (most days), home by 5:30. I don’t even try and do mentally taxing work after we get the kids to bed (around 7:30). Usually it’s helping cleanup, hanging with the wife, TV, and asleep by 9:30ish.

Because life is life, some mornings I’ve got the dog walked and am in the office by 5, sometimes I’ve got a meeting at 8, or have to take kids to school.

On weekends I do the exact same morning routine except I’ll be on the computer at home and usually no gym.

There are plenty of times where I’ve got a good flow going and my alarm buzzes at 5pm and I just have to tear myself away and get home.

Traveling is what kills me. My morning routine sets up my whole day and gets my head where it needs to be. When I’m traveling for work it’s not so bad because I hit the hotel gym and usually get even more morning time to myself. Traveling with the family (like over the holidays when I’m staying at the in-laws) leaves me jumping out of my skin without the physical and mental exercises I’m used to. I haven’t cracked that nut yet, but I’m really trying to not be such a dick about it to the wife this year.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the most important part! I’m definitely still working on this, myself. I found that really jumping in and ACTUALLY participating with the kids is a salve for that mental itch that seems to not be getting scratched when I am obsessing over something in the back of my mind. Building LEGO, kicking ass at Guess Who, etc. can still be pretty fun if we just get over ourselves and let go. Or if I REALLY still want to take the dog in the woods, bring the kids with and it’s a whole new adventure.

In terms of actual "available" hours to do what I want, it looks a bit like this:

Work ~10 hours (assumes some amount of commuting, getting ready, etc.) Evening/dinner/cleanup/nighttime routines (~2-3 hrs) Sleep ~7-8 hours

That leaves around 3-4 hours per day. Weekends are actually similar since that is a team effort of running the household and parenting along with my wife (And she needs a break too!). 3-4 hours sounds like a lot but the problem is that do you want to immediately go from activity to activity with no pause, no recharge time, no time to just "do nothing" and take a break from being around other people, tending to others' needs, work, etc. People need "recharge" time which might include resting, thinking, reading, or otherwise laying down and relaxing, with a spouse or not, or with a movie/show or not.

So yes they need lots of time now, but when they don't you'll miss it too.

Oh and one of the biggest surprises for me was how much free time there was immediately post baby. I actually got a lot of work done because there was nothing else to do and I was bored out of my mind (both of our kids slept a ton in the weeks after being born)

As for personal activities? Definitely impacted, but only ones that took me out of the house on my own. Otherwise my gaming habits haven’t changed and I fit cycling in by taking my oldest kid to school on bike. Trying to just find new hobbies I can do with my kids instead.

My experience is it gets "easier", but it doesn't get "better". Some parents really relate to their kids as they grow up, but it never happened for me. If you've ever seen the movie Rushmore, remember Bill Murray's character and kids? Just, no common interest and he's obviously defeated and burdened by them. That's about what it's like for some of us.

I had to scale back on hobbies, but haven't given them up.

I wrote two books while I had small children at home, mostly while they slept and in the subway during commutes. I paused doing my favorite sport (table tennis) for about two years, and resumed afterwards.

It was harder for my wife, who breast fed (and my younger child wouldn't accept anything else). She had a harder time leaving the house on her own.

Wisdom is hard to come by from a sample size of one. I'd just recommend to reserve one evening a week for things you used to like to do, and do even if you don't feel it in the moment. Best to leave the house for it.

Plus it will get better. The older they are, the easier it is. 2 and 4 is probably arouns low point.

It's gotten a bit better. (My daughter just turned 10) It's more like 95%. And each year I get a sliver more back. I think that in a few years more it should shift even more dramatically.

What my kids (grown now) care about? That I can afford to give them money to help pay with their rent and any financial issues and that their Dad is not 'a loser'. Not whether I read them books or went to games or school events. It's all perspective and how you present it to them honestly.

But to your question yes it's a huge energy drain. Not going to get better either. Just try not to get sucked into things 'because that is what you do for kids and if you don't they will resent it and they will be screwed up'. Not true. Ok maybe in some edge cases true but many of us that are older grew up in a era where Dad and Mom were not our friends and we didn't want them to be either.

I'm fortunate to be able to work from home which saves the time on commuting, but you'll want a private office to avoid interruptions, esp. important for any concentration-intensive work like programming. But there's no getting around it, all kids before school needs to be supervised at all times, either with day care, a full time in-house nanny or as it's now in my case my better half is effectively the full-time nanny during the work day. We're starting to see some light at the tunnel with the eldest just starting school but as our youngest is only 10 days old, it's going to be a long time before they're all in school. At the same time, you're going to miss this time you had when they are this young so you've also got to cherish the journey before the parental reprieve when you get to lock them in the school system during the day :)

The only tip I have for prospective parents is to get all your travelling, hobbies and interests out of the way pre-kids as your life after kids essentially is going to revolve around the kids and family commitments.

Another time saving habit I keep forgetting about (that differentiates from my childhood) since it's been eradicated from our daily lives is not watching TV, we only watch Netflix/Prime À la carte on occasion when we have downtime (i.e. kids are in bed), but the time you save is more productively spent on your interests and hobbies.

It took some adjustment but now we have.. I really enjoy it. Playing games with my kids is fun, seeing them playing with their friends. Baking.

Our gym has a creche so I can still lift weights, read manga and get enough sleep (when the youngest allows it).

I don't code for fun anymore, but honestly I haven't done that for a long time. I've spent 30 years on computing, I keep up to date via work so my spare time is spent learning in other areas: history, the natural world, math, politics, physiology.. whatever interests me..

The key for me was learning to actually manage time better. The challenges of having a kid have made me see how little time for other things I have now, which in turn made me manage that time better. Previously, I'd fall into the trap of "there's so much time" that I could easily waste it. A whole evening free, planning to work on a side project? First I do something else, get carried away, then figure it isn't worth working for just two hours, and so waste the whole evening. Now I'm much better at using the time. An hour free? I can do some actual coding. Fifteen minutes free? I won't start coding, but I'll maybe update the SSL certificates on my server or read an article I've been planning to.

Yes, there are periods where that doesn't work. There can be three days where I have less than an hour combined to myself. Or some nights of such bad sleep that my creativity is at a zero. Speaking of sleep, I also made a habit of sleeping more after having a kid, and honestly it's a productivity booster. Sleeping for 7-7.5 hours means I can accomplish more the next day than sleeping for 6 hours. Having the right day job definitely helps. I'm very lucky in that my commute is fifteen minutes door-to-door, and that I have a quiet working environment.

