Comment by volkl48 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by volkl48 | Hacker News Reader

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1) You may be good at this or have some situation in terms of support structures or lifestyle where this is particularly easy, but this is not at all what many parents I know/encounter express to me (as a person who's openly childfree). The combination of more than one kid and 2 parents working FT out of the home, seems to equal an absolutely exhausting long-term grind for many unless they've got a lot of family nearby who are both willing and able to share that load.

2) To be replaced by endless after school activities/sports, events, and other child-related things. Fine if you like them, but if not you're not seriously getting your free time back until maybe the teenage years. A decade+ in the prime of your life is not a "mere blip" to many.

3) You do (which is great - clearly you're the sort of person who should have kids). There are a lot of people who have children and....don't suddenly find an appreciation for children. The vast number of children in the world with a willfully absent, abusive, or simply disinterested and not loving parent stand as a clear counter-argument, and the statistics on child abuse/neglect are pretty awful.

On the anecdotal side - It's pretty heartbreaking how many of those I grew up with (who had outwardly normal, upper middle class families) turned out to have those sorts of terrible parents and traumatic childhoods...and those are just the ones I know about. I'm thankful I didn't have that childhood, but a shocking number of children do.

I think it's misleading to promote this ideal like it's just going to happen for everyone who has kids and leads to people who shouldn't have children having them and resenting them or worse.

> but this is not at all what many parents I know/encounter express to me (as a person who's openly childfree).

My experience as a parent and talking to other parents in my social circle couldn't be more different.

It's possible that your "openly childfree" status is biasing your conversations with others toward viewpoints that support your childfree identity. Personally, I learned long ago to avoid discussing anything about parenting with people who make childfree part of their outward identity, because it seems they only want to argue that my experience as a parent is somehow wrong or invalid.

> Personally, I learned long ago to avoid discussing anything about parenting with people who make childfree part of their outward identity, because it seems they only want to argue that my experience as a parent is somehow wrong or invalid.

Aren't you doing that exact thing when saying this:

> It's possible that your "openly childfree" status is biasing your conversations with others toward viewpoints that support your childfree identity.

GP never argued that you're wrong or your perspective is invalid, just that there's a spectrum of experiences, and that you shouldn't expect everyone to have the same experiences you do, and that you shouldn't blindly encourage others based on your own experience. It's one thing if you know the person well and can point at specific things about them you think suggest they would enjoy parenthood, but it's not something that be laid down as a blanket statement.

Why would I tell a childfree friend about the joys of parenthood? Who would do that?

To somebody who's just Wrong on the Internet, though, I would happily say that it's not the most important thing. It's the only thing.

Good luck!

I think you’re painting a pretty simplistic and distorted caricature of reality.

I don't think I am, at least speaking to the US, but if you've got a particular argument I'm open to hearing it.

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Just as some related examples to illustrate that there's a whole lot of children not growing up in some idealized life though:

~23% of children in the US live with one parent and no other adults in the household.

~40% of children born to married parents in the US will see those parents divorce before they turn 18.

~40% of children are born to unmarried parents. I don't know where to find what the rate for those parents splitting up is, but I'll assume it's probably not better than the married ones.

1/7 children experienced abuse or neglect in the past year, 1/4 will at some point in their childhood.

I think the statistics look different if you look at it in terms of percent of parents instead of percent of children. There's a certain segment that has lots of kids, either out of wedlock or in circumstance especially vulnerable to divorce and vulnerable to conditions which create unintended neglect due to scarcity of resources. Fewer number of kids is also associated with circumstances associated with more privileged background, which skews the statistics to look very different in % parents vs % children.

Also bear in mind some states consider neglect something like "allowed 8 year old to play at park by himself 2 blocks from the house and within line of sight from a trusted neighbor's house" or "left child in locked climate controlled running car while walking inside to pay gasoline because card reader was broken and didn't want to expose child to crackheads/drunks lingering next to the register (if you use inner-city gas stations you know what I mean)."

Also did those splits happen because of the children , or because of the parent's issues with each other or the world? It's often the later.

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