It’s in TFA but pretty self-evident: in traditional non-nuclear families, extended kin (especially grandparents) help with childcare, reducing the burden.
i'm living with two other families in a house (separate apartments). it lifts the hyper dependency of children on their parents and creates more room to attend to needs for both adults and children. it also makes it possible to stack many things, like grocery shopping or cooking (one person cooking for 12 people does not require three times as much time as cooking for four people). plus, there's usually always other adults at the house that you can hang out with plus many other kids for your kids to play with, so less stress with playdates etc.
I don't think the commenter is saying you can't be happy without children, but it's a kind of experience that you either have or you don't, and it's hard to understand if you never had children. I'll add some context below in case you're interested in hearing about my own perspective.
I was pretty darn happy as someone who got to go read a book each weekend at a coffee shop and workout 3x per week. I eventually had a kid and I no longer have hardly any time for the stuff I used to love to do. Kids need constant assistance and have their own growing pains. Despite all that, it's given me a richness and depth to my life that I can't put into words. I get to experience raising someone with all the ups and downs. This has given me a kind of wisdom I never knew I didn't have. I could go on and on for days.
"A lie parents tell themselves to justify their decision"? Not at all (at least for 99% of is I'd wager). It's terrifying, but I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't trade the feeling I get from getting a hug from my kid or that first time they read a book for a combined $50B dollars, immortality, super inhumane intelligence, and movie star good looks.
>but it's a kind of experience that you either have or you don't, and it's hard to understand if you never had children.
this kind of mention is only ever asymmetrical -- generally in the direction you mentioned -- but i'd like to mention that being a childless adult with a long term relationship (or not) is also a unique perspective that very young parents / couples will never experience.
I had plenty of friends in school that mothered/fathered children at the age of 14-17 -- they won't get to experience my life, either -- they were busy with trying to provide for a child.
Both experiences are equally valid and unique, but for some reason we only ever speak about the one side of the coin 'missing out', as if the parents can just sort of surmise what they missed out by having a child; I'm sure that's not the case, just am i'm sure I could never understand what having a child is like -- I just wish there was a bit more understanding from the other side of the aisle that any perspective unlike your own is unique in its' own right.
I should have further specified that I didn't have a child at 14 or 17, but at approximately 30. I essentially had about a decade to live the care free life with my wife who I'd been with since 18. So I understand that lifestyle choice and it's fine. I'm offering a counter explanation for the other comment suggesting we're all delusional for saying it is a unique experience. That doesn't mean the childless lifestyle can't be rewarding as well in a different manner (I already acknowledged that), but for myself, I consider myself better off and I believe most probably agree (although I'm sure there are plenty out there that may have a different opinion).
Here’s the problem though. If you had your kids at about age thirty five and they do the same, you’re seventy when your grandchildren are born. How much can you realistically expect to help raise a child at seventy plus?
I think we should teach young people that it is ok to not have children.
There is nothing wrong being child free
and it ought to be the default for most people.
if not having children is the default, then population will decrease and eventually die out, or the burden of keeping the population stable rests on those few who need to have lots of children.
if the replacement rate today is 2,3 children per couple, then when half of couples don't have children the others need to have more than 4 children. in an environment that is not supportive of having children this is going to create a two class society.
better to spread the load.
also, having children late also means that more children per family are needed. so you can choose between having 2 children when you are young or having 3 or more when you are older. (i don't know the actual numbers but i think you can get the idea)
so i disagree that teaching young people that not having children is ok. we need to teach them the opposite, and most importantly, we need to teach those that do not want children of their own, that they need to actively support those who do have children instead.
we need to create a child friendly society. and we can't do that without everyone contributing to that.
> if not having children is the default, then population will decrease and eventually die out, or the burden of keeping the population stable rests on those few who need to have lots of children.
oh, no.
I want the population to decrease.
Please do not have more children to "offset" me not having any children.
That defeats the point.
I want fewer people to have children.
I also want the people who have children to have fewer children.
In fact, I am against this whole idea of "reproductive rights".
Nobody should have a right to have as many children as they want.
There should be a cap in the number of biological children a human can have.
If you want to see what that policy leads to, look no further than China's one child policy and the horrors that came with enforcing it and what is now occuring to their economy.
If you're concerned about population control, you'll see that it naturally goes down with industrialization like what is occuring all over Europe right now. There's no need to move to a forced system that will lead to human rights abuses.
Meh I mean it's true for some not others.
I had a kid and never particularly found the richness and depth emotional feeling.