Even in the best case, you have to give up some things - I haven't seen a full length movie in two years, rarely watch any series, and it sure takes me longer to get through a book. But at least in my experience, becoming a parent doesn't have to mean putting all learning and personal/freelance projects on hold for a few years.

I work for a fortune 50 company. I’m about 25 years into my career. Ymmv.

You will hit a point in your career where expectations will increase. You’ll be the person folks look to for guidance. There will never be enough hours in a day, and you will increasingly look at your time as the single most valuable commodity. You will always have to ask- how much impact can I make in this slice of time? Is this thing someone asking me to do the best use of that commodity? Is it more important that I spend that time with my kids?

Conversely, your kids will need a lot of low value time from you as they get older. They need rides to sports, rides to class, they need direction on chores. At a certain point, you’ll realize that self care, so playfully bandied about by zoomers and millennials will literally become a life-or-death priority. You’ll have to make decisions about your time that are best guided by clear knowledge of your values.

I’m a bit surprised by this turn of events. I’d advise folks that are younger to recognize that this is a long process. Make sure you invest time early in figuring out your values, and start investing in them as soon as you have established your foundation. The teens are a time where your parenting gets complex. It may be less physically demanding, but you’ll likely spend a lot of time asking yourself if you are making the best choices possible.

I am now in a similar place with my own young child. I am totally drained after putting her down for bed and fall asleep within an hour or two. I'm not at a place where it's gotten better for me, but I know it gets better. Hope that helps.

Edit: typing out MASH correctly messes with the formatting on this site!

You will get your time back in due time. If you screw this up now, you wont forgive yourself. When you went to college (assuming you did), you probably focused on getting good grades. This is the same. Just get a ~4.0 in parenting, the rewards are massive not only for you but for society as a whole.

By 7:30pm that energy is a vague memory. Often the best I can manage is not falling asleep while I put them to bed.

People talk about crowding out the bad with the good: don't make time for things, just do them and let the world mold around what you love. In this stage of life though, the consequence of don't this can be massively damaging.

Kids this age are relentless, if you push hard for yourself it can be very hard to recover. But in line with other comments, I can feel the change coming. At 2 and 4, the sleep is better and their needs on us are becoming less.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and this helps me recognise that right now just isn't the time to push hard.

You are getting 35-40 hours a week of structured time at the office away from your kids and you're complaining about not having enough time to absorb your "bursts of energy"? Only a "couple hours" to think about something interesting before getting 7 hours of healthy sleep?

You aren't having "absolutely no life". On which planet do people get to have 2 tiny kids, work full time, then have a jam-packed evening full of "freelance clients, learning/hobbies and interesting stuff"? Your expectations are just fabulously off-beam.

The good news is that you're at Peak Kid in terms of how much time they take - in a couple years they'll be at school, and a while later, you'll be looking at them wistfully wishing they needed you to entertain them all evening like they used to. I have 2 kids (13 and 16) and while they are not stereotypical sullen teens, they are almost too capable of entertaining themselves. One of the secrets of parenting is to let yourself enjoy each stage for what it is as far as that's possible (modulo scary events like illnesses and injuries and so on), not sit there waiting impatiently for the Awesome Next Phase of parenting when the workload is lighter or the kids are somehow "better".

I would suggest that if you have the luxury of a structured 35-40 hour work week (who is looking after your kids then, I wonder) that you find a job that can absorb the bulk of those bursts of energy and doesn't leave you thinking you need to work on something interesting for a couple hours. I joined a startup with a fun algorithmic problem and would often think idly about NFA matching and the like while watching the kids in the early AM (my wife called me, mildly exasperated, "notebook guy").

Still have the desire to build stuff and learn new technologies, and find myself watching random tutorials on YouTube sometimes late at night if I don't feel like watching anything on NetFlix.

It's been a challenge to get my kids into a good bedtime routine, so by the time they are asleep, I've usually got little desire to sit back down in front of the computer and actually work on anything else, including actually working through those tutorials.

Hoping things get easier when they get older and I have more time to myself again (and hopefully more energy) to work on side projects. Combined with working on stuff in my day job that isn't particularly fulfilling either for most of this year, it's a bit of a depressing predicament in some ways.

I made a rule shortly thereafter - no side projects. Anything we can’t afford from my main job, we don’t need. If I can’t learn skills that keep competitive while working 40-45 hours a week, it’s time to change jobs.

They are older now, but I still have the same rule. I spend my time on hobbies - not development side projects either for pay or resume building.

The other thing I’ve learned is that all (and I’m banking on) is that none of these stages is forever, because right now I know I can’t keep this up. Like when my first child didn’t sleep through the first 14 months we thought we were going to lose our minds and then...he did. And it all changed.

So at the very least, this part is brutal but it will, at the very least, change.

So, just enjoy it while you can. It's one of the BEST parts and you'll be happy you did.

As for whether you have no life, well, I think this is life. It's far more fulfilling than when I spent my time outside of the office futzing around on somewhat productive hobbies that were ultimately not life changing.

The hardest part has been staying close with friends. I'm lucky there in that a bunch of my friends had kids at the same time so we all made the transition at once. Suddenly instead of going out to bars we all want to hang out on a Saturday afternoon with our kids. Without that I genuinely don't know how we'd keep our adult social life going.

In the other hand, I never had such a fruitful experience. I can teach my kids. I can make them respect my daddy time. And I can let them help with the chores.

It all comes down to honesty. Honesty bro yourself, your partner, and your kids. If a side project is what you want to do. Tell everyone and make a schedule. The thing is, even if kids are the most fragile and beautiful part of a family they are but a part and need to understand that at some point.

As far as bedtime/sleep stuff: I pretty much just wind down after the kids go to bed. Meditate if I haven't got that in yet (or maybe do a shorter session if I have and am feeling stressed). Read. Then try to get to bed early enough to give myself an 8-ish hour sleep window.

I’ve put my professional life on hold to kick start my children’s lives. I fought against it until I realized this was an opportunity I’ll experience only once in my life for a relatively short amount of time.

Enjoy the ride.

Her studies showed that people who have a kid 3 or younger were less happy than equally situated peers. Their first smile is nice, but it's a lot of poop and your peers are going to Europe.

If your youngest is 4 or older, there's literally no difference in happiness. Europe is nice. Their first play, them as actual human beings - also nice.

When the _parents_ are north of 60, then happiness _and_ health go up if you have kids, by a rapidly increasing margin with time.

So when we decided to have kids, we just knew that for the first few years... Well, that's going to suck. It's made it easier knowing what we signed up for.

However I always wonder how these robot parents do it, those that seem to be able to raise 4 kids, time to volunteer for PTA and kids sports, work full time, go to a gym, have hobbies, socialise, tidy house and look impeccable doing it.

When daughter number 1 came along it was hard. Cut down socialising. Gaming and coding only after 11 pm if not already asleep.

But then number 2 came along and it was near impossible. No socialising, no gaming, no exercise, not enough sleep, and no coding.

Though since I work as a contractor I have often taken a month or two off between contracts to both spend time with my kids and catching up with new tech. And lately not had full-time clients so been able to some personal coding during day time hours. Also if I have a client in London I have some me-time for coding on my hour-long train commute.

Though in September the youngest started school and suddenly the house is so much quieter. And daily routines are so much easier. We may resurface soon.

So, 35-40 hours of work a week, at an office, and then some family time, and then "at best" a couple hours of free time to work/study whatever you like, plus 7 hours of sleep.

Doesn't it sound better than what 99.9% percent of humanity had to endure for the latest 10,000 years and 80% of humanity still has (including a good 50-70% in the US itself)?

You do have to lose yourself a bit for a while especially when the little loves are very young but there are so many repayments in kind if you notice them. Try and describe the first time your child looked into your eyes and you felt loved ... really, really loved and wanted and the best person in the world ever because you are dad and the little darling is ensuring that if mum is not around then you are the absolute dogs nadgers 8)

You are dad. You'll be fine.

Anyway, it gets better, and interaction gets more intellectually stimulating. Do your best to enjoy every day as it comes at you, because all too soon you will be parallel parking between orange cones in a big, empty parking lot, and soon after paying tuition bills to the fanciest school they can get into.

I wake up at 4AM, walk the dog, get to work before 7 AM (some days as early as 5:30), work until 4 PM, get home at 5 PM, play with kid and eat dinner, get kid ready for bed and read to them, and then I have 30 min - 1 hour before going to bed. By this time I'm exhausted and when I try to do anything technical fall asleep 10 minutes in.

Our weekends revolve around my kid 100%. It is rare for me to be doing something besides playing with them or doing errands with them. I'm starting to see some independence though.

I really enjoy playing with my kid and it is a wonderful experience, but I've gotten out of shape and there are a lot of things I want to work on but never can. No hobbies right now outside of being a parent.

I'm in a fortunate situation of having both my parents and my in-laws so close and that my kids love to have sleep overs with them. Those seem to be the only times where I have a decent amount of time to dive into something, but even then, there are still up-keep responsibilities and a desire to just rest during those times that causes that window of time to disappear faster than I'd like.

I don't have any advice to offer but just an answer to the question on if anyone else is in the situation you described. Just know you're not alone :)

The truth is, you weren't going to do that thing anyway. That burst of energy is an illusion. It's a defence mechanism to make you feel like you would be an extremely productive person if it weren't for your obligations. In my experience, if you take away the obligations from that scenario, the burst of energy disappears.

The big redemption in my experience has been that I didn't really expect kids generally and this part of childrearing specifically, to be enjoyable or particularly meaningful. My wife and I agreed before having kids that at least the first 5 years were just gonna suck and we were just going to have to power through. I have still been impressed by how challenging it is, even coming in with that expectation.

On the plus side, I've always viewed having children as unrelated to happiness. If you care primarily about being happy, accomplishing great things professionally, or living an alternative lifestyle (and there's nothing wrong with any of these things) it seems pretty clear that having kids is not a good choice.

For me, I view the experience as a way to grow as a person and connect with something bigger than me. It's a way to become more human, and I'm getting what I came for.

-Ignore the kids menu. It's shit. Just order off the regular menu and share with your kids.

-Some kids are hard to raise, some are easy. You will probably have both if you many more than 1. C'est la vie.

-If you're like me and value time, get a job you can walk to. Have your kids go to a school you can walk them to. It makes things so much easier.

-Hire a cleaner every few weeks if you need a break.

-Buy used clothing if you can. Same with toys. No need to break the bank.

-Give them space, teach them to be bored on their own.

-Have scheduled electronics free time. Kids careers != Parents careers. They may end up doing things completely unrelated to your career. Let them find it.

-They will push you to the edge of your patience, and you will lose it. It's all good. Just try to keep calm. Even if you lose it once, just try to do better the next time.

-There is no instruction manual for kids - it was forgotten by the doctor inside the mother's womb - for every kid ever born :) So yeah, we're all winging it!

-My kids are 6 and 8. They have given me a new range of emotions that I never knew existed and have made me better for it.

-Kids make you value your time. Learn from that lesson.

This works for me because work is already plenty interesting. Things can always be more interesting, but I have chosen to optimize for my health instead. I also see kids as an investment: raising them takes a lot of energy and pain, but long term return is increased happiness, reduced loneliness. Think about how life would look like when you are 70 and have no kids.

As for myself, just to name a few; I got the opportunity to build big stuff with lego, I learnt how to draw, got to know a lot more about mythology to tell him stories, honed my cooking skills, I even tried golfing (it was boring for both of us).

My kid at this moment is only 5, but I can say that my interests and myself as a human is greater than before. I might have delved deeper into some stuff if I didn't have him, but I think my perspective would be smaller.

Life is hard. I feel beat down and depressed a lot. I would also love some words of wisdom. All I can contribute to this discuss is that I can relate.

My kids (and I’m sure yours) are such amazing people. I love them so much. But I fear I have lost the ability to care about or love myself. We do finally have a great house to raise them in after many nights of back breaking labor done after coding all day.

I know so many people have it so much harder than me. Which makes it feel wrong to feel so broken. But there it is. I’ll probably delete this post out of shame but if you read it maybe you’ll know you’re not alone.

First off, if I can find time anyone can.

I’ll be blunt. Sounds like you just don’t want to do it.

When you want to do something I mean you Really want to do something it will get done. Otherwise it requires discipline. Simple as that. No shame in saying you rather spend time with your family then work on a project.

Sleep: it's better in the sense that If I get lucky and they sleep all night in their beds without coming to mine, I sleep for 7 hours, if not, then well, I don't sleep all that well.

Work: it's super hard and I work a few hours after everyone is sleep. I have tried waking up earlier but I'm using that time to try and hit the gym.

Easier said than done though, been meaning to do this for 20 years and only managed to do it now.

Let me know if you want to chat offline.

Think that’s your problem right there. Kids can and should learn to entertain themselves.

