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So my experience was the opposite. I came in expecting this great "chemical change" where suddenly the world revolved around my kids and their future. Well th

So my experience was the opposite. I came in expecting this great "chemical change" where suddenly the world revolved around my kids and their future. Well the latter part is true: my world now revolves around them and their futures. But chemical change? No. It's just the responsibility I have now. There's never a break. It's all-encompassing. I mean, it's survivable, I can deal with it, and I do the best I can, but, while it's certainly not PC to say, I regret it. I thought it would be great, and it's not. What would I be doing so much better with my time had I not had kids? I don't know. Probably nothing. But it doesn't change the fact. I was happier before. This article made me angry. That's great that Paul has such a wonderful experience. I'm happy for him. But don't act like you can speak for everyone.

throwawaypa123 7y ago
Thank you for sharing. I think it is rare that people share this perspective. It sucks that we can't know if your experience is 1 in 100 or 1,000,000.
- danenania 7y ago
  I believe there’s research showing that people are on average less happy after having kids, at least for a long period of time. As a new parent of an 8 month old, I can certainly understand this, even though so far I personally feel much happier than I did before. I think a lot depends on your life situation. With reasonable financial stability, a flexible schedule, and a spouse who (happily) devotes most of her time to the baby, it’s overall a beautiful experience that has given my life a whole new sense of meaning, a depth of love I never knew I could feel, and lots of those peaceful moments pg talks about. But take away one of those supporting pillars, and I could easily see the stress and responsibilities overwhelming all the positive aspects to the point where it might not be enjoyable anymore.
minblaster 7y ago
Thank you for sharing that. PG doesn't seem to realize there's a tremendous survivorship bias in what you read about kids due to the taboo of saying you regret it.
rbavocadotree 7y ago
My good friend, as well as my Mom are family/young child psychologists, and they talk about people like you a lot. How's your mental health? People with negative self images, underdeveloped personalities, unresolved trauma, anxiety, depression, etc, are all very likely to have those same feelings. They may be telling you something.
- overflow897 7y ago
  Are you implying that if you don't want or don't enjoy having children, you have mental health issues?
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    I've often encountered people who've told me that my desire to not have children is immoral in some way; that I'm being selfish. It's not a perspective I agree with at all, and I know several other people with kids (that they wanted to have) tell me there is nothing wrong with not wanting kids. I've heard people make a moral case for having children, but I've never heard people implying others are mentally ill for not wanting them. It does get into deeper questions about what are mental illnesses; how some illnesses warp our perception and cause delusions, but others are just things we've socially evolved to think as unacceptable because they cause harm. Homosexuality was once a mental illness, and now it's not. Maybe if Earth's population takes a big hit and we're under 1 billion again, I could see some case to be made for society to adopt procreation above all else; but today .. we've moved past that .. and I agree; not wanting children or regretting having children is not a mental illness at all!
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't cross into internet psychiatric diagnosis on HN. Even though your intentions are good, comments like this are more likely to land as personal attacks than anything supportive. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20diagnosis%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
cablexl 7y ago
I know many parents and there is a giant unspoken difference between the ones that truly love it, and the ones that are just hanging on and trying to survive. Thanks for being honest, it is way more refreshing to hear than anything paul had to say.
randomsearch 7y ago
Thanks for the perspective. I know many others who have said the same thing as you, if that’s any comfort.
foobarqux 7y ago
I've seen studies that show it makes you less happy on average, with wealth mitigating the impact. I'm sure having paid full or part-time help makes an enormous difference.
kelnos 7y ago
