The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood
shreyans.orgI have four children. I have never regretted it or wished for a different path. I know it isn't for everyone, but it absolutely was and is for me.
At the same time I do think articles like this should be countered with the reality that many fathers aren't overwhelmed with waves of love or "surreal magnificence". With each of my children being born the primary emotions I could point to were dread and anxiety.
The sudden overwhelming obligation to provide care, comfort and security for such a vulnerable human for decades encompasses your being.
One of the reasons birthrates have plummeted in the West, and sentiments about having children have dropped, is that we have no "village", so to speak. Having children is not only an astronomical expense -- every single element of life is dramatically more expensive, made much worse with the housing crisis occurring in many Western nations -- a couple is often entirely on their own. There are no respites or breaks.
And as children get viewed as a selfish luxury, the social norms for what a parent needs to do to be proper climb ever higher.
As the father of a teenager, I would also add: take parenting "wisdom" from new parents with the same grain of salt you would career advice from someone who just landed their first job.
I personally found the complexities of parenting and, even more importantly, family life, don't really start to emerge until after the first few years.
Talk to divorced parents of older children about the "Surreal Magnificence" of parenting and you'll likely get a hearty chuckle out of them.
To put a counter-point on your counter-point:
* Divorced parents aren't representative experiences for most parents. (The oft-used statistics that >50% of marriages end in divorce miss that those with one divorce often end up with N divorces. Aka most PEOPLE, and most COUPLES, do NOT end up divorced)
* The job of a parent is to raise an adult. There are certainly those that become enamored with the idea of parenting a baby/toddler/child and are unprepared for the complicated job ahead. But there are also those that seem to think their job ends as soon as the child is legally an adult. Or those that are all too happy to throw away their decade plus of investment because their teenager going through absolutely normal hormonal chaos are suddenly disrespectful to them.
* In essence, I'm trying to say that divorce parents of older children are just as much full of shit as the new parents in terms of giving someone advice.
Some brief googling suggests that 41% of first marriages end in divorce (ex. https://www.wf-lawyers.com/divorce-statistics-and-facts/). Obviously not >50%, but certainly in the neighborhood
I'd be curious how much of this changes once you account for a few basic fundamental things like:
* Being over 25
* Having a college degree.
The people who worry about marriage because of these stats are typically in this category. I bet just by accounting for these 2 points, the numbers would plummet to the 20s if not teens.
So I agree that naivety is a thing, but that doesn't mean you have to dismiss the advice. It's just that it's not wise to rely on one person's advice.
I have a two year old (well, she'll be two next week, close enough). Among my nearby friends are five couples who have have children that are one or two years older than mine. Their input has been extremely helpful in the last two years, because it's been mostly in the form of "these are the mistakes we first made and what we eventually figured out". It also helps that they are five very different couples so my partner and I can compare their experiences and figure out what applies to our situation and what doesn't.
Also, by comparison, I have friends with much older children too, and their input can essentially be reduced to "I'm sorry the first two years are a sleep-deprived haze of which my memories are limited to the photos and videos we took, so we have no advice for you."
The best parenting advice that I hear does not humble-brag about their own (this is undercurrent of most bad advice), rather acknowledges that each child is different, weird, and special in their own way.
> One of the reasons birthrates have plummeted in the West, and sentiments about having children have dropped, is that we have no "village", so to speak. Having children is not only an astronomical expense -- every single element of life is dramatically more expensive, made much worse with the housing crisis occurring in many Western nations -- a couple is often entirely on their own. There are no respites or breaks.
It’s the opportunity cost of having children. When you’re poor, it’s not changing what you can do with your life. You were never able to go to dinner or on vacation. When you’re wealthy, you can afford to bring them with you, or better, pay somebody to watch them while you’re gone. The well-off middle class needs to weigh completely changing their lives.
And it is reflected in numbers. The fertility rate has a non-monotonous relationship with income. It is the middle-income fertility that plummets.
https://x.com/theHauer/status/1222514313723875332/photo/1
From "Population Pyramids Yield Accurate Estimates of Total Fertility Rates", https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s13524-019-00842-x?sh...
> When you’re poor, it’s not changing what you can do with your life. You were never able to go to dinner or on vacation.
When you're poor and child-less, you can still sleep in on weekends, watch Netflix/game all day/night or whatever other (cheap) hobby you have. It's even possible to do a decent amount of travelling on a very tight budget these days (low-cost airlines, couchsurfing...). All things considered, today is not a bad time to be a poor person in terms of being able to have fun.
I think even for middle class, the main cost is actually the time rather than the monetary cost.
But I do agree that opportunity cost is the right framing.
is just so absolutely bizarre to me as a 28 year old childless man who intends to have kids that gaming could possibly be something that you would trade vs raising a literal human child who is a genetic copy of you and the person you love most in your life
Human beings vary in all kinds of ways, more than we generally expect, right down to the nature of our most fundamental fears and desires. Not everyone wants to have children, in the way that you do, and some people clearly want not to.
I doubt that anyone would prefer gaming to children because they hold gaming in the kind of profound esteem you feel for the task of "raising a literal human child"; more likely, they simply don't feel much of anything about having kids, or perhaps they feel some aversion. It's not hard for even a comparatively trivial activity you enjoy to feel more appealing than an alternative you don't actually desire.
I agree; as someone who was _very_ into gaming at different periods of my life. Both gaming and travelling struck me as things young adults do to pass the time when they don’t have the privilege and responsibility of a family.
I understand procrastination for sure, but the idea that someone would avoid having kids to do the above is absolutely bizarre to me.
Please don't take it as a personal attack, but you're 28 and from the way you're talking, it sounds like kids are not a priority for you right now, so apparently you want to do certain things before getting them. Many people who end up child-less are just like you - they don't actively decide "I'd rather game than have children", they just make excuses and postpone until it just doesn't work out at all.
One thing which I kind of regret about having children relatively late in my life (although I wasn't that much older when I had my first than you are now) is that I won't be there for them (and potentially grandchildren) as long as I wish I would be, esp. in good health. A depressing way to think about this is that every year I've enjoyed the freedom before them is a year I'm not going to spend with them.
no that perfectly makes sense, and for some context i am likely to have a kid within the next 5 years if things dont go horribly in my relationship, but beyond that i really struggle to imagine that a 42nd vacation at the age of 62 is going to be more satisfying than watching my kids graduate college
You’re sort of begging the question that the second thing is really desirable. You accurately describe the experience, but that doesn’t necessarily make it something people want.
im sorry but its just bizarre to think that you need to re-litigate whether checks notes the primary biological purpose of our existence is indeed desirable
“Biological purpose” is a weird phrase. Evolution has no purpose, it’s just what happens. Purpose is what we make of it.
In any case, it’s just a plain fact that some people don’t desire to raise a child. Many, probably most, do, but many don’t. Personally, I’d pick the video games. Heck, I’d pick nothing as a preferable alternative to raising children. Not everyone considers it a positive.
billions of years of evolution are screaming at you to reproduce. your entire being was crafted for that sole purpose, methinks our flesh machines might enjoy that and it might actually be a good thing.
crazy thought i know.
That’s great, but it didn’t actually work for me, or for many other people.
How is this any different than 25/50/75 years ago? Not much being said here. What has really changed in many wealthy countries: There is less family support because many people live far from their parents. And, proportionally, housing/healthcare/education is more expensive for middle class and below compared to previous generations.
And you don't think the destruction of the village and sharp decline in birth rate feed of each other? Individuals have outsourced so much to abstract "institutions" that they can't see alternatives whatever precarious and worsening services these institutions provide.
No. The reason why is because we have opportunities to move up and down the social ladder.
Basically it’s not really like the whole village raised your kid before, that’s more of a romanticized version. What happened was that your extended family helped because you lived with them for your entire life. So you have a kid, your sister in law watches them along with your mother while you work. Where do you work? Well that’s wherever your family works. If you are born into a farm, you are a farmer. If your family is blacksmiths, you’ll be a smith. Or a dung sifter, etc. If you can’t do it, maybe your farmer family sends you to apprentice with the local smith. But you rarely get a choice in what you do, where you live, etc.
