All the responses here indicate the same "la dee da having kids is so wonderful that you don't even miss the other stuff." Fuck that. I have kids and I totally miss being able to stay up all night working on stuff and exploring new technologies, feeling like the world is going on without me.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a passable dad, spend as much time with kids as possible, take them out to libraries and parks and try to teach them things. But in the back of my head most of that time I'm still lamenting the things that I'm not able to do and that I'll probably never be able to accomplish, wondering if this was the right decision. But it seems almost heretical these days to admit that. I can't be the only one, right?
I think a lot of people can sympathize, but as you said, it's kinda taboo to say you wish you didn't have kids! I think you get the same feeling, a loss of freedoms, from any significant evolution in life.
Leaving college: "I wish I could still go out drinking every other day and perform the best in my peer-circle"
Getting to a more serious romantic stage in your relationship: "I wish I could still play video games all weekend and not have to think about another person's feelings"
And in my case, getting a puppy: "I wish I could leave the house for more than a day without having to worry about the living being I'm responsible for"
And then having kids, and then getting old enough that you can't be as active as you want, and then just being an actual grandpa.
I think it's just important to put things in context and look at the sum of the joys in your life. I was pretty stoked in college because I could do whatever I wanted, but I also couldn't afford nice vacations, casual plane trips to see friends, quality (expensive) food, etc.
Perspective is what it's about. Your kids won't be the same in a few years, neither will you and nor the world. Take care of your health while doing all that you do and you'll get back to doing the other things that you miss doing or would love to do.
It won't kill you, or your career, if you miss out on a shitty framework or two.
> It won't kill you, or your career, if you miss out on a shitty framework or two.
How about: if you miss on most weekends, music festivals, backpacking through different countries, working whenever you want, getting a drink whenever you want....and that is only your personal freedoms. Add to that all the responsibilities that comes with parenting.
I'm not saying its not a good idea to be a parent; simply that its not just "missing out on a framework". You miss out on a lot of things...and you should be aware of that before making that decision.
When my older daughter was 7 and my younger daughter was 3 months old we went on a 2.5 month camping trip to Australia. This is more than what me and many other people have done with no kids. We've certainly taken the kids to music festivals as well and have gone on short backpacking trips (not that we couldn't do long ones if we wanted).
A lot of the limitations you're describing are self imposed.
Life tends to have responsibilities whether you have kids or not.
Having kids is a life changing experience for sure but you can definitely "skill up" and do a lot of other things after you've had kids. Not a problem.
> A lot of the limitations you're describing are self imposed.
I'm sure there are some self imposed limitations, and I'm sure there are other avenues opened up by having children as well. I'm not saying there aren't. All I'm saying is that people should be aware of them before making that important decision. It shouldn't just be a natural progression i.e. college -> job -> marriage -> kids.
> Life tends to have responsibilities whether you have kids or not.
Its the specific responsibilities of child-rearing that I do not like. Also, let's please not gloss over the incredibly time consuming, financially draining task of raising children by saying that "life is the same either way". That is simply not true. I'm not making a judgement about which path is better, but lets agree on the facts.
> Having kids is a life changing experience for sure but you can definitely "skill up" and do a lot of other things after you've had kids. Not a problem.
Again, not denying this. In fact, having kids might make you want to be more ambitious so as to provide a better future for them, which might be more motivation. That still doesn't change the points I've made, in that it is a huge tradeoff in lifestyle and one must be clear about that.
> That still doesn't change the points I've made, in that it is a huge tradeoff in lifestyle and one must be clear about that.
This is the case for many life decisions. I don't see how this is a helpful addition to the conversation.
* Move to another state? There will be big life implications.
* Change careers? Ditto.
* Go to college?
* Go _back_ to school?
* Spend loads of free time hacking away instead of getting out of the house?
* Travel a bunch, perhaps at the cost of rapid career advancement?
* Take a huge pay cut to work on something you enjoy?
