11 ms·

Why Parents Hate Parenting

117 points by gcv 16y ago

kroger 16y ago
one page version: http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/67024/ http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/67024/
david927 16y ago
It's a lot of work. I think that's exacerbated by modern lifestyles. We're pulled in a thousand directions and we're less likely to live near relatives, which means that the support systems are not there like they used to be. Kids demand you. Simple things like watching them playing is huge for them. If you try to understand what they're saying (already at a few months old), you'll be surprised to find it pretty cogent and clear. For example, in the article, the little boy was literally hitting his mother over the head to get her attention. But if you're not listening, you just get upset. I didn't become parent because I think it will selfishly make me happier. I became a parent because I felt I would have something to offer a child and I wanted to give expression to that.
- yardie 16y ago
  It's a lot of work, but not because of lifestyle. In reading the article you see that parents, now, spend more time with their kids than previous generations. But kids are coddled more than ever. Between shuttling them to school, soccer practice, and piano lessons it seems like the parents have decided to give themselves these tasks and are surprised! when they don't have anytime for do what they want. If anything I learned from the article it's these parents are wimps. The kid almost takes the father's eye out and the strongest punishment is a timeout?! The mother has to ask her son to do his homework?! I guess my family is old school, but throwing anything at my mom would have my ass on ice. And if she has to ask twice, that computer would be gone.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- gcheong 16y ago
  "I didn't become parent because I think it will selfishly make me happier. I became a parent because I felt I would have something to offer a child and I wanted to give expression to that." This is an interesting point. Do you not feel that the expression of this desire will make you happier? Did you adopt your child? If not, then how is the creating of a human life in order for you to fulfill your desire to give what you have to offer to a child anything but selfish? Certainly there were kids that existed before that could have benefitted from your gifts. I don't mean to say you should not have had kids for this reason. I think anyone who desires to have a kid and has the means should do so but I don't see anything different in your desire than that of someone who simply wants kids.
pragmatic 16y ago
Like everything in life, the thought of doing it, trumps the actual doing it. Finishing the basement, writing a novel, building the next great web app, raising kids all seem like great projects to embark on. But it's the dark night of the soul, when you're up for the 10 night in a row (or you have writer's block or you realize you shouldn't have cut that pipe, etc, etc). Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns. Speaking as a member of GenX, our lives are so damn easy most of the time, when we run into problems, we don't know how to handle it. However, we adjust. I just can't imagine how grandma raised 9 kids with no ER or acute care and little money. Wars, the great depression, death of a child, she went through it all. And they did hard physical labor every day. The thing is we adjust, it's hard at first, but we persevere. When you watch your kid doing something you taught him, that's just not a feeling you get from purchasing a new iPad. When you sit in structure you built or use a product you built you'll know the feeling. It's hard to explain but in the end, it's worth it.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  Very true. My wife and I are lucky, in a way. She's Italian. Like, born Italian, speaks Italian, lives Italian. Okay, she lives in Montreal, but damnit, call her a Frenchy and she'll punch me hard enough in that spot on the arm that she knows will get a reaction. Anyways, we live next door to her great-grandmother (nona), and below her Mother and Father. I swear, her sisters are over often enough that it's normal. Her older sister lived at home till she was 25/26 and got married. Only then did she move out. My wife did the same thing. For them, their entire culture, this is normal. Lawyers living at home with their parents, not batting an eye. This is normal. Now, I'm American. 18, and I'm out the house, fending for myself. Seeing my cousins was something I did every few years (being a military brat didn't help, neither did parents getting a divorce). My wife sees her cousins all the time. Weekly. Not all the cousins, but often enough that again, it's normal. It's not some super special event. What's all this getting to? There is a point, I promise. Anyways, we had our first son in 2008, and our second is due the end of the month, beginning of August (yay!). Raising our son has been a joy. Ignoring the fact that he is a very laid back and very happy child, having parents/grand parent next door and upstairs, and a very close knit family always present meant raising him wasn't difficult. Couple this with the fact that Quebec hands you a years paid maternity (if you are working, of course), and it's pretty smooth sailing. We could still go out occasionally, assured that the grandparents would take good care of our child. If we assistance, we literally knocked on the wall, and they'd come over. Oh, we did our part. We didn't rely on them. And they took advantage, too. When they needed to go to the market, my wife was able to take them instead of having to take the bus or walk. All very practical. So, you ask a good question: > I just can't imagine how grandma raised 9 kids with no ER or acute care and little money. And I give you an answer: Family. It's odd. My family loved me, they cared for me, but family to me before I met my wife was immediate. I didn't see grandparents but maybe one a year on Christmas or Thanksgiving. I grew up away from cousins, and at 18, expected to have to go out on my own. My family wasn't bad. But in my wife's family, I fully realize how other cultures see family. I look at my brother, living in the US, married, with a second child on the way. I won't go into to many details, but they are struggling, but they get very little support from family. They live almost 2 hours from my father, but rarely see him (compared to how often I see my wives family members), and they get little help from his wives family. This probably comes from the American cultural of independence. You make it or break it on your own skill, and asking or getting help is seen as a weakness. Children are thrown to the wolves at 18 and expected to thrive. Some do. Many don't. My son is happy. He makes his parents happy. He's constantly surrounded by people that love him. Parenting is a joy, and we are in a good place. Our biggest worries are silly when we think about them (seriously, we worry about the stupidest things, and laugh about them when we realize what we are worrying about). I'm not religious, but that doesn't mean I can't feel blessed.
mcknz 16y ago
I certainly don't have all the answers, but part of why parents hate parenting is a one-size-fits-all approach to what parents are "supposed" to do: issue time-outs, "recite the rules of the house to a 2 year-old," or overuse the good old "1, 2, 3...." There's no single golden path to parenting.
futuremint 16y ago
