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Comment by ksdale | Hacker News Reader

"They seemed like ideal infant-caregivers: calm, gentle, patient and sensitive. They didn’t seem like men you would go to battle with. In fact, they were the very antithesis of the warriors and athletes – think Maximus, Achilles or Michael Jordan – often associated with a masculine ideal."

I became a father quite a bit before most of my friends, and so was the butt of some jokes about masculinity for the way I parented (purely just the poking fun between good, old friends), but perhaps as a result of fatherhood, where my former reaction to those jokes would have been embarrassment, my new reaction was to think that my friends were childish for not being able to understand how it felt to be a father who loved his children.

Also, somewhat ironic, but my willingness to "go to battle" for my family is far greater than my willingness to "go to battle" for anything before having a family, to an extent that becoming a father has made me far more assertive, confident, and willing to take responsibility, which makes me more "masculine" if you so happen to define masculinity that way...

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I echo this. I’m an empty nester now but when I was raising kids (really early on) most of my friends were going to bars and didn’t understand the responsibility. Now they are all having kids and looking to me for answers... like there’s a manual for kids.

I felt the most pride in my life watching my step-daughter get her diploma. I, a masculine man who was taught to bottle it all up and stuff upper lip, cried like a baby.

Those who have kids know. Those who don’t just will never understand.

> Those who have kids know. Those who don’t just will never understand.

Oh come on, I was agreeing with your comment until this totally unnecessary condescension.

Part of being a mature person (which you imply to claim you are) is the knowledge that whatever you know isn’t necessarily special to your experience, and that other people may arrive at it through a different set of experiences. In this case, being proud of someone whom you love and whose well-being you actively contributed to isn’t an exclusive domain of parents or step-parents, but also of teachers and caretakers in orphanages who are capable of fulfilling the role. “Having a kid” isn’t a requirement here.

Au contraire, maturity entails realizing that if you haven't experienced something, you don't know what it's like. That's certainly true of creating a new human being.

For myself, having kids taught me things about myself that I'd have been happier never knowing.

Not a better person, just happier.

On balance the knowledge is worth it to me.

That you'd be happier never knowing? I'm curious what some insights are you learned from your journey.

Not the parent but the birth of my kids and their growing up 'caused' a cascade childhood trauma to bubble up. It was overwhelming for months and it messed me up for years, including bouts of depression and lots of trauma purges. Not the kids' doing, just some mirror effect, situations triggering and unlocking memories. And I feel it's even worse if you try alternative, progressive education methods, that give lots of agency to children, that focus on understanding the emotional state of mind, on accepting everyone's emotions without judgement, with infinite patience, the absolute minimum of coercion, and go so much in opposition to the way I was 'raised'.

Not saying I agree with parent that I'd be happier for sure in some ways, but I sure didn't expect so much psychological pain in addition to the hard work of raising kids.

The is very profound, thank you for sharing what to expect. I also share childhood trauma and your perspective on the current generation and state of what is acceptable in parenting as being a little too alien in comparison to my childhood where my parents were manipulative and addicted to their own vices so I escaped playing outside all day with neighborhood friends. Nowadays helicopter parenting, ubiquitous computing/gaming, phone/social media addiction and instant gratification have eroded the working memory of the younger generation. It's only time until we realize it's akin to drug addiction and the smoking kills revelation of our times.

Heavy but hopeful reading: https://www.rewriting-the-rules.com/self/trauma-and-cptsd-10...

"[...] each time psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy have begun to take trauma seriously, it has been shut down by people denying that it’s even a thing, and suggesting that those who are traumatised are making it up or exaggerating its impact. When Freud first published a paper pointing out that most of the people with mental health struggles he was working with had experienced childhood and/or adult sexual abuse and assault, he was ignored and shut down. He went on to shift to a theory that suggested his patients had fantasised those things: they couldn’t possibly actually had happened. This is pretty terrifying now that we know the statistics on the prevalence of abuse and assault."

My new therapist asks 2-3x per session 'but no one raised a fuss with CPS'? What? I was very well treated compared to most kids from my neighbourhood & cohort. I was fed, clothed, and my health was somehow cared for, at least when obviously sick. Sleeping in my own bed in a stable home, a roof over my head. Not to much abuse, at least not everyday. Most of my mates didn't have this luck. The slaps in school by their parents, the pulled hair or ears to obtain compliance, the insults, pushing around, threats of sleeping on the ground or outside, the black eyes, belt scars, the never washed clothes and body, the 'forgotten' breakfasts or dinners, the rotten teeth, the neglected vision problems...