All of these (and more) will limit you in various ways, but gift you with different experiences. The same is for kids.
It sounds like you don't want kids. That's cool, I'm glad you know what you want. But no need to hype up this decision to have kids or not as scary or some kind of albatross. It's just another decision with pros and cons.
I can understand why some people here are so sensitive about this particular topic. Anyways, no, it is definitely NOT the same as any of the decisions you mentioned above. Having another HUMAN BEING is a commitment of ginormous proportions. You are responsible for raising a kid, for being there when they need you the most, through teenage phase, and (luckily? hopefully?) have good relationship as adults. All the while, supporting them financially and emotionally until they land on their feet. And even then, the parental bonds of love and care are never truly severed...you are connected to that person for your whole life. Tell me one of those decisions you mention above that are similar to this. Its absolutely a huge decision, and all of this must NOT be discounted, especially when young people are attempting to make a decision.
Also, one more really really important point about all the decisions you stated is simply: you can choose to change your mind about a decision you make, but not so with children.
> It sounds like you don't want kids. That's cool, I'm glad you know what you want. But no need to hype up this decision to have kids or not as scary or some kind of albatross.
No, its not hype at all, as I've explained above. And despite all the cons I still have an open mind about it. But please don't try to convince people its all flowers and unicorns. Give them the pros and cons and let them make the decision.
But please don't try to convince people its all flowers and unicorns.
Oh my! No way! More like tantrums, stinky diapers, strongly curtailed freedoms, opportunity costs and grey hair and/or hair loss.
But I can count at least 12 other "irreversible" life choices a person could make that will lead to more or less similar results. So, there's that.
Each person needs to make this decision for themselves, but once you do, you are in it for the rest of your foreseeable future. If you can't make that kind of commitment, for whatever reason, stay the -eff away!
Can you provide us a list of those 12 other irreversible life choices that you can count? I am genuinely cuious to know what other such life choices are there that I need to be careful about.
"Irreversible" life choices, in no particular order:
* Getting convicted for an offense with "mandatory minimum" jail time - e.g. dealing drugs to minors.
* Driving drunk, crashing and getting fully paralyzed - 'coz "driving drunk" is a choice.
* Having unprotected sex and living with HIV - for the rest of your days.
* Getting college/higher education, on a student loan, in a field that does not/will not pay at a high enough rate to payback the loan - good luck discharging that.
* Doing any high-risk physical activity with a >50% chance of serious bodily harm/injury. (Death is OK, by this metric!)
... logically refute all of the above and I'll give you the remaining 7 :P
I don't think this list comes anywhere close to having a baby. None of the items have a 100% probability of causing irreversible life choices. For example, the choice of performing a crime may not end up in conviction, the choice of drunk driving may not end up in a crash, one may not get HIV even after having unprotected sex, one may be able to repay the student loan even after choosing an unoptimal field, etc.
But having a baby has a 100% probability of altering one's schedule for the rest of the life!
But having a baby has a 100% probability of altering one's schedule for the rest of the life!
Sure, but you can put your kid up for adoption if you are so deeply affected. I mean, Steve Job's biological mother did, so it is not really a 100% thing.
Case 1: Have a child. Take care of the child until the child is an adult. It has an irreversible effect on one's lifestyle and schedule. Even after the child has grown up, the parent and the child are still emotionally bonded to varying degree.
Case 2: Have a child. Put the child up for adoption. Once the child is adopted, two cases emerge.
Case 2.1: The adoption lasts life long, thus being irreversible by definition.
Case 2.2: The adoption is reversed, thus bringing the biological parent back to Case 1 and thus facing the irreversible effects of Case 1.
Thus, in all cases, having a child has 100% probability of having life long effects.
I am honestly unable to understand if you are arguing for argument's sake or if you are genuinely trying to make a point. I think most people would agree that issues like having a child or putting a child up for adoption has a 100% probability of serious irreversible effect on one's schedule, lifestyle and emotions than something like high-risk physical activity which has less than 100% of probability of such an irreversible effect.
