I find the days that I forget myself and throw myself into trying to be a good dad are the days I find joy in fatherhood. Weekends especially I try to forget the stresses of work and productivity and everything else and try to spend as much time with them as possible. Playing, teaching, and learning with them.
Not saying it's universal. Just a datapoint from me.
So my advice is: find activities to do with them that you would both enjoy. Maybe going to parks, museums, have them help you on house chores... You only have a few years left under they get to middle school and start becoming more distant.
I wanted to be a dad more than anything in the world, and I absolutely love my kids and I love being a dad.
Most of the time.
There is a TON of things you have to do as a parent that objectively sucks, and you have to do it no matter how you are feeling and no matter what else you also have to do. It is impossible not to feel trapped, at times, by the understanding that it never ends, that you are a parent 24/7/365.25 and that your kids dominate your life. I don’t care how much you love your kids, you are going to feel that sometimes (or you are so strongly into the self-denial that you force yourself to pretend you always like it).
That doesn’t mean you aren’t a good parent, or even that you made the right choice to be a parent. Most of the best things in life involve sacrifice, and doing things you don’t want to have to do, and powering through even when you want to give up. It’s cliche, but the struggle makes the rewards even sweeter. Doesn’t mean the struggle doesn’t suck sometimes, and you might want to give up, and you have to use all your self-control tricks to maintain.
I feel even worse for parents who did IVF or other fertility treatments, or who adopt. In my conversations with some close friends who are in those situations, they talk about how much pressure they feel to never complain when it is hard. They spent a ton of money and effort and used insurance money and many doctors and procedures (or all the interviews and inspections and money for adoption) so they could have kids, and now they want to complain about being a parent? Of course, they still have all the same struggles and pains and nostalgia for their before life, no matter how much this is what they want.
Anyway, I am not sure what my point is. I just want people to be honest with themselves, and other parents and future parents, about what the entire parenting experience really is. Sometimes I think parents don’t want to scare potential parents off of being parents, which I think is understandable but overstated. There is simply no way to convey to non-parents what it is actually like to be a parent, and this applies to both the good and bad things. I thought my wife and I were prepared and knowledgeable and ready, and we were to the extent we could be. But so many things we imagined about what it would be like is not the reality at all, but even if we had a Time Machine I couldn’t explain to my previous self what it is actually like. You just have to experience it… if you want to. I would never tell people they should have kids, because it is such an all-encompassing thing that everyone has to decide for themselves… all without knowing what it will actually be like.
It is a hell of an adventure, though.
Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?
EDIT: Just to be 100% clear: I mean absolutely no judgement. I'm not going to tell you off or try to change your mind. I ask out of pure curiosity.
Critically: I give them my full attention.
I could choose to spend all that mental effort on myself, but I choose to spend it on them. That’s as good a demonstration of love as any, in my book anyway.
Edit: no offence taken! I didn’t interpret it that way at all.
Show mostly by example, not by direct mentoring.
What rich education and various cultures for 6-year-olds (or less)? That is simply irrelevant at that age and logistics of it just makes you hate everything. Do you even take your kids to dozen of arbitrary chosen classes?
Tone it down, everybody will feel better and you won't have to fake it. Happy parent is more important for family than robo parent.
My family and friends are multi-cultural so they’re naturally exposed to several cultures, for example. It’s also important to my wife and I as the world itself is multi-cultural, so having an appreciation that different people live their lives differently is important. We lead by example simply by living in a multi-cultural life and embracing it.
Take that same approach and apply it across the rest of the points I made. Nothing is forced, I promise.
It is true that some people are not really cut out to be parents. But unfortunately it is difficult to tell whether that will be you or not. I see people looking at comments in threads like this and then chiming in with sentiments along the lines of "see, this is why I never wanted to be a parent." There is no way to know that, and such statements strike me as cope. Becoming a parent changes you, but you won't know how until you do it. There is a lot of biology and psychology in play, for certain.