Of course if you express the opinion you find parenting to be basically another duty you must fulfill to the best of your ability despite finding little to no joy from the task, it will be taken poorly. So you internalize the lie, buy into it the best you can to pretend to yourself you don't have an opinion that makes everyone hate you, because apparently parenting is the one duty that is 'wrong' unless you find it satisfying.
Feels like a bunch of people got the 'dope' that makes parents feel emotional rewarded from the insane amount of labor it requires, others internalize the 'lie' so they have a way to respond to others in a socially appropriate way.
I feel in anything you do or have to do, you can find richness and depth. At least that’s somehow what I like to believe and trying to make my life experience be by practicing meditation.
The duty of being a parent however, just comes with so much expectations from society and therefore within yourself - It is super hard to find freedom within that duty, to then actually find your relationship to your child, the specific richness and depth it can be for the both of you.
So in that regard, saying „I don’t find that in there for me“ is just as good and right as any other point of experience.
actually, i believe this experience is more common for fathers at least than people want to admit. especially in western society fathers are generally expected to be more involved, and have a hard time when they come from a family where this wasn't the case (so they don't have a good role model) nor have a partner that encourages them to be involved, or worse a partner that actually discourages them.
i have been struggling with this too, especially because i had quite different expectations going in.
but the thing is that what gives you joy very much depends on your own expectations, and you can change those. i believe it's the same thing as with a job. there are people arguing that you should love your job, and if you don't you should not be doing it, while others claim that most people don't have a choice but to take a job that they don't enjoy.
I think it's ok if you don't find joy. Personally I had a very involved father and supportive partner. I understand my duty and am fulfilling it with full acceptance and gravity, I just keep this one piece of independence for my sanity-- the right to the validity of my emotion regarding how that duty makes me feel.
i do find joy, just not only in the way some people may expect it. (like i enjoy playing with the kids, but i don't enjoy not having much time to do so)
i think the primary problem is expectations of others. i may be lucky, that i do have a supportive family and partner that do not push any specific expectations on me, so i am free to find the enjoyment where i like. and a strong part of that for me is that i enjoy that i have been given this responsibility and am able to take care of my family to the best of my ability. in other words: i wanted this life and i am thankful to have gotten it, even if it turned out different than i thought it would be.
The main expectations I am driven by are to provide the child with adequate resources to thrive, to not neglect the child, and to give them a good footing to navigate this life. I'm not sure if these are expectations that can reasonably be relaxed, I'm just pretty much resigned I'm in for a long slog to provide these for the good of the child at great effort to myself whether it pleases me or not -- the circle of life I guess.
I see you, fellow dad. Thank you for having the courage to speak up and for fulfilling your duty as a parent, rain or shine. No judgement from me, only respect.
I'm not sure if anyone suggested that directly. It does bring happiness sure, but maybe some mean a different kind of fulfillment you get through living for others. You'd likely get the same thing through adoption or working at shelters I'd imagine.
Just as you think it’s annoying to have someone project the statement onto you (though I don’t think that’s what GP was doing), I think it’s annoying you’re telling me it’s a lie that I’m telling myself. I can say with confidence I’m happier with kids than without. I’ve had it both ways, and I can speak to my own experience with honesty far better than you can guess about strangers you don’t know.
Don’t take GP’s statement as a projection onto you. Take it as one’s projection onto their own self. That said, this (GP’s statement) has been the general consensus of other parents I’ve talked to. So I wouldn’t discard it so flippantly.
That doesn’t mean literally everyone would be happier with children, of course.
However, what I'm arguing is not "having children makes me happy."
It's "having children is above every other kind of happiness."
Think about that for a second. What does that statement say to a person without children? To me, I hear that if you don't have children you're literally wasting your life. It's a denial of every other thing people find joy in.
Why would you say that? I can only think of two reasons:
- You're an asshole trying to feel superior to others
- You're unsure of your decision, so you have to put everyone else down
If you have any other reasons then let me know though!
Perhaps they are helpfully evangelizing a happiness that someone else may not have considered. Not everyone without children has taken a resolute stand on the matter. Some may be on the fence. Everything is anecdotal anyway so why be so offended?
Because of course it is impossible that they are genuinely describing their personal experience where raising children has brought them fulfillment and meaning beyond anything else they have ever done, right?
I think the main communication barrier between childless people and parents is that it's an experience far removed from anything else we do in our lives, so it is very difficult to grasp if you haven't been there.