The criteria was "reversibility", not societal acceptance.
Also, "having children" is not "considered good" by society in 100% of cases. We'd never have Roe v Wade if that were the case. I think you are building a bit of a straw man there.
I don't see how Roe v Wade contradicts the claim that "having children" is "considered good". Roe v Wade is about abortion, i.e. a situation that applies to unwanted pregnancy, something we are not discussing in this thread. When we say "having children", I thought it is understood that we are talking about planned/wanted pregnancy with planned parenthood.
Having children is definitely a bigger commitment than getting a dog ;) However the picture painted that your life is over financially or otherwise is a bit of an exaggeration. So it's not a fact that you can't go backpacking, drinking, or learn a new framework once you have children. Don't get me wrong, having kids is a huge change in your life, just not necessarily in the way people who don't have kids think.
Everyone is free to live their lives as they wish. I'm not implying you should or shouldn't get married, or a get a job, or go to college, or have kids, in any order you feel like... It's just that you shouldn't decide not to have kids because you think you won't be able to learn a new framework (or whatever other skill you wish to acquire) once you have kids. At least generally speaking. Different people may have their own specific situations.
Apologies, I didn't mean to imply life is over after having children. I think we are in agreement over the basic facts. I've been brought up in a culture that places too much emphasis on having a family as the "right" thing to do so I try to find the downsides and/or tradeoffs as well, more for personal reasons than anything else.
> it's kinda taboo to say you wish you didn't have kids! I think you get the same feeling, a loss of freedoms, from any significant evolution in life.
I think any society that has thrived has had some variation of this cultural trait. Its easy to see why: without lots of children the society would simply die out.
This is a very nuanced point though. As a young, somewhat single developer, I'm incredibly grateful to work a job that I enjoy that pays great. Love the freedom to go on vacation anywhere, to afford nice restaurants and such. I can't see why I would give up all that freedom to "settle down" as my parents keep reminding me of. Although I've had many great relationships, at some point, its always: "I just want to not have to plan out every weekend together!".
Perhaps I'm an outlier that just puts way too much emphasis on independence.
> > it's kinda taboo to say you wish you didn't have kids!
> I think any society that has thrived has had some variation of this cultural trait.
I think in a lot of societies, having kids doesn't quite restrict your options as much as modern American society - prior to this century, you'd likely still live surrounded by family and a community who could help you with a lot of the childcare.
You could drop the kids off at granddad's on the way to work, and not spend a significant portion of your income on daycare; in-laws could come and stay with you for awhile to help you get some sleep during those first few months; if you needed to do something during a weekend that you couldn't bring a kid to, you could drop the kid off at the neighbors'.
I agree completely. And I imagine, before the internet, having an extended family would have a lot of "tribal knowledge" about all the little idiosyncrasies of raising children as well.
That can be both good and bad, though; I was talking to my stepbrother - who is 30 years my senior - and when he was raising his kids, who are my age, putting them on their stomach to sleep was the medically advised strategy. Today, that's considered a risk for SIDS.
I'd say that 90% of the benefit of the extended family would be people who would come and be a warm body to sit with the kid, or bring you food, at least for the first year.
Don't let anyone with kids fool you. It's perfectly fine to never have kids, and becoming much more common.
My wife and I decided before we got married we were probably not going to have kids. Now that we have been married for years and enjoy our life of independence, it has to turned solidly to never.
Simple fact is, having kids is gonna change your life, should you choose to have them. It seems like a lot of people in this thread are trying to hammer down a reality where this isn't a fact, but that won't change that every aspect of how your time is managed will revolve around a new focal point for 20 years or more.