I mean it wasn't Oliver Twist but some of us had it GOOD.

Gimme helicopter parenting and too many activities. The pendulum hasn't swung that much on that side than it had on the other...

Sorry, I hate the 'helicopter parenting' expression.

FWIW I agree about our modern vices. Phones, twitter, HN, everything-gamification...

Yeah for me it was alcohol addiction and escapism, verbal abuse and unloving home environment that really messes with your head as a kid and is hard to understand the long term implications to my mental well being. I am slowly unraveling the issues that manifest themselves in my adult life through guided CBT. Poverty and drug addicted parents was a common theme among my childhood friends.

Good luck on your path and if anything, for all the pain and work and worry kids can be (and twins can be a handful), they're also so much... Love and fun :-) it took some time for me to believe it was directed at me, but love like this is overwhelming and life-transforming.

It doesn't have to be a great perfect day, just two minutes or twenty seconds of a hug with a person who loves and cares for you unconditionally, and you back... It's... powerful. Moving. Like a gift from you to you, and a gift to the world, trying to raise new beaming, can-do, positive-energy to build the world of tomorrow. It sounds silly but I believe the phrase.

Cheers.

Very very true... in this case, think of “having kids” as possession.

I echo this as well. I'll also add that I made very little to no investment in my mental health until becoming a father. My perspective on who I want to be and what I need to do to get there changed practically overnight.

> "go to battle"

I remember that in the first days after my kid was born, the thought that I would defend that child to the bitter end against any attacker suddenly seemed completely natural, even trivial. It was quite strange and included a sudden extreme awareness of (and aggressive feelings against) animals which came to close. This included dogs. The feelings were overwhelmingly archaic. I talked to my wife about this, she experienced the same. I now understand the aggressiveness of animals who protect their offspring. I felt it myself.

There seems to be some research regarding this: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/147470491666228...

One day it just hit me: "I could totally give my life for this child".

It came out of nowhere and it was a chilling and somewhat unnerving feeling. I never felt that for anyone. But the conviction is there, almost like a peaceful resignation: if there is no other solution and that is the only possible alternative then so be it.

Crazy.

It's funny, this was one of the reasons I always found Harry Potter so overrated.

So Harry has super special invincibility from The Killing Curse because Lily sacrifices herself for him. This is described as "Ancient, Long Forgotten Magic"

Wouldn't literally any parent do this?

Why aren't they're dozens of boys/girls who lived?

Because only in this case did Voldemort even consider sparing a parent. Note that James is already dead and his love is not believed to have any extra power. It was only that Lily had a rare chance to flee and refused to take it that Harry was protected.

(Assuming I haven't mixed up canonical Harry Potter with Methods of Rationality.)

Indeed, crazy. Some people think having a child rewrites of a lot of core routines - apparently also those involved into self-preservation.

I'm sorry if that comes out as offensive, but this strikes me as something a virus or a parasite would also do, hijacking the host brain.

How exposure to parasites encourages promiscuity has been studied: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013694/

Obviously, children may not be parasites, but the "It came out of nowhere and it was a chilling and somewhat unnerving feeling" part is troubling.

except they are parasites. for women, biologically, the foetus considers the mother's body as the host body and siphons off resources. and thats ok. because the parasite is 50% of host DNA.

all babies are born premature because we evolved quickly and the human female's pelvic bones didnt grow as wide and as quickly as the baby's head to come through the birth canal. even after birth, the human baby needs the mother/father for a much longer time for survival.

progestrone, semen, testosterone, pregnancy etc hijacks not just the blood stream, hormones but also the brain because the fetus basically converts the mother's body into a fortress and a machine to keep itself alive. after birth, the immature baby/fetus also hijacks the father's brain and instincts.

it's best to remember that all biological organisms are mere vehicles for DNA and it's survival instinct. this isnt just for humans. my favourites are insects. at the farm..watch the praying mantis and the tarantula wasp and the drone bees play out their lives changes your perspective on life forever.

I have to say that this is an interesting perspective to take. Seems highly functional. Not sure if I agree or disagree, I do find it interesting.

If that interests you, see the philosophical debates about the nature and existence of consciousness, e.g. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-d... and the follow-up https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/04/03/magic-illusions-and...

