Seems to be correlated with when you have young kids. Not surprising really as having young kids is like having a grenade set off in your relationship.
Anecdotally, very young kids in and of themselves are in fact pretty great! It’s the logistics around child-rearing that are soul-crushing. Or, glibly: having kids good, early parenting bad.
We nibble around the logistic edges with buying our time back: a front-door laundry service, a lot of delivery meals when we had a newborn during peak Covid, Amazon Prime for virtually everything. “Acquiring consumer stuff” is fairly solved.
We had a nanny for a while, and that had a lot of upsides, but having a family-like relationship that’s actually transactional is extra overhead to manage. Nice while it was working well, though.
My local pizza joint’s app has a “repeat last delivery order” that comes in handy.
Ultimately, though, the hard parts remain hard. When a kid is sick or doesn’t sleep through the night, who’s skipping work tomorrow? How do we tag-team our way to survive till bedtime? Do I not bill out a client today so my wife can get enough of a break from the kids to stay sane—and vice-versa?
It’s very isolating. This feels like a fabric-of-society issue to which the product-and-services-to-solve-it mentality, however well-intentioned in the moment, is kinda how we ended up here in the first place.
There isn’t an app or a service that’ll make living in the states (or, I gather, much of the west, albeit to a lesser degree) less individualized and more communal.
We haven’t tried it, but this looks like it could be great if you find a group you’re compatible with.
The strong individualism is not really compatible with that.
On HN when these structures are talked about, it is always only in terms of essentially free labor from extended family.
What I'd tell my former self is: start doing everything in my life to optimize for my own perceived agency in this new life. I started doing the things that I'd previously delayed for "retirement" now, albeit with much smaller time investments. (Working toward decoupling time from pay.) If there are relationship issues, then start working on those, too. And, for heaven's sake, once the kid can be watched by family/friends, start doing so.
Good luck. HTH!
It's highly likely that they can imagine it, but realize that it might also be worse and decide that it's not worth the risk for them, since there is no going back.
My wife and I just recently had our first no-kids date night since last Father’s Day (just short of a year ago). It was pretty great! The connection is still there. But it was also _surreal_, and I can totally see how couples just lose themselves in the chaos. It worries me sometimes.
I heard this a lot before I had kids. Then we had kids and it was not only fine, but actually enjoyable.
Yes, there was a short-term increase in stress and reduction in personal time, but the key factor missing from online discussions on the topic is that the stressful low-sleep, diaper-changing period isn't all that long. A couple percent of your lifetime, really.
The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids and spending time with them. There's so much media that portrays children as some sort of endless chore and drain on your time, but it turns out that it's actually a ton of fun to play with your kids and help them grow.
Not everybody enjoys time with their kids, either. I'm truly glad you do, but that isn't universal.
There's such a huge spectrum of experiences for parents. Listening to the experience of others in our post natal groups was really interesting for that reason. Some people just get it so easy, and some people seem to be living nightmares. There's no real rhyme or reason to it.
Well, that's the core of the issue, isn't it? I know people who were really looking forward to having children, wanted them, and anticipated that they would enjoy it - so expected personal sacrifice was not that big of an issue. It's just what you had to do to enjoy having kids.
Media that portrays children as a chore, on the other hand, matches the thought process of someone who looks at having children (potentially including their own childhood) and thinks "why would someone want that?". It was a welcome balance, speaking as someone who barely came across portrayal of children as anything other than the source of joy and something that everyone - surely - wants. It was a different media landscape 10-15 years ago, and I like the current one better even if not maximally nuanced.
The under one years were at a time in my career when I was working at 2am most nights anyway. A few minutes to hang out and take care of someone no love was a nice break. Mom slept pretty much through the night after the first couple of weeks.
Decade and 1/2 in and I can't see things getting worse, but we'll see.