Moreover, if you don’t like your family/they don’t like you: tough. You might hate your sister in law but who else will watch your kid while you sift dung?
What has changed is that we have the free market. Your can move out, have your own career and hire someone to care for your kids while you work. You no longer have access to “free” childcare but you have access to the job market instead. Want to leave the farm and move to the big city to become a jewelry maker? Go for it. But you won’t have much support to start a family. You are paying for free choice.
"The village" isn't limited to some pioneer dung sifter living seven generations to a hovel. Also absolutely bizarre how so many people so desperately want to make this an economic thing.
The village referred to the notion that children were viewed as important to the whole. The whole country, the whole province, the whole village, the whole neighbourhood, the whole family. Everyone cared about and contributed to the raising of children. In my childhood -- and at this point the village was already declining -- I had a number of friend families that were like second, third and fourth families where I could stayover for dinner whenever I wanted, they watched out for me, etc. There were many times where I spent nights at aunts with my cousins, or at grandparents.
Culturally this is far less common. We all move hundreds of kilometers apart. Sometimes for careers, more often because you're a loser if you stay near where you grew up. Many/most younger people have little relation with cousins or aunts or uncles. Grandparents now move to Arizona and ask for pictures occasionally. People have an antagonistic attitude towards other people's kids as a selfish trifle that are just a nuisance for everyone else.
No, hiring a nanny isn't equivalent and doesn't invalidate this.
Yes these were things we lost, but 'we' as in anytime in past 500 years. You just experienced it yourself for your line.
What was gained is meaningless to some, and next to everything to others. I don't fucking ever have to deal with anybody's crap I don't want to. It feels amazing, simple yet right way to live a life. How shitty my life would be if I had to accept and constantly tolerate people in family circle that for example aren't good people, moral ones or just an emotional vampire. Or brutally incompatible with me in any other way. I see it in peers sucking it up over and over, oh boy do they hate relative X from their or spouse's family tree, yet since they live nearby frequent meetings are unavoidable. For some blood is sacred and above else, I don't see it that way if relationships are not at least a bit mutually beneficial.
Freedom, man, to do what you want with your life, that's a wonderful thing. Freedom to form new bonds with literally anybody in this world, as you please. Great friendships trump most of blood relationships, all if you want. Also, people change over time and common ground is getting usually smaller and smaller every year. I'd gladly give it to my kids over some tighter knit family ties with people of variable quality with highly questionable views on life, who raised their own kids only so-so and it shows later on.
Just to be clear - I've experienced most if not all you wrote. It was good. All non-good easily trumps it so thus my opinion on the matters. My kids are growing in very different world than I grew up in, that one is long gone. I look at it as a package with + and -, liking current package more.
Simply not true. My grandparents moved from India to watch us. They didn't have to. They did live with us for a while but in my parents house
In no way did we live with them. They lived with us.
Ultimately this is cultural. JD Vance talks about this when it comes to his mother in law who did the same thing.
Cultures that value kids will have more. My parents did the same for us
> Cultures that value kids will have more. My parents did the same for us
Last I checked, cultures that have access to contraception and female education have fewer kids, independent of religion or tradition or practice of valuing kids.
Indian culture is no exception; total fertility rate has declined in the last ~50 years from ~6 children per woman to ~2, and continues to decline.
> No. The reason why is because we have opportunities to move up and down the social ladder.
Wait until people realize the ladder is a treadmill and any movement is an illusion of entropy.
Every wave of humanity is like an ocean's endless beating against a beach.
> Every wave of humanity is like an ocean's endless beating against a beach.
"Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like the coastal shelf
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself."
(Philip Larkin.)
Part of the problem is that preferring family today is seen as nepotistic.
Witness the widespread shock that Joe Biden pardoned his son.
The shock is because he said multiple times he wouldn't do it.
You can't do better than the daily show coverage of it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BcIHPMAHw
No I agree. But you shouldn't be shocked. Obviously he was going to
> preferring family today is seen as nepotistic
That's kinda the definition of the word so it isn't surprising.
Nepotism as a negative is a relatively new phenomenon, historically speaking. I suspect this is what you actually meant.
You're correct in both your criticism and in your interpretation.
Nothing wrong with preferring family in your private affairs, but it has no place in government.
Agree 100%.
People say it’s the cost. But what’s way worse is the effort and time you need to spend for every child.
A normal couple, most often with both having to work, will be at their limits to provide for more than 1 child - constantly.
A couple can’t replace the village unless they have tons of money.
I am lucky that I do consulting through my own company, setting my own schedule and availability. It would be impossible otherwise.
Just as one small example, daycares/schools will call for you to pickup your kid -- blowing up your day -- at the slightest indication of illness. With four kids going to school, this means two to six+ times a month your day is going to be completely blown up at any moment. I'm not complaining (though when I was a kid if you had a bit of a stomach ache you chilled in the nurse's office for a bit and 9 times out of 10 go back to class), but the average person cannot accommodate this without quickly finding themselves unemployed. This is just one of a million cases where two working parents and few or no supports leave you in a precarious situation.
I remember the feeling of relief when my kids left daycare for the last time (I just have two, though). Partly because the massive reduction in cost, and partly because of the ease in scheduling my day. And it's just gotten better as they've grown a bit older. Now in middle school, they get themselves going in the morning and then get home in the afternoon just before 5pm. I've pretty much forgotten all the scheduling we had to do around nap times, daycare, etc.
I got lucky in a sense, when covid came along and sent me home permanently, it makes dealing with kids so much simpler. My wife and I both work from home now, and schedules are a breeze.
True that things have changed on the child side as well. I remember being by myself for long stretches on any day.
Parents today not only have lost the village but are also expected to be with their children more.
“ And as children get viewed as a selfish luxury” I never quite understood this. Who exactly will pay into social security to benefit the next crop of retirees that seem to think it’s selfish to have kids?
Many people think overpopulation is a legitimate concern. I suspect the argument would be "who cares about social security if we kill the planet" (or something along those lines).
Not my view, just suggesting who might believe the "children as selfish luxury" line.
Social security is well failed in my country, we are paying both for the retirees and for our future selves. So if tomorrow ends up like children of men, sure, no problem.
I would hope that my own current contribution to the fiscus would pay for my eventual old age pension. And my hypothetical children's future contribution would pay for their own retirement. But alas this is probably not the case.
It couldn't possibly be the case. The only way that could make sense is if your contribution were paying for something like automation of the services you will one day need. Otherwise, at the end of the day, the services you'll need will require labor, and if there's insufficient labor available because not enough people had kids, then the amount of money you contribute today is irrelevant, and it's ultimately unfair to expect a future generation to devote most of their available resources to taking care of a previous generation.
Money is a grease to help direct resource utilization. You can't expect the big bucket of grease you saved for the future to mean much if there are no resources to flow. You cannot rely on a financial abstraction to "invest" in the future without everyone also actually concretely investing in creating a future.
Immigrants, even better that their source country paid for their natal care and education rather than us
That’s fine, but if the immigrants move from the developing to the developed world, that incurs a massive increase in their carbon footprint.
it's better than paying for natal care and education for a local-born child who will still have a high carbon footprint, and might also not be as productive as the immigrant
And one could argue that: 1. Immigrants typically have higher TFRs that within years wipes out the gains you allude to 2. Productivity depends on how skilled the immigrants are; much of Europe has a large chunk of immigrants with lower productivity than the native born. Anyway, this is a low signal discussion on both sides; this is my last comment on this matter
> One of the reasons birthrates have plummeted in the West, and sentiments about having children have dropped, is that we have no "village", so to speak.
It probably true but even the well of who can afford to buy the village aren't having kids.
I think it has more to do with
1. cultural acceptance and lack of strict cultural pressure to have kids. Its unimaginable in India to not have kids by choice. Its not a choice at all unless you want to be pariah.
