5 ms·

Seems to be correlated with when you have young kids. Not surprising really as having young kids is like having a grenade set off in your relationship.

digbybk 5y ago
This might just be an assumption. We'd need to compare with childless couples. As a datapoint of one, I'm getting close to 40, just over 10 years of marriage without children, and this article describes my experience eerily well and has given me real pause.
Arubis 5y ago
That lines up with other studies I’ve seen elsewhere; for better or for worse, this entire proposed curve does (dip when the kids arrive, then slow but steady rise in happiness till self-reported values exceed childless couples). That makes the choice to have children a necessary variable to control for; otherwise this meta-analysis is about as diagnostic as a mid-2000’s Internet personality test. Anecdotally, very young kids in and of themselves are in fact pretty great! It’s the logistics around child-rearing that are soul-crushing. Or, glibly: having kids good, early parenting bad.
- Axsuul 5y ago
  What would make the logistics part better? Would it be hiring dedicated help?
  - ativzzz 5y ago
    It would be having community that helps ease the burden of child rearing. Grandparents, neighbor friends with kids, etc
    - watwut 5y ago
      The trouble is, such community requires payback. You need ot just take, you need to give. And often in ways you don't like giving or more then you like. It requires a lot more negotiation with more people, compromise about what we are used to be autonomous in and conformity. The strong individualism is not really compatible with that. On HN when these structures are talked about, it is always only in terms of essentially free labor from extended family.
  - Arubis 5y ago
    I had many moments of thinking “is there a product here?” Most things that help aren’t products. We nibble around the logistic edges with buying our time back: a front-door laundry service, a lot of delivery meals when we had a newborn during peak Covid, Amazon Prime for virtually everything. “Acquiring consumer stuff” is fairly solved. We had a nanny for a while, and that had a lot of upsides, but having a family-like relationship that’s actually transactional is extra overhead to manage. Nice while it was working well, though. My local pizza joint’s app has a “repeat last delivery order” that comes in handy. Ultimately, though, the hard parts remain hard. When a kid is sick or doesn’t sleep through the night, who’s skipping work tomorrow? How do we tag-team our way to survive till bedtime? Do I not bill out a client today so my wife can get enough of a break from the kids to stay sane—and vice-versa? It’s very isolating. This feels like a fabric-of-society issue to which the product-and-services-to-solve-it mentality, however well-intentioned in the moment, is kinda how we ended up here in the first place. There isn’t an app or a service that’ll make living in the states (or, I gather, much of the west, albeit to a lesser degree) less individualized and more communal.
    - ericd 5y ago
      To your point about becoming more communal, we found this the other day: https://www.cohousing.org/directory/wpbdp_category/comm/ https://www.cohousing.org/directory/wpbdp_category/comm/ We haven’t tried it, but this looks like it could be great if you find a group you’re compatible with.
      - Arubis 5y ago
        That looks like a cool resource; thank you! We’re pondering making a move at some point in the next year or so, and this is gross for that particular mill.
leokennis 5y ago
Having kids is weird. I love them a lot, but I also severely miss my life and relationship with my wife from before I had them.
- beardyw 5y ago
  Wait till they grow up and leave home. Then you will miss them, and they don't call.
  - watwut 5y ago
    You dont get life before kids back when kids grow. Too many years passed in the meantime. The world is not the same. You are older and a lot of activities you have done before are harder. The former friends moved on and you have to build new ones.
    - ip26 5y ago
      Yeah, but you might also realize many of those activities were (unbeknownst to you) essentially performative displays to attract a partner, with little inherent worth.
      - watwut 5y ago
        Might. But very likely won't. And even if they were, it does not matter. You are still need to find the replacement, still need to fill the void. Otherwise you will just sit on sofa depressed and feel pointless.
- Arubis 5y ago
  I can relate; that said, a confounding factor I’ve been unable to disambiguate is raising young kids _during a pandemic_. How much of the challenge was typical parenting? How much was doing it in a world on fire when it was unsafe for the kids’ grandparents to travel and help out, and mothers’ groups weren’t a thing, etc.? My wife and I just recently had our first no-kids date night since last Father’s Day (just short of a year ago). It was pretty great! The connection is still there. But it was also _surreal_, and I can totally see how couples just lose themselves in the chaos. It worries me sometimes.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Not surprising really as having young kids is like having a grenade set off in your relationship I heard this a lot before I had kids. Then we had kids and it was not only fine, but actually enjoyable. Yes, there was a short-term increase in stress and reduction in personal time, but the key factor missing from online discussions on the topic is that the stressful low-sleep, diaper-changing period isn't all that long. A couple percent of your lifetime, really. The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids and spending time with them. There's so much media that portrays children as some sort of endless chore and drain on your time, but it turns out that it's actually a ton of fun to play with your kids and help them grow.
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  Heh, we were about the same. Add in that sweet tech oncall lifestyle for me and sleep deprivation was either not an issue or didn't change my personality basis so the stress was quite limited. The under one years were at a time in my career when I was working at 2am most nights anyway. A few minutes to hang out and take care of someone no love was a nice break. Mom slept pretty much through the night after the first couple of weeks. Decade and 1/2 in and I can't see things getting worse, but we'll see.
- balfirevic 5y ago
  > The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids and spending time with them. Well, that's the core of the issue, isn't it? I know people who were really looking forward to having children, wanted them, and anticipated that they would enjoy it - so expected personal sacrifice was not that big of an issue. It's just what you had to do to enjoy having kids. Media that portrays children as a chore, on the other hand, matches the thought process of someone who looks at having children (potentially including their own childhood) and thinks "why would someone want that?". It was a welcome balance, speaking as someone who barely came across portrayal of children as anything other than the source of joy and something that everyone - surely - wants. It was a different media landscape 10-15 years ago, and I like the current one better even if not maximally nuanced.
- 5y ago

digbybk 5y ago

This might just be an assumption. We'd need to compare with childless couples. As a datapoint of one, I'm getting close to 40, just over 10 years of marriage without children, and this article describes my experience eerily well and has given me real pause.

Arubis 5y ago

That lines up with other studies I’ve seen elsewhere; for better or for worse, this entire proposed curve does (dip when the kids arrive, then slow but steady rise in happiness till self-reported values exceed childless couples). That makes the choice to have children a necessary variable to control for; otherwise this meta-analysis is about as diagnostic as a mid-2000’s Internet personality test. Anecdotally, very young kids in and of themselves are in fact pretty great! It’s the logistics around child-rearing that are soul-crushing. Or, glibly: having kids good, early parenting bad.

Axsuul 5y ago
What would make the logistics part better? Would it be hiring dedicated help?
- ativzzz 5y ago
  It would be having community that helps ease the burden of child rearing. Grandparents, neighbor friends with kids, etc
  - watwut 5y ago
    The trouble is, such community requires payback. You need ot just take, you need to give. And often in ways you don't like giving or more then you like. It requires a lot more negotiation with more people, compromise about what we are used to be autonomous in and conformity. The strong individualism is not really compatible with that. On HN when these structures are talked about, it is always only in terms of essentially free labor from extended family.
- Arubis 5y ago
  I had many moments of thinking “is there a product here?” Most things that help aren’t products. We nibble around the logistic edges with buying our time back: a front-door laundry service, a lot of delivery meals when we had a newborