Friends with babies
Friends with babies
221 comments
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I don't have kids but I still like to wonder about where planes are going
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where planes are going
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Another one that's not corporate, and doesn't remove planes when someone pays a fee.
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Some people get easy babys.
And then there are the people who get to be parents of ever-screaming high energy high need children.
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Then there are the ones who have an easy baby, wonder what all the fuss is about, and then have a second which is a nightmare. Actual quote from friends of ours who had it that way round - "I understand what you were on about now."
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I knew a couple that had four super easy babies in a row. Just delightful, sleeping through the night within a month of birth, no colic, easy like Sunday morning girls. So they went for one more. Had a boy that was the hardest baby in the world. Didn’t sleep through the night till 5, colic, had a nuclear reactors worth of energy in him. They said if that had been their first they never would have had a second.
You never know what you’re going to get. My daughter was ROUGH the first 9 months, hardest thing I’ve ever been through. But then it got a lot easier and every day was better. She’s 15 now and the coolest kid. We had planned to have a second but by the time we could even wrap our heads around it she could talk, so we asked her if she wanted a sibling. She thought about her two best friends, who are brother and sister and fought like mad, and said nah. I didn’t want to go through that first 9 months again so that was that. Really glad we did that, we’ve got such a great bond with the three of us.
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This happened to my family. Our first was all around pretty easy. Our second was absolutely insane. She gave my wife and I PTSD; we felt like abuse victims. She screamed 90% of her whole existence until she was 2. Any noise above a whisper would wake her up. This kid would break all parents. We tried everything to make it easier and literally nothing worked. She is the most intense child I've ever met, and she is cute as all hell. Love her to death, but my god is she difficult and stubborn.
We started watching TV with headphones because we were so scared of waking her up during nap time. Screamed for hours if she woke up, nothing could fix it.
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That's why I'm pro abortion. But not after the child's 10th year. That would be unethical.
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Silly, you have to phrase it the way new parents do.
Legalize abortion through 129 months.
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Come on. They're not people until they're 23.
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I always thought labeling the death penalty as post-natal abortions would get the conservatives against it.
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Yeah I agree, by the tenth year you know for sure wether that child is an asshole or not.
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There is both how easy is the kid and how much support there is around (not just from family and friends but also institutional). And then there is how fulfilling you personally find being “parent”. Honestly, it took me more than I would have wanted to find a parent-other life balance. And I still find the parent life to be a bit limiting at times. While I have friends that dove head first into the parent life apparently seamlessly.
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I was a really easy baby. Too easy, actually. Didn’t say a word until I was 4.
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Why bother if you can't say much, right?
-- I assume was my item toddler brain's reasoning. Do a few words here and there, lay off for a while, then go in with the sentences.
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I have 1 of each. The first is our impossible one. I still get shocked how easy it has been the second time around. Things I used to stress about or cry over how fucked my life is are non existent this time around. Don't get me wrong, a child, even a good one, is a huge amount of work. It's just crazy how different they can be from each other.
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We have one of those "major pain in the ass" ones, and sometimes I look at other people's kids and think how boring they are. Love my demon spawn
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Mine is crazy when she's awake. But she has slept through the night alone since 6 months old. I have to remind myself when she's awake how much more sleep I have gotten than other parents.
Though she did need to be held for every sleep period up until 5 months old. Some switch flipped. Before that she basically slept every hour on my wives lap or in my baby carrier.
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There is no easy babie. Maybe an easier baby.
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One must understand that the hormones which motivate breeding instinct in social mammals override all other considerations on a neurochemical level when someone has a baby--if those hormones and emotional systems are working correctly.
(Sometimes they aren't, after all; everyone knows those statistical outlier individuals who stick out like a sore thumb for having no parental instincts.)
If a common-sense-overriding mechanism were not in place to drive reproduction, a species will go extinct.
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It's exactly the inability (more like refusal) of most of us to override our base instincts that is going to cause the extinction of not just ourselves, but most complex life on the planet along with us. I say that not just as someone with "no parental instincts," but rather a humble human who actually uses the ability to see further than my nose.
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Equally of course, if we use our mighty intellects to override our breeding instincts entirely then we’d arrive at the same extinction rather more quickly.
So you know, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Given our current birth rates in the western world I’m less worried about our breeding instincts than our inability to convince everyone that their children should live in a better world than them, apparently that’s the instinct that broke first.
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Brain: I'd have to be crazy to have a baby...
Biology: No problem!
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What's worse to me is that mother's also forget the pain and awfulness of 9 months of pregnancy followed by childbirth, leading to them wanting another child.
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Maybe im misunderstanding:
Are you saying that there necessarily exists for all not extinct species of social mammals a "common-sense-overriding mechanism"?
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There's a reason bustin makes me feel good
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There necessarily exists in all mammals (and also some other species as well such as several speeches of birds) a mechanism that will override all other motivators up to and including common sense if the specimen in question even manifests the feature of common sense in the first place.
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Meh. My wife and I had kids based upon our own thoughts of how we wanted our life to go, not based upon some reproduction drive. The sex drive is a totally different thing, but there was no urge and pull to have kids for us.
We've had three kids and it's been an incredible experience with very few downsides and massive upsides. I was not a "kid person" before having kids, but IMO it's one of the peek good experiences in life.
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I didn't really want kids, but my wife did, so we compromised and had 6.
Jokes aside I found it super fulfilling, I had struggled a lot with depression and feeling like everything was pointless, but raising kids gives me a purpose and makes mudane stuff like work feel meaningful. I definitely get what the comic is talking about, it's rough a lot of the time, but it was what I unexpectedly needed in my life.
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but raising kids gives me a purpose
Ugh, this makes me shudder. It just sounds like "I've eagerly embraced my role as part of a procreation machine".
I guess it's necessary that some people become parents, in order to keep humanity going. And, it's better if those people are doing it willingly rather than reluctantly. But, it just sounds like evolution reached into your brain and turned off some critical faculties in order to make you a more effective procreator.
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Humans were never meant to take care of babies as couples or alone.
Research suggests that given the tradeoffs of our evolutionary path, we had to shift towards a collective parenting (call it tribe, clan, extended family, etc.)
The modern "individualization" of the person is what has convinced us that such parenting form is "normal" and bearable, and that if you feel overwhelmed, there is something wrong with you.
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Parent of 1.5y here.
Without grandparents in picture I would go crazy.
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I dont know where i heard it, but "children should not have only 2 parents". Meaning the grandparents, uncles, everyone else should parent the child somewhat.
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The cliché quote is "it takes a village to raise a child" and I agree. In Western nuclear family culture, that "village" has largely been forgotten.
Most people who are "childfree", or even anti-natalist, don't hate children. In a more cooperative society, many would definitely slot into that mentor/cool adult role; myself included.
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Doesn't Ruth know you can reuse the same glass instead of getting a new glass every time you want more wine
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Yeah, but that makes it much more difficult for the artist to show you shes drunk.
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That's called a creative challenge
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Oh I assume that was at a bar or something.
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Oh yeah maybe
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Father for 12 years here, never have I ever said anything even remotely close of this sort to any my non kids / single friends, is it an American thing?
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American father here. Not as far as I know. I tell folks don't have kids unless you're 100% sure. Even then, get a pet first. I love my kid. But boy, do I sure believe folks should get all sorts of tests before they decide now.
Kids are hard man, especially if you didn't have a good example growing up.
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I hear you man, I was just always curious how often actually the issue comes up in a normal chill time with friends or even in a normal conversation with coworkers, unless people ask me specifically for advice, or ask about my kids, it's not something that just comes up naturally...I'm here aren't I? Trying to enjoy my time with you, nothing more, If I wanted to air out my frustrations, there's definitely a time and a place
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it helps to be enslaved to a system that forces you to spend an average of 8 hours a day working only to be classified as part time while getting no health benefits whatsoever despite there being essentially no government healthcare
*I'm including excessive commute and non-paid work as "working"
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It's a self-marketing/preservation thing.
When the kids are infants, the parents are sleep deprived and miserable at times, we they get such a seretonin boost from the baby factor so they don't kill them (yay evolution). They advocate for others to have kids because it feels so great.
When they hit their slightly difficult years, that seretonin boost starts to drop, work/life balance becomes harder, financial hardship starts to hit as they need to feed them more and provide them outside activities. They still take pride in their kids, but need to tell everyone how awesome it is, but they especially need to tell themselves.