The lens through which parenting is viewed here is too narrow. Parenting isn't about being happier. It is about being a bigger and better person. Children make your life BIGGER. You feel moments of happiness like you've never felt before. You also feel moments of anger like you've never felt before. It really is indescribable and not for the faint of heart or the selfish. The beautiful thing about parenting is that it shows you who you really are (not who you think you are), and gives you chances every day to grow. It makes you see what really matters in life, assuming you actually come to this realization. I've seen plenty of people not realize this and fight to keep their identity, their original idea of what they wanted for themselves while also trying to be a parent. That doesn't work. Part of parenting is a certain amount of ego destruction. You have to go through that if you want to genuinely care for another human being. This is what makes the experience of parenting so great. It is a kind of Zen experience of making yourself better by destroying your concept of self (and putting another 'self' first more than your own self would like).
- junklight 16y ago
  I so agree with this. The whole "does it make my life happier" is such a shallow consumer thing. When I was younger I led an interesting life in many ways but I have never had the intensity of experience I have with and about my children. Another really surprising thing was finding out how much I connect back with society - I want to be part of society and change it and make it better - I get what it is for. Children are not a lifestyle accessory and as the poster above says they push you into all sorts of aspects of your self in all sorts of interesting ways. The mixture of a startup and three small children has certainly been entertaining and there have been times when I am so exhausted I have nothing else to give but then to go and do something simple - like bathing the children or doing something in the garden with them and it makes it all worth while. As I frequently find myself telling my children: Things in life that aren't challenging aren't worth while (possibly hyperbole but you get my point)
  - pavel_lishin 16y ago
    Really? Happiness is shallow and consumeristic?
capital_omega 16y ago
Of course, this should not be a surprise. If you are no longer fretting about spending too little time with your children after they’re born (because you have a year of paid maternity leave), if you’re no longer anxious about finding affordable child care once you go back to work (because the state subsidizes it), if you’re no longer wondering how to pay for your children’s education and health care (because they’re free)—well, it stands to reason that your own mental health would improve. When Kahneman and his colleagues did another version of his survey of working women, this time comparing those in Columbus, Ohio, to those in Rennes, France, the French sample enjoyed child care a good deal more than its American counterpart. “We’ve put all this energy into being perfect parents,” says Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, “instead of political change that would make family life better.” This is an important note. Despite the "family values" posturing of the American right wing, the "socialist" Europeans are actually far more pro-family than the conservatives who dominate (even now, having a sizeable minority of the Democratic party) in American politics.
- ja30278 16y ago
  This is contradicted elsewhere in the article by the observation that families who could afford more childcare were _not_ necessarily happier.
  - Robin_Message 16y ago
    But things like paternity leave, maternity leave, requiring employers to consider flexible working -- these kind of things Europe is doing are far more family friendly than the republican party. The family values line of "mothers should stay at home" espoused by Pat Robertson et al. probably is better than both parents working, however much childcare you can afford. No reason it has to be the mother though. And the actual family values line is in conflict with Republican views on work. This conflict is partly historic (Protestant work ethic), but partly an interesting indictment of the hypocrisy of the religious rights' support for the Republican party. Their focus on only a few moral issues does a great disservice to the actual morality of the nation. They say mothers should stay home, but support a party who's economic policies make that impossible.
S_A_P 16y ago
Is this more of a reflection of how much more selfish we generally are compared with previous generations, or evidence that raising children really is hard?
- hugh3 16y ago
  Why should it be about selfishness? It could be about different things, like changing fashions for disciplining children. I get the impression that children were much better-behaved in the old days, when they knew acting up would get them belted.
yason 16y ago
Parenting is about showing the kid his boundaries. And by showing the boundaries I don't mean canonically forbidding all nice things and always being "the bad guy". Limits and boundaries have a bad rap in some literature. The concept of boundaries is universal: boundaries don't enforce anyone to choose one option over another: they just enforce one to choose. Showing the kid his boundaries is not an easy undertaking but on the other hand it is something we all do to each other everyday. At work, at home, with friends, with kids. By letting one make choices—which is enforced by setting and keeping the boundaries—allows him to gradually learn about himself, and eventually grow to change himself. Boundaries change as a person grows: first, with a toddler it might be about not gaining anything by hitting or throwing things, not merely being forbidden or removed from throwing things around. Later it might be about deferred gratification: if the child chooses to have everything right away now and the boundaries stick, thus enforcing proper consequences of the kids choice, he will gradually learn that in the long run he gets less by having everything immediately. In adulthood, showing boundaries might be about saying no to someone known to ask around for favours, rarely returning them. The refusal will force him to consider his options: he must either do this or that but no longer both, as he can't get other people to do work for him anymore. A parent can't change the kid's mind nor himself make the kid a good adult. The kid is a person of his own anyway. A parent can only show boundaries and hope that he manages to be a mirror to the kid's behavior well enough so that the kid will learn something.
- jtheory 16y ago
  Some of this I agree with, but be careful assuming that a child's reason can function like an adult's. Giving them choices sometimes helps them take control of their lives, but sometimes (if they're already cognitively overwhelmed) being forced to choose is an unwanted stress. Absolutely, consistency is important, and putting some thought into what lesson the child is learning from your interaction (often not what you're trying to teach them). And the almost-always overlooked key to boundaries/rules is that the boundaries that are convenient to you are cruelly restrictive to your child, whose burning purpose in life is to do what you're doing -- reading your book, using your phone, typing on your laptop, exploring your food, putting on your makeup, etc.. This is learning; unfortunately it's inconvenient when they do physics experiments with the juice glasses, etc.. I've found it very eye-opening how much easier my toddler is once I realized that she could have access to almost everything as long as the interactions were carefully controlled and she learned rules along the way (the same rules we follow, really). Now she's far less excited by the laptop, phone, coffee mug, dinner plate, etc. because she's had a chance to explore them instead of being tormented by them put constantly just out of her reach. She has also learned not to tear book pages (we started with things headed for recycling anyway, and if she tore a page we were sad & took it away for "repair"), so she can flip through "grown-up" books safely -- another thing off the "frantically interested" list. She's most of the way to learning that she's allowed to see almost anything as long as she is careful not to drop it or mangle it. No punishments involved -- why punish someone for something they didn't know was wrong? -- it's all just learning, and she knows that things get put away when she doesn't interact with them the "right" way, so she has lots of motivation to learn the right way.