I have a 1-and-a-half year old. I'm very lucky because I work from home, my wife doesn't work and I'm in a good work-life balance situation (good company). The incredible advantage of working at home and being a Software Developer is that I don't need to sit at a computer all the time to do my job. Good chunk of it is thinking through a problem, I can do that while I lay on the floor and let my baby crawl on me ;)

That being said, I can relate. I end up an entire week where all I did was work, get groceries, get other stuff from somewhere else.

I did try to optimize my time though: when I'm in the washroom, sitting on the throne, I read 5-10 pages of a book instead of my RSS feed (I leave that to the moments when I'm too tired). That over the course of 1 years adds up, I almost finished 4 books, which is a lot with a kid!

I got a tablet to stream my PC there, so that I can play a few videogames when in bed, however most of the time I just fall asleep or play 30 minutes at most. I need 10 hour to get decent rest (the baby moves/do stuff during the night. Yes she sleeps with us, otherwise we would get 1 hour of sleep).

Audiobooks have proven very helpful, I listen to those when going to buy groceries, I manage to keep growing while I wait to get back my time.

What I'm missing the most is time with my wife. I mean, we stay all day together, but we rarely get to play something together. We recently made a big purchase: a board game table. This should allow us to play when the baby naps and keep the board game set, so hopefully we can go back to play board games without having to wait 4-5 years.

That's all the "wisdom" I have to offer. I bet you already figured out all of it since you are further in the parenting voyage, but in case you missed it, that's my 2-cents, hope it's of some help.

That being said, I do love my baby. Some weeks I really need that 1 hour of gaming or reading, otherwise I go crazy, but most of the time is either work or kids.

Some weeks I just need 10 minutes hugging with my wife, to recover lack of "us" time

I think it can be a mindset or awareness thing, but some people are also resistant to involving anyone else in their stuff.

It requires having an attitude where you believe others might have have something worthwhile to contribute, and it requires exercising faith in that person. And thinking through how they might contribute and/or what reasonable limits are. Some people aren't willing to do that, and they tend to shut people out so they keep control. (This applies to both kids and adults.)

IMHO (as a non-parent), it might actually be way better parenting, too, if you can get this right. People often respond well if you give them a stake in things and responsibility for something (assuming it's not genuinely more than they can handle). You're telling them you believe in them and giving them an opportunity to grow. Many people will take that opportunity. And if you always avoid giving them such opportunities, you're implicitly suggesting you don't think they can handle it. Developmentally, I think a kid needs to have these experiences where they see that they are trusted with things, learn to step up, see that their contributions fit in somewhere, and see how to do more of that. If they don't, they are probably going to go out into the world not really expecting anyone to want their contribution.

My parents got free labor they would have otherwise needed a pricey contractor for, and I got practical skills that have helped me to this day.

This this this a 1000 times. Feeling needed, learning to help, and being rewarded with happy words and a clear sense of success and achievement is like a hard drug.

Every children will lean towards different activities; involving them will need a slightly different approach; and you will need to learn patience while they learn, so it's not a trivial task, but IME if you work it out, it works wonders even with the most challenged (or challenging) kids.

1. If you cannot priorize having fun and teaching your children over the actual thing you are doing, you gonna have a bad time. Filling the dishwasher with a 2 yr old? You will spend 45 min on it while laughing 10 times, having a heart attack two times and maybe break a chip off a plate or break a cup now and then. Of course you can do it alone in 15 minutes if you could get rid of him/her... As soon as you get frustrated by the slowness and just want the task done you've lost. There is no task for you other than to teach them and you need to incorporate your daily chores into this task. This is of course fuckin' hard and sometimes impossible and a great source of frustration, shouting and regret.

2. Kids add a time multiplier for everything you do together and for he first 4 years it's gonna be less than one. After that there is an ever incerasing chance for them to be actually useful and reduce the time needed for a task. But the catch is : if you let them empty and fill the dishwasher regularly at 2 yr old and endure the long task they will help later on and you will benefit. If you don't they won't be interested in helping when they are 6,8,12 years old and their help would actually make a difference.

...and "you da real MVP" for raising your kids well, without "chemical assistance." Thank you.

It seems very difficult to say these things and I’m sure it makes other parents who might have regrets feel a bit better/less lonely at least.

We all have aspects of our life that are less enjoyable, but focusing on those do nothing but make you less happy. I'd encourage you to look into Stoic philosophy for advice on how to focus on what's good and enjoyable in your life.

Not everybody gets the feels/chemical thing indeed, or not the first time. Some people are just less on the emotional / pathos side and more on the rational / logos, the 'rational' kind of feelings or rather 'impressions', 'convictions', sometimes just this 'clarity' — less feels, more words. Same result, just different brains to get there.

I've felt like this too, I've learned you have to make some time for yourself & your partner. Try to get grandparents to look after the children, or friends to take them away. Definitely hire babysitters and maybe even a nanny. When you see them again you'll be re-energized.

In particular, I'm curious about these questions pertaining to your life prior to having children:

- From 1 to 10, how much did you enjoy helping a friend out when it was a mild inconvenience to yourself?

- From 1 to 10, how positive of an emotional reaction do you get when you see a cute dog?

I have a completely unfounded hypothesis that the 'chemical' changes that PG describes are akin to how our brains react when we see cute pets.

I'm genuinely glad you said this too. I don't have children and don't really want them. I think it's totally fine if people want to have kids.

Even if there isn't a discernible change in your cognitive and thought processes, human beings still can be happy with the choices we make (and we're actually less happy with reversible choices; see Dan Gilbert's talk on happiness).

Also remember that people on average become less happy until their 40s or 50s after that their happiness increases again.

Then again, that's statistics and how does that help you if you're an outlier or just at the edge of the normal distribution?

Most suburbs lack the density to make neighborhood friends. None of my friends from school lived near me; my little neck of the suburbs was occupied by retirees or kids over a decade apart from me. Visiting friends meant parents organizing a play date and a 15 minute one way car ride. There are rare cases where you do have a little neighborhood gang to play with, but it wasn't like when my parents grew up in the 50s-60s when an entire generation was birthed in sync and you could walk to 8 kids houses on a whim. Suburbs used to be only new families, with zero retirees when they began.

Living in LA now, I get to see that urban upbringing I missed. Kids are always walking around with their friends or siblings, visiting parks and rec centers, taking transit, walking to school, going to stores, etc. There are enough people where even though the generations of kids are blurred compared to the massive pulse of the boomer generation, you live among so many people that there will always be a few kids your age nearby that you can play with.

