He says this at some point:
> That was the second thing Theo taught me. The first thing he taught me, at 430am in his first week, when he wouldn't stop crying, as a rage started bubbling up in me, was that no amount of urging, forcing, or frustration will get this tiny baby to do what I want him to do. All I can do is surrender and listen; find peace and meet him from a place of equanimity. Then maybe I'll have the presence of mind to change the wet diaper that was making him cry.
Ask yourself how many times per day do you take a moment to surrender and listen... If you do it (even without a kid) you will find beauty in every aspect of life. The thing about kids is that it can be so overwhelming that they give you no other choice. Of course you still have the choice of not doing it, and this can make you start building a lot of frustration against the kid, your partner, life itself...
Later I found out that post-partum depression is a real thing that fathers can go through. I went through all the stages of grief for my old life that I’d grown too attached to. Only when I’d gone through that could I actually open up to accept a newer, bigger life.
My son is 7 now. I love him dearly and am so grateful that I can be a father to him.
For me, it led to depression, therapy and medication. The first time in my life I'd experienced actual clinical depression. We do have a particularly challenging situation though. I'm always tired, ill, stressed, eat unhealthy, don't exercise enough. Being a parent is all consuming.
It has been getting easier as they get a bit older, and I love my children in all the ways a typical father does. I'd literally die for them. But a lot of the time I just do not enjoy it.
Why is it so torturous? For me, I'm a software engineer, and I became one because I'm obsessive. I like to think about a thing all day every day. The most I get now is maybe three 90 minute chunks a day, maybe a couple three hour chunks a week. If you're not like this you won't understand how it feels, but if you are, you'll know what I mean when I say learning to live without this kind of thing (I guess the term is need for cognition?) has made me into a completely different person.
It does get better though! We do daycare so when they're old enough I get a regular work schedule back. Definitely no nights or weekends though; those days are gone for the foreseeable future. But, like you, I'd do anything for them and I don't regret it. It's just hard to overstate how huge the change is--you legitimately are forced to become a different person (or, I guess, you can choose to not be a very good parent, idk)
But yes, it is becoming a bit easier. And as it becomes easier, I actually relax a bit more too and my mood lightens, which makes the meltdowns a bit easier to handle.
I would strongly encourage all fathers to become as closely involved with day-to-day care of their babies as possible. Don't wait until they can walk and talk.
Yes, agreed. I never share my feelings in real life for the same reason. And it is very lonely. I did therapy for six months which helped. I was in a very dark place at one point.
It's like, in this day and age where anything and everything is said by somebody, we can detect, however subconsciously, an artificial absence of expressing a position expected to exist. So, societal pressure (per the comment) in this case evidently.
And that’s actually true for a lot of people. But not everyone. And there’s zero support for trying to figure it out and come to an informed decision before you dive in, and even less for concluding that actually you don’t think it’ll be that great for you and you’re not going to do it.
>Surveys conducted over the last few years on representative samples in the US and Germany suggest that the percentage of parents who regret having children is approximately 17–8%.
- Financial difficulties
- Being a single parent
- Having children with a disability
All seem to vastly influence the result.
How would that work?
Don't get me wrong I couldn't imagine life without them, don't regret them, and I care for their well being deeply, but it certainly was not (and still is not at 5 and 3 years old) this overpowering feeling of love.
In the meantime, if your means allow it, nannies and au pairs can be a huge help. I'd even advise you to hire a full-timer. (You might even want to consider moving to a country where this is cheaper and more easily possible.) There ought to be no shame in it.
I was deeply burned out at the 14 mark with my first child. I did lots of things since then and am much better even after more children.
I’m one of those people who had a strong feeling of falling in love with my child right away, but even so the toil and sleep deprivation ground my sanity down to a low I never reached before or since.
I was really anxious about #2, but a) we spent some savings and hired much more help for the first year, and b) she just sleeps better than her older brother, which is luck. It’s been incomparably better.
To the parent poster, look into a mother’s helper, or even a cleaner who can come daily. We also had to switch to formula earlier than we planned (biology intervened), and that transition had to happen even earlier with #2, and frankly that helped too. I’ve become very pro-formula. Nursing is nice when it’s working, but if it’s not, it’s not worth making a tough year harder—formula has gotten quite good and lets you balance the load better. The breastmilk-IQ link everyone’s scared of isn’t borne out by sibling studies anyway.
To speak plainly, I wasn't terribly interested in my son until he turned 3 years old. Then he started talking, started developing a personality with interests of his own, and fatherhood then became much more interesting. But I was intentionally quite uninvolved in those very early years. I don't regret this, don't see how else it could have been, and indeed I feel that some degree of fatherly aloofness towards infants is natural.
And I was 51.
Someone has to guide the small children towards being functional human beings and it's a lot of work. I found they have interesting personalities and ways of expressing themselves by 1 at the latest.
Even ignoring the extra work for the mother or whoever is actually providing the care, this conscious decision is not cost free for the future of the relationship with the child. It makes it harder to straighten the ship later.
Same for the relationship with the wife, they remember.
That may have been your experience, but I would push back hard against generalizing that notion.
For my first child, we bottle-fed formula, and I was very involved in her routine: night feedings, diaper changes, counting days since the last poop, all of it. I felt very invested in every tiny milestone. It was a lot of problem solving, and I was very invested in her progress.
For my second child, because my wife breast-fed that time, I felt a little bit more like an outsider. I jumped in to help where I could, but it took longer for me to feel the same kind of connection. I also got much less paternity leave the second time around, which is likely the bigger factor.
All that to say, I think there are a lot of environmental factors that can play into infant attachment. No one should feel guilty for not having attachment right away, but it should still be pursued.
When the mother breastfeeds, and dad just fills in around the cracks without directly “providing care” beyond holding the kiddo and changing diapers, how can they be judged for feeling aloof? When are they bonding?
You should consider softening your tone, being a dad is fucking hard.
All that time in between the breastfeeding? Somehow, this question does not compute for me (as a father of a breast-fed 8-month-old baby).
First kid?
(It's our second kid)
When my daughter was born I was crying with joy. And while her infancy was enormously challenging, especially as she was born right when COVID lockdowns began (which prevented ANY assistance), I was immediately and profoundly in love with her.
It was very important to me to be extremely engaged when she was an infant. I wanted to - and did - earn her trust as a caretaker and source of comfort. And now, as a 4 year old, the relationship I have with her is utterly priceless.
It's pretty simple, by doing it.
The answer is certainly "no". But does it matter? I guess it does in this age - after decades of social conditioning that parenthood is not much but an individual's lifestyle choice.
All this leading to worsening of social cohesion at all levels, inability to think beyond one's lifetime, extreme self-absorption, decrease in hope, demographic collapse across the world.
Not for nothing humans developed social pressure for parenthood: why would most humans willingly choose to give up their selfs for others over decades (if not lifetime)? Even laws/sanctions don't work if you don't morally know what is the right path.