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Comment by zero_deg_kevin | Hacker News Reader

Any ideas on how to get them to stick around after their kids are born? Asking for a friend.

I will make a shameless plug for marriage. While it is obviously not foolproof, and can go bad just as swiftly as no marriage at all, it is still a good signal of commitment in a partner. If your partner desires to be married (not just to please you I might add) then at least at face value he desires commitment. It isn't just an idle ceremony but a contract and vows with family and friends witnessing ideally to hold you to account.

Best of luck to your friend! ;)

Maybe remembering the fathers that after his kid is born there is a "hell" time of mostly 3-4 months where the baby will be adapting to you and vice-versa.

Then the baby sleeps gets longer and you can have 6-8h of sleep.

New fathers: Hold tight, after 3-4 months it gets way easier.

In my experience it's a lot longer than 3-4 months. Or perhaps it's hell for 3-4 months, then just purgatory for another couple of years. I have a 4-yo and 2.5-yo and my sleep has still not recovered. Just last night one of them woke up screaming, and this continues to happen about weekly. Being woken up in the middle of the night is one thing, being woken up in the middle of the night to the banshee screams of a young child is quite another.

This rhymes with my experience. My 4.5yo only wakes up when she's sick but my 2yo wakes up at least once a night almost every night. Last night was the first time in weeks where she didn't, but then of course my body has been trained to respond to her so I didn't sleep well.

It varies widely. My kid has slept through the night since about 4 weeks old. The more kids you have, the more likely you are to get a fussy one.

My mother, at 76 years old, to me at 56 years old and (former) stay-at-home parent: "oh, the first 40 years are the hardest".

Seconding this. It wasn't until she turned four that we could assume that we would sleep through the night, instead of vice versa. Takes a long time for the exception to become the rule.

Just wait until they're 16 and aren't home by midnight and not answering phone.

Yeah, but at that point it's kind of out of your control. You've probably provided 95% of the guidance you could have provided and they're almost grown-ups.

I understand the attachment, but at some point you have to let go and life is full of risks (and interesting things).

Though I doubt my reasoning will assuage any parental fears :-)

> Though I doubt my reasoning will assuage any parental fears :-)

Yeah how many teenagers do you parent? :)

None, yet. I do consider that I know myself well enough but we'll see in a bunch of years :-))

It gets better after 1 years, then gets better after 2, and so on. Especially once they become autonomous and self-sustaining and you can reason with them using words. Then it's absolute rewarding bliss and frustrating chaos all at the same time.

at the 8 year mark I have yet to experience this reasoning with words you speak of.

My wife and I had two queen sized beds, I slept on one, and our infant and my wife on the other. We coslept and my wife breast fed ad libitum. People kept asking me if I was tired, and I was confused about what they meant. I remember her once commenting "it's so amazing, she (our daughter) sleeps through the night without feeding!" to which I replied, "no, she makes a small fuss and you roll over and pop a boob in her mouth"! Wife wasn't even aware it was happening, and we were well rested and happy.

On the downside, breast feeding ad libitum basically meant my wife's full time job was to breast feed, we went on a date after our kid was a few months old and we had to cut it short because she was sore and it was feeding time. She estimates she spent 40+ hours a week breastfeeding. She played a lot of video games with our daughter latched on, since it could be pretty boring.

Like any parents, we had a few "hell nights" when she was sick or teething, but in general human infants are significantly happier (and much quieter!) sleeping next to their mother, and unless a mother is either drunk or under the influence of some other substance, you're not going to crush your baby. I slept significantly more soundly and slept in a different bed. Putting your kid in a crib in a different room is a very weird, Victorian thing to do.

I respect your choice; I suggest that you may try doing the same for people putting their kids in cribs instead of calling it weird and Victorian - because studies show it to reduce infant deaths; and it is practiced widely across the World, not just Victorian England. It is not weird for a parent to choose something that is shown to be safer for their infant. Again, I respect co-sleeping too; you had a queen just for baby and momma, and seem to be attentive and amazing parents. Some parents may be heavier sleepers though! I think there are many ways to be a good parent. Different room is also associated with higher risk though in the first 6 months ~ ideally crib is in a room with a parent.

Well, I've got both of mine... but then, I always wanted kids. Their mom was biggest part of the issue. That's why I have them at every possible opportunity - which translates to: If I'm home, which I am most of the time, they're most likely with me.

Some people will stick around and some won't. I would avoid those who won't like the plague, not just as a potential significant other but even as a friend. I'm not saying that everyone who has lost custody of their child or doesn't see their child much is a horrible person, but I am saying that those people who aren't even _interested_ in raising their own children are not generally the kind of people I want influencing me. Parenthood is difficult, some people try really hard and it beats them, and there shouldn't be any shame in that, there should be help. I'm also not talking about people in that category.

For the most part: Choose a male mate that has qualities which signal or are correlated with their likelihood to stick around afterwards and be a good parent. That would increase the likelihood of them staying (barring unexpected external factors to the dynamic). You can't just "magically" make people want something they don't want to, nor can you force them (you can see that with things like child-support payments).

Depends. "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle

But I think the majority of cases could be covered by these two things: (1) Choose the right person; don't expect that someone will magically change after the kids are born. (2) Don't let your partner feel like a fifth wheel, or rather like a mere money machine, after the kids are born.

From the article there are actually a number of weak correlates: a man with smaller testes, for example. But it concludes with the prefrontal cortex being the largest discriminator, all other factors considered. It would seem that picking a partner who is capable and willing to use rational thought to override emotional responses would be a successful strategy - more capable of dealing with the frustrating reality of childcare, less likely to leave in search of another mate.

Help them face the problems, emotions, and ways of thinking in their own life that are holding them back. Then they will be more prepared and excited to expand this practice of care outward, starting with those closest to them such as immediate family. Far easier said than done. It can take years.

Accept that there is a training process, some men are willing to take lessons from their partner and some aren't.

Also, regarding your friend's children... I know two adults who turned out to be very successful in life and in their careers despite having fathers that abandoned them at a young age.

By selecting them before the kid is born.

Before conceived is even better.

There are many men that do not want to sacrifice their pursuit of happiness for children.

This is why almost half of US children are not raised under the same roof with their biological father.

If you're still at a point in life where having children means "sacrificing your happiness", then you probably shouldn't be having children yet anyway (assuming it's a case where you're making a conscious decision on the matter). That's not a healthy starting point for either party.

> This is why almost half of US children are not raised under the same roof with their biological father.

Do you have any source on this? That's an interesting but shocking fact

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2020/comm/chil...

I didn't expect to see similar proportions of children both living only with mother and only with father. In fact, 12 to 17 years of age is 44% only with father versus 36.6% only with mother. Not only do more teens live with their father only, but only 20% live with both parents?

> only 20% live with both parents

That's not the correct conclusion, the percentages add up to 100% for both the single mother and single father parent cohort, but it doesn't say anything about kids who are living with both parents.

Oh, yes, I grossly misinterpreted what that meant. It’s “of the children living with one parent, these are how the ages are distributed within mother only and father only households.”

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