Suburbs or in the city, this rate of having a similar aged neighbor is probably the same, so upping the amount of neighbors makes this outcome almost assured.

In general, in the West at least, folks had bigger families and started earlier (just make a new one!).

A friend of ours from rural China (Dalian province, I think) talked about how all the kids would go out by themselves and teach each other how to swim in the river. We expressed some admiration for that, and she said, "oh, I don't know - a few kids drowned every year". Every year!

In my experience, people who go on about 'helicopter parents' are awfully brave with the welfare of other people's kids.

We're pretty free-roam, but I spent a lot of time worrying about traffic when my youngest was the height that he could be invisible before stepping out from behind a car.

Maybe I'd be more relaxed about this if, for instance, someone blasting through inner-city streets in a SUV while texting, was legally treated as a potential murderer (or an actual one if things go badly).

I’m wondering if there any new urban projects, ideally in the U.S, potentially on the scale of the superblocks or e.g. NYC’s High Line / Atlanta’s Beltline / Miami’s Underline, where ecosystems are emerging beyond the reach of cars?

They're the number 1 killer of children in the US. They are objectively terrible for kids.

In NYC, Robert Moses put the car at the center of his infrastructure build out. That's why Manhattan has two highways up and down it's waterfront... A squandered opportunity to have created a city that was more attune with it's surroundings.

Ultimately you might need to move to Europe to go car free. But most of the cities I'm thinking of were planned a millennia ago.

Taken literally, it sounds like he's dismissing his relationship/marriage and saying he was lonely while in it, pre-children. I'm not going to try and extrapolate if that's what he truly meant or what the implications of such a statement would mean.

The sentiment, I think, would improve from removing kids and saying "I didn't take advantage of my pre-children freedoms and was lonely because of that."

It also raises an interesting question... If he had maximized those freedoms, how would that have affected his decision to have a child?

Earlier in life I often considered loneliness to be my biggest fear, but I eventually realized that loneliness isn't something that just happens to you. It's a choice. If you don't want that choice, then you have to put in effort to find and maintain friendships[1], find a hopefully-lifelong romantic partner, etc.

Beyond that, though, there are plenty of elderly people who are profoundly lonely because their children have families and lives of their own and rarely see them. Perhaps if they tried harder to maintain relationships outside their nuclear family, they'd be better off. Not saying all that is easy (especially with kids in the mix), but I certainly think it's worthwhile in the end.

[0] "Easy" in that your time will always be filled, with no searching needed on your part; I'm not suggesting that raising kids is easy.

[1] Being friends with parents (when you are not one) is hard, but it's worthwhile to make the time, and be flexible with your time since theirs often isn't.

I think what you're saying is that you want us to be interested in different stuff, more along the lines of what you're interested in, because you're not interested in kids. That doesn't sound so much like a social problem to me as a simple personality mismatch.

People who have kids (and people who really want kids) and people who don't (and people who don't want). They can't understand each other and most of one camp think the other camp dull and crazy.

It's just pov, and yeah, I keep distances from people with kids when the kids are around, because very possible they will leave their kids to me to gain a couple of hours to themselves.

Some people are boring about their hobbies, some are boring about people, some are boring about work, some are boring about their kids.

If you find the conversation boring just remember they are probably just as bored at you droning on about blockchain or whatever it is you are keen to talk about.

For my wife and I, the book “Bringing Up Bebe” was really influential in how we thought about kids before and after we had them. It’s a perspective shift kind of like this: your newborn human can’t talk, can’t move, doesn’t have any hobbies, interests, or friends. Rather than bend your life around that, why not invite this child into your life, to join in your hobbies, meet your friends, etc.

That may sound silly but it’s actually a pretty influential idea to latch on to. We don’t have a schedule wrapped around our kids, or weekends wrapped around our kids. We go places we want to go, and do things we want to do, and include the kids and tell them what we’re doing and why and invite them to join the fun. The great thing about kids is they’re pretty much up for anything, so they usually love this and jump in :)

I think, as an adult, you also have to make a conscious choice to keep up your independent life.

Losing your independence is something that happens to people for various reasons - you see it sometimes when people get married, and then they withdraw from all their old social life and kind of retreat into each other. It’s a lot of pressure to be someone’s entire world... I haven’t seen many of those couples stay happy.

I think that’s the part of having kids that’s hardest. Because they do have needs and do have to be accommodated, it can be easy to just worry about taking care of them and give up on everything else because it’s not as easy as it used to be to maintain your independent life. But it’s a choice you make, and in my experience it’s deeply worthwhile.

Yes, most parents talk a lot about their kids and that can be annoying if you don't have kids. Most single people are just as annoying though. You can talk about your kids or you can talk about your vacation, or your job... for the most part people will find it interesting if they relate and boring if they don't. I don't think there's a qualitative difference there between parents and single people, just different audiences that will be receptive to what they're talking about.

So how exactly does that show the biggest problem you have with kids?

Alternately, for some reason you laser-focus on the topic for some reason and you can't help but let it fill the entirety of your perception. This appears in Facebook a lot where people complain about baby pictures or anecdotes and somehow ignore the 99.99% of absolutely irrelevant inanity that the rest of their feed is ("Oh you ate at a restaurant...wowwweeeee"). It happens in loud restaurants when people filter out enormous volumes of ambient sound to focus on the sounds of a child sixty feet away. When someone has some sort of hangup about children, it's amazing how large it can appear in their perspective.

Logistically, extended families are a good idea. But I don’t think they stop people from putting their children first in terms of life priorities. On the contrary, a culture where parenthood rather than childless adulthood is normal is one where talking about your kids is a universal common ground you can share with other adults. (People need to have lots of kids for extended families to be normal—everyone will have grandparents but not necessarily aunts and uncles). Maybe you’re just observing one of these (sub)cultures from the outside.

Most of my friends are from childhood. For the ones who have children, about half of them have turned into uninteresting people who are incapable of carrying a conversation about anything other than their children. And some of them were extremely interesting beforehand. A few have snapped out of it when their kids have turned 3-5, but most seem stuck forever.

When I go to visit family and family friends outside the US, they all have a bunch of kids but none of them have this disease where they can only talk about the kids. But there's also much more family support nearby and societal norms allow the children to be more independent.

It’s probably not something varianece in social structure will change since it comes from a fundamentally biological place.

If I have kids now, I'll have to work into old age, and so will my kids. That's a very sad situation in my view.