2. Availability of affordable widespread recreation that will keep you occupied. Affordability of lots of on demand TV, dining out, live music, internet, hobbies, travel ect.
I also think we've become more self-obsessed and the idea that we might need to sacrifice time spent on ourselves scares us.
We don't have a village because no one has kids. The parents I know who are best supported are ones who have tons of siblings.
True. Those with large numbers of kids tend to have a family network of mutual support.
My parents had less kids due to circumstances (age + immigration). But they had so many siblings that they had so much help compared to my brother and I.
Luckily we both have three and we at least want more (they might be aging out... Maybe they'll have one more).
Kids are so much fine and they love each other too. It's amazing
I’m 40, rich, coupled, live next door to my parents and close to my inlaws, have plenty of free time. I have no kids and no desire to have kids. My girlfriend is the same and plenty of our friends too.
I’m very happy for people who have children and love them to bits, but many of just don’t want to.
And there isn’t anything wrong with that at all. Kids are, in my opinion, literally the only life choice you can’t walk away from having made. That is extremely high stakes, and not everyone has the appetite for it or desire to engage in it.
That doesn’t make anyone who has kids or wants to have kids better or worse. Plenty of people have kids and should not have, and they end up neglecting their kids or abusing them.
Have kids if you want to. Don’t if you don’t. Just realize that if you wait too long to make a choice, those options become much more limited and lean much more toward not having them. And if you make the choice without thinking, you’re just gambling, but you’re gambling with someone’s life, not to mention your own.
If it sounds scary… good. That means you’re thinking about it. You just have to decide if you want to do this particularly scary thing, and if the potential reward outweighs the risk.
And, I think it’s important to be okay with that choice changing in either direction. My wife didn’t want kids, and that opinion has changed, through no pushing of my own.
(The proverbial you, not you specifically, since it sounds like you’ve decided)
I wish more of the country had tech work. I shouldn't have to move away from my village across the country to one of a handful of tech hubs.
Incentivize remote work so we can spread out into these cheaper and under served communities.
Great post, until this:
What country / culture? Surely, no one is saying that in any country that I know well.> And as children get viewed as a selfish luxuryIn much of the West the ability to have children is economically or logistically (e.g. a career that would fall apart if they had kids) out of reach for many [1], leading many to perceive it as a selfish luxury. A "must be nice" kind of thing.
e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=children+a+luxury+item
With this comes the perspective that every downside parents enjoy is earned if not poetically satisfying. It is amazing how absolutely without sympathy -- instead holding smug satisfaction -- people are if a parent faces obstacles.
[1] Obviously there are exceptions and different situations exist in different cultures and socioeconomic settings.
Uh what? Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece: Absolutely false. Same in Japan, Korea, Taiwan.
Edit
I forgot: ALL of Latin America: False, children are treated as a blessing!
Delaying having children until ones' 30s also is a problem. After 30, fertility rates decline, and birth defects increase. You can't have a lot of children after 30, either.
I think steeper decline is at about 37ish years for women.
There's also some deterioration as men age, but it's less obvious.
Some say the combined age should not be over 80. Shrug.
(Should be obvious fertility varies greatly between individuals.)
Birth rates plummeted even in Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are polar opposite of the West, so I'd say loss of "village" is tiny part of the problem.
It's possible for different influences to play a part in different countries and cultures. Further, there is a remarkable scale difference.
The high survivability of children now means that having large numbers of children dropped everywhere. You don't need to have "extras". The problem is when the number drops too much. It did in Iran due to literal government influence, and is quickly turning back to replacement level. Saudi Arabia is above replacement level.
That is very different than Canada (1.33) or South Korea (0.88), or Switzerland (1.39). The scale is dramatically different.
I’m not sure I’d consider Iran or Saudi Arabia as polar opposites to the west. Or at least not in the aspects related to kids.
> a couple is often entirely on their own.
Yeah. This has been the worst part. Neither of our parents feel the need to help with their TIME, but they will sporadically send us money after making us feel bad about asking. Meanwhile they had all kinds of help from relatives, in time, sweat, and money. Part of the problem is that you don't get your full Social Security benefits until age 70, so for the one grandparent that is still working, they literally do not have the time to help. If they wanted to retire early, they would have to forgo what they perceive as critical $. Alternatively, they could sell their multi-million dollar home and downsize, but their egos could never handle that.
Do you think this could be because you have so many children?
Anecdotally the more kids in a family the more neglected the child. I can't imagine having more than one child a decade and raising them well.
I think you horribly misread my post. Do you think I am saying I don't love my children? I love them absolutely. The last word in the universe that applies to them is "neglected". They want for nothing.
Indeed, it's precisely that I care so much that having children wasn't some carefree social media event for me. It was an enormous commitment. The biggest commitment a human can make, in my judgment, and I was all in.
And as another poster already said, one of the greatest gifts a child can have is siblings. This isn't always true and of course there are many counterpoints, but siblings are usually the closest friends and allies in a hostile world.
There is IMMENSE value in having siblings, particularly later in life when you yourself have kids. Especially if they are in the same city.
I feel having no sibling of the opposite sex as a great loss to myself, and to my parents. It seems to me a grievous deficiency in one's life-experience.
I was one of 5. I was not neglected. I am a horrible person, though, so there's that.
Your parents by definition will only be able to spend 20% of the time on you that they could on a single child if they didn't neglect the others.
Seeing children with multiple siblings with less than 8 year difference between them vs single children is shocking just how differently kids are treated.
This is the most accurate but least factual description of what it looks like from the outside when a family keeps adding kids as fast as they can https://malcolminthemiddle.fandom.com/wiki/Flashback
I would argue that your position is the "perfectionist parenting" nonsense that many have used to avoid having children.
Do you think all of the latchkey lone children of the current generation are the most psychologically healthy individuals the world has seen? Do you think they're the most loved or coddled? The most educated? Your anecdote is actually kind of hilarious in context.
The idea that 2 children splits the love or attention is absolutely insane.
>Do you think all of the latchkey lone children of the current generation are the most psychologically healthy individuals the world has seen?
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/siblings.html
80% of kids under 18 have siblings in the USA today.
>The idea that 2 children splits the love is absolutely insane.
It's also what's blindingly obvious when you spend more than 5 minutes in a playground with single kids and multiple kids.
>80% of kids under 18 have siblings in the USA today.
I wasn't claiming that all or most kids are single children. I was observing that by your philosophy those single children would somehow have the best outcomes (in a multivariate manner). I don't think that's the case.
>It's also what's blindingly obvious
Sure.
It’s the same logic as: when I married, the time to cook each meal doubled. Ugh, no - many things scale vastly sublinearly with the number of kids one has.
I see your point. But I think you may be taking it to extremes.
A parent can snuggle multiple kids at once, read to multiple kids at once, take multiple kids to the zoo at once, etc.
Moreover siblings have their own rich relationships.
Having closely spaced siblings is pretty normal.
In the west in the year of our lord 1955.
And in the year of our lord 2025 it's normal not to have kids in the west.
In most of the rest of the world neither of those things were normal.
Which is the point.
The west is weird when it comes to raising children and has been uniquely bad at it for over 80 years which happens to be living memory for pretty much everyone on here.
Having closed spaced siblings was normal in the entire world forever until a couple decades ago. There wasn't even birth control.
80 years? Things started to go awry around 1970. That's when the Boy Scouts stopped treating scouts like young adults and instead began treating them like delicate flowers.
You can see the change in the Boy Scout manual.
The great depression destroyed the social fabric of the us more thoroughly than did the civil war. The 1950s weren't normal, they were the result of a generations want for stability and domesticity when they had no idea what either looked like. For one thing the end of generational households to be replaced by nuclear family households was seen by the people at the time as worse than single parent households are today and with good reason.
That the majority of conservatives today pine for the 50s us that we not only lost the ability to have a stable society but even the memory of what one should look like.
> Your parents by definition will only be able to spend 20% of the time on you that they could on a single child if they didn't neglect the others.