bitwize 16y ago
A time out in his crib? No wonder she hates parenting. If I threw shit at my parents it would have gotten me the mother of all whoopings.
- adamhowell 16y ago
  I think you nailed it. Physically abusing your toddler is definitely the key to happy parenting.
  - fr0sty 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure that was hyperbolic language on the part of the OP.
- bobbin 16y ago
  I don't think using pain to control a child's behaviour is good parenting. I'm sorry you where abused.
  - steverb 16y ago
    Yes, because nature doesn't use pain to teach us ever. That's why I can leave my hand on a hot stove until it turns black. There is a difference between corporal punishment/discipline and abuse.
    - bobbin 16y ago
      > Yes, because nature doesn't use pain to teach us ever. That's why I can leave my hand on a hot stove until it turns black. I don't to see how is this an argument. I'm not objecting the notion that people can learn to avoid what causes pain. How is it that what you wrote makes sense and supports your case? (that controlling children through pain is good parenting). > There is a difference between corporal punishment/discipline and abuse. You are right. Abuse is just abuse, and corporal punishment is abuse with the propose of shaping someone's behaviour. There is a difference. I would agree that someone who does "corporal punishment" can have good intentions.
milesf 16y ago
I feel like a freak. After reading this article I'm afraid my experience is much different. My wife and I love being parents, and life with our 8 year old son and 6 year old daughter is peaceful and full of laughter most of the time. It wasn't always this way for me. I grew up in a home that screamed a lot, and most of my family and relatives still live with too much manufactured drama and bad life choices. After I converted to Christianity at the age of 20, I spent the next decade "working out my salvation" before I met and married my wife. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary next week, and I can honestly say my life is fantastic. I credit a lot of why I've managed to pull off what I have to this book http://amzn.to/9zILXE http://amzn.to/9zILXE
- steverb 16y ago
  My wife and I are big fans of that book as well. We have also forced our older children (13, 11) to read the teen version. Useful advice whether you're a Christian or not.
- mcantor 16y ago
  Out of curiosity, why did you shorten that URL?
  - milesf 16y ago
    Force of habit from my Twitter addiction. No, it's not an Amazon affiliate link :) I suppose the original wasn't all that long I could have used it instead http://www.amazon.ca/Boundaries-Pb-Cloud/dp/0310247454 http://www.amazon.ca/Boundaries-Pb-Cloud/dp/0310247454
rada 16y ago
As someone who just moved from New York to Minneapolis (15 years in NYC, last year with a newborn) I want to add that a LOT of the unhappiness has to do with the city. It is truly hard to raise a child there for reasons too numerous to discuss here. The writers didn't have to go to Scandinavia for examples of happy parents, they just had to get out of the tri-state area.
- metageek 16y ago
  Psst. Now that you're not in New York, you don't need to call it "the city".
  - rada 16y ago
    Your downvoters must not get the joke. What's funny, I did originally quote "the city" but figured not everyone would get it :)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
Tichy 16y ago
This considering a kid to be a project seems to have a lot to do with this. All these ideas of how a kid has to be (and also the perfect family with the perfect family home and the perfect family car). I see it the other way round. I am extremely curious to see what kind of person my kid will turn out to be. Granted, there might be a pang of regret in case he wouldn't show any interest in mathematics or science at all, but I don't see myself fighting over it. And I hated school myself, so honestly, in school vs kid, I would side with the kid.
ivankirigin 16y ago
I thought this article was a bit better about data http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/ http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/ I have a 3.3 year old and a 3.5 week old. The trick to not being too pissed off at a 3 year old is to remember that he is just fucking three years old. He isn't going to listen to everything you say. Most things you tell your kid are about long term socialization that he is certain to learn, so don't stress about it. You don't stress about it, but you do enforce it. You need to get good at not caring about crying. Crying is the sound of weakness leaving their bodies :) Having a kid is extremely satisfying. I can't imagine I'd be happier without mine. If you average out these opinions across most of society, the amount of information relevant to me approaches nil. So don't not have kids because of some statistic with happiness research.
sethg 16y ago
The article has these little asides describing a videotaped interaction between a mother and her son... “I have to get it to the part and then pause it,” says the boy. “No,” says his mother. “You do that after you do your homework.” Not that I haven’t been guilty of the same misparenting myself, but.... If you expect that you can ever get an eight-year-old to walk away from a video and do his homework by persuading him, you’re setting yourself up for unhappiness.
- jimbokun 16y ago
  Heck, try to persuade yourself to get up from a video you are engrossed in and do something else. I don't think it's only 8 year olds.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >If you expect that you can ever get an eight-year-old to walk away from a video and do his homework by persuading him, you’re setting yourself up for unhappiness. So you let your kids walk all over you?
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    No, you turn the TV off and set the kid in front of his homework. (I don't have kids but that's what my parents did to me. It worked well enough.)
    - cmars232 16y ago
      Completely agree. No small wonder parents who feel obligated to negotiate every little thing with their children are so burned out. Kids need nurturing and honest attention, but they'll turn into little controlling tyrants if you let them.
  - sethg 16y ago
    What epochwolf said: turn the TV off and, if necessary, pick up the child and take him out of the room. A child with the TV in front of him, being asked to do his homework, is not interested in a reasonable discussion of the house rules; he’s interested in stalling. (Also, if he sees this as a power struggle with Mom, he will not want to surrender.) If his stalling tactic is effective, then you not only extend the period of pointless and frustrating argument in this one instance, but you reinforce, in the kid’s mind, the idea that “turn off the TV” is just background noise that can be ignored with no serious consequences.
dugmartin 16y ago
I think the parents in this article need to grow up. If you have so little emotional maturity that your kid's tantrum makes you upset you have a problem. They are the children, you are the adult. Act like one. I have two kids, 3 and 6. My 3 year old is at a stage where she throws epic tantrums, mostly when she is tired but this heat wave we are in on the east coast doesn't help. When she is in full flail I look at her and smile and say "you can do better than that if you try". I don't feel bad as a parent that she is having a tantrum, she doesn't have the emotional control yet. She will - my 6 year old went through the same thing and when the 3 year old starts up my 6 year old now rolls her eyes and smiles.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >When she is in full flail I look at her and smile and say "you can do better than that if you try". I have a friend who has 2 girls, he did this sort of playful taunting with them and it had similar effects to yours. This sort of thing has not worked at all with my eldest (and we're just entering the tantrum zone with the youngest, hold tight!) who would simply do worse, smashing, hitting, kicking, biting in response. When they are damaging property and hurting people then IMO intervention is required. Yes, standing back and letting him blow off some steam has helped on occasions but has not been half as effective as for my friend's girls. Not all kids are the same. My lad brought me to tears once because he was hurting himself having a tantrum and couldn't be calmed. I don't consider my response childish, but I'm not an objective observer.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    I guess that is when you remember stuff like "never negotiate with terrorists"? Presumably it is kind of the job of kids to test their parents' limits...