As I tell my own kids, however, be careful because you only get to become a parent one time. Cannot blame someone for opting out of the risk, even if the counterfactual is that they would have been amazing parents with amazing children and been much happier.
Men haven't evolved to be overly attached to babies or small kids like mothers did - that'd have been a weakness in the survival race. Men skills were completely different, usually related to being away from the kids most of the time.
Translate to modern day, that is men not really wanting to have kids (sometimes just going along with the wife's biological clock), and pretty much "feeling nothing" when the kids are born. There's a million documented examples of that.
However, once kids leave the "little puppy" phase and grow beyond the basic needs care that mothers provide, it's when the fathers start to really relate to them.
If your older kid is maybe 5-6 you're about to start that new phase. That's what happened to me, and I find (maybe not so extreme) examples of that on almost every guy I talk to.
Give it a second chance, maybe having kids is just not for you. But don't assume it's already the case, you may miss out whole new world.
have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else
At some point when our kid was still young, I started working 4/5 FTE, taking the afternoons off after ~14:00. I feel like that provided a lot of mental space. Since I was working part-time, I did not feel bad/guilty about not working the afternoons and I would be focused on being very productive from 8:30 to 14:00. The free hours were for doing stuff together or accommodating their playdates (picking up from school, ensuring the house doesn't get torn down).
Now they are an age where they want to do things without parents, so I am working full-time again, but do miss those early days where she would be with me in her seat on my bike and we'd cycle to the city and she'd be singing aloud from joy.
But every person is different and I think that there are also parents that start enjoying having kids more when they are older. So, your years may still come :).
dark comment
My dark comment would be: we are all learning on the job and I feel like I could do some things better with the experience I have now.
If I have a second life, I don't know what to do though, I probably will first make enough money before having kids at least.
I think you’ve hit the key difference.
I waited until I was 40 before having kids, and it just feels like I’m doing it on easy mode.
We had time and money sorted out, and tons of free baby stuff donated from all our friends who had done it already.
It’s still lots of work, but you’re at a place in life where you can handle it. I can’t imagine trying to raise kids in my 20s, with my crappy stressful office job and no money in my little studio apartment.
Hats off to anybody who can do that.
I will say that a lot of those issues have gotten better as they have gotten older (they are now 10 and almost 7). They don’t require the same level of constant attention that they used to, they are getting more and more interesting to talk to, and have developed interesting personalities and senses of humor.
Seeing them grow was fun, seeing them turning teenagers is a pain.
I now make it a point to be honest with people when they ask "Should we have kids?" and tell them about how hard it can be, etc. Most importantly, I tell people that they shouldn't have kids unless they would still want to do it if their experience doesn't land in the middle of the bell curve. We tend to romanticize the decision, and expect that everything "just gets even better" with kids. There are all sorts of ways your experience can be less than ideal. Unless you're evaluating your decision with those potential outcomes in mind, you're doing yourself, your partner, and even your future children a disservice.
I’m sure you love your kids and take great care of them, and it’s not your fault that you feel this way.
It would benefit all of us if this taboo was lifted, so that we could speak truthfully about the impact of kids on families, and maybe then we’d have to provide more support and encouragement to convince people to have them. Not everyone has free daycare from their grandparents or a large social network to babysit or the finances that make having a child less of a burden.
I can't wait to play with my 3 year old and 1 year old. I get so mad at work when I have an odd late meeting because it is keeping me from them.
My three year old helps me build furniture (he gets screws started, counts out parts, helps apply glue). I love showing him synths and instruments and seeing his face light up.
My one year old is a cuddle monster who likes listening to jazz with me. She also really enjoys when the cat climbs up on our lap and she gets to pet it.
I don't know your situation, but most miserable parents I know see their kid as something to manage, like some kind of annoying work underling.
I see my kids as little detectives.
My goal isn't to solve their case or even help them approach it in the right way. It's to give them an occasional hint (or step stool), keep them from danger, and help them discover the correct way to behave.
They find enough there to keep themselves entertained. It’s amazing how much interest deer poop can generate.
