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Comment by ehutch79 | Hacker News Reader

Real parents consistently make it clear how terrible having kids is.

The childless among us hear every complaint and lament about how terrible it is. Why would we do that to ourselves?

I have 2 kids, I don’t recommend it. Quality of life decline is steep unless you’re wealthy and can hire robust childcare support, and it causes a significant decline in relationship satisfaction with your partner. Maybe you end up happy in the end, maybe you don’t, it’s Russian Roulette in a different form. People who tell you to go for it aren’t going to make you whole if it doesn’t work out or be your village when you need help.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-25189-001

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062063/

This is extremely location-dependent. In countries where you have universal healthcare, free education and childcare benefits, the financial impact of having a child can be very low.

What are the birth rates in these countries? If you check (Our World In Data Fertility Rates), you’ll see it’s lower than the US, even countries with strong pro natalist policies. The opportunity cost of kids is just too damn high.

When fathers in Spain were given more parental leave, they have less kids, for example. The revealed preference is clear.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-UN

https://qz.com/work/1614893/after-men-in-spain-got-paternity...

“As the authors point out, it’s impossible to draw sweeping conclusions from this observation of a single data point in a single country.”

The study doesnt mention any effect on career progression or any other type of opportunity cost either. You’re entitled to your opinion but this article does not support it.

Those countries just offload the cost of the child onto other people. The cost is not low.

The cost to a society of not having children is also quite high, so pick your poison.

No disagreement there, although I think perhaps society should stop treating children as crops to be harvested for the commons. A tragedy of the commons has been created as society claims social security tax from grown children to pay to the elderly, so the economic incentive is to be a free-rider and live off other people's children while having none of your own.

> so the economic incentive is to be a free-rider...

I'm reminded of societies in which families have more children than they want because there is no social safety net. Children are the safety net. Talk about harvesting human beings. Children suffer immense pressure and even abuse in such places.

Just to think through this a little bit further. There is a proportion of "free-riders" in every given population, even those without a safety net. Some free-riders will exploit their own children, the government, their family's status, their spouse, or whatever or whoever is at hand. Some people decide they would rather be homeless than exploit anyone. In short, let us acknowledge that free riding is a thing that happens, and that it is usually morally reprehensible.

Which will lead to a more stable society: social safety net, or no social safety net?

In my experience and observation, societies that have protections from poverty seem to be far more stable as compared to societies that do not have them.

I'm curious why you ended up having two?

My wife and I are done with the one. I think we got lucky - she is a sweet, fun and fairly easy (for now) two year old, but the decrease in life quality is significant. I didn't want to further extend the monotony of our current life by having a second.

Overall my advice to anyone would be if you are not missing anything in your life and are happy, you don't have to have children. Other people might tell you how great it is (after complaining a bunch, and then complaining some more later) but that's their life, not yours.

First one required several rounds of IVF and a switch to a remote job to have the flexibility needed for such an endeavor, second one was unexpected. Got a vasectomy after the second.

Experience is what we get what when we don’t get what we expected.

Interesting. You sound like me from the future or something, except we only had to do IUIs instead. No vasectomy yet but maybe this is a good warning.

It’s $1000 to collect some semen and have it frozen for a few years (Reprotech is a cryoprovider I can recommend)). Vasectomies are cheap (<$1000 but free in a handful of states). Bank the tissue and get snipped is my advice. Buys you an option if you change your mind (call for a specimen and do IUI) but firmly insulates you from mistakes or decisions made under suboptimal conditions.

This. And no, it's not just the baby stage.

Just yesterday, in my team of five, three work colleagues were counseling each other about how go get help for their kids. The two children of one colleague suffer from anxiety and attention deficit, which is the same problem another colleague has. The third colleague needed to leave yesterday mid-afternoon because his daughter had a breakdown at school. Today he is taking her to therapy, and that's a regular occurrence.

I've started to suspect that there is a silent pandemic of mental health issues between kids these days. Maybe it's the cell phones, maybe it's over-diagnosis, maybe it's because it's too much. Maybe the entire way we do families and child-rearing is broken. I remember feeling lonely and sad as a kid, then I went to boarding school and made some amazing friends and life was so much better and easier. Kids shouldn't grow alone.

> Real parents consistently make it clear how terrible having kids is.

What world do you live in? I have 4 (soon to be 5) kids myself and I’m happy with my choices. I know many families with kids, and only a small percentage seem unhappy, similar to most other life choices.

> I know many families with kids, and only a small percentage seem unhappy, similar to most other life choices.

"Seem" is the keyword. People successfully hide suicidal depression from close friends and family, so I'm not sure why you think people can't hide mild unhappiness.

If they "seem" happy, then they are not "consistently mak[ing] it clear how terrible having kids is."

You're talking about two different contexts: they can make happy while with friends and family where there are social expectations, and they can also report how they honestly feel in anonymous or confidential circumstances, like surveys, studies and therapy.