herdrick 16y ago
What they left dangling were the serene Namibian parents. It just seems less painful there and within our own past as well. Maybe the "slavishly respect your childrens' thoughts and wants" was a big mistake. You know, phrases like, "Children should be seen and not heard" and "Children should speak when spoken to" used to be commonplace. Maybe there's hope for modern rich societies. I've read that in the French culture decisions that are made as much or more for the benefit of the parents. The family goes on vacations that the parents are interested in, enjoying art museums, sophisticated cities, etc, instead of what the kids want: a theme park in the suburbs. Maybe this derives from an attitude that children are born barbarians, that their natural tastes and desires are stupid, and they need to have civilization pounded into them in order. Whereas we in the Anglo-Saxon derived culture put more value on the natural impulses of children. I think the situation can be improved.
ergo98 16y ago
Have only been a HN reader for a short time (though I've been linked from here quite a few times), so please pardon my pollution of this story to ask a question: Does this belong on Hacker News? Is Hacker News turning into Reddit (minus the convenience of subreddits)? I visit both because HN was always just solid tech links and news, but several completely non-hacker stories (outside of the fact that we are humans, might have families, may see someone possibly drown, and might be a white ninja) have made the top in the past couple of days. The HN mission is diluting.
- rikthevik 16y ago
  I think for young professionals trying to figure out a balance between work, entrepreneurship, career, children and relationships, this article is extremely valuable. There's a lot of big decisions being made in a hacker's life.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    >I think for young professionals HN has always only intended to fulfill one aspect of a Hacker's life. It never purported to offer cooking advice, car buying information, or lifestyle tips. It was about NoSQL versus SQL, language trends, Lisp, functional programming, and on and on. If it generalizes it becomes reddit, and soon a "Real Hacker News" will take over on the tech side while this place features pictures of cats and fictitious Facebook exchanges. But yes, maybe "Young Working White Collar Adult" would be a good site.
    - tjr 16y ago
      We had a cooking advice thread a year or two ago; I enjoyed that one as well. Don't want to see it here every day.
- tjr 16y ago
  Once in a long while? Yes, absolutely. I greatly enjoy and appreciate seeing parenting insight from other like-minded people on this site, and find the discussion very interesting. I didn't read the article itself, but I often don't, as the discussions here are often more interesting than the articles linked to. I wouldn't want to see this every day / week / month, but I'm happy to have seen it this time.
Oxryly 16y ago
I'd say that becoming a parent will definitely come between you and your idea of happiness. You'll have to re-evaluate your relationship to happiness and satisfaction (and sleep and pain) and that in itself is difficult and not fun. In the end you may be able to develop the skill of redefining happiness to suit the state you find yourself in, which everyone can benefit from.
jpdugan 16y ago
In my experience, parenthood is often challenging because we are given so little good information in advance concerning what is actually challenging about parenting. When we talk about the difficulties of parenthood, we normally talk about sleepless nights and tantrums and expense. We do this, I think, because these are safe topics. They allow us to have ritualized conversations about parenthood. We know what we are supposed to say and we say those things, even though we often don't think they're true or important. But the real crisis isn't something we talk about. Raising children requires a huge commitment of time and energy--time and energy we can no longer give to ourselves or our spouse. And while almost all new parents try to keep their pre-baby lives intact for some period of time, eventually the futility becomes so obvious that they relent and cull many activities out of their lives to make space for the baby. The real crisis is one of identity. We fear that by cutting so many of the things we care(d) about out of our lives, we risk not being ourselves anymore. Am I the same person now? Is my wife the same? We don't talk about these questions because many of us don't like the answers. For me personally, any such fears were unwarranted. I love my new life. Having children improved an already wonderful marriage--my wife and I are now an unstoppable team. My toddler has become one of my best friends. The infant just looks like a new buddy in waiting. But I'm a fundamentally happy person. I suspect it's like winning the lottery. If you're happy beforehand, you'll be happy afterward; if you're unhappy beforehand, you'll be unhappy afterward.
mcantor 16y ago
There is so much talk in this article about how having a child does not affect your happiness positively, and the cited examples range from dealing with the financial burden to the psychological distress of trying to control a misbehaving kid. The author even notes with surprise that "housework" ranked above parenting on the list of things that made women happy in a Texan study several years ago. I bet video games are more fun, too. But nowhere do I see a comparison between how it feels to look back on your life after raising a kid for 18 years, and how it feels to look back on your life after playing Xbox for 18 years. We're all hedonists; the only difference is who has the patience to do what makes them joyful tomorrow instead of what gives them chuckles today.
brc 16y ago
Well, as a parent who has to split time between child rearing (2.5 and .5 years old) and writing software, I can tell you that most of this article is true. The problems are many: for me the two main problems was about 17 years of independent life and good times funded by good wages. Travelling, sports, parties, all-night coding sessions. All of these have been put into the too-hard basket. The second main problem is the idealised view of parenting fed to us through movies, TV shows and advertising. You're meant to enjoy the bonding times, but running the bath for the 800th time to bathe a wriggling toddler is tedium no matter which way you slice it, and cleaning up poo for the thousandth time is horrid work you wouldn't wish on anyone. The keys to success I think are a rock-solid partnership going into the child raising, family support available, and lack of other stresses like housing or income or illness. When your tired you just can't handle things in the same way, and with young children in the house, you're going to be tired as you battle to maintain your adult habits of staying up late while children take up your waking hours. Once you've done it, there's no going back, so you have to work on finding a new level of happiness and honestly say goodbye to your old lifestyle for a while. Friends will slip away, interests will be put on hold, careers might slide for a few years, your house will be messy and ruined. That's the choice you've made, might as well find new ways of getting joy.
exit 16y ago
i read articles like this now and then, and i never get it.

117 points by gcv 16y ago

one page version: http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/67024/ http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/67024/

It's a lot of work. I think that's exacerbated by modern lifestyles. We're pulled in a thousand directions and we're less likely to live near relatives, which means that the support systems are not there like they used to be. Kids demand you. Simple things like watching them playing is huge for them. If you try to understand what they're saying (already at a few months old), you'll be surprised to find it pretty cogent and clear. For example, in the article, the little boy was literally hitting his mother over the head to get her attention. But if you're not listening, you just get upset. I didn't become parent because I think it will selfishly make me happier. I became a parent because I felt I would have something to offer a child and I wanted to give expression to that.

yardie 16y ago
It's a lot of work, but not because of lifestyle. In reading the article you see that parents, now, spend more time with their kids than previous generations. But kids are coddled more than ever. Between shuttling them to school, soccer practice, and piano lessons it seems like the parents have decided to give themselves these tasks and are surprised! when they don't have anytime for do what they want. If anything I learned from the article it's these parents are wimps. The kid almost takes the father's eye out and the strongest punishment is a timeout?! The mother has to ask her son to do his homework?! I guess my family is old school, but throwing anything at my mom would have my ass on ice. And if she has to ask twice, that computer would be gone.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
gcheong 16y ago
"I didn't become parent because I think it will selfishly make me happier. I became a parent because I felt I would have something to offer a child and I wanted to give expression to that." This is an interesting point. Do you not feel that the expression of this desire will make you happier? Did you adopt your child? If not, then how is the creating of a human life in order for you to fulfill your desire to give what you have to offer to a child anything but selfish? Certainly there were kids that existed before that could have benefitted from your gifts. I don't mean to say you should not have had kids for this reason. I think anyone who desires to have a kid and has the means should do so but I don't see anything different in your desire than that of someone who simply wants kids.

pragmatic 16y ago

Like everything in life, the thought of doing it, trumps the actual doing it. Finishing the basement, writing a novel, building the next great web app, raising kids all seem like great projects to embark on. But it's the dark night of the soul, when you're up for the 10 night in a row (or you have writer's block or you realize you shouldn't have cut that pipe, etc, etc). Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns. Speaking as a member of GenX, our lives are so damn easy most of the time, when we run into problems, we don't know how to handle it. However, we adjust. I just can't imagine how grandma raised 9 kids with no ER or acute care and little money. Wars, the great depression, death of a child, she went through it all. And they did hard physical labor every day. The thing is we adjust, it's hard at first, but we persevere. When you watch your kid doing something you taught him, that's just not a feeling you get from purchasing a new iPad. When you sit in structure you built or use a product you built you'll know the feeling. It's hard to explain but in the end, it's worth it.

jasonlotito 16y ago
Very true. My wife and I are lucky, in a way. She's Italian. Like, born Italian, speaks Italian, lives Italian. Okay, she lives in Montreal, but damnit, call her a Frenchy and she'll punch me hard enough in that spot on the arm that she knows will get a reaction. Anyways, we live next door to her great-grandmother (nona), and below her Mother and Father. I swear, her sisters are over often enough that it's normal. Her older sister lived at home till she was 25/26 and got married. Only then did she move out. My wife did the same thing. For them, their entire culture, this is normal. Lawyers living at home with their parents, not batting an eye. This is normal. Now, I'm American. 18, and I'm out the house, fending for myself. Seeing my cousins was something I did every few years (being a military brat didn't help, neither did parents getting a divorce). My wife sees her cousins all the time. Weekly. Not all the cousins, but often enough that again, it's normal. It's not some super special event. What's all this getting to? There is a point, I promise. Anyways, we had our first son in 2008, and our second is due the end of the month, beginning of August (yay!). Raising our son has been a joy. Ignoring the fact that he is a very laid back and very happy child, having parents/grand parent next door and upstairs, and a very close knit family always present meant raising him wasn't difficult. Couple this with the fact that Quebec hands you a years paid maternity (if you are working, of course), and it's pretty smooth sailing. We could still go out occasionally, assured that the grandparents would take good care of our child. If we assistance, we literally knocked on the wall, and they'd come over. Oh, we did our part. We didn't rely on them. And they took advantage, too. When they needed to go to the market, my wife was able to take them instead of having to take the bus or walk. All very practical. So, you ask a good question: > I just can't imagine how grandma raised 9 kids with no ER or acute care and little money. And I give you an answer: Family. It's odd. My family loved me, they cared for me, but family to me before I met my wife was immediate. I didn't see grandparents but maybe one a year on Christmas or Thanksgiving. I grew up away from cousins, and at 18, expected to have to go out on my own. My family wasn't bad. But in my wife's family, I fully realize how other cultures see family. I look at my brother, living in the US, married, with a second child on the way. I won't go into to many details, but they are struggling, but they get very little support from family. They live almost 2 hours from my father, but rarely see him (compared to how often I see my wives family members), and they get little help from his wives family. This probably comes from the American cultural of independence. You make it or break it on your own skill, and asking or getting help is seen as a weakness. Children are thrown to the wolves at 18 and expected to thrive. Some do. Many don't. My son is happy. He makes his parents happy. He's constantly surrounded by people that love him. Parenting is a joy, and we are in a good place. Our biggest worries are silly when we think about them (seriously, we worry about the stupidest things, and laugh about them when we realize what we are worrying about). I'm not religious, but that doesn't mean I can't feel blessed.

mcknz 16y ago

I certainly don't have all the answers, but part of why parents hate parenting is a one-size-fits-all approach to what parents are "supposed" to do: issue time-outs, "recite the rules of the house to a 2 year-old," or overuse the good old "1, 2, 3...." There's no single golden path to parenting.

futuremint 16y ago

The lens through which parenting is viewed here is too narrow. Parenting isn't about being happier. It is about being a bigger and better person. Children make your life BIGGER. You feel moments of happiness like you've never felt before. You also feel moments of anger like you've never felt before. It really is indescribable and not for the faint of heart or the selfish. The beautiful thing about parenting is that it shows you who you really are (not who you think you are), and gives you chances every day to grow. It makes you see what really matters in life, assuming you actually come to this realization. I've seen plenty of people not realize this and fight to keep their identity, their original idea of what they wanted for themselves while also trying to be a parent. That doesn't work. Part of parenting is a certain amount of ego destruction. You have to go through that if you want to genuinely care for another human being. This is what makes the experience of parenting so great. It is a kind of Zen experience of making yourself better by destroying your concept of self (and putting another 'self' first more than your own self would like).

junklight 16y ago
I so agree with this. The whole "does it make my life happier" is such a shallow consumer thing. When I was younger I led an interesting life in many ways but I have never had the intensity of experience I have with and about my children. Another really surprising thing was finding out how much I connect back with society - I want to be part of society and change it and make it better - I get what it is for. Children are not a lifestyle accessory and as the poster above says they push you into all sorts of aspects of your self in all sorts of interesting ways. The mixture of a startup and three small children has certainly been entertaining and there have been times when I am so exhausted I have nothing else to give but then to go and do something simple - like bathing the children or doing something in the garden with them and it makes it all worth while. As I frequently find myself telling my children: Things in life that aren't challenging aren't worth while (possibly hyperbole but you get my point)
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  Really? Happiness is shallow and consumeristic?

capital_omega 16y ago

Of course, this should not be a surprise. If you are no longer fretting about spending too little time with your children after they’re born (because you have a year of paid maternity leave), if you’re no longer anxious about finding affordable child care once you go back to work (because the state subsidizes it), if you’re no longer wondering how to pay for your children’s education and health care (because they’re free)—well, it stands to reason that your own mental health would improve. When Kahneman and his colleagues did another version of his survey of working women, this time comparing those in Columbus, Ohio, to those in Rennes, France, the French sample enjoyed child care a good deal more than its American counterpart. “We’ve put all this energy into being perfect parents,” says Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, “instead of political change that would make family life better.” This is an important note. Despite the "family values" posturing of the American right wing, the "socialist" Europeans are actually far more pro-family than the conservatives who dominate (even now, having a sizeable minority of the Democratic party) in American politics.

ja30278 16y ago
This is contradicted elsewhere in the article by the observation that families who could afford more childcare were _not_ necessarily happier.
- Robin_Message 16y ago
  But things like paternity leave, maternity leave, requiring employers to consider flexible working -- these kind of things Europe is doing are far more family friendly than the republican party. The family values line of "mothers should stay at home" espoused by Pat Robertson et al. probably is better than both parents working, however much childcare you can afford. No reason it has to be the mother though. And the actual family values line is in conflict with Republican views on work. This conflict is partly historic (Protestant work ethic), but partly an interesting indictment of the hypocrisy of the religious rights' support for the Republican party. Their focus on only a few moral issues does a great disservice to the actual morality of the nation. They say mothers should stay home, but support a party who's economic policies make that impossible.

S_A_P 16y ago

Is this more of a reflection of how much more selfish we generally are compared with previous generations, or evidence that raising children really is hard?

hugh3 16y ago
Why should it be about selfishness? It could be about different things, like changing fashions for disciplining children. I get the impression that children were much better-behaved in the old days, when they knew acting up would get them belted.

yason 16y ago

Parenting is about showing the kid his boundaries. And by showing the boundaries I don't mean canonically forbidding all nice things and always being "the bad guy". Limits and boundaries have a bad rap in some literature. The concept of boundaries is universal: boundaries don't enforce anyone to choose one option over another: they just enforce one to choose. Showing the kid his boundaries is not an easy undertaking but on the other hand it is something we all do to each other everyday. At work, at home, with friends, with kids. By letting one make choices—which is enforced by setting and keeping the boundaries—allows him to gradually learn about himself, and eventually grow to change himself. Boundaries change as a person grows: first, with a toddler it might be about not gaining anything by hitting or throwing things, not merely being forbidden or removed from throwing things around. Later it might be about deferred gratification: if the child chooses to have everything right away now and the boundaries stick, thus enforcing proper consequences of the kids choice, he will gradually learn that in the long run he gets less by having everything immediately. In adulthood, showing boundaries might be about saying no to someone known to ask around for favours, rarely returning them. The refusal will force him to consider his options: he must either do this or that but no longer both, as he can't get other people to do work for him anymore. A parent can't change the kid's mind nor himself make the kid a good adult. The kid is a person of his own anyway. A parent can only show boundaries and hope that he manages to be a mirror to the kid's behavior well enough so that the kid will learn something.

jtheory 16y ago
Some of this I agree with, but be careful assuming that a child's reason can function like an adult's. Giving them choices sometimes helps them take control of their lives, but sometimes (if they're already cognitively overwhelmed) being forced to choose is an unwanted stress. Absolutely, consistency is important, and putting some thought into what lesson the child is learning from your interaction (often not what you're trying to teach them). And the almost-always overlooked key to boundaries/rules is that the boundaries that are convenient to you are cruelly restrictive to your child, whose burning purpose in life is to do what you're doing -- reading your book, using your phone, typing on your laptop, exploring your food, putting on your makeup, etc.. This is learning; unfortunately it's inconvenient when they do physics experiments with the juice glasses, etc.. I've found it very eye-opening how much easier my toddler is once I realized that she could have access to almost everything as long as the interactions were carefully controlled and she learned rules along the way (the same rules we follow, really). Now she's far less excited by the laptop, phone, coffee mug, dinner plate, etc. because she's had a chance to explore them instead of being tormented by them put constantly just out of her reach. She has also learned not to tear book pages (we started with things headed for recycling anyway, and if she tore a page we were sad & took it away for "repair"), so she can flip through "grown-up" books safely -- another thing off the "frantically interested" list. She's most of the way to learning that she's allowed to see almost anything as long as she is careful not to drop it or mangle it. No punishments involved -- why punish someone for something they didn't know was wrong? -- it's all just learning, and she knows that things get put away when she doesn't interact with them the "right" way, so she has lots of motivation to learn the right way.

bitwize 16y ago

A time out in his crib? No wonder she hates parenting. If I threw shit at my parents it would have gotten me the mother of all whoopings.

adamhowell 16y ago
I think you nailed it. Physically abusing your toddler is definitely the key to happy parenting.
- fr0sty 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure that was hyperbolic language on the part of the OP.
bobbin 16y ago
I don't think using pain to control a child's behaviour is good parenting. I'm sorry you where abused.
- steverb 16y ago
  Yes, because nature doesn't use pain to teach us ever. That's why I can leave my hand on a hot stove until it turns black. There is a difference between corporal punishment/discipline and abuse.
  - bobbin 16y ago
    > Yes, because nature doesn't use pain to teach us ever. That's why I can leave my hand on a hot stove until it turns black. I don't to see how is this an argument. I'm not objecting the notion that people can learn to avoid what causes pain. How is it that what you wrote makes sense and supports your case? (that controlling children through pain is good parenting). > There is a difference between corporal punishment/discipline and abuse. You are right. Abuse is just abuse, and corporal punishment is abuse with the propose of shaping someone's behaviour. There is a difference. I would agree that someone who does "corporal punishment" can have good intentions.

milesf 16y ago

I feel like a freak. After reading this article I'm afraid my experience is much different. My wife and I love being parents, and life with our 8 year old son and 6 year old daughter is peaceful and full of laughter most of the time. It wasn't always this way for me. I grew up in a home that screamed a lot, and most of my family and relatives still live with too much manufactured drama and bad life choices. After I converted to Christianity at the age of 20, I spent the next decade "working out my salvation" before I met and married my wife. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary next week, and I can honestly say my life is fantastic. I credit a lot of why I've managed to pull off what I have to this book http://amzn.to/9zILXE http://amzn.to/9zILXE

steverb 16y ago
My wife and I are big fans of that book as well. We have also forced our older children (13, 11) to read the teen version. Useful advice whether you're a Christian or not.
mcantor 16y ago
Out of curiosity, why did you shorten that URL?
- milesf 16y ago
  Force of habit from my Twitter addiction. No, it's not an Amazon affiliate link :) I suppose the original wasn't all that long I could have used it instead http://www.amazon.ca/Boundaries-Pb-Cloud/dp/0310247454 http://www.amazon.ca/Boundaries-Pb-Cloud/dp/0310247454

rada 16y ago

As someone who just moved from New York to Minneapolis (15 years in NYC, last year with a newborn) I want to add that a LOT of the unhappiness has to do with the city. It is truly hard to raise a child there for reasons too numerous to discuss here. The writers didn't have to go to Scandinavia for examples of happy parents, they just had to get out of the tri-state area.

metageek 16y ago
Psst. Now that you're not in New York, you don't need to call it "the city".
- rada 16y ago
  Your downvoters must not get the joke. What's funny, I did originally quote "the city" but figured not everyone would get it :)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

Tichy 16y ago

This considering a kid to be a project seems to have a lot to do with this. All these ideas of how a kid has to be (and also the perfect family with the perfect family home and the perfect family car). I see it the other way round. I am extremely curious to see what kind of person my kid will turn out to be. Granted, there might be a pang of regret in case he wouldn't show any interest in mathematics or science at all, but I don't see myself fighting over it. And I hated school myself, so honestly, in school vs kid, I would side with the kid.

ivankirigin 16y ago

I thought this article was a bit better about data http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/ http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/ I have a 3.3 year old and a 3.5 week old. The trick to not being too pissed off at a 3 year old is to remember that he is just fucking three years old. He isn't going to listen to everything you say. Most things you tell your kid are about long term socialization that he is certain to learn, so don't stress about it. You don't stress about it, but you do enforce it. You need to get good at not caring about crying. Crying is the sound of weakness leaving their bodies :) Having a kid is extremely satisfying. I can't imagine I'd be happier without mine. If you average out these opinions across most of society, the amount of information relevant to me approaches nil. So don't not have kids because of some statistic with happiness research.

sethg 16y ago

The article has these little asides describing a videotaped interaction between a mother and her son... “I have to get it to the part and then pause it,” says the boy. “No,” says his mother. “You do that after you do your homework.” Not that I haven’t been guilty of the same misparenting myself, but.... If you expect that you can ever get an eight-year-old to walk away from a video and do his homework by persuading him, you’re setting yourself up for unhappiness.

jimbokun 16y ago
Heck, try to persuade yourself to get up from a video you are engrossed in and do something else. I don't think it's only 8 year olds.
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>If you expect that you can ever get an eight-year-old to walk away from a video and do his homework by persuading him, you’re setting yourself up for unhappiness. So you let your kids walk all over you?
- epochwolf 16y ago
  No, you turn the TV off and set the kid in front of his homework. (I don't have kids but that's what my parents did to me. It worked well enough.)
  - cmars232 16y ago
    Completely agree. No small wonder parents who feel obligated to negotiate every little thing with their children are so burned out. Kids need nurturing and honest attention, but they'll turn into little controlling tyrants if you let them.
- sethg 16y ago
  What epochwolf said: turn the TV off and, if necessary, pick up the child and take him out of the room. A child with the TV in front of him, being asked to do his homework, is not interested in a reasonable discussion of the house rules; he’s interested in stalling. (Also, if he sees this as a power struggle with Mom, he will not want to surrender.) If his stalling tactic is effective, then you not only extend the period of pointless and frustrating argument in this one instance, but you reinforce, in the kid’s mind, the idea that “turn off the TV” is just background noise that can be ignored with no serious consequences.

dugmartin 16y ago

I think the parents in this article need to grow up. If you have so little emotional maturity that your kid's tantrum makes you upset you have a problem. They are the children, you are the adult. Act like one. I have two kids, 3 and 6. My 3 year old is at a stage where she throws epic tantrums, mostly when she is tired but this heat wave we are in on the east coast doesn't help. When she is in full flail I look at her and smile and say "you can do better than that if you try". I don't feel bad as a parent that she is having a tantrum, she doesn't have the emotional control yet. She will - my 6 year old went through the same thing and when the 3 year old starts up my 6 year old now rolls her eyes and smiles.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>When she is in full flail I look at her and smile and say "you can do better than that if you try". I have a friend who has 2 girls, he did this sort of playful taunting with them and it had similar effects to yours. This sort of thing has not worked at all with my eldest (and we're just entering the tantrum zone with the youngest, hold tight!) who would simply do worse, smashing, hitting, kicking, biting in response. When they are damaging property and hurting people then IMO intervention is required. Yes, standing back and letting him blow off some steam has helped on occasions but has not been half as effective as for my friend's girls. Not all kids are the same. My lad brought me to tears once because he was hurting himself having a tantrum and couldn't be calmed. I don't consider my response childish, but I'm not an objective observer.
- Tichy 16y ago
  I guess that is when you remember stuff like "never negotiate with terrorists"? Presumably it is kind of the job of kids to test their parents' limits...

herdrick 16y ago

What they left dangling were the serene Namibian parents. It just seems less painful there and within our own past as well. Maybe the "slavishly respect your childrens' thoughts and wants" was a big mistake. You know, phrases like, "Children should be seen and not heard" and "Children should speak when spoken to" used to be commonplace. Maybe there's hope for modern rich societies. I've read that in the French culture decisions that are made as much or more for the benefit of the parents. The family goes on vacations that the parents are interested in, enjoying art museums, sophisticated cities, etc, instead of what the kids want: a theme park in the suburbs. Maybe this derives from an attitude that children are born barbarians, that their natural tastes and desires are stupid, and they need to have civilization pounded into them in order. Whereas we in the Anglo-Saxon derived culture put more value on the natural impulses of children. I think the situation can be improved.

ergo98 16y ago

Have only been a HN reader for a short time (though I've been linked from here quite a few times), so please pardon my pollution of this story to ask a question: Does this belong on Hacker News? Is Hacker News turning into Reddit (minus the convenience of subreddits)? I visit both because HN was always just solid tech links and news, but several completely non-hacker stories (outside of the fact that we are humans, might have families, may see someone possibly drown, and might be a white ninja) have made the top in the past couple of days. The HN mission is diluting.

rikthevik 16y ago
I think for young professionals trying to figure out a balance between work, entrepreneurship, career, children and relationships, this article is extremely valuable. There's a lot of big decisions being made in a hacker's life.
- ergo98 16y ago
  >I think for young professionals HN has always only intended to fulfill one aspect of a Hacker's life. It never purported to offer cooking advice, car buying information, or lifestyle tips. It was about NoSQL versus SQL, language trends, Lisp, functional programming, and on and on. If it generalizes it becomes reddit, and soon a "Real Hacker News" will take over on the tech side while this place features pictures of cats and fictitious Facebook exchanges. But yes, maybe "Young Working White Collar Adult" would be a good site.
  - tjr 16y ago
    We had a cooking advice thread a year or two ago; I enjoyed that one as well. Don't want to see it here every day.
tjr 16y ago
Once in a long while? Yes, absolutely. I greatly enjoy and appreciate seeing parenting insight from other like-minded people on this site, and find the discussion very interesting. I didn't read the article itself, but I often don't, as the discussions here are often more interesting than the articles linked to. I wouldn't want to see this every day / week / month, but I'm happy to have seen it this time.

Oxryly 16y ago

I'd say that becoming a parent will definitely come between you and your idea of happiness. You'll have to re-evaluate your relationship to happiness and satisfaction (and sleep and pain) and that in itself is difficult and not fun. In the end you may be able to develop the skill of redefining happiness to suit the state you find yourself in, which everyone can benefit from.

jpdugan 16y ago

In my experience, parenthood is often challenging because we are given so little good information in advance concerning what is actually challenging about parenting. When we talk about the difficulties of parenthood, we normally talk about sleepless nights and tantrums and expense. We do this, I think, because these are safe topics. They allow us to have ritualized conversations about parenthood. We know what we are supposed to say and we say those things, even though we often don't think they're true or important. But the real crisis isn't something we talk about. Raising children requires a huge commitment of time and energy--time and energy we can no longer give to ourselves or our spouse. And while almost all new parents try to keep their pre-baby lives intact for some period of time, eventually the futility becomes so obvious that they relent and cull many activities out of their lives to make space for the baby. The real crisis is one of identity. We fear that by cutting so many of the things we care(d) about out of our lives, we risk not being ourselves anymore. Am I the same person now? Is my wife the same? We don't talk about these questions because many of us don't like the answers. For me personally, any such fears were unwarranted. I love my new life. Having children improved an already wonderful marriage--my wife and I are now an unstoppable team. My toddler has become one of my best friends. The infant just looks like a new buddy in waiting. But I'm a fundamentally happy person. I suspect it's like winning the lottery. If you're happy beforehand, you'll be happy afterward; if you're unhappy beforehand, you'll be unhappy afterward.

mcantor 16y ago

There is so much talk in this article about how having a child does not affect your happiness positively, and the cited examples range from dealing with the financial burden to the psychological distress of trying to control a misbehaving kid. The author even notes with surprise that "housework" ranked above parenting on the list of things that made women happy in a Texan study several years ago. I bet video games are more fun, too. But nowhere do I see a comparison between how it feels to look back on your life after raising a kid for 18 years, and how it feels to look back on your life after playing Xbox for 18 years. We're all hedonists; the only difference is who has the patience to do what makes them joyful tomorrow instead of what gives them chuckles today.

brc 16y ago

Well, as a parent who has to split time between child rearing (2.5 and .5 years old) and writing software, I can tell you that most of this article is true. The problems are many: for me the two main problems was about 17 years of independent life and good times funded by good wages. Travelling, sports, parties, all-night coding sessions. All of these have been put into the too-hard basket. The second main problem is the idealised view of parenting fed to us through movies, TV shows and advertising. You're meant to enjoy the bonding times, but running the bath for the 800th time to bathe a wriggling toddler is tedium no matter which way you slice it, and cleaning up poo for the thousandth time is horrid work you wouldn't wish on anyone. The keys to success I think are a rock-solid partnership going into the child raising, family support available, and lack of other stresses like housing or income or illness. When your tired you just can't handle things in the same way, and with young children in the house, you're going to be tired as you battle to maintain your adult habits of staying up late while children take up your waking hours. Once you've done it, there's no going back, so you have to work on finding a new level of happiness and honestly say goodbye to your old lifestyle for a while. Friends will slip away, interests will be put on hold, careers might slide for a few years, your house will be messy and ruined. That's the choice you've made, might as well find new ways of getting joy.

exit 16y ago

i read articles like this now and then, and i never get it.