When they hit their teens, they're now providing adult prices for things. Cars, Insurance. There's little money left and little disillusion. If they had the kids late in life, their earning potential will end up dropping just as the kids leave home making bucket list plans harder to reach.
It's worse in the US because we have shitty work/life balance and almost total lack of public transportation / affordable heathcare.
The childless fare better and live more comfortably.
And we wonder why populations are in decline.
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I’ve heard similar from people, usually the “you’ll change your mind when you find the right person”. I am from the US.
The worst was a conversation I had with coworkers. I mentioned I didn’t want kids because it would be really hard on my body to be pregnant after a near fatal car crash (back broken and lost a major organ). One gal said she thinks all women should have a baby. So I said, if I change my mind I can always adopt. She said “I think all women should have their own baby, it makes you a real woman. Adopting isn’t the same as having your own, there is not the same level of love there”. Worst part, she said this in front of another coworker who was adopted from a not great situation into a very loving and supportive family.
She was a misogynistic asshat about other things too.
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Maybe it's cause they don't get as much time off work to care for their kids as Europeans do?
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It's a childless person thing. Very much an outsider "I only see my friends when they're looking for time out" perspective.
If you want to see this in spades, you can go through the back catalog of Penny Arcade. Pre-kids, there was a ton of this "Oh no! Kids are the worst! They get in the way of all my drunken debauchery and time-consuming hobbies." Post-kids, its a tidal wave of "Look at what my son can do! Look at what my daughter is into!" and they're going out of their way to make life as fun and fulfilling as possible for the next generation, because that's what they know they craved at that age.
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I'm starting to just be the person they want us to be because screw them. Like you said I've never seen any comic or media rubbing in the face of people with kids like these people without kids love to cry about. It's watching a guy in the cuck chair cry. You put yourself there, quiet down.
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The best birth control is other people's children.
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I gotta say, it's been the exact opposite for me.
One couple has kids, and everyone passes around the baby making cooing faces. Six months later, half the block is pregnant.
Add in that there's this reflexive desire in a big community of like-aged friends/family for our kids to be friends, too. My wife has eight or nine different cousins who are all her age. And we all had kids within a year or two of one another.
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I used to agree but my hormones tell me otherwise.
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Clapping ovaries, eh? That's the noise that IT'S BABY-MAKING TIIIIIIME!
That's "klapperende eierstokken" in Dutch, BTW.
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Honestly as a father I agree that being a parent is the hardest thing I've done in my life but, I'm also so fucking tired of the "it's hell" joke.
My older dughter is now a teenager with all the trouble that entails and the selfishness she has but still there are no words to describe how much she helps when needed, how hard of a pilar she is to me, how caring and loving she is....Oh wait there is one...
Family
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Nuclear families are intentionally isolating because it makes women and children more vulnerable.
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It really does take a village and we need to get back into living with big extended families.
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I absolutely adore my kiddo and find meaning in my role as a dad that I did in very few other things I've done in life.
That said, it definitely does change your life in a way where you will not be able to prioritize the things that are just for you anymore. I am both deeply happy to have become a parent and simultaneously very glad that my wife and I waited and got our finances in order and traveled and lived our life as a couple for almost a decade before we decided to be parents. For parents whose story wasn't quite as deliberate, I can imagine a lot of conflicting feelings.
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I would recommend reading the Baby decision to people. It's a very open minded examination, despite what the title might implicate also very open and supportive for childless/childfree mindset. Even touches topics like, just because you like kids, doesn't mean you have to have them, you can teach, volunteer for after school activities, etc.
I think the single most important take away from it is that whether you decide to have kid(s) or not, you give something up.
You also have to go into it responsibly and it's also okay to reevaluate as you go along, e.g. just because you wanted 3 kids before getting married, doesn't mean you can't take a moment to reevaluate after the first if you still want that.
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Even touches topics like, just because you like kids, doesn't mean you have to have them, you can teach, volunteer for after school activities, etc.
Plus parenting is a lifelong role. Your kids are gonna be 50 one day, and you'll probably be alive for that.
Personally, I've never liked children (the age group), but I have always admired some of my friends' relationships with their parents, and have always wanted adult children (that is, the relationship) of my own, so I had kids. And although my kids are pretty cool, I still mostly think other people's kids are annoying, and have only softened my views on that front a little bit.
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I do wonder if there's ever been a generation or ever will be a generation of kids that grow up and don't go, well at least I'm not going to make the mistakes of my parents.
I think everyone thinks everyone else's kids are annoying because everyone else's kids were brought up by parents that were trying to compensate for different traumas. The hands-off parents are trying to not be helicopter parents, and the helicopter parents are trying to not be absent parents.
In my experience annoying kids are always the fault of the parents.
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About to be 43 and more grateful every year that my partner and I are childfree. I like hanging out with my friend's kids occasionally, they can be funny tiny humans, but I hit a limit quickly and we invariably share a sigh of relief once we're in the car on our way home.
I'm also grateful that there are folks who love kids and are great, involved parents to them. I'm in awe of my friend's ability to be the mom she is and I appreciate her efforts to better the collective group of humanity by two. Even more grateful that I was free to make a different choice. It takes all kinds, ya know? And kids benefit from unofficial "aunties", I think.
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Kids' parents generally benefit from unofficial "aunties" too!
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Meh, there’s enough of a biological drive to have children there’s no need to pressure people into it socially. It’s condescending to assume someone else will follow your same “growth” trajectory.
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evolution has given us a drive to have sex sure enough.
but my impression is that there's not a lot of biological drive to have children per se, as shown by a lack of children the moment that women can actually decide whether to have them.
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Some of my women friends have shared that they definitely felt a need/pang/drive to have kids. Not all of them listened based on the other things they decided to do with their lives or their bodies' ability, but it doesn't mean the feeling isn't there. I wouldn't conclude from my anecdotal information that that drive extends to all women, but I would guess that many women feel it given how prevalent the discussion is.
The choice of whether to have kids at all is important, but doesn't rule out the presence of some evolutionary biological drive. Although, it's possible it's not some genetic instinct and is instead some cultural thing that becomes more powerful during certain hormonal shifts that occur across a woman's life cycle. I've never studied such things, but I'm open to different possibilities.
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It’s probably difficult to prove that it’s genetic but at least anecdotally the biological clock is a thing.
And there are societies that exist today with relatively young first birth ages. But this is impossible to determine how much genetics vs culture contribute.
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Often it's more about validating your own situation unfortunately
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Oh I accept that it feels like a very normal thing to say. It’s just that we should avoid acting upon them.
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Naw, kids are great fun
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I like kids but I do not want my own.
I think people should be OK with other people making their own choices.
Telling someone to "grow up and have kids" like in the comic is really shitty just like how telling someone they made a mistake by having kids would be.
Idk why the argument is "everyone should have kids or nobody should have kids. "
I feel like the internet has ruined many people's tolerance for ambiguity or difference.
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With a statement like that, there's no middle ground. Either you're a unicorn of a parent who can deal with it all or you're leaving someone else with most of the burden.
... so tell us, precious, which is it?
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when I see a cute baby smile at me, its like a sims moodlet. "I need one of those. Why dont I have one of those". After 24 ish hours I remember babysitting and caring for my sibling and cousin, and quickly go back to normal. 30 and childless.
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Real talk. I said the exact same thing and didn't plan to have kids. My wife and I didn't have kids until she was 36.
Babysitting a cousin is not the same as parenting your own kin. It's completely different.
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Depends heavily on how indepth that "babysitting is". When that Abby sitting involves cooking two meals a day for them, taking them two and from school, changing their diapers at 3am and taking them to the doctor.
All because their parents are too drunk and at the bar instead of home... Well
I fucking babysat my cousins and it was more raising them then anything their parents did
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Offtopic, but after reading these comments, I'm so glad I first opened Lemmy today rather than Reddit. Thoughtful, varied discussion, instead of sifting through a ton of samey "joke" comments to maybe (if ever) find some nugget of humanistic or original thought, or get bored, doomscrolling and lose hope in humanity.
I just love this community, thank you all for being here.
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I feel like this cartoon was drawn by someone who doesn't have kids. Or didn't want them but got them.
Be fulfilled without kids or with them. Don't be fulfilled by judging those who have chosen different from you.
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My interpretation of this comic was that it is making fun of the parts of having a kid that they don't tell you about, not that it was being judgemental towards anyone.
Sure, it is being hyperbolic, but hyperbole is common feature of humor.
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No shit. Raising kids is an act of love and sacrifice.
If you aren't willing to do this, do NOT have kids!
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There's definitely this strain of "Why would I ever want to sacrifice for anyone else? Who could possibly deserve that much love?" coming off these comic artists and their readership.
It reeks of alienation and despair. Like, that final panel of the comic might as well be of the artist themself. Alone, on a roof, half conscious, rings under the eyes - that's more than a few people I knew back in college.
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I'm married, 41, and childless by choice. I like this comic because it validates my consistent experience with arrogant parents acting as though I'm not truly mature or fulfilled because I haven't become a father.
There is no subtext of alienation or despair in my enjoyment. To the contrary, both my wife and I are largely satisfied with our lives and content with our choice to not force another human being into the fucking cruel absurdity of this world.
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I would be absolutely destroyed if I had dumb little copy of me that I was required to take care of.
I understand now why my dad was so distant and eventually went away.
Having an insane mother helps, too.
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<3 sending love friendo
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When I was starting high school and going through registration with my mom, we were standing in line behind another kid and his mom that I knew pretty well from middle school.
My mom starts talking to his mom about how she now has one child each in elementary, middle school, and high school this year, and it's going to be overwhelming.
What my mom didn't know is that she was talking to the mom of a legendary family of like seven kids. The guy I went to school with was the second youngest of the bunch. In elementary school, one of his older brothers stopped by the class and talked about his time in boot camp. We had middle aged teachers who had gone to school with his older siblings. My mom did not pick her battle well on that one.
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As a parent of two I really enjoy talking about this. It's such a complex, nuanced topic. Yeah you sacrifice a lot, sleep, time, sanity, but you kinda unlock a whole new level of your life, in your mind. I wouldn't want to change it back, ever.
Just yesterday I read about cultural neoteny. Our society is so safe, that people don't have to mentally mature to full grown adults anymore. No famine, no war, no oppression, no violence to deal with (yet). We can stay teenagers forever, being unable to deal with criticism, lacking resilience, unwilling to take responsibilities, cultivating out sensitivities that then clash with other peoples sensitivity.
Again, this is not the place for a long conversations, but I can't help but feel that the constant joke "look at those stupid parents giving up their lifes" may be a part of that. There is some truth to it though. I am a little burned out, I may have dropped some life goals along the way. But then again, what's the purpose of being alive?-
But then again, what’s the purpose of being alive?
Apparently dragging people from peaceful nonexistence into existence without their consent so that during their lifetime they will endure a lot of suffering, admittedly experiencing some transient joys along the way but doomed to one day have to undergo the agony of getting sick and dying, after which everything that happened during their life will have been meaningless, given that one day (in the near or far future) there will be no humans left and so even how their life affected other people will have been for naught?
I mean, that does not seem like a great life purpose to me, but you do you I guess?
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dragging people from peaceful nonexistence into existence without their consent
The male body gave consent to copy itself before ejaculating and the female body also consented to copy itself. Both copies agreed to merge and create a new copy —the child. So technically, we did consent to being born. (Except when the mother has been raped, or throughout the pregnancy was denied abortion because of some stupid law — a timeframe allowed for one party to withdraw that consent).
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Christ this is dark. I'm not a parent and I feel like this.
The Internet used to be such a neat place. Why is it so shit ever since like 2020? Or is that just the whole world? Since 2017 maybe.
I had a thought yesterday: it sucks that after you die, you can't come back. AND that time just keeps flowing for everybody else after you're gone. What a great gift to be alive, at all, though. Why do some people feel the need to make it as shitty as possible for others?
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The Internet used to be such a neat place.
You just used to be younger and hanging out in forums with other younger people, with brighter and more optimistic outlooks.
Now you're discovering the Boomer Web, where everyone removed and whines and despairs and complains.
I had a thought yesterday: it sucks that after you die, you can’t come back. AND that time just keeps flowing for everybody else after you’re gone.