Thank you for saying that. There's a huge taboo around admitting (even privately!) any regrets around having children, but I imagine there are quite a few people who'd say so if only they weren't too afraid to.
- burfog 7y ago
  Another taboo is not loving them equally. I admit to regrets about some of them. I like the others very much. It's too bad I couldn't pick my kids by personality. The random draw has been mixed.
  - daxfohl 7y ago
    Agree with this. I love my kids like crazy. But I see other parents here that are doing circuit boards and such with their kids, and mine are just not interested at all, and I can't help but wonder what it would be like if.
asah 7y ago
THANK YOU for saying this. Not only is it is service to would-be parents, parents who don't feel the chemicals but do feel guilt, but it's also a service to those of us without kids and without regrets. ...and "you da real MVP" for raising your kids well, without "chemical assistance." Thank you.
outime 7y ago
I don’t have kids and I have no idea if I will but thanks for having the courage to share your feelings. It seems very difficult to say these things and I’m sure it makes other parents who might have regrets feel a bit better/less lonely at least.
lutorm 7y ago
I'm sorry you feel that way. I was apprehensive about having kids, and it's certainly true that it's been a big change to my life where I now can't do a lot of the things I used to enjoy doing. However, I find that I'm a lot happier when I don't go around focusing on what I can no longer do but on the enjoyable things in my current life. We all have aspects of our life that are less enjoyable, but focusing on those do nothing but make you less happy. I'd encourage you to look into Stoic philosophy for advice on how to focus on what's good and enjoyable in your life.
stoicShell 7y ago
> chemical change? No. Not everybody gets the feels/chemical thing indeed, or not the first time. Some people are just less on the emotional / pathos side and more on the rational / logos, the 'rational' kind of feelings or rather 'impressions', 'convictions', sometimes just this 'clarity' — less feels, more words. Same result, just different brains to get there.
rb808 7y ago
> There's never a break. It's all-encompassing. I've felt like this too, I've learned you have to make some time for yourself & your partner. Try to get grandparents to look after the children, or friends to take them away. Definitely hire babysitters and maybe even a nanny. When you see them again you'll be re-energized.
datadoc 7y ago
There was no chemical change for me either, but it's weird to think the world revolves around my child. It doesn't. As parents we have responsibilities, and we try to make sure our child lives a balanced and peaceful life, but I don't spend every minute of non-work time doing stuff for my kid. Neither am I unhappier that I have a child to take care of, nor am I enthralled about it. It's just a part of my life man.
abalashov 7y ago
Indeed. Also, it's important to remember that a lot of these rainbows and unicorns don't apply to people unwillingly forced into single parenthood (my situation). That's a very rare situation for males, so it kind of gets the short shrift on this forum, but, we're out there...
- steve_adams_86 7y ago
  I had this experience too. Being isolated with that amount of responsibility is a huge burden. Not many people actually get it... It's easy to find superficial sympathies, maybe equally easy to find people who discount your struggle, and rare to find those who really get it. Then to find help; nearly impossible. I didn't regret my son back then, but it felt like the ultimate sin to ever express my stress or pains because they clearly were due in part to his existence. It's wildly unhealthy not to be able to do so. Shit, it's wildly unhealthy to be isolated like that and absurd not to be able to be openly upset about it. I'm grateful for my son. I have Paul's experience with all of my kids in terms of the good feelings and the desire to have them in my life. But I'd be lying in a bad way if I ever said they weren't a large part of my suffering at different stages of our lives. It's part of it. Being a male in that situation is also awful because people kind of shrug it off like... Well, you're not a single mom. Whatever. You're a programmer, you make tons of money. You're lucky! Ugh. Hard times.
  - abalashov 7y ago