I thought of this connection because of the philosopher Daniel Dennett's writing about the Sphex wasp.

Thank you for the links.

The Sphex wasp behaviour is common to most wasps. They are fierce mothers. I have seen it first hand with tarantula wasps in my farm where the female wasp will paralyze tarantula with a neurotoxin. Then she lays the eggs in the still alive tarantula’s belly. It’s insides liquify and after the baby wasps come along, they are nourished by the fortifying soup of the ..wait for it..still-living tarantula’s innards.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150109-the-wasp-that-scares...

A more dramatic telling here on video: https://www.newsweek.com/horrifying-video-shows-giant-wasp-p...

I have often wondered if it’s more of a symbiotic relationship rather than a parasitic one because in fairness, the foetus doesn’t kill the host.

Having said that, symbiosis only occurs with two distinctly different species.

With pregnancy and the human fetus, it’s is a kind of quasi-parasitic relationship because the host survives the parasite. Even though it’s changed. (Pregnancy changes body chemistry and functionally not just physical change)

This is obviously a trait evolution would strongly favor.

I can totally relate to this. I have always been a completely non-violent person, but I remember the feeling of “I would kill to defend this tiny creature” when I became a dad. It was pretty powerful.

This is also when you realize the insidious power of the “think of the children” argument. When someone manipulates you to think of your own children, they trigger that base instinct that’s hard to fight.

Many of the problems in the world boil down to intentional and unintentional manipulation of basic instincts/ traits/ weaknesses of humans. The biggest way to fight this is simply making people aware of them.

This sentiment used to annoy me as it seemed like a non-sequitur.

Now that I'm a father I'm much more wary of it because I know just what it means.

+1 to this.

Some time ago a friend of mine from high school asked me how it feels to have a child and what do I feel for them - my answer was: "do you remember the time when you most powerfully fell in love to someone? Multiply that then by 100 and you'll get the answer" :)

This is my very most fav life quote I've ever came up with :)

This protection instinct can be utterly irrational: when my first son was just born, we were walking on a sidewalk and a car passed by, and I felt a slight urge to throw myself in front of that car to protect my family. Of course I didn't, but I did know right then that I would be able to fight and give my life for my family, if necessary.

I try not to, but I know it's in there.

That urge is what I meant by "overwhelmingly archaic feelings". I hesitated to write this as I am a completely nonviolent person, but at one point, I felt the urge to take out my cheap Swiss pocket knife in preparation to kill a dog which approached the family, in case he attacked. As another commenter has mentioned, this is just something evolution has strongly selected for.

It's definitely fascinating, feeling these outdated instincts in our modern world.

you can made a copy of your code and put it inside a tiny human body. of course, you will defend it with your life! it is what will carry you..or rather a tiny sliver of you into immortality. it's precious because you will die one day but part of your code won't....your child will continue on and hopefully will reproduce to take forward a part of you and so on. we are all meat sacs carrying the code of life.

It started for me the minute they were born. They had to take my first born twin in the next room while the second was coming, and I was so angry and mad, I barely contained myself and stayed bedside with my suffering wife. To this day I'm still so angry about this, and I beat myself I wasn't more of an advocate for my first-born girl...

And then when they wanted to take one or the other away for exams, and I wouldn't leave them alone for a second. No fucking way. Yeah no, you're not taking them away to the nursery, I'll watch and console my girls while my wife gets some sleep.

I know it'll seem strange but there's probably only 2 people in the world I'd leave my girls alone at home with, even though they're 4 now. And none of them are our parents. Some friendly neighbors for acute emergencies, maybe, but the list is short.

And boy, having twins is a sure way to get attention, especially from nosy old people, that will put their face so close to the kids' or will remove the fucking stroller covers to see the baby's face (WTF!) and be angry when you say 'please don't'... I was humouring the old ladies, but my wife was dragon-like.

Its a sudden visceral awareness that you were a host for the DNA thats been passed down from millions of people that came before.

The previous, relatively selfish person you used to be, almost immediately upon first seeing them, now only exists to protect this vulnerable life that's completely dependent on you.

Also, having become a dad, one changes the attitude to the "battle".

Instead of being a brash, brave, showy warrior who just doesnt' care about the danger and only cares about valor, you become a diligent, careful, never-surrendering and deadly efficient warrior, because you care a bit less about valor, but badly need to win. You have some specific lives to protect.

I love the way you phrased this and I experienced exactly the transformation you described!