Parents can spend time with their children as a group. Parents with lots of kids have the kids do the chores.
Yes the single child is usually unsociable and verging on narcissistic.
Your issue here is that you have labeled the single kids life as good and the multi sibling family as bad .
It used to be the opposite. People would pity a single child.
I would argue the opposite. Worst are the only childs. There is just something off socially. Kids with only siblings that are 8+ years older have the same but less severe. You can pick them out from a mile away.
> Do you think this could be because you have so many children?
Four? So many? According to Churchill, four would be the bare minimum.
Is it like this for everyone? I sometimes wonder how large the number of cases is where the parent does not feel like that at all but refrains from sharing it due to societal expectations and fear of being judged. It would introduce a bias regarding these stories.
Of course it's not like this for everyone. Even for him it is not like this all the time :) but if you listen to the world around you there are these bits of beautiful life that appear here and there.
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...
Took me about 2-3 years to find my groove as a father.
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.
I unexpectedly went through that when my second kid was born. I somehow felt that my first kid grew up suddenly and I was not able to say goodbye to the little boy that he was while a single kid.
My wife experienced a similar reaction to the second - it’s obvious in retrospect, but we didn’t realize that “one-on-one with an infant” is a unique chapter of parenthood that happens very quickly and only with the first born.
No, it certainly isn't. But it is a social sin to admit otherwise.
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.
My partner and I have two kids (21 months and 5 weeks) and we absolutely hate the caretaking phase... which lasts a year? Our oldest can be pretty hilarious now so she's net worth it, but it was a journey of misery to get here, and the reason we dove right back into the icy pond of abject awfulness is that we just wanted to get it over with ASAP.
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)
My children are older - five and three - so I've passed the early care taking phase. We suspect our eldest has mild autism or some form of adhd and sensory processing issues. He is the sweetest little boy at times, I love him so much, but he is incredibly challenging. The entire five years have been hard, hard work and we're constantly on edge and having to help him cope with the world. The youngest is a bit more typical, but also extremely high energy. It's just physically and mentally exhausting.
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.
This was the most accurately description of first-time fatherhood I've read. It was a bit light on how debilitating constant lack of sleep can be but everything else: yes.
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.
I absolutely do not share my true feelings about fatherhood. They would not be viewed kindly or understood by most. Also, how I feel about things does not matter, at all. My obligation is the same regardless of how I feel. So I do my best to adjust my attitude and soldier on. This is just one of the many alienating and lonely aspects of fatherhood.
Thank you for sharing genuinely in face of societal pressures. Yes so the autosquelching of valid voices to the conversation like this are part of what keep are from seriously considering taking that big, and especially irreversible, life step.
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.
> This is just one of the many alienating and lonely aspects of fatherhood.
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.
No. And that’s a bit of an issue - I’ve encountered people that plan to become parents and their understanding of the process is all wrong. Not saying that they’ll end up being bad parents - most people rise to the occasion, but it feels like society tricks people into having kids.
Absolutely. It’s pushed from all angles: you may not think you want kids, but it’ll be amazing. Once you do it you’ll have no regrets. You’ll never experience joy like the joy that they bring.
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.
Being "the village" for someone else's kid(s) can give a decent idea of what to expect. And by that I mean actually moving in and helping 24/7 for a months at a time, not just babysitting one evening here and there. Did that one full year for a sibling. I'm told your outlook is different when it is your own kid, and I did ok but it definitely taught me that signing up for the full 18 years isn't for me.
We have scientific evidence that parenthood floods your brain with all sorts of chemicals, and changes how your brain responds to stimuli. It’s a deeply rooted biological reflex. It may not be true for everyone, but it’s true of close to everyone.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8294566/
>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%.
In the study linked it seems that factors like:
- Financial difficulties
- Being a single parent
- Having children with a disability
All seem to vastly influence the result.
I'd be curious to see regret vs. would you make the same choice again. I can imagine parents nor regretting it, but maybe thinking about it twice if they had known what to expect.
I’ll throw in another anecdata point (more than one as I have multiple children): I found them to be mostly logistical burden for the first few months he is writing about, but my love fully developed over the years. Don’t give up hope if you’re not feeling it instantly!
I'm also very concerned about self-selection bias for the positive stories like this. Ideal would be an aggregate of fathers anonymously reporting satisfaction vs those reporting dissatisfaction with their choice of having kids , and then (male) non-fathers reporting satisfaction vs dissatisfaction with having kids.
>(male) non-fathers reporting satisfaction vs dissatisfaction with having kids
How would that work?
non-fathers reporting satisfaction vs dissatisfaction with not having kids. Typo.
Better not being much into kids and being free to not have any than being forced to and hating them for the rest of their lives. Spoken as someone who grew very close to such scenario (the second).
You’ll certainly never find me stating my true feelings on the matter, outside of internet anonymity or a HIPAA-protected environment.
Not for me.
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.
No. I for one am probably heading down the divorce path that the article speaks of (14mo child)
If you can hold out for another 18 months, it'll get much better.
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.
There are ways to throw money at the stress you are feeling, which will still be cheaper than divorce. Children can get much easier as they mature, which might give you space to work through your marriage even if it feels impossible now.
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.
Yes, I also found the first child much harder than the second, which I wasn’t expecting.
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.
I don’t know your situation but for me everything changed once my child could speak and started going to preschool (so I got a break). The fall-in-love-with-child phenomenon didn’t happen to me until my child was around 3-1/2
It's certainly not.
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.
I feel sorry for the mother or whoever was taking care of your child for the first 3 years.
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.
One does the best one can. But I guess "intentionally detaching" doesn't convey the best.
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.
> this conscious decision is not cost free for the future of the relationship with the child
Same for the relationship with the wife, they remember.
I wasn't too interested in my son till 1 yr old but I did all the housework ( cooking, cleaning, laundry), taking my son to all doctors appointments, taking him with me to grocery shopping, outdoor walks and to the park.
I’m not going to shame you for your parental experience, but it does not mirror mine as a father.
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.
That's really interesting to read. I'm a man who has absolutely zero interest in interacting with babies and infants, but kids who can talk and ask questions can be pretty funny and cute even. My wife doesn't understand this at all.
I was the same way before having my own children. Then a switch flipped.
100% same.
And I was 51.
[flagged]
Handle checks out.
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.
> When are they bonding?
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).
All that time, huh?
First kid?
I have a child who is about to turn three who was breastfed. The notion of being aloof until now is unfathomable to me.
Yes, the baby is in fact not feeding most of the time. You can easily find several hours a day during which you can bond with the baby, I'm pretty sure your wife is going to be supportive in this effort.
(It's our second kid)
> some degree of fatherly aloofness towards infants is natural.
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.
You don't see how you could have spent more time with your kid for the first 3 years of their life?
It's pretty simple, by doing it.
> is it like this for everyone
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.
If the survival of the species depends on pressuring people to live their lives in a way that many of them don’t want, then maybe we should just die out.
> then maybe we should just die out Have you consider all aspects of social conditioning/pressure existed and exist to lead you to utter those words?
Yes, every action I take is the sum of all events in my past light cone, very profound.
It's f*cking hard work, for those in any doubt. It's the most difficult web server config file you've ever to edit at 4am to resolve some production outage, for years, without any hope of let up. Is it rewarding, yes, but it's a duty and there's no backup or timeout, you get to experience this 24/7 for at least a few year while they're young.
counterpoint: it's not
you don't have to sift through some indecipherable mountain of information to find a solution
you just have to provide some basic mammalian service like provide warmth or food in a first world country
it can be stressful but it's actually quite simple
The early years are a ton of simple work. Later, it becomes incredibly complex and difficult. Try dealing with bad choices, power struggles, figuring out and enforcing rules.... Now try it as a typical techie person who has trouble engaging with things they don’t enjoy and doesn’t understand people.
Sifting through an indecipherable mountain of information is fun. I’ll do it in my spare time. My reaction to some ridiculous bug report is, hell yeah, let’s go.