Parents know that there will be times when raising your kids is the most meaningful thing you've ever done, and there are other times when it's a relentless slog that is grinding you down. It is both, and perhaps it is neither.
As a childless person you may read the above and think I'm stupid or deluded, but I bet most parents will nod in understanding, because they will have experienced something similar.
It is fine to be contend with having kids. It is pretentious to claim that everyone without kids hasn't achieved supreme humanhood. Both sides cant really know how the alternative would have felt like. If you have kids, you cant magically unhave kids and see how your life would have developed. And if you have no kids, you can't magically swipe through your alternative timeline either. So what is the point of claiming superiority over the other sides position?
> It is pretentious to claim that everyone without kids hasn't achieved supreme humanhood.
That would be pretentious to make such a claim. But I have not seen a claim like that be made in this conversation thread.
People have expressed having children has enriched their own lives. That doesn’t mean you can’t enrich your life without children, nor does it mean literally everyone with children feels enriched.
Other people have put it more eloquently and perhaps a bit more diplomatically, but you’re wrong.
I lived for 33 years before having a child and nothing - absolutely nothing - ever brought me more joy than something as simple as my daughter’s stupid grin when I’m on my back and she’s above me, ready to pounce.
While I’m sure not every parent feels the same way, I bet most do. I feel sorry for the people out there that would get the same feeling but will never experience it.
>I suspect it isn't the parents that are lying to themselves...
I suspect some of them are genuinely happy they had kids, some others are lying to themselves, and some others lie to others because they don't want to become pariahs when it's found out that they wish they hadn't had kids.
You can read the opinions of the last group on some anonymous discussion forums; they're real people.
What the relative ratios of these 3 groups are, I have no idea, and I doubt there's any way of finding out.
Once you experience the other side, outside of a psuedo-anonymous forum you're not really allowed to have the other opinion, and you'll quickly learn to shut up or 'lie' or become a hated pariah. It becomes a bit of an echo chamber.
> You don't get to say "oh I was wrong" after a couple years.
Parents leaving their partner and their child behind isn't unheard of. Even women sometimes do so. Sometimes, children end up at the grandparents, and the woman tries to start over. Your claim seems to come from an idealized world.
Western culture no longer seems to appreciate the commitment that is required to raise children. Personally I think people are too self-centered and are too eager to seek hedonism. Whether or not it will be OK long term is to be seen.
I have no doubt that if you were to ask the people without kids on their death bed if they wished they had had them, they would say yes.
In western culture raising kids by societal norms is a bigger commitment than it ever was. My grandma had 7 siblings and no shoes for most of her childhood. It wasn't nearly as big a commitment for my great grandparents to raise her.
> People in their deathbed also regret working so much but nobody's chomping at the bit to quit their job and become a bum
The Financially Independent Retired Early (FIRE) movement is very popular and it centers around focusing on the essentials so that you can quit working early. And that's just an example of one of the ways in which people escape the rat race.
Every parent was once a non-parent, and therefore can compare their own experience before and after. I'm sure parents are a little (intentionally) delusional at times, nobody wants to seem like a 'bad' or 'uncaring' parent. But to assume that the extreme majority of parents are lying about enjoying an experience that they've been evolutionarily primed for seems like flat-earth level reality-denial.
My issue is not with the fact that some parents are happy with their decision.
My issue is the implication that the joy of parenthood is above every other joy.
For comparison, you don't see programmers claiming the joy of programming is superior to all other jobs. Mountaineers don't claim that you haven't enjoyed life unless you climb mountains.
Why? Because those things are obviously joyful, but not accessible to everyone. Not everyone can climb, not everyone can program, but everyone can find their own joy.
So why do parents feel okay saying that? If you can come up with any other reason then please let me know because I'm still searching.
The same reason sex is pleasurable. We would not be here if it were not this way.
Put in different terms, there are many experiences which have an evolutionary origin. Disgust reactions to certain sights/smells are a near-universal experience, for example. Individuals that don't share these experiences (or who are attracted to them) are considered weird or degenerate precisely because they are so universal.
i didn't mean to generalize in what i said, but i see that the way i framed it makes it easy to understand that way.
i totally think that for some people having children would definitely not make them more happy, possibly many. it really depends on what gives you meaning, joy (obviously) and i think to a significant extent the setup within which you are having children. before i moved into this setup with the other families parenthood was significantly less joyful for me.
privilege is also a big factor. how much education and access to resources do you have so that you have the option to choose to work less than full-time for example?
And there's a lot less strain when moving out of nuclear family structures. It all becomes easier for the children and the parents.