> They didn’t seem like men you would go to battle with... Maximus, Achilles or Michael Jordan – often associated with a masculine ideal.

Funny how often the “masculine ideal” gets ret-conned in ways that say more about the person making the argument than anything else. Achilles is hardly insensitive——the turning point of the Iliad is his mourning over the body of Patroclus.

> calm, gentle, patient and sensitive. They didn’t seem like men you would go to battle with. In fact, they were the very antithesis of the warriors and athletes

IMO this really describes almost everyone, not just fathers. There's a pretty big disconnect between our cultural ideal, and reality. Half of American men are fat whether they have a kid or not.

> There's a pretty big disconnect between our cultural ideal, and reality.

As someone who isn't a native-born American, is that really your cultural ideal? Warriors and athletes?

Because to an outsider that just seems...laughable at best, and for more reasons than just rampant obesity.

Why? What is your culture's cultural ideal?

For whatever is worth, I don't find warrior ideal either. I associate that with someone who is source of danger and threat.

Warriors around means that you have to go home shortest route and watch whether the room is dangerous.

Athletes have good bodies, but that is about it.

As one good book a read recently says: Be dangerous but not the danger.

In think warrior ideal describes exactly that. You've got tools, skills and internal readiness to be the danger but you're not until it's necessary

Sure, but morality aside there is something to be admired in people that do dangerous, frightnening and difficult things for a living.

“Difficult” does not belong with the other two and I’m not sure we need to admire people who have to risk their lives so much as pity them. It’s unfortunate we have so many roles in society that still require that.

You would be surprised as to how many of these people would pity and politely dismiss most of richer and softer types of human that inhabit tech.

Nothing to do with rich or “softer”. There are jobs that are dangerous that pay quite well and require little physical prowess.

I think life without risk or discomfort would be very boring indeed.

I think you might have missed the point of my post.

It's laughable because it is so far from reality, not because the ideals are something to be laughed at.

I would argue that American males are closer to the warrior archetype than any other democracy. We certainly have fought more actual wars than any other advanced nation, we have the best combat athletes in the world, many of us hunt, shoot and practice warrior like skills. I am hard pressed to think of any other modern society that comes even close.

Your testosterone levels are reduced as a man when you become a father [1], I wouldn't be surprised if that affects men's behaviour.

Our evolution is complex, I find it fascinating that you can often dig up research with regards to this topic.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182719/

I think he's overstating how much effect T has on this.

I'm on HRT due to past medical issues that drastically reduced my T levels. I remember what it was like to have my T really low, Now that I'm on T, and probably about normal or higher than average for my age, I can't say its changed drastically my attitude towards my children, how gentle I am towards them and much less increased my willingness or proclivity to leave my family or my wife and seek another partner. If anything its made me more protective and I've had more a sense of duty towards my family, to protect them and be the first line of defense against whatever threats minor and major exist. The worst of it has been a shortness of temper but I keep it in check, its basically like being 20 again and being older and wiser, I can channel it into positive action.

I wonder if he studied fathers who are physically active and do things like weight lifting or MMA, that naturally elevate T levels would agree that the line drawn between animals with higher T and humans are being overly correlated.

I think it true that modern childrearing might have an affect on activity levels, but small changes in T level produce very outsized effects. If anything literature understates the role that hormones play in human cognition.

It’s kind of a weird ret-conning of “of the masculine ideal.” When NASA picked astronauts to be the public face of the technological race against communism, they picked men with families: https://nasa.fandom.com/wiki/Mercury_Seven

> From the 18, the first seven NASA astronauts were chosen,[8] each a "superb physical specimen" with an IQ above 130, and the ability to function well both as part of a team and solo.[6] Grissom, Cooper, and Slayton were Air Force pilots; Shepard, Carpenter, and Schirra were Navy pilots, and Glenn was a Marine Corps pilot.

> Because they wore civilian clothes, the audience did not see them as military test pilots but "mature, middle-class Americans, average in height and visage, family men all," ready for single combat versus worldwide Communism. To the astronauts' surprise, the reporters asked about their personal lives instead of war records or flight experience, or about the details of Mercury. After Glenn responded by speaking eloquently "on God, country, and family" the others followed his example, and the reporters "lustily applauded them."

This is great. In my comment, I almost mentioned that because of how much earlier people historically had children (than most Americans and Europeans do now), most of the people we think of as "masculine ideals" throughout history would have been (were) fathers.