The hardest stuff in my life has nothing to do with computers and it’s not even remotely close.
Accurate. There’s this seemingly never ending stream of moments of desperation, where there are no good answers.
But also if you asked me, “what led to most of the goodness in your life?”, I’d answer:
Moments of desperation
Fatherhood transforms men. Becoming a father was by far the most transformative event of my entire life so far. This is the common refrain I’ve heard. Of course, you also have to live up to the vocation.
Divorce, child support, alimony, and two weekends of time with your kids per month (what the majority of men end up with), can also be transformative!
If anyone reading this is thinking about having kids, be really careful who you have them with.
It is obviously extremely important who you choose to have children with. I completely agree. If I’d had kids in my 20s with my ex, I would have ended up with regrets for the rest of my life (not the kids, but my choice of with whom to have them).
If I have kids now, there’s no chance I’d have regrets. It’s a very different timeline in my life, being in a non-abusive relationship after 8 years of being in one and lots of therapy.
And yes, men can be in abusive relationships with women too.
I've been in such relationship once, albeit only few months. Took me few years to recover fully but it was a lifelong wakeup lesson and I started properly looking into psychology. Afterwards, no mysteries in the opposite camp anymore and straight to my wife now.
How to handle various relationships and personalities should be mandatory psychology 101 somewhere around beginning of high school. It would make whole mankind behave a bit better overall, no doubt there.
The problem with your comment is, kids are by far the biggest stressor in marriages. Wonderfully working, fully matching couples are pushed sometimes to their limits and beautiful relationships become just surviving hardships next to each other. You can't fully know how the opposite will handle this, even under good circumstances, god forbid something ain't right (like post natal health issues in kid or mother), even when trying to use psychology a bit. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails in myriad ways. You could have felt your ex was the one for life while pro creating, thats happening during (brutally) easy times.
You’re right; I can’t predict the future.
But I have experience having gone through extremely difficult things with my wife; both of our dads were diagnosed with cancer this year, months apart. Our relationship started only a year before a pandemic. I went through a serious depressive phase. She was diagnosed with and has been (successfully) working through dealing with her C(omplex)-PTSD. I discovered I had ADHD, and have had it since I was a kid, and have gone through that self-discovery process.
Basically, you’re completely correct, but we’ve also discussed the fact that most partners do forget about one another when kids enter the picture, and we have promised not to; and to check in with each other constantly, as the risk of postpartum runs in her family (if that’s even a thing, and it isn’t just people in general).
It may help that she has been through many, many years of therapy on her own, and is also studying to get her masters in psychology to become an LPCC/LMFT.
She’s the strongest and most impressive person I’ve ever met. And I’ve met a lot of strong and impressive people.
So while the chance we end up hating each other isn’t zero, I’m pretty sure it’s as damn low as it can be, and I’m pretty fine with that as life decisions go. :)
Do you have kids?
I enjoyed this.
I became a father after 51 years of avoiding it and avoiding children.
It has changed my life and enriched it in ways I could not have imagined before.
I monitored myself and my internal state as closely as I am able from learning that my partner was pregant until a few months after the birth. I could not detect the slightest difference in my mind, but I have gone from strongly disliking children to being a loving dad who enjoys being around kids. I am really enjoying it.
It feels like a whole section of my biological programming has been unlocked and while I couldn't feel it happening, I am now a different person, and a happier one too.
It has been the most life-altering experience I've ever had, and I've nearly died, I've had skeletal surgery while awake, and more.
I love this one:
> My mother came in with a great tip: when in doubt, ask second time parents, not other first timers.
So true in so many levels.
Even if the other first timer is years ahead of you in parenting because they have an older child, whereas you have a newborn, they just don't remember the newborn stage anymore, and only went through it once. It is all a distant blur to them.
What a beautiful post. I've always had a difficult time explaining how having a child has fundamentally changed who I am to people who don't have kids. This captures some of that well. Thank you for sharing!!
It’s difficult to relate even to parents. But some days honestly feel like Christmas did when I was a kid, with all the potentiality. And the bad days have a sense of endless responsibility that can feel overwhelming.
My life in my 20s had too little meaning. Now, in my 40s, sometimes it feels like too much. I much prefer it to how it used to be, though.
“Finding babies funny is probably a useful survival mechanism for an overworked parent.”
Currently in week 5 of my own journey with my child, and the above is basically how you have to perceive things as you push through this early phase. Beautiful read, and looking forward to appreciating more as I’m less sleep deprived.
Ah, the beauty of hormones and how they effect your perception of life and love.
My experience resonates with the authors. But certainly the experience ranges dramatically for different people under different life circumstances.
why is this flagged? how do we vouch for a submission
I just sent an email to hn@ycombinator.com in hopes ‘dang fixes it.
Thanks to you (and dang) for doing that.
He fixed it, fyi.
It appears you can only vouch for [dead] submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Good read. I really liked the line about soliciting advice from second time parents.
Also: “We all came out like this. This is how it has always happened. Insane.“
… I was a C-section :P
As a second time parent, looking back now, that is such a good advice. On the first play-through we second guessed ourselves so much. On the second time, we knew where all the good loot was hidden. :) we felt so much more in control. The truth is that a lot of details first-time parents try to control don't really matter that much or cannot really be controlled.
What are these details? I'm curious to know what to focus on and what not to.
Sometimes when they have a temper tantrum (at home) it’s ok to let them scream for 5 minutes. Usually when they realize you don’t care they start to calm down.
Letting a baby fuss in their crib for 5-10 minutes won’t kill them if you need to take a shit.
Start feeding them more than just milk/formula at 6-8 months.
They’re going to fall and hurt themselves a lot, kids bounce.
Kids feel your energy and reflect it like a mirror, and they hear fucking EVERYTHING you say when when you don’t see them.
Saying “no” is a good thing, kids actually crave structure, and rules create structure. And tantrums, see first point.
Always, always, always follow through. If you say “throw that again and I’m taking it” and you don’t take it, you’re setting yourself up for more testing of boundaries. Also, don’t make a threat you don’t mean.
I could probably write a book, if this was helpful I can keep going.
> Start feeding them more than just milk/formula at 6-8 months.
This feels out of place. What did you do the first time?
We actually start what we call "diversification" (=eating solid food) even earlier in France: we were advised by our paediatrician to do it when the baby was 4 months old.
Apparently if you start early and have him try a lot of different stuff (especially potentially allergenic things like nuts), it causes less allergy problems later on.
It's worked very well for us, the kid loves it and feeding him is quite fun (although certainly messy!)
It's interesting to see how different it is depending on the country though!
My wife and I found this super helpful for introducing foods: https://solidstarts.com/ (no affiliation)
Like, baby oatmeal mixed with breast milk. Then scrambled eggs, soft foods.
One thing that I wish I knew was the conflict between the parent short-term vs long-term benefits.
Imagine there is a big meltdown because the child wants a snack. The parents are exhausted and you just need it to stop. You will have a strong interest in finding a quick short-term solution (ie. give the kid a snack) because it will produce immediate benefit (end the meltdown). But in the long term that may have side effects (e.g. the kid will expect snack at any time they want).
The long-term goal (eating schedule) has a high short term cost (meltdown will go longer and be harder) but often ends up paying off in a big way over time.
I wish I had paid more attention to that, but I don't want to be too hard on my old exhausted self :)
Well, there are Persian texts talking about c-sections more than 3 millenia old. So I guess if you adjust your timeline you can argue C-sections are also "how it has always happened" for some of us.
Pet peeve: parents you meet in passing warning me that $THEIR_KIDS_AGE is actually the hardest age to parent after asking how old my son is. :)
Nobody said it was going to be easy. They’re just venting after all. I just smile and nod.
I always tell my spouse: “the easiest day we had with the kids was yesterday” and they’re 2, 4, and 10.
There is a high societal expectation that fatherhood (or motherhood) should look like the one in this article. Having had 2 babies in the last 5 years and observing most of our friends going through parenthood in the last 5+ years I think this is a very biased view that does not reflect reality.
My sample might be a bit biased as most our friends are PhD educated and in Tech or Academia.
My own observations:
- I was not terribly interested in our kids between ages of 0 - 2. This does not mean I did not fully participate in their life, but this was a muscle I had to exercise. I went to therapy as I thought I was somehow broken because thats not how people should feel. What I learned is that feelings are much more common than it is widely accepted.
- Once they started to speak, ask questions, and being more emotionally regulated it became very different. At this point I spend more time with my kids than my wife and generally love spending time with them, its almost effortless. Explaining things, buildings legos, became one of my favourite activities.
- Having daily help (live in nanny, live in grandparents) is an enormous help both from kids and relationship perspective. Seems like a trivial thing but if you do not have live in help you are likely to never be alone again as a couple for more than 24h (i.e. you can't go on a short trip).
Observations about my friends:
- Trying for a baby and being unsuccessful for years or going through multiple miscarriages can make couples extremely sad. You can reduce this risk by trying early.
- If your mental health is not amazing before kids it is likely get worse. This is about functional people that have mild mental health problems. Two of our friends developed severe mental health problems that in one case ended in a divorce and in second case multiple years of unemployment (father who was not primary care giver). This were generally reasonable people that sought mental health help from both therapy and medicine perspective.
- The societal expectations that women should be super excited about motherhood is not always true. Within our friends group probably 50% women are less involved in raising their kids than fathers. Some (reluctantly) admitted that they don't really like how motherhood negatively affected their job prospects, bodies and mental health.
- If you do happen to get divorce with young kids it is likely going to be a life changing event. Situation has to be pretty bad to get divorce with young kids so most likely you will be better off but from the two cases we have seen this typically means severe financial burden and inability to sustain long term relationship afterwards. If you are a women and somehow loose custody there is also going to be pretty severe societal judgement against you even in very progressive locations.
It may sound as a little bit depressing view of parenthood but this is more reality check for those reading only the bright side. Overall, I am extremely happy we have kids and our relationship is stronger than it was before but thats not the case for everyone and it required work.
Well written, and very recognizable. I felt pretty much the same as the author at the time of my firstborn. The second kid's birth I don't even remember, haha. I can say that 8 years later the love for the children and my partner has only deepened. Family life is unrelenting and exhausting at times, but I'm one of the lucky ones with a fabulous partner and healthy, smart and fun kids-- until the teenage years change the picture all over again, maybe?
Reading this just re-confirmed to me that I’m not cut out for parenting. I’m glad he’s digging it, but my reaction to all of the little miracles he described was either rolling my eyes or thinking “that sounds terrible”.
I was exactly the same.
Until it happened to me.
"there's a part of me somewhere else."
This. Although I'm not sure this merits my quote book. I would phrase it as "there's a big part of me that's someone else" maybe.
As a fellow first-time parent with a 1 month old at home this captured a lot of feelings that I’ve experienced recently. Thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful article
Counterpoint:
This is not a counterpoint.
I definitely feel a lot dumber compared to ~8 years and three kids ago. Lack of sleep, lack of agency, continuous need for some background level of vigilance...
Oh I'm not arguing that the study is flawed, I'm saying it's not applicable to the point of the post
Haha I even think I love cleaning up their puke because the constant stressors made me dumber.
Having a kid may have dinged my raw intelligence but the forced ruthless prioritization of what I do and what I value doing has actually made me more competent at home and work
Agreed 100%, my bullshit tolerance has gone to zero. You want to bikeshed this backlog shit we'll probably never get around to doing? Without me yo, I'm out.
It’s debilitating in my experience.
It’s surreal, for sure, but I would like the drugs this guy is on. I can’t wait till they’re off to college when I’m 58 and I can program full bore again.
"Do you remember falling in love for the first time? Fatherhood feels like this."
That's EXACTLY what I felt when my daugther was born
Nice post, new babies are really magical. There are so many more transformations coming! Now that I have two, one of them coming up on age 4, so many new things make sense. You don’t immediately get the sense of the father/son discipline dynamic when they’re infants. You watch someone go from “perfect” to perfectly human. A little angel to a little man. The first time your child hurts someone: that’s when fatherhood shifts into gear.
> And after a few minutes passed I started to...think
Gosh I miss the first-baby newborn phase! Thinking time is dramatically cut in little-kid phase; but hey, tricycles and legos and Playdough!
You’re in it now friend! Keep writing and hang in there, it’s a life-long occupation!
I still feel that way. My kids are well into their third decades.
This is like LinkedIn content not hackernews.
I have to say that nothing in my life compared to having children. I have a 15 and a 17-year-old, today.
I think the biggest factor was the shift in self-preservation instinct. Before my son was born, I had "believed" that I'd be the kind of guy who -- barring alternatives -- would jump in front of a bullet, sacrificing my own life to save my child.
But I'd been on Earth for 29 years at that point and during that time, one of the things that's sort of wired into you is "avoid, at all costs, the path of projectiles fired from guns." Though I recognized that this sort of thing doesn't happen to the vast majority of people in my position, I'd wondered whether or not that instinct might kick in should that occasion ever occur.
Shortly after my son was born, after the haze of sleepless nights ended, I realized something -- really, everything -- had changed. Replaying that scenario in my head, I no longer worried at all about how I'd react. I knew that there would be no scenario, ever again, where my safety would take precedence over that of my son (and later, my daughter). It wasn't the complexity of knowing I would have an impossible time living with myself if I survived and my son had died; it was like my brain had rewired a new instinct.
And as any parent with children of sufficient age has probably experienced, it was tested time and again, though thankfully in much less serious ways. I remember teaching my daughter to ice skate at age 5 and upon watching her lose her balance, watching as my body lurched forward and dove under her, clumsily catching her and breaking her fall.
"Watching" is the way I describe it because I don't remember ever having a thought in advance of doing it nor any control over my body once it had made the inevitable choice. There was no planning, no strategy, no honest understanding that a guy who'd never slid into first base, dove to catch a football or been skilled in any way when it came to sports along with not being particularly good in a pair of hockey skates[0] had a greater chance of injuring myself in the fall than my daughter had of injuring herself in five layers of padded cloth falling a couple of feet to the ground. I remember the moment I'd "saved her" in triumph and the subsequent feeling of defeat during the hours spent in the ER diagnosing my fracture rib.
I often compare the kind of parent I thought I would be against the kind of parent I ultimately became. I had put off having kids mostly due to my sister-in-law's 4-year-old terror (who turned out just fine). I would be the strong, stern Dad who didn't let their child misbehave. I would temper this by being the loving, affectionate Dad that my own was. And while I became the latter, I quickly realized how much more effective it is to call out and encourage the good behavior. I learned to have "sit downs" and discuss the bad behavior but to be gracious with it. I understood how poorly I reacted to negativity as a child and how discouraging that was to my success when I saw my son respond like I did.
Somehow, through a divorce and ensuing turmoil in my own life, I managed to end up with two teenage children who love nothing more than to spend time with Dad. We have a less-than-perfect parenting time schedule that the laws in my state make impossible for me to change (despite my flexible schedule and my children's desires) but my kids would rather schedule friend time on Mom's clock and invite friends out with us on my time. My kids both call me every day after school and we talk, sometimes for hours. We play Fortnite five out of seven nights an evening -- a game I'd be unlikely to touch without them[1] but one I'm thankful that we "play on the same team" and use mostly for talking to one another over twelve miles.
I realized that up until about age 12, I could read their minds and understood them better than they knew themselves. Sometime in their teen years, I discovered that -- in some ways -- they are more brave, more honest and better children than I ever was at my best.
I remember thinking "I'm not going to push programming on them" because I really respected the fact that my Dad didn't push what he did on me -- he wasn't a programmer, but he supported my second love as if it were his own. And I remember how proud I was when my daughter signed up for programming class in 8th grade and yelled at me when I suggested she might enjoy "art" (her passion and offered at the same time) more "I'm NOT doing this for YOU, Dad!" That's my girl.