You're still here. We don't go anywhere when we die. We return to the soil and become integrated into something new. Our memories fade away, but we're still the same raw dough we sprang from. And our planet is rich with life. The thing that is you will become a million other things that are someone, in time. And they'll become a million million other things. And on and on, into eternity.
Why do some people feel the need to make it as shitty as possible for others?
Brain chemicals, mostly.
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I had a thought yesterday: it sucks that after you die, you can't come back. AND that time just keeps flowing for everybody else after you're gone. What a great gift to be alive, at all, though.
That is a profound thought which many people don't independently get to.
I honestly did not get to it independently either. It took reading a a lot on Indigineous precepts and accepting time as cyclical rather than linear to see life that way. Modern life treats existence like there's a progress bar over our heads and I think many people derive a sense of frustration with the world from that.
That doesn't mean there isn't room for self improvement. I just think its important not to have a crabs in a bucket mentality because thst is harmful to oneself and others.
There are other issues at play here, wage slavery and the despair that brings on, but the goal should be to escape that which limits our world view.
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I have no kids and I'm still as miserable.
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Did you used to go places?
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Maybe it's time to have kids and share the misery
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You're not thinking the long game here!
You don't have babies to be happy, you have babies to indoctrinate them into believing your bullshit!
You're influencing generations to come! Just think, man! Think!-
You're wrong. You have kids to assure your pension and some to pull the plug when you're old and dement.
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Well this is a horrifying thread to read 3 months away from our first making an appearance
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Its all true. The bags under the eyes. The stress. The moving your life into the closet. The rationing of self-care.
But the important thing is, it's still the greatest joy. Babies take everything from you, and demand more, but its still a fucking bargain.
Edit - also congratulations and good luck!
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You will be tired. But you'll also be fulfilled in a way that nothing else in life can truly approximate.
There will be sleepless nights but your child will also imbue many of your wakeful hours with a joy you've never had before.
If you really open your mind and see the world from their perspective, you'll come to appreciate things you've long taken for granted.
The first few months are pretty rote. Feed, diaper, nap every 2-3 hours. There's not a lot of feedback. There's still joy in the comfort you bring to them but man is it exhausting.
Eventually.. that first time they smile at you or babble at you... it will stay with you. There are many facets to love but the love you'll feel in that moment will be like nothing else you've experienced. Its like seeing the sun rise for the first time.
Father of 18 months. Wouldn't change a thing.
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He could also regret everything. Spiral into depression and find he is not fulfilled at all.
Leading to a total life spiral.
Iv had more then one friend better spouted off the whole. You'll be fulfilled in ways you don't know nonsense. Only for them to take their own f****** life because they couldn't handle it leaving themselves dead their wife alone and their child fatherless.
Really f****** sick and tired of people claiming just absolute b******* with no understanding of the person they're talking to.
We have no way to know if he actually will be a good parent if they'll be fulfilled if they'll hate it if they will hate their child if they'll hate themselves if they'll love their child. If they'll love themselves, we don't know them and spouting off. B******* does nothing. It's too complex a topic for anyone myself or yourself to have any real grasp on for someone else. We can only speak for ourselves
So speak for yourself and not others
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Some people are amazing parents, it takes talent and compassion, I think you guys will do great, good luck
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I only sacrificed sleep a bit in the first 3 years until both my kids were sleeping through the night. In no time they are school age, then off to university. The people I often see represented by the women in the comic are those who are married to their jobs, not parents. If you don't want kids, fine, don't have them but many parents think their kids are one of the best parts of their lives. Things that are the most worthwhile in your life often take a bit of work or challenge.
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We got the second kid when the first one was almost 4. It was pretty rough, we where just getting back our sleep, and went in 2+ years of irregular sleep. She is 2 and a half now and thankfully sleep is getting much better.
If you have a kid and thinking about a second one, I would recommend don't wait 3+ years, or wait 5+ years so you have a bit of time to recover.
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*singles with babies
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Both
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Having a kid will fill that void inside you of "wtf am I doing with my life". At least for me it did, purpose and responsibility made me happy.
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Rich people travel too much
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It's all they have left to feel fulfilled. As a lower middle class dude that will work until the day I die: I dream of a year or two I can just travel when I'm in my 60s. But I'll probably bail my neice and nephew out of some scam they fell for while paying off some scam my mother fell for on a deep dementia dive on Instagram.