    I appreciate the commiseration. You’re right that it’s hard to find people who really get it. The economic challenges of self-employment combined with the cognitive / mental demands of programming conspire to make “programmer” a uniquely difficult thing to carry on as a single parent, despite the income benefits. There are many days I wish I had a more dull job consisting of some sort of mind-numbing piecework, or a low-level management position consisting mostly of meetings and parrying email, the kind of stuff you really can noodle around in 15 minute blocks instead of requiring huge chunks of many unbounded hours to even get into the right headspace for. As it stands, child-related impositions and constraints feel like an onerous theft of time and focus because programming is so time-intensive and so dependent on precious, scarce focus. That’s really what having that type of responsibility robs me of the most. It’s hard not to get inadvertently resentful and irritable about that. The causes greatly contribute to the resentment. My child’s mother is a meth addict, and basically abandoned all three of her children to live on the streets and do meth. The other two ended up with her mother. And all of that after being fleeced by the family law industrial complex for $80k in custody litigation (absurd that it took such a sum to make the humanitarian point). I think it would be a lot easier to come to terms with if the cause weren’t so flagrantly, insultingly ignoble.
twmahna 7y ago
Thank you for posting your perspective. As someone who's contemplating having kids in the distant future, I'm wondering if there's a way to predict whether these chemical changes will occur for me or not. Do you have any insights here? In particular, I'm curious about these questions pertaining to your life prior to having children: - From 1 to 10, how much did you enjoy helping a friend out when it was a mild inconvenience to yourself? - From 1 to 10, how positive of an emotional reaction do you get when you see a cute dog? I have a completely unfounded hypothesis that the 'chemical' changes that PG describes are akin to how our brains react when we see cute pets.
- cadence- 7y ago
  I think it depends on how much you want to have kids. If you feel very strongly about it, then go ahead and have kids. You will probably experience the chemical changes in your brain that will help you cope. But if you are unsure about having kids, then don’t have them. You don’t need to over analyze it. If you feel the need to analyze, overthink and research it, then it seems to me like you don’t have the kind of brain that will make it easy for you to be happy while dealing with all the parenting challenges. I believe that if you need to carefully analyze whether to have kids, then you will also continue to analyze and think about your decision after you already have kids. And it will make you miserable.
- ericd 7y ago
  I dgaf at all about cute pets, like -1. But a lot of everyday experiences with our toddler are pretty magical feeling. One thing I've found, if you're exhausted and just waiting to do something else, the whole thing just sucks. I've definitely done that/had days like that. But if you throw yourself into playing with them, and really try to engage, interact, trick them, tickle them when they don't expect it, etc, it becomes amazing, because he picks up on that and gets really into it too, and he appreciates it so much. Like beaming joy. And that's one of the greatest things I've ever witnessed. Just a point of anecdata. But it really seems to be one of those things where you get more out when you put more in. I don't know that I got an obvious chemical lightswitch thing, it's been a relationship that's grown more and more over time.
- daxfohl 7y ago
djsumdog 7y ago
Did it get easier to change at all once they were old enough for school? I'm genuinely glad you said this too. I don't have children and don't really want them. I think it's totally fine if people want to have kids. Even if there isn't a discernible change in your cognitive and thought processes, human beings still can be happy with the choices we make (and we're actually less happy with reversible choices; see Dan Gilbert's talk on happiness).
abnercoimbre 7y ago
I'm gay (male) with no plans to adopt, but instead wish to spend my family budget taking care of aging parents so my siblings with kids don't have to. I also very much use my freedom to travel, take professional risks, and create special moments with friends and loved ones. I'm happy for PG and hopefully we always have parents like him, but the essay was weird and your anger understandable.
bhaak 7y ago
I read about a study that parents and non-parents are on average equally happy but the parents had a wider range of extreme emotional experiences. Also remember that people on average become less happy until their 40s or 50s after that their happiness increases again. Then again, that's statistics and how does that help you if you're an outlier or just at the edge of the normal distribution?