I think the biggest adjustment, though, is realizing that they are the entire reason I'm here. Every single thing I do comes with the question: "How does this affect them?" I might have looked at a man who behaved that way and thought "that's the kind of Dad I want to be" but I know there's nothing special about that with me -- it was a re-wiring. I fear my own death only in that I know how it would affect them were it to come suddenly in their young lives.
I, like most boys raised by stereo-typical "Family Ties" or "The Cosby Show" parents learned "men don't cry" and rarely had the temptation to do so until after they were born. Last month, "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin" was released and I made it a point to get through it alone before watching it with my kids. I sobbed -- and I mean ugly cried -- through the whole thing sitting alone in my bedroom. I didn't do much better the second time with my kids[2]. I'm blessed that I've never lost my composure over my own life and its struggles but I can imagine how devastating and permanent losing one of my children would be.
I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it would be like to have kids, I thought I had a lot figured out before I had them. There are few things I had more wrong in my life. Maybe it's possible for some to accurately imagine/prepare for the experience but I had absolutely no idea. I didn't have the arrogance to pray for the kind of teenagers I raised. My son and daughter both share so much of my brain, the way I process things and the like but they use it differently. When people say "your kids teach you as much as you teach them", that's what they mean. You watch your own struggles get adapted to differently, quite often better, than you did. My son processes things with deep empathy. My daughter errs toward logic and reasoned argument. More than a few occasions, I'm stuck thinking "dammit, they're right" and find myself demonstrating the act of apologizing. That's a humbling experience.
[0] This was a wet indoor rink and though I could handle myself OK on outdoor lake ice and was very proficient with inlines on cement or gravel.
[1] My gaming days are behind me, frankly.
[2] My Dad, who was -- in every way -- a stereotypical "He-Man" is exactly the same way.
That was a great article. It highlights many things I routinely hear in church about how God works through families. They and the books we read talk about how children are a gift that humbles us, starts transforming our character, and teaches us a lot. God uses children in big ways.
Recently, we’ve been reading Disciplines of a Godly Man by R. Kent Hughes. Today we’re to discuss the chapter on Fatherhood. I was happy to see the author had learned a few of these lessons. Here’s a few for those interested.
Do’s include investing time in them, speaking tenderly, teaching them, setting an example, discipline where necessary, and especially praying for them. If they have Christ, and God intervenes for them, many situations day to day work out better than if left purely to human nature. My friends strongly attest to this with many examples.
Don’t included too much criticism (or too little praise), excessive strictness, irritability (esp “been at work all day!”), inconsistency, and favoritism. He gives examples of each hurting relationships between fathers and sons.
I thought those were a nice start. Character of Christ, putting the children first (love), and some specific tips. Lastly, we can be calm knowing God is in control of every step of our future. He just expects us to act on what we’ve learned a day at a time. He’ll only let happen what needs to happen for His plan for our lives and our kids’ lives. That’s comforting.
I think your comment is additive to the conversation, despite it not agreeing with the core HN cohort. Not worth downvoting IMO.
As someone who used to work with a children's hospital (on the EMR site but still) I wish we could find and kill the asshole who decided a myriad of childhood cancers was in their grand plan.
Do you believe that to be optimal gameplay?
You can save over ten million children from murder if you raise support to ban abortion. Cancer is horrible, too. People following Christ built many hospitals, orphanages, recovery programs, and places like Life Choices Memphis to do what we can for them.
You show two, common views: God owes us something; no gratitude.
God is a sovereign being who can do what He wants with His creation like you do with your possessions. If we always choose evil, He owes us nothing but wrath. Yet, people expect God of all creation to come down, drop on His knees to kiss their feet, and do an entire list of things to please them and earn their respect. What arrogance!
In fact, His lovingkindness and mercies are on everything He’s made. He gives the gift of children to many people, gives medical treatment for cancers that human activities (eg chemicals/food/stress) are likely causing, and all the good things in our lives. Gor protects so many children that there’s almost ten billion people on Earth.
So, people show up on Hacker News grateful for all God has given them: children, our daily lives, and even good submissions here. Nope! Maybe you thank Him for protecting billions of lives or motivating tens of billions in charity. Nope! Instead, people act like He doesn’t exist, censor the Gospel in media, curse His name in movies, and accuse Him on HN with no credit for any positive things.
God must love us to keep letting us live, healing our kids, etc. While we were still sinners (God’s enemies), Christ died for us so we’d get a second chance. You should repent of the evil in your heart. Once you meet God, you may thank Him for all He does for you instead of curse Him. Especially for the gift of eternal life.
Why are you doing this?
Friendly reminder that this is HackerNews; nobody is here (nor cares) to read your incoherent, unwelcome religious preach nor to argue religion - at all. That is not the topic of the article, there is nothing to do with religion in the article yet you feel it is your duty to solicit your irrelevant and frankly offensive religious beliefs onto others.
I don't spew atheist thought unto christianforums.com - though if I did I'm certain there would be be pitchforks, unchallenged hypocrisy is one of religions most potent weapons.
Also, I'm assuming you do not possess the physical configuration to give birth to a child so lay hands off her body, it's not your f*cking life. If you are indeed capable of birthing a child, forgive me - I hear y'all good at that.
One last question: is your zealotry the reason behind your lobste.rs ban last year by pushcx?
> Even supposedly friendly bigotry is unwelcome.
Maybe don't pray on us, cool?
Thanks!
edit: spelling
Your comments repeatedly and blatantly violate the HN guidelines (which you can read here https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) as well as being incredibly vicious and hateful. You seem to be new to HN - this is not Reddit. You shouldn't do this here.
Your hypocrisy and hateful tone also further serve to legitimize nickpsecurity's points - he is the one preaching religion, but in a very kind and respectful tone despite your vitriol and hypocrisy.
You also demonstrate a shocking lack of ability to use logic, and a lack of awareness of what the poster's points or ideology actually are, in addition to the above malice. More than even a tone problem - your comment is just completely and entirely unsuitable for HN and beyond providing zero value provides negative value. Please don't do this here.
> Friendly reminder that this is HackerNews; nobody is here (nor cares) to read your incoherent, unwelcome religious preach nor to argue religion - at all.
Be careful, Faith comes in many forms, and in many metaphysical frameworks (science, as one example).
Faith != religion
I have faith in the mathematical probability that you will reply - 66.6% Nobody told me to do that, but I have faith!
Do be careful, religion also divides countries, separates families and inherently promotes inequality by categorizing human beings into troughs to be tagged, labelled and consumed.
Do you have Faith that the sensation that you can read minds at scale is genuine?
I do not need a lecture on religion or rationality from you, thanks. It is Your Kind that keeps these habits going strong, not mine.
We do it because we love Christ and love other people. We also enjoy meeting them, sharing our experiences, and so on. In this case, I saw a father writing enthusiastically about the wonders of children and fatherhood. I shared with him another perspective on it, the ability to have God in his life, and some advice from someone who thought similar to him. Just friendly discussion at that point.
Most of my work here in Mississippi is like that. I talk to a lot of people about many topics, including their faith (or atheism). While many avoid the topic, those that discuss it mostly speak their mind, we listen, share our views in love, sometimes debate, and walk away with mutual respect. Some react harshly but most are pleasant. I learn plenty from them, too.
Then, there’s other areas with a different culture. They discuss all kinds of topics, even religion, allowing many views in posts or comments. The second a Christian shows up, they’re met with dismissal, mockery, personal attacks, and censorship (eg downvotes). It’s usually multiple people showing up as a mob.
At least one always claims to speak for everyone in the place or the world or a race or gender but don’t actually represent most or all views. In some places, they try to eject opponents or get them fired. Unlike Jesus Christ and His followers, this group usually has no love for their outgroup, no forgiveness for perceived wrongs, their own beliefs are inconsistent over time, and never did miracles (no power).
(Note: The best description I have so far are Western Progressives into intersectionality. Especially who went to colleges dominated by those ideologies which passed them on. Outside this group, I basically never run into the patterns I described.)