>And then having kids
I take issue with the prevailing attitude that having kids should be a mandatory evolution in life. My partner and I are quite happy spending the better part of some weekends playing videogames, and we're especially happy never sharing a minute of either of our time with anyone's children, especially our own. So many people in this thread and in general will just regurgitate "but you can't imagine it!" and "your whole perspective changes!" but that's the point. We've concretely determined we do not want that shift in perspective, and I want child-rearing life to remain firmly outside the grasp of my imagination forever.
Being around other people's children can be annoying if they're not well behaved, being around my own children would imply a 20 year sentence of that. I did not mean to imply I've left a trail of abandoned kids across my history :)
I have two daughters, 7 and 8. Both have clinically diagnosed ADHD and the eldest has ODD and was born with heart problems that required open heart surgery to fix. I love them both to death. On their good days they're amazing kids. On their bad days, I, like you just slog through it and keep my thoughts to myself wondering just how much longer I can keep going. It's hard. You don't want to ruin your kids by admitting your doubts. You don't want them to have any inkling that they were anything but the perfect decision to expand your loving family. But your computer at least does what you tell it to, even if it wasn't quite what you intended to tell it to do. If I have to tell my kids to put on their shoes one more time today I may jump off the roof. I won't lie, there's days I'm truly not even sure how I make it through the day, but somehow, by some grace of God, because it's not my own, that left long ago, I do. On the days where they snuggle into you and tell you you're the most amazing Daddy a little girl can have, that makes all the suffering and sacrifice melt away.
This is so well said, thank you. My own kids have their moments of driving me up the wall (every bedtime, where "brush your teeth" seems to be in a foreign language), but there are very very few things that feel even remotely as good as your kids giving you a hug when you (or they) need it.
I can't speak to whether boys or girls are more frequently diagnosed with this. My guess would be boys that are more frequently diagnosed, but I'd like to emphasize the word guess; I've not done any extensive research on that aspect. We (her parents and psychiatrist) have determined that my eldest daughter hits every single symptom on the list.
It's been particularly hard to live with and we've sought out help from every available resource to learn to manage it and live with it. This will likely be an ongoing work in progress until we find a balance where the effort to manage it balances symptoms we can learn to live with, eventually as she grows and looks to leave home and start her own life, she will need to have learned to manage and control it herself. Of course, it's already been 8 years and is at least another 10 years away. It hasn't been and isn't going to be an easy path.
I often tell myself that she's just 8 and growing up with heart problems and surgery that you can't hide from her because of the slew of tests she's had to undergo her whole life to ensure her health has been harder on her psychologically than it has on all of us - and it's been hard for us, I can only begin to imagine what it was like to go through for her. So some allowances have to be made for her psychological state from this. That doesn't make it easier to deal with, it just helps you to keep putting on the mask and continuing to demonstrate a level patience that you ran out of so long ago you can't remember what it was like not to feel this way.
It is, but you do what you have to do to get through.
Realistically, everyone has their own shit to deal with and nobody really wants to be reminded that their own troubles aren't the most important things in the world - because to them, their troubles are the most important thing in their world. So you dig deep and you get on with things and hope you make it through before it spits you out of the other end a broken mess and you do the best you can with the resources you can dig up and you keep a smile on your face and keep everyone laughing because you don't want to be that guy that's always complaining about how their life sucks and the world owes them something.
Some days it's secretly really, really bleak. But other days it's openly beautiful and life couldn't be better. You have to try and focus on those days because they're the ones that pull you through the hard times.
I'm sure you're not the only one. As a soon-to-be Dad and long time single hacker late night guy, I've been wondering myself if I'll feel the same way.
But then I remember the day jobs I've had where I was thinking the same things on the clock: lamenting what I'm not working on and will probably never accomplish. Especially including the programming and/or devops jobs.
I've got to say I can't point to a single job (even working in a restaurant as a dish washer, and on a ranch) where I couldn't have found any way to constantly increase my knowlede even by some small ammount while working. It's even more challenging to me working remotely on gigs that are utterly boring, because I'm tempted to stray out into left field and the Internet makes that so easy of course.