The number of times I read about a famous historical figure on Wikipedia, and they mention almost as an afterthought that they had 6 kids...

But I didn't want to go off on a big tangent about the "masculine ideal" although I agree completely that there is ret-conning and we could definitely use a rethink of how we expect men to act!

I’m not sure who “Maximus” is—if the author is talking about the movie Gladiator, the whole premise of that story is that Maximus is a loving family man who kills the illegitimate Emperor who had his wife and son killed. Achilles had a son who fought in the war against Troy. Hector, who Achilles fought and killed, also had a family, and that’s a key part of his portrayal by Homer. He’s the loyal soldier who fights to protect Troy without any impure motive of seeking glory or power. The whole Odyssey is about Odysseus returning home to his wife and son.

Yup, just posted about this myself before reading further down. The whole line is a bizarre illiteracy that is, I think, unfortunately common.

It's self-evident that this must be so. As an evolutionary strategy it's essential to produce a family before engaging in high risk activity like war or space exploration that has a good chance of getting you dead. In the past for many if not all human cultures, most marriageable men that weren't set to inherit had to spend some time doing dangerous things before they had the social standing to marry.

I echo the sentiment as well. I think these are precisely the men you would go to the battle with. The battle to defend the family and the Country. The men who know what they are fighting for.

At the other end, I became a father quite a bit after all of my friends; now I get what they couldn't get me to understand before.

> think Maximus, Achilles or Michael Jordan

Maximus is a bit of a strange choice there. Marcus Aurelius of Meditations fame, is the titular grandfather figure in the film (right at the start). Meditations has a lot in it about child rearing and Marcus was something of a devoted father to his many children (for Roman men in those days). All that said, his son, Commodus, the first emperor to have the title passed down to him from his own father, was a uniquely terrible person. As seen in the film, he was just a 'very bad guy', but in reality he was much worse than is portrayed.

In essence, no matter the effort you put into your kid, they are still themselves

> Commodus, the first emperor to have the title passed down to him from his own father

I don't think that's right? Titus[0] succeeded Vespasian in 79 AD, father to son. Both were good rulers BTW, but Titus was succeeded by Domitian (younger brother) who was a disaster and assassinated for it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus

Argh! You are correct.

I meant to use the old saying of 'born in the purple', in that Commodus was the first emperor born and raised to be one. But I tried to use a simpler way of speaking and was, of course, wrong about it. Thank you.

This from the Wikipedia article on Commodus does indeed seem very bad: "Citizens of Rome missing their feet through accident or illness were taken to the arena, where they were tethered together for Commodus to club to death while pretending they were giants."

> Also, somewhat ironic, but my willingness to "go to battle" for my family is far greater than my willingness to "go to battle" for anything before having a family

I'd bet the "for my family" part is critical to this statement though, and in the modern "Western" world, at least, such circumstances are exceedingly rare.

I'm less inclined to go mountaineering or ice climbing, to give a more realistic example, partly because of the risk, and quality time at home (both with family and alone) is a pretty limited resource.

It is, surprisingly, not as critical as I would have thought. There is something about being a dad that is sufficiently general, the idea that I'm responsible for another person's wellbeing entirely, that made me more confident that I could be trusted with greater responsibility.

And I use the phrase "go to battle" almost as metaphorically as possible, in the sense of my willingness to be in conflict with people over right and wrong, but I think that's a good point about physical safety and quality time.

The actual way people go to battle is by ensuring maximum societal resources go towards their own kids. Moving to suburbs poorer people can’t afford, wealthier people keeping their kids from mingling with poorer kids, etc.

Something similar, but a bit different has happened a few times to me where I've had to show a lot more restraint than I would have previous. With my daughter or without, I now have a responsibility to stay out of trouble. I can't just run in mouth and fist first into any situation.

I've described it as emasculating in the past, but this thread has changed my mind to think about it as more being in control and ready - a man with a purpose.

Thanks all for discussing.

> Also, somewhat ironic, but my willingness to "go to battle" for my family is far greater than my willingness to "go to battle" for anything before having a family, to an extent that becoming a father has made me far more assertive, confident, and willing to take responsibility, which makes me more "masculine" if you so happen to define masculinity that way...

That's a known fact in the military since times immemorial.

I feel exactly the same way, with respect to "going to battle". Things got much more real after kids, its you they look to when things go wrong and you better have it together.

and then...otoh...there was Sparta.

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