There are few things sweeter than sleeping in on a Saturday and waking up to a clean, quiet house.
Waking up early, making pancakes for a couple of gleeful little munchkins, and then going out to the park to run around and have fun is one of those things you forget you used to love doing when you were younger.
one of them screams about something that doesn’t matter
I mean, one of the challenges of child care is having empathy for kids who are still struggling to regulate their emotions. If you’re openly dismissive and adversarial to kids, their behavior tends to get worse over time.
There are plenty of people who simply aren’t mature enough, themselves, to know how to interact with children. That’s one big reason why its helpful to have large extended family homes. Grandparents - particularly those who are retired, experienced, and nostalgic for parenthood - can be way better at dealing with little kids than adults who are themselves too emotionally congested and socially anxious to know how to respond.
But people routinely overstate how difficult child care can be, in large part because they fixate on the grumpy and frustrated children while suffering total blindness towards the happy, well-adjusted, and well-behaved kids.
Can’t quantify the feeling of having kids until you have one, but it’s very easy to articulate the perceived drawbacks of said unknown. They bring a life buff like nothing else, speaking a someone who regularly chases altered states of consciousness.
They provide a large opportunity for some enormous maturation, removal of bitterness/edgelord-iness and to not be so self-centred.
Your description of kids sounds like me beforehand. Have 2 happy accidents now.
Lie-ins are still possible if you are actually in a decent relationship by the way.
To anybody reading, don’t have kids if you are in a bad one. No kid deserves to grow up around that.
I grew up in a family with eighteen kids. If having such a huge family is good for anything, it’s that I don’t have the romantic veneer that most people do when it comes to childrearing.
I know exactly how expensive and hard it is, and just how much it sucks.
Your life experience is actually so extreme that you don’t know exactly how hard it is or how much it sucks. Your experience is not going to be representative of 99.9% of the populace.
You should basically never use your family life experiences growing as a reference point because of how extremely unusual it is. This is the equivalent of complaining about how hard it is to drive around town in the truckasaurus.
Unless you are intentionally misrepresenting a foster home, which is again different than having your own child or 2.
Driving a monster truck on a tiny road will give you a lot of life experience about driving safely. It’s the same when you have to do a lot of parenting and have no other choice. I have more practical experience rearing children than most people on this thread, guaranteed.
As a father and a very rational person, I can fully understand you.
Especially if you don’t have any kids around you and/or problems inside your family anyways.
I’d lie if I said I wouldn’t sometimes love to have some alone time. But I would never go back to sleeping in every Saturday and missing out on my child.
There are few things sweeter than sleeping in on a Saturday and waking up to a clean, quiet house.
You couldn’t pay me to trade that for some whiny, entitled little brat.
Waking up early, making pancakes for a couple of gleeful little munchkins, and then going out to the park to run around and have fun is one of those things you forget you used to love doing when you were younger.
Nah. I’m good. My vagina is in tact and I don’t end up bear homicidal every day.
True, until one of them screams about something that doesn’t matter and you have to will yourself not to strangle them.
To be fair I encounter that problem with other adults, too.
Yeah, but you can walk away from a grownup. You’re stuck if it’s your kid.
I mean, one of the challenges of child care is having empathy for kids who are still struggling to regulate their emotions. If you’re openly dismissive and adversarial to kids, their behavior tends to get worse over time.
There are plenty of people who simply aren’t mature enough, themselves, to know how to interact with children. That’s one big reason why its helpful to have large extended family homes. Grandparents - particularly those who are retired, experienced, and nostalgic for parenthood - can be way better at dealing with little kids than adults who are themselves too emotionally congested and socially anxious to know how to respond.
But people routinely overstate how difficult child care can be, in large part because they fixate on the grumpy and frustrated children while suffering total blindness towards the happy, well-adjusted, and well-behaved kids.
Can’t quantify the feeling of having kids until you have one, but it’s very easy to articulate the perceived drawbacks of said unknown. They bring a life buff like nothing else, speaking a someone who regularly chases altered states of consciousness.
They provide a large opportunity for some enormous maturation, removal of bitterness/edgelord-iness and to not be so self-centred.
Your description of kids sounds like me beforehand. Have 2 happy accidents now.
Lie-ins are still possible if you are actually in a decent relationship by the way. To anybody reading, don’t have kids if you are in a bad one. No kid deserves to grow up around that.
I grew up in a family with eighteen kids. If having such a huge family is good for anything, it’s that I don’t have the romantic veneer that most people do when it comes to childrearing.
I know exactly how expensive and hard it is, and just how much it sucks.
Your life experience is actually so extreme that you don’t know exactly how hard it is or how much it sucks. Your experience is not going to be representative of 99.9% of the populace.
You should basically never use your family life experiences growing as a reference point because of how extremely unusual it is. This is the equivalent of complaining about how hard it is to drive around town in the truckasaurus.
Unless you are intentionally misrepresenting a foster home, which is again different than having your own child or 2.
I don’t think that’s a great analogy.
Driving a monster truck on a tiny road will give you a lot of life experience about driving safely. It’s the same when you have to do a lot of parenting and have no other choice. I have more practical experience rearing children than most people on this thread, guaranteed.
It actually won’t, but if you own it, you’ll find lots of excuses to use it anyway and rationalize it to others.
Jesus fucking Christ, that poor woman.
Had a dozen and adopted six more.
Poor woman is right.
You cannot rationally explain why it’s fulfilling to have kids. The payoff is largely emotional.
Sleeping in got old for me at some point.
That’s certainly true.
As a father and a very rational person, I can fully understand you.
Especially if you don’t have any kids around you and/or problems inside your family anyways.
I’d lie if I said I wouldn’t sometimes love to have some alone time. But I would never go back to sleeping in every Saturday and missing out on my child.