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I wish you this dream travel and both to solve the financial issues. Even if would you travel the whole Asia or Africa in the two-year trip, you would not produce so much pollution as really rich people who have 'city breaks' every weekend by plane, or have 8 holiday a year. I personally know just middle class ladies traveling in group 4 times a year on holiday.
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"I had no children. I haven’t transmitted the legacy of our misery to any creature"— Machado de Assis (1881)
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They get mad because I “don’t have responsibilities” and it’s not a conversation just people shouting at me
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basically, the parents who are fulfilled with their kids, versus the ones who probably needed a 1 year course on how to parent before being granted the privilege to have a child.
I say this, as a parent.
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I'm not planning to have kids. In fact I have a Dr. appointment today for a vasectomy referral. But if such a class were offered I would 100% take it before having a kid.
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I resent your implication that just because I have a great relationship with my kid and I find my family relationships fulfilling that I must know wtf I'm doing.
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you resent the fact that someone assumes you're knowledgeable about raising a loving child?
I'll just assume you possess qualities that any good parent should have, like patience, the ability to communicate clearly, etc. . . . . these are the type of things I mean when I mention parental knowledge. People learn these over the course of their lives, so it's likely ingrained in you, not like knowledge you gain from any class.
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there are several books available. If you child is healthy, it's actually a pretty easy learning curve; you have time to read chapters based on the age of your child, and newborns are actually pretty ... uninteractive. They slowly develop and you're there to check the milestones they should hit during that time period and help them reach those milestones.
If your child is sick, disabled etc, good fucking luck. also if both parents are working.
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What was that movie about post partum depression and the nannie that comes over to help?
Tully by J reitman (2018)
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Is it good? I've had it in the backlog for a while
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I found it very good, fascinating, makes you feel a full range of emotions being confronted by such a natural yet heavy human experience.
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I am childfree 33, childfree both by choice and by economic circumstances. I have a intense aversion towards baby's, doesn't mean others shouldn't get them. I used to think that instead of having kids, I could just be the cool uncle that babysits sometime. Turns out I really dislike babys. So, probably should never get my own.
Sometimes I get tempted by the wish, but then I am reminder that I prefer the risk of regretting not having children, then risking regretting having children. And while I do subscribe to the anti-natalist worldview, that only should dictate my actions, not those of other people.
I am very lucky to have a partner who is also childfree by choice.
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Whenever someone tells me about their kids I’m like, I’m happy for you, but have you seen literally anything humanity has done for the last half century?
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Skill issue. Kids are really not that hard if you take it seriously like any other job. Traveling is mostly dead though until they turn teen.
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My parents took my sister and I to China, Hawaii, Europe, as well as other vacations when I was like 10-14 or something. I knew it wasn't normal when we were doing it, like my friends families weren't doing this, but I didn't realize how unusual it was until much later. I definitely respect them for not leaving us, the kids, out of it, and teaching us how to travel, but man it's crazy to spend that much money on a kid that'll only remember a fraction of the trip at best.
Tangentially, speaking of memory - in China specifically, I remember being kinda swarmed by locals taking selfies with us, as my sister and I were two blond white kids, which isn't an everyday sight there. I still wonder if we're in any photo albums.
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Hard disagree. Kids are different, have different needs, and behave differently. Parents also have a wide variety of support structures around them, which also has a huge impact on how difficult raising kids is.
There are people who will struggle to be good parent regardless of other factors, but that is not the only reason raising kids might be hard. I'm glad you haven't had some of the struggles other people have, but you sound like the guy born on third who thought he got a home run.
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i was hell incarnation but my sister was calm and playful. Each kids is a new experience.
Plus we travel nonstop until we were teens. Because we can finally tell mom no. I hate traveling so much now. 2 days road trips one way and forced to do homework in car. Miserable. Don't get me started on planes.
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Going to go the opposite way. Kids are fucking easy. Don't listen to these other people. You're literally built to create them against your better judgement for a reason. "ooooOOOOOoOOOOo I don't know if I'll be a good parent" shhhhhh, throw out the condoms. It'll all work out.
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pfft. friends with kids have to get public assistance which is constantly reduced and taken away. I don't have kids but I have a roof over my wife and I's head. For now anyway.
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