If I achieve financial independence personally, but I have kids who will have to toil their whole lives, then I'd feel I'm making a selfish choice. How could I explain to my kids, who would see nothing but a relaxed and happy life at home, that they now owe our system 40+ years of labor?

If I can achieve a level of wealth that would ensure my children could follow their dreams, then I'd love to have kids.

It's very hard to find a partner that would be able to say "Well, if we don't have $5M+ by age 40, we'll be childless, and that's fine. If we do make a lot of money, we'd love to have a big family."

I know lots of people here are doing it, but how can you ethically commit your unborn children to a lifetime of work?

And god forbid you have a child with disabilities and don't have a sizable financial buffer...

Very few are in their ideal situation when having kids and yet they still have positive experiences being a parent.

Those without kids and new parents think they need to be perfect, but in reality, there is no difference between being perfect and being good enough when it comes to raising kids.

This, right here, encapsulates what is so wrong with this present iteration of society. Having kids is now something that you do if you're wealthy and can afford it, or if you're extremely poor and cannot afford birth control (or just don't know about it ... before the downvotes come, yes I know there are a lot of factors that influence high birth rates among poorer demographics).

This isn't a sustainable situation, at all. We need a complete realigning of what society - and indeed Civilization - is supposed to be about. Family formation is used as an economic marker today, for a ton of policy proposals. More families means more purchases of stuff. Fewer families means less buying of stuff, and leads to policies that might be tuned to address the economic "problem" but don't really address the societal one.

So, financial independence: obvious pros. Cons: low probability event in short time frame.

Kids: pros: they're awesome. They make you very happy on balance. (I would assign a high probability to that). Obviously a subjective point of view. They are also way lower maintenance (cost) than you think. Cons: they take up a lot of your time.

Also there are interaction effects. Getting kids will reduce your available time needed to work to get financial independence.

So you need to weigh these things out. Point is, money (or lack of it) shouldn't be too much of a deciding factor in the kids decision. IMHO

Just recently, in talking through my similar frustrations (I have a 6 & 9 yro) - I've realized I love being, and playing with my kids, but not doing the rote parenting. We've considered placing kids in afterschool care longer, having more babysitters, etc. We've also considered getting an "au pair" to be around me, but to do the basic block and tacklin g so I can focus on the bigger issues.

When you look at the market value of the labor the homemaker does for the household, and consider that it accrues tax-free, the financial benefits are considerable. And there are also substantial tax benefits to married filing jointly when one spouse has no taxable income. For the arrangement to be successful though, the "working" spouse needs to fully recognize the value provided to the household and make sure it's well compensated, both emotionally and financially. If you can do that, it works extremely well.

My wife is currently finishing her third year at home and there will be at least two more.

The piece of knowledge which is still missing, and which you should direct your search if you feel the way you outlined in your post is, what's consciousness? What're the mechanisms by which it functions? We might be biological machines with a single, hardcoded directive in one sense, but it's very inside the realm of possibility we possess the potential to escape that.

There are basically three possible answers to that:

1) The scientific one you alluded to. Our purpose is to make our genes survive (though that in turn serves no greater purpose, that's just the mechanics of evolution)

2) religious / spiritual reasons, if you believe in those

3) the realization that a rational meaning (or lack thereof) doesn't matter much if you feel a sense of purpose

Having kids moved me pretty firmly in camp 3), though I realize the irony that that's a direct consequence of how 1) works :-)

Even further, I worry that if i ever have kids i'd have to distance myself from parents as I do not approve on how they live or manage their lives. As their child i can manage via effective boundaries and I'm able to ignore their stupidity.

If i ever have kids though, they will want to be part of their lives and I can't really say no and keep their delusions alive.

They think they did a good job raising me and they would use that as an argument and I would never want to enlighten them with what i really feel.

i wouldn't want them parenting my kids like they did me

they love/loved me but love isn't enough. i do care deeply for them, but i do not respect their judgement.

Obviously these activities do not capture huge things about the 24/7 job that being a parent is, but they will probably tell you a lot more about how you relate to children than looking at population self-report data.

And as to who is feeling overwhelmed and regretful, it's mostly women who are shoved into a thankless housewife roll and living far away from their family and friends.

I'd argue that your ambition simply shifts upon having kids. If you channel that ambition into being a better parent everyone benefits.

And from an "accomplishment" perspective, I'd ask which of a would-be parent's projects are so world-changing that they'll be alive or still affecting things 70 years from now? If you're Elon Musk maybe you can make that argument, but for most people their kids will have more overall influence then their work ever will. So if you want to make an impact over the long term and aren't just satisfying an obsessive workaholic itch, kids can be a great way to do that.

This is not a great advice. Those points only "sounds disastrous". It can be totally changed after you have kids.

As a developer, I always know I will be less productive etc. after having kids. On the other hand, I know I am not a genius, and I know I will be fulfilled more from my kids than from my lost productivity.

And then, you know what? When you get older, you will realize that losing productivity is unavoidable. It is so great to spend time with your family outside of work. Nobody can stay at 20s forever.

There is one more important factor: If you want to have a life without kids, you need to find a partner with the same mind set, which is not easy, or just stay alone.

  * less productive
  * less time for your ideas
  * less ambitious

If it’s your own lifetime, sure. If you measure your productivity over the next 300 years as what you plus your transitive offspring accomplish, it’s possible having kids is a huge boost to your aggregated productivity.

I think "simply" is an important word in that sentence, and when I read "is not ... simply your DNA", I read "simply" as "merely". He's saying that, sure, there is a biological compulsion involved, but there is also more to it.

The kid is a human being you can have a meaningful relationship with. They will do or say things that are interesting or worthwhile or significant in a way that's not really connected to the fact that they're your kid.

(It can be compared to a romantic relationship. Are there hormones making you want to be with a romantic partner because you like their looks, etc.? Absolutely. But on top of that, you can have a real friendship with a romantic partner where you have shared interests you enjoy pursuing together, you have interesting discussions, you support each other, and so on.)

On a side note, some parents can only see their kid through the lens of parenting. They rarely or never connect with their kid on the human-to-human level, and every thought and interaction is on the parent-to-child level. Maybe they just haven't thought in those terms, or they're afraid of undermining parental authority by being too much of a buddy, or their sense of parental duty dominates their thoughts, or maybe they can't connect personally to anyone else either.

I don’t think it’s programmed into me. I am actively repulsed by children, the thought of reproducing, the concept of adding more humans to society, or increasing the resource consumption of my leaf node’s subtree.

