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Comment by gabereiser | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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