If the only thing you can enjoy is adult stuff or working then you might have a rougher time at it if you don't find joy in the pure act of raising a kid. For me the first few months were meh, but once they started to get a personality I found it more entertaining.
I tell others not to do it unless they are prepared to suffer. You won't know if its for you until you've already gone through the one way door. I wish others luck. For the unlucky, I wish grit and stoicism.
I wonder if there would be something identifiable in common if we fMRI'd your brains, as while you are definitely not alone it does seem like a pretty strong exception that makes the rule.
Now with smaller family units and less community interaction they represent a risk to security, mainly financially.
Having children for yourself provides more security for all the other families but barely anymore for your own. Meanwhile you bear most the costs and everyone else bears very little. So the incentives are totally reversed, and even worse the coupling between investment in children and payoff is cut which means the people in the best position to help their kids be successful are the least incentivized to do so.
Given the post you’re replying to, it seems you’re implying a specific reason, but what if it’s a different one? How about “I love children but having kids is super expensive”?
> There is generally an inverse correlation between monetary income and the total fertility rate within and between nations.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
> In 2021, the birth rate in the United States was highest in families that had under 10,000 U.S. dollars in income per year
And a few thousands more links.
always surprises me when ppl say this when they clearly observe the opposite in action. whats going on here.
My oldest will need a laptop for school next year. It isn't optional or provided.
Maybe you need a bigger car because car seats take up a lot of room.
What if your kid decides they want to join a sports team? A friend of a friend told me they did the math on a year of competitive swimming. It was $10,000 by the time they were done with equipment and travel.
A trip to the dentist for my family of four is about $1000 for just cleanings. Braces for my oldest were $3000 if I could pay cash or $4000 to finance. You could skip dental care, but some might consider that neglect.
What if the school tells you to get your child tested? That costs about $3000 in my part of the world. Half of the kids on my block are neurodivergent somehow. What do you do?
In a less well off part of the world, most of these "concerns" probably disappear. I think we have pretty high expectations of parents that aren't poor.
I don't know why you're trying to explain an outcome that is opposite of the observed outcome.
Are you saying that while more money is correlated with less fertility (the fact), that somehow even more money will reverse the trend and start going the other way?
Based on observed data, one could almost make the case that if only billionaires start stealing from the poor even more, then birth rates should go up.
I've always believed that it isn't money itself, but access to healthcare and education that lower fertility rates. Money correlates really strongly with access to healthcare and education.
Having good education and healthcare leads to birth control and maybe an abortion if the BC fails.
When a family of three is making $15K a year, do you believe baby four, five and six were planned out in agonizing detail? Or do you think maybe they weren't planned at all?
And I do believe more money going around would help. If the perspective is "I can't afford it", those who are doing OK will not have children if they can help it.
So it's expensive no matter what income bracket you're in.
Also: having many children used to be an insurance policy, but as countries become more developed it's less necessary.
> Generally, I regret having kids
Please don't ever, ever let them know this, or even allow them to figure it out. Especially before they're at least ~30 and able to begin to understand.
I regret the loss of my mental energy and personal time, but not them, if that makes sense.
It certainly is. Speaking from personal experience. And he let me know in a very direct and cruel way.
I make sure my kids know I love them in many, many ways.
Yes you definitely should try that.
This is stated as some sort of universal truth.
It is not. Please don’t make OP feel bad, whether you mean to or not.
Example: it took us an hour to walk the mile home from preschool together together. It's astounding to me to think that someone could be fulfilled and engaged for every minute of every day of that walk. That there's nowhere else they'd rather be. That some days it wouldn't just feel _slow_.
Being present for your kids can be hard work, and it sucks to be judged for putting in that work even when you don't enjoy it. I wish people would stop thinking they're better parents just because they _like_ spending a higher percentage of their time with their kids. All that means is that it's easier for them.
Celebrate the parents who put the work in, even when it's hard.
My kids miss out on nothing, don’t worry. There’s zero reason to pity them - they’re amazing and they have an amazing life. I purely regret my loss of mental energy and personal time.