The whole thing seems disgusting and self-centered and self-indulgent and selfish and irresponsible to me.

That said, I think that myself and others that feel this way stand in contrast to your claim that we are simply programmed to reproduce. We are not—only a subset of us are.

But in my experience most people actually spend a lot of time hanging out with friends or doing nothing at all. This is where sacrifice of leisure and time management kicks in. I don't actually work on side projects any less than before I had kids. But I play games, hang out with friends, and do nothing a lot less.

You get to decide what kind of slave to your genes you'll be, but no one gets to build themselves free of them.

I agree 100%. But at the same time, I have to appreciate that nearly all Presidents (to use an example) have children, many of them young enough to live in the White House. So maybe it's not quite as brtual as 'take a wrecking ball to your productivity' unless you want it to.

Anecdotally, I also observe that I don't mean that many folks in senior management and above who don't have kids. It's clearly possible to remain ambitious and be very successful even with kids in the picture.

Now, if your definition of productivity is coding every waking moment, then ... well, that goes away with age regardless :).

I'd also say don't get a pet unless you really want one. I'd much rather have another kid than a dog.

Do you trust yourself to raise these children? If so, why do you think you’d be better at it than everyone you’ve met?

Sadly many women with this view are discriminated against.

But, now I have a young adult that is permanently attached to me in a close and wonderful way for the rest of my life. I wouldn't trade any extra hours of netflix or going out to eat for having my own people.

Have as many kids as you are willing/able to have. I had 5. First one is a shock. Second one means one kid per parent. Third is now a full family, but the oldest is so thrilled about a sibling now and there is play and joy in the house. 4th and 5th don't really add any extra work (mentally) other than you have a few extra years dealing with kids. And you need a minivan. (which I love anyway for many reasons) The older the kids get the more they take care of themselves, and eventually add more to the family than they need.

Now, when my two oldest visit, we have a defacto party and we have so much fun hanging out and playing, talking, laughing, cooking together, making plans...

I get this for the rest of my life now.

Best investment I have ever made.

Edit: We know a family that both parents were single kids (they said their childhoods were lonely) so they had 7 kids and then adopted 7 more (all siblings from a messed up home). They love it, their house is like a dorm. I couldn't do this, so I think its so much about your life experience.

Kids, god love 'em, are a long term liability in the context of seeking your first big financial/professional success.

Attaching success to finances is where things start to skew because no matter how much you have, you can always have more. It’s something that people take for granted in a country where we are all in the top 1% of the world...by birth.

Remember, money isn’t the root of all evil. The love of money is.

You can't have love and freedom both, by definition. Love means giving a part of you to someone else.

The drug isn't having children, the drug is dedicating yourself to the service of something outside of yourself. That could be children, or other things.

It's not at all obvious.

I suspect one of the reason Paul Graham views them the way he does is because he has approached them with a genuine sense of curiosity. If you're trying to mould them too much (a mistake I'm sad to say I've made too much) then things are going to be rough for both of you. But if you explore the world with them, placing boundaries only where true danger lies, then things can become really intellectually and emotionally interesting.

Also, you know what? Take some time for yourself periodically to recharge! You know what else? Let and encourage your spouse do the same! Also? Take some time together without the kids from time to time. Your kids might complain at the moment but you'll all be better for it in the end.

When he asks me to play with him it breaks my heart when I say no because I'm working. I work from home, so I need to maintain boundaries otherwise I'd always be playing with him.

I feel terrible that I resent him for waking me up early, and really have to work at reminding myself that I don't hold it against him and that I did get up and care for him, even when I didn't want to.

It breaks my heart to disappoint him, but I need to work or he doesn't eat. I also try to actually keep working hours so that I have time to spend with him.

Honestly, just meeting your childrens basic needs as well as you can is being a good parent. We can't be there all the time to do everything possible. We're human; we don't have the time or attention.

As for the chemical change mentioned, the only difference I've ever felt is I get much more sad when something bad happens to a child, but otherwise, I don't think I think I've changed much elsewise. My heart wasn't bursting with joy when either was born, not to say I wasn't happy.

Virtue is exactly what allows you to behave further that your feelings.

Three kids later and I definitely have strong feelings around my kids, but it's not some kind of revelation. They're people just like me, they just have less experience. It's my job (legally and ethically) to make sure they have a reasonably well informed, if biased, framework to examine, test and act in the world.

    The Rules of the New Car
    by Wesley McNair
    
    After I got married and became
    the stepfather of two children, just before
    we had two more, I bought it, the bright
    blue sorrowful car that slowly turned
    to scratches and the flat black spots
    of gum in the seats and stains impossible
    to remove from the floor mats. “Never again.”
    I said as our kids, four of them by now,
    climbed into the new car. “This time,
    there will be rules.” The first to go
    was the rule I made for myself about
    cleaning it once a week, though why,
    I shouted at the kids in the rearview mirror,
    should I have to clean it if they would just
    remember to fold their hands. Three years
    later, it was the same car I had before,
    except for the dent my wife put in the grille
    when, ignoring the regulation about snacks,
    she reached for a bag of chips on her way
    home from work and hit a tow truck. Oh,
    the ache I felt for the broken rules,
    and the beautiful car that had been lost,
    and the car that we now had, on soft
    shocks in the driveway, still unpaid for.
    Then one day, for no particular reason except
    that the car was loaded down with wood
    for the fireplace at my in-laws’ camp
    and groceries and sheets and clothes
    for the week, my wife in the passenger seat,
    the dog lightly panting beside the kids in the back,
    all innocent anticipation, waiting for me
    to join them, I opened the door to my life.

For example: "..but having kids may make one less ambitious.".

It might apply to Paul but I have never been more ambitious since I had kids.

In his next sentences he almost makes us feeling guilty for it because "..you're probably going to care more about them than you do about yourself."

Ehm, no. Taking more care about your kids has nothing to do with ambitions. At least not for me. You can have great ambitions which include your whole family.

Many of us stress about college costs, and costs in general. And, getting help can be very expensive, unless you have extensive family support.

> over the past 3 years have realized just how selfish I am when it comes to taking care of the munchkins.

Ditto. Part of the deal with parenting is to grow out of the selfishness. It's never completely gone (at least, not for me), but I've grown to a place where I am (hopefully, at least) less selfish than I was.

Children grow their parents, too.

* The introduction of birth control and giving people (yes both men and women) too much control over procreation without having to control the impulse for procreation.