But those boring gigs carry value that I can find if I look for it, and that I can build upon. Every second, they offer opportunities for exploring a new problem domain - for learning something new. And my client gets a great ROI if I do that. We both win.
And with Kids, is it not a good thing to tell them about what you're working on? To show enthusiasm for your work? You say you try to teach your kids things - I've heard it said the best way to learn something is by teaching it, right?
There's a pretty powerful and largely unspoken cultural norm to present yourself as happy, motivated and fulfilled. I'm not sure if it's a US thing or a universal thing. Those are all good things indeed, and good to aim for. But ... some days/some weeks/some months/some years ... life is not fun, is demotivating, and is a grind.
Definitely not the only one. I think it depends on what stage your kids are at. Are they old enough to have their own hobbies? Our first arrived recently, I've resigned myself to the fact that working toward any sort of mastery again will elude me until he finds his own obsessions. So about 6 years or so if my childhood is any indicator. But I think having a relationship cuts into that as well. There are times when he's sleeping and we're both trying to work on projects and my wife wants to talk or "needs a hug" or something. At times it's frustrating, then I try and remember what things were like before they came along. Obviously this would all be different if I had means or money and was single at the same time...
How do you know the other side would feel any better? If you had chosen not to have kids, would you lament your solitary existence and worry that maybe you've picked the wrong path?
Or put differently: how do you tell the difference between making the wrong choice and buyer's remorse?
One of my old high school friends just posted a long rant about this and it's totally understandable. I'm not sure I could have kids for the same reasons you mentioned.
It's a mix. On the one hand, I do also regret not being able to crunch things through the night like I used to. On the other hand, most of that stuff matters a lot less to me now than it used to.
I mean, I still do a fair amount of hobby stuff and learning new tech stacks, but it's just one part of my identity instead of being the primary part. If I was gung-ho about wanting to start a company and never got the chance, then I might feel more regret about it. But that has never been a personal goal of mine.
I've talked to a lot of dads at my workplace about this. Everyone has these questions come up, and everyone feels closest to their children at different timescales too. E.g. some dads do not feel close to their kids as babies at all, but became very attached once they started talking.
Lots of random thoughts there. Just don't beat yourself up over it.
Be honest.. before kids, how many nights did you "stay up working on stuff and exploring new technologies?" My bet is most of your time pre-kids was "wasted" on non-career things. If you were actually spending many nights studying then having kids won't really stop you from learning.
My anecdotal story: Before my kid, I spent roughly 80% of my time outside work "wasting" playing video games, watching youtube, twitch, going out, things like that. The other 20% was spent learning and progressing my skills. Since having a kid, I haven't really touched video games nor really miss them, though I may pick up a switch soon. I tend to spend about the same time, maybe more now, on studying and picking up new skills. What i did find is having a kid helped me sharpen my focus when I do study and helped me put my life in perspective of his.
*I use "wasted" as you used it, but I personally don't think that time was actually wasted.
I find this to be the best response. I don't miss the "crap" I used to have time for, lack of "freedom" isn't that big of a deal. It's more about putting ambitions and dreams on hold, likely forever, and the recognition that no, I'm not going to be the person who solves quantum gravity because I have to spend most of my time making sure these little things aren't eating worms or tearing library books and whatnot, and I'll be 60 when they're gone. It's easy in those moments to blame them for it, but you have to remember that such things were always pipe dreams anyway. Still, that doesn't make the recognition of that fact any easier.
All that said, due to lack of free time and the newfound need to use it efficiently, I've found that I've probably read more actual physics in the last four years than in the previous many years of dreaming about it. So there's that aspect too. It's not all bad.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a passable dad, spend as much time with kids as possible, take them out to libraries and parks and try to teach them things. But in the back of my head most of that time I'm still lamenting the things that I'm not able to do and that I'll probably never be able to accomplish, wondering if this was the right decision. But it seems almost heretical these days to admit that. I can't be the only one, right?