The analogy I made to depression was intentional because it exhibits exactly this pattern: every depressed person consistently reports how terrible it is, and yet they often make a show of appearing happy in public.

I'm talking about the statement that "Real parents consistently make it clear how terrible having kids is."

If they "seem" happy in all my interactions, I don't see how they can be "consistently mak[ing] clear how terrible having kids is."

I also don't see how some secret only-tell-the-therapist-and-pollsters views could qualify as "consistently mak[ing] clear" their supposed negative feelings.

It's difficult to express to non-parents how good the good parts are. Speaking from personal experience, I never understood why people would want kids until we decided to have our own.

This isn't a judgment or to say parents are in any way superior! Having children is a very personal choice which everyone has to confront, and there's no wrong answer. The feeling of being a parent is just incredibly difficult to put into words.

I think you got the point right - it's easy to agree, almost objective, that sleepless nights are not good for you or crying babies or toddler with tantrums or chasing a toddler for the bed routing might not be the most funny thing to do after work is not the funniest activity in most of the cases, while the positive things are very subjective, less universal and more personal. That's why pointing out the "bad" things is easier, while reflecting on the positive side takes considerably longer than a random article on the web.

Yes, it's extremely obvious what the unpleasant things are, like a screaming toddler in the supermarket. But you can't explain the joy in simply watching some DuckTales with your kid and laughing together. I try to describe it like it's like when you're in love with a girl, the honey moon, except the honey moon never passes. Just like you can't stop looking at your crush you can't stop looking at your child, you find everything they do and learn extremely interesting. May not be the experience for everyone but if it were not like this it would be very difficult to get through the rough parts!

The interesting thing is I care more about others kids as well now. Before kids I didn't have many interactions with them, not really a kids person, but now I feel more paternal for all kids. While there's an obvious confounding variable here, my friends with kids care about mine and want to meet them while those without pretend like they don't exist.

Did you hear from marathon runners how difficult it was? Same here, it's difficult but it brings experiences you could not have otherwise, and on pragmatic side passes on your genes ;)

The amount of one's genes after several generations is homeopathic, so it doesn't matter in the long run.

Yeah that whole evolution thing is clearly bunk.

. . .

Why yes marathon runners love to tell you how hard it was.

The people you hear most vocally for many things (for example, video games) are the ones that are listing the problems with it. They're also the ones that are doing it the most, by choice. As a general rule, it's common for the vocal minority to be the complainers; and also to be the ones that most enjoy the thing in question.

My wife had a friend who would watch us deal with our then toddler son and claim that we were the best birth control she could wish for :-)

I wish my sister had a child first. I would have never agreed to have one on my own :D

Real parent, here.

Having a son anchored me to the (land and planet)* in a very unexpected way. Formerly, there was always an option to chuck things and go somewhere else, but now whatever is in front of me I must deal with and make happen. It's not about what I want to do any more, but the first underlying thought behind everything I do is how it will affect my son and family.

Lots of former options are closed. I can no longer start a relationship with a fun and beautiful but legitimately insane woman. I can no longer splurge my life savings on some risky venture. I can no longer spontaneously digital nomad. Heck, I can't really hit the local pub or have a night out without negotiation.

Is that terrible? I don't think so. It doesn't feel so. More, like, I do whatever I want within the bounds determined by my responsibility to someone who cannot care for himself yet.

I have a fatherly and calm personality, though, and I know it's not suited for everyone.

So, TL;DR: Not terrible. Anchoring. Limiting, but not oppressive.

* There's no really good word for this.

I strongly identify with this post. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, there are lots of things I can't do now. But that's ok with me. It doesn't even feel like a sacrifice really. Being a dad is just part of who I am and I want to do it well just like any other thing I do.

My kids won't need me anchored forever. And I still get to go fishing, see concerts, play video games, and do other stuff I enjoy. It's not the total loss of all freedom some make it out to be.

Agreed. Fun is to be had. Is essential, actually.

Kids and covid lockdown are a combo that speaks to that "anchoring". Sure, the world has gone to hell and you can't buy toilet paper anymore. But the kids need you so yeet any nascent doomscrolling feelings in the bin, there's no room for that shit.

Hmmmm... not exactly an endorsement for parenting...

Wasn't trying to endorse it. In fact, I explicitly said it's not for everyone.

There are tons of "having a kid is great" in this thread. I have been present at many conversations in groups along these lines ... in multiple cases, the same people 1 on 1 tell me afterwards the exact opposite, what they have said in a group setting was an outright lie.

Nobody wants to be the one who speaks out, everyone is saying its amazing because the others say it is amazing.

People complain about kids in a similar way to how they complain about their jobs. An unemployed observer might conclude that a career is inevitably hell on earth, but that wouldn't be the whole picture, even if everyone's work sucks some of the time and some people's work just sucks all the time.

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