* Seeing people solely as material beings as a consequence of the Enlightenment. After all, if you're just the matter you're composed off then you're no more special than a rock or your iPhone or a dog. Why sacrifice so much material comfort in exchange for the material discomfort that parenting will inevitably cause if the baby is just matter?

> You have not bought these boys, nor stolen them, nor passed any bit for them. You have them by some strange and lovely dispensation.

Any formal system is going to be based upon some set of axioms. You can't apply reason without some foundational choices (ie. your axioms).

The bright line you are looking for is a lot fuzzier than it seems at first glance.

If you take as axiomatic that "the human race surviving is a good thing we should work towards". Having kids becomes an exceptionally rational thing for people to do.

Along with all the logic games people play to justify not having children, they miss the overarching principle that they have a responsibility, to their ancestors, to match the gift of life that was given to them, to the sense of continuing the legacy of their parents, grandparents etc.

Or... one should, or even must, think this way to overcome the obsession with seeking a logical or selfish reason to have kids when they might not find one.

... just kidding. I think.

When kids get older it seems fairly common to start fighting over having to look after siblings, as it's a barrier to having friends and studying.

A million times this.

Totally.

In my experience the inconvenience has changed pretty dramatically (for the better) as they've gotten older. Maybe it's just that I don't mind the new inconveniences as much as the old ones, but I do _not_ miss the diaper/toilet training/can't talk/can't get into the car themselves phase.

Forget about this idea of burden, this is not for you to decide, and if you are serious about that, you should be clear about sharing the workload. And yes, there are also the specific burdens of pregnancy, lactation that you can't share, but also for plenty of women, there is also a reward for those activities. A reward that you as a man can also only reap vicariously. So, for every woman there will be a different balance of perspectives, some value more the rewards and will be happy having kids, others will feel more actually the burdens. Not your business to decide that.

But, what is your business is to understand what is important to you. To understand that if you feel so strongly about it now, it probably won't go away and that you will resent over time, if not right now.

And then, if you have such different attitudes about this matter, maybe, just maybe, it would be best for both of you to free yourselves from each other.

Decades of data suggest parenthood makes people unhappy https://bigthink.com/sex-relationships/should-you-have-kids

Google confessional: Your search engine knows if you regret having kids https://www.salon.com/2017/05/09/google-confessional-your-se...

Many Parents Are Happier Than Non-Parents — But Not in the U.S. https://time.com/collection/guide-to-happiness/4370344/paren...

Having kids makes you happier, but only when they move out https://www.newscientist.com/article/2213655-having-kids-mak...

The depressing reason why having kids doesn’t actually make you happier https://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-theory-on-why-having-k...

I have met people like that who do not even have children!

It’s similar to the phrase “you can’t truly love somebody until you love yourself”

> I'll leave her to figure it out for herself.

The most ethical thing to do would be to force the issue and break up with her. Otherwise, by the time she figures out that you're not going to change your mind and breaks up with you, she'll resent that she wasted time off her biological clock.

I understand that your perspective is "She might change her mind in time, so if I'm happy with her right now, why should I force the issue? That's on her if the status quo doesn't work", but you've already seen the way her mind changed and it's not going in the direction you want. So at this point you're more aware than she is of the reality of the situation.

Do the right thing.

But I'm managing and I'm sure you will too. Clichés exist for a reason: as it turns out; I wouldn't trade it for anything.

My twenties were a very parenting-unfriendly time of my life. I was in a couple of bands, going out a lot, moved around a bunch. It was convenient to have that luxury for a while.

I used to work with a guy who had his kids at 18. I can't imagine being a parent when I was that young and dumb, but I gotta admit to some real envy. When I worked with him, he was in his thirties and his kids were getting ready to move out. Having the child part of parenthood "done" and still having plenty of youth and many years of time to look forward to — spending time both with and without now-grown kids — sounds pretty amazing.

I would have had them earlier (I had 'em at 34 and 37) if I could do it again. Probably like 30-32 if I could.

That said, I'm not sure having kids has to be so bad for your career. Nothing focuses a person more than needed to keep work time-boxed in order to leave time for family. Perhaps the totally self-motivated types would suffer, but for me and other parents I've known, it can sort of add a level of maturity and focus that can actually help a career.

Like Paul is saying, it'll change your perspective on everything, and you'll be much less grumpy. You'll understand the world at a much deeper level. You'll be more accepting of everyone around you. Your priorities will be a lot better. Your perspective will stretch outside yourself and across the generations. As much as people think they have it together before they have kids, they have no skin in the game, and they have no idea what they're talking about.

When I meet people who don't have kids, especially as they advance into their late 20s and 30s, my overwhelming sentiment is pity. They're yammering on about their expensive cars, their exotic vacations, their large empty houses, and the long hours they waste slaving away for some distant corporate master on some irrelevant chunk of code, and while many seem to think these things are impressive, the only thing I feel is pity for the empty materialism and wasted effort that dominates their lives.

It's obvious they're looking for some meaning in the wrong places. Humans need the significance and the responsibility that come from parenthood. It's irreplaceable, incomparable. Life without kids is all but worthless.

My advice is stop planning because everything you think you know is wrong. Get married and have kids. It's hard, sure. You don't have as much time for personal interests, also sure. You don't have as much spare cash (usually hardly any). But none of that matters, and if you think it matters, it's because you don't have kids yet.

Source: 6 kids.

I do remember having the wish to have children, and thinking "not yet".

And somebody I respected told me "it's never the perfect time to have children".

There's a tendency towards thinking that, whatever your current situation might be, there might be a better time.

I finished my degree, moved in with my girlfriend of several years, and started a PhD program. I considered waiting with procreation until I finished the program, but decided the time was good enough. Sure, having a PhD and a well-paying job would be even more awesome, but even then I might have wanted to wait for that next promotion around the corner, or owning a house, or whatever.

There's never the perfect time to have kids. If you want kids, ask yourself: is it good enough now?

I don't want kids in large part because I do not think I would be a good dad, and I'm not going to do that to another human being, even (especially!) if they share my DNA. But the main reason I see for foregoing children is that I would be handing them a terrible world without hope of salvation. (We might pull through, and I hope we do, but I have no basis for that hope other than faith, and that not enough to justify incarnating a new soul.)

I can't imagine explaining to my child what the monarch butterfly migration was like. What elephants were. What reefs were. What the dawn chorus sounded like.

think about that.. our parents could have decided the same based on the old prognosis from the 70/80s

this dangerous world point makes sense if applied to our faith/morals, but not to the nature environment which affects our souls/happiness/feelings much less (we have all kinds of people in all kinds of environments but still all livable)