throwawaypa123 7y ago

Thank you for sharing. I think it is rare that people share this perspective. It sucks that we can't know if your experience is 1 in 100 or 1,000,000.

danenania 7y ago
I believe there’s research showing that people are on average less happy after having kids, at least for a long period of time. As a new parent of an 8 month old, I can certainly understand this, even though so far I personally feel much happier than I did before. I think a lot depends on your life situation. With reasonable financial stability, a flexible schedule, and a spouse who (happily) devotes most of her time to the baby, it’s overall a beautiful experience that has given my life a whole new sense of meaning, a depth of love I never knew I could feel, and lots of those peaceful moments pg talks about. But take away one of those supporting pillars, and I could easily see the stress and responsibilities overwhelming all the positive aspects to the point where it might not be enjoyable anymore.

minblaster 7y ago

Thank you for sharing that. PG doesn't seem to realize there's a tremendous survivorship bias in what you read about kids due to the taboo of saying you regret it.

rbavocadotree 7y ago

My good friend, as well as my Mom are family/young child psychologists, and they talk about people like you a lot. How's your mental health? People with negative self images, underdeveloped personalities, unresolved trauma, anxiety, depression, etc, are all very likely to have those same feelings. They may be telling you something.

overflow897 7y ago
Are you implying that if you don't want or don't enjoy having children, you have mental health issues?
- djsumdog 7y ago
  I've often encountered people who've told me that my desire to not have children is immoral in some way; that I'm being selfish. It's not a perspective I agree with at all, and I know several other people with kids (that they wanted to have) tell me there is nothing wrong with not wanting kids. I've heard people make a moral case for having children, but I've never heard people implying others are mentally ill for not wanting them. It does get into deeper questions about what are mental illnesses; how some illnesses warp our perception and cause delusions, but others are just things we've socially evolved to think as unacceptable because they cause harm. Homosexuality was once a mental illness, and now it's not. Maybe if Earth's population takes a big hit and we're under 1 billion again, I could see some case to be made for society to adopt procreation above all else; but today .. we've moved past that .. and I agree; not wanting children or regretting having children is not a mental illness at all!
dang 7y ago
Please don't cross into internet psychiatric diagnosis on HN. Even though your intentions are good, comments like this are more likely to land as personal attacks than anything supportive. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20diagnosis%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

cablexl 7y ago

I know many parents and there is a giant unspoken difference between the ones that truly love it, and the ones that are just hanging on and trying to survive. Thanks for being honest, it is way more refreshing to hear than anything paul had to say.

randomsearch 7y ago

Thanks for the perspective. I know many others who have said the same thing as you, if that’s any comfort.

foobarqux 7y ago

I've seen studies that show it makes you less happy on average, with wealth mitigating the impact. I'm sure having paid full or part-time help makes an enormous difference.

kelnos 7y ago

Thank you for saying that. There's a huge taboo around admitting (even privately!) any regrets around having children, but I imagine there are quite a few people who'd say so if only they weren't too afraid to.

burfog 7y ago
Another taboo is not loving them equally. I admit to regrets about some of them. I like the others very much. It's too bad I couldn't pick my kids by personality. The random draw has been mixed.
- daxfohl 7y ago
  Agree with this. I love my kids like crazy. But I see other parents here that are doing circuit boards and such with their kids, and mine are just not interested at all, and I can't help but wonder what it would be like if.

asah 7y ago

THANK YOU for saying this. Not only is it is service to would-be parents, parents who don't feel the chemicals but do feel guilt, but it's also a service to those of us without kids and without regrets. ...and "you da real MVP" for raising your kids well, without "chemical assistance." Thank you.

outime 7y ago

I don’t have kids and I have no idea if I will but thanks for having the courage to share your feelings. It seems very difficult to say these things and I’m sure it makes other parents who might have regrets feel a bit better/less lonely at least.

lutorm 7y ago

I'm sorry you feel that way. I was apprehensive about having kids, and it's certainly true that it's been a big change to my life where I now can't do a lot of the things I used to enjoy doing. However, I find that I'm a lot happier when I don't go around focusing on what I can no longer do but on the enjoyable things in my current life. We all have aspects of our life that are less enjoyable, but focusing on those do nothing but make you less happy. I'd encourage you to look into Stoic philosophy for advice on how to focus on what's good and enjoyable in your life.

stoicShell 7y ago

> chemical change? No. Not everybody gets the feels/chemical thing indeed, or not the first time. Some people are just less on the emotional / pathos side and more on the rational / logos, the 'rational' kind of feelings or rather 'impressions', 'convictions', sometimes just this 'clarity' — less feels, more words. Same result, just different brains to get there.

rb808 7y ago

> There's never a break. It's all-encompassing. I've felt like this too, I've learned you have to make some time for yourself & your partner. Try to get grandparents to look after the children, or friends to take them away. Definitely hire babysitters and maybe even a nanny. When you see them again you'll be re-energized.

datadoc 7y ago

There was no chemical change for me either, but it's weird to think the world revolves around my child. It doesn't. As parents we have responsibilities, and we try to make sure our child lives a balanced and peaceful life, but I don't spend every minute of non-work time doing stuff for my kid. Neither am I unhappier that I have a child to take care of, nor am I enthralled about it. It's just a part of my life man.

abalashov 7y ago

Indeed. Also, it's important to remember that a lot of these rainbows and unicorns don't apply to people unwillingly forced into single parenthood (my situation). That's a very rare situation for males, so it kind of gets the short shrift on this forum, but, we're out there...