As you pointed out, that was the case on Lobsters. It was a low-noise, tech site. The social justice crowd demanded in meta threads that they could inject politics, their agenda, into every thread. However, anything opposing their beliefs was hate speech, harassment, “exterminist,” etc. Once favored, they mobbed their opponents, downvoted them, and tried to get them banned. I was banned.
The worst part was selective deletion of civil comments, but leaving horrible accusations, that makes future readers think that’s what the deleted comment said. Progressive liberals revise history to make them look better and opponents look worse which is what they accuse others of. I do thank pushcx for otherwise being a great moderator. Also, for crediting that I was kind to the mob in the last debate.
Even there, I received private messages and emails from opponents saying what happened was unfair to me, non-Progressives thanking me for speaking up, and Christian’s saying they don’t identify as Christians there to avoid mistreatment.
Back to HN, there’s clearly some hardcore people in specific ideologies who use similar tactics. However, the majority of Hacker News are more open-minded and civil. They like learning others’ perspectives. The rare few who mob on me don’t scare me since I wear the armor of God. I just respond peacefully and helpfully. You had a question, too.
Re not my body and no hands on “her” body
That’s three misconceptions: only her body; man’s view; only woman has a right to an opinion.
First, a pregnant woman has a baby growing inside them. It’s their body and another person’s body. We respect both. We apply the right to life, to safety, and so on to the baby’s body, too. Like with adults, we’re morally consistent by not allowing people to murder inconvenient dependents.
Second, even Progressives and non-Christians often support giving the helpless a voice. Protection, too. We also do that for babies that many don’t care about.
Other ministries exist that interview or are made up of people who would’ve been aborted. They changed their mind or it failed or something. In all cases I’ve heard, they were glad their mothers didn’t or couldn’t murder them. One was my best friend, a smart guy, who doctors said would be a vegetable. I thank God his mother listened to Him, not them.
Third, there’s a myth that you might be referencing that Christianity or protecting children in the womb is men’s belief forced on women. The first witnesses to Christ’s resurrection were women, most Christians are women IIRC, they spread it the most (esp to children), and they think God’s Word is the best thing for women. I feel I must speak up for half a billion women that some segments, like Progressives or feminists, often mock or censor. We should listen to those women.
Finally, people in Life Choices Memphis discovered another lie in many scenarios: Progressives care about what women want. Women going to abortion clinics sometimes allowed interviews. The vast majority were undecided on abortion but were pressured to do it. From their boyfriend to parents to liberal media to the clinic itself, everyone was telling them killing the child was the right thing. Those women who were asked what they thought, esp if having ultrasound or hearing heartbeat, kept the baby in many cases. Pressuring women to kill a child isn't caring for the woman or the child.
I never knew any of that as a liberal atheist. I wasn’t allowed to because specific segments in control of media and college forced those beliefs out where I never heard them. Eventually, I experienced a miracle (see GetHisWord.com) with events sending me to Christ. Outside of Plato’s Cave, I learned things I never knew which make sense and actually get good results. I’m happy to share the gift with others.
Thank God I left Mississippi.
So after you force a woman to give birth to an unwanted baby y'all Christians take care of both of them right?
I'm sorry but prayers aren't valid tender and cannot be exchanged for tangible necessities like food and shelter, it's almost 2025, we should be well past this.
Here's a real fun exercise you can try yourself - you'll need :
* A couple dollars
* Prayers
Now I want you to go to the grocery store and try to buy a loaf of bread with prayers, use the really good juicy ones!
Okay next, I want you to then repeat the same experiment but instead of prayers, use dollars.
See which one keeps you alive longer...
> only woman has a right to an opinion
I see what you did there, sneaky and typical christpilled behaviour. When it comes to women's rights, yes, it is one hundred percent their call. full stop.
Here's another fun one - go visit Africa and check the great work missionaries are doing spreading reprehensible speech that condoms are sacrilege and you can pray the AIDS away... do you see how harmful this is?
> Paper bills only in the collection plate folks, coins disrupt the service...
I came to this post because it was about working on a project with your son—about fatherhood—and then I noticed someone had brought up lobsters. That reminded me of a day my son and I had planned for weeks: just the two of us, cooking lobsters over the firepit in the backyard. It was the kind of day where the process mattered as much as the meal. The fire crackled warmly as we salted the pot, the sun glinting off the shells of the lobsters we’d picked out that morning.
Then Larry, my brother-in-law, arrived.
Larry wasn’t exactly unwelcome. He had a knack for showing up unannounced, but most of the time, we didn’t mind. He’s a guy full of ideas and energy, and that can be great—just not always at the right time. His real challenge is understanding when the moment isn’t about him or his latest fixation. Today, it was marshmallows.
“You’re boiling lobsters?” Larry asked, strolling over with a bag of marshmallows dangling from one hand. His tone wasn’t accusatory, exactly—more like he’d stumbled upon a golden opportunity that we somehow hadn’t noticed.
“Yep,” I said, turning a lobster in the pot to make sure it cooked evenly. “It’s our thing. Lobster boil Sunday.”
Larry nodded, but he wasn’t listening. He was already holding up the bag of marshmallows like they were the answer to a question no one had asked. “You know what would really make this fun? Roasting these bad boys over the fire. Quick, easy, no mess. You get that perfect golden crust and—bam!—instant crowd-pleaser.”
I glanced at my son, who was tending the fire with the focus of someone trying very hard not to roll his eyes.
“We’re good, Larry,” I said. “We’ve got our lobsters, our butter, our lemon. That’s all we need.”
But Larry wasn’t done. “I get it,” he said, with the tone of someone who clearly didn’t get it. “You’ve got your little setup here. It’s cute. But marshmallows? Way simpler. And honestly, they’re just more fun. No one has to deal with… you know, lobsters. You ever think about how much work those things are?”
My son looked up at me, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Do you even like lobster, Larry?” he asked.
Larry shrugged, already rummaging for sticks to skewer his marshmallows. “It’s not about what I like,” he said. “It’s about what’s… practical. You know, sometimes people get so stuck on their thing that they don’t see how much easier it could be.”
I took a deep breath, stirring the pot as the lobsters turned that bright, unmistakable red. “Larry, this isn’t about easy. It’s about the process. We like doing it this way.”
“Oh, sure, sure,” he said, his tone dripping with doubt. “But still, I think you’re missing out.” He waved a marshmallow-laden stick at us like a torch of wisdom. “These are the way to go. You’ll see.”
We didn’t.
My son and I turned back to our lobsters—cracking claws, dipping the meat into butter, savoring every bite. Larry sat to the side, roasting marshmallows in silence, looking vaguely put out that we hadn’t joined his impromptu campfire crusade.
When we’d finished, my son leaned back and sighed. “Best lobster yet,” he said with a grin.
I nodded, smiling. Larry watched us for a moment before finally saying, “You know, you could have had marshmallows and lobster.”
“Maybe next time,” I said, though we both knew there wouldn’t be a next time for that particular combination.
The thing about Larry—and people like him—isn’t that they’re wrong. Marshmallows are fine, in their place. But sometimes, the fire’s already lit for something else. Not every moment needs to be reimagined, repurposed, or improved upon. Sometimes, it’s enough to just cook lobsters with your son and enjoy what’s already there.
I was gonna say you must be new to HN, but it appears you’re not. I assumed the anti-Christian sentiment had finally driven most Christians away from here.
I’ve been here for a bit and I’m a Christian. Pain and suffering are difficult to rationalize with the whole “God only gives you want you can handle stuff.” It’s not comforting. Bad things happen to Christians all the time. I try to ease suffering no matter who it happens to. It does help me to remember that Jesus suffered too.
I’d say more but my son is saying “play with me” over and over. Take care ya’ll.
If you want to prosetylize, go hand out flyers in a shopping mall or whatever...
Do the HN guidelines explicitly outlaw proselytization of specific metaphysical frameworks? Because there is more than one person engaged in the activity.