steve_adams_86 7y ago
I had this experience too. Being isolated with that amount of responsibility is a huge burden. Not many people actually get it... It's easy to find superficial sympathies, maybe equally easy to find people who discount your struggle, and rare to find those who really get it. Then to find help; nearly impossible. I didn't regret my son back then, but it felt like the ultimate sin to ever express my stress or pains because they clearly were due in part to his existence. It's wildly unhealthy not to be able to do so. Shit, it's wildly unhealthy to be isolated like that and absurd not to be able to be openly upset about it. I'm grateful for my son. I have Paul's experience with all of my kids in terms of the good feelings and the desire to have them in my life. But I'd be lying in a bad way if I ever said they weren't a large part of my suffering at different stages of our lives. It's part of it. Being a male in that situation is also awful because people kind of shrug it off like... Well, you're not a single mom. Whatever. You're a programmer, you make tons of money. You're lucky! Ugh. Hard times.
- abalashov 7y ago
  I appreciate the commiseration. You’re right that it’s hard to find people who really get it. The economic challenges of self-employment combined with the cognitive / mental demands of programming conspire to make “programmer” a uniquely difficult thing to carry on as a single parent, despite the income benefits. There are many days I wish I had a more dull job consisting of some sort of mind-numbing piecework, or a low-level management position consisting mostly of meetings and parrying email, the kind of stuff you really can noodle around in 15 minute blocks instead of requiring huge chunks of many unbounded hours to even get into the right headspace for. As it stands, child-related impositions and constraints feel like an onerous theft of time and focus because programming is so time-intensive and so dependent on precious, scarce focus. That’s really what having that type of responsibility robs me of the most. It’s hard not to get inadvertently resentful and irritable about that. The causes greatly contribute to the resentment. My child’s mother is a meth addict, and basically abandoned all three of her children to live on the streets and do meth. The other two ended up with her mother. And all of that after being fleeced by the family law industrial complex for $80k in custody litigation (absurd that it took such a sum to make the humanitarian point). I think it would be a lot easier to come to terms with if the cause weren’t so flagrantly, insultingly ignoble.

twmahna 7y ago

Thank you for posting your perspective. As someone who's contemplating having kids in the distant future, I'm wondering if there's a way to predict whether these chemical changes will occur for me or not. Do you have any insights here? In particular, I'm curious about these questions pertaining to your life prior to having children: - From 1 to 10, how much did you enjoy helping a friend out when it was a mild inconvenience to yourself? - From 1 to 10, how positive of an emotional reaction do you get when you see a cute dog? I have a completely unfounded hypothesis that the 'chemical' changes that PG describes are akin to how our brains react when we see cute pets.

cadence- 7y ago
I think it depends on how much you want to have kids. If you feel very strongly about it, then go ahead and have kids. You will probably experience the chemical changes in your brain that will help you cope. But if you are unsure about having kids, then don’t have them. You don’t need to over analyze it. If you feel the need to analyze, overthink and research it, then it seems to me like you don’t have the kind of brain that will make it easy for you to be happy while dealing with all the parenting challenges. I believe that if you need to carefully analyze whether to have kids, then you will also continue to analyze and think about your decision after you already have kids. And it will make you miserable.
ericd 7y ago
I dgaf at all about cute pets, like -1. But a lot of everyday experiences with our toddler are pretty magical feeling. One thing I've found, if you're exhausted and just waiting to do something else, the whole thing just sucks. I've definitely done that/had days like that. But if you throw yourself into playing with them, and really try to engage, interact, trick them, tickle them when they don't expect it, etc, it becomes amazing, because he picks up on that and gets really into it too, and he appreciates it so much. Like beaming joy. And that's one of the greatest things I've ever witnessed. Just a point of anecdata. But it really seems to be one of those things where you get more out when you put more in. I don't know that I got an obvious chemical lightswitch thing, it's been a relationship that's grown more and more over time.
daxfohl 7y ago

djsumdog 7y ago

Did it get easier to change at all once they were old enough for school? I'm genuinely glad you said this too. I don't have children and don't really want them. I think it's totally fine if people want to have kids. Even if there isn't a discernible change in your cognitive and thought processes, human beings still can be happy with the choices we make (and we're actually less happy with reversible choices; see Dan Gilbert's talk on happiness).

abnercoimbre 7y ago

I'm gay (male) with no plans to adopt, but instead wish to spend my family budget taking care of aging parents so my siblings with kids don't have to. I also very much use my freedom to travel, take professional risks, and create special moments with friends and loved ones. I'm happy for PG and hopefully we always have parents like him, but the essay was weird and your anger understandable.

bhaak 7y ago

I read about a study that parents and non-parents are on average equally happy but the parents had a wider range of extreme emotional experiences. Also remember that people on average become less happy until their 40s or 50s after that their happiness increases again. Then again, that's statistics and how does that help you if you're an outlier or just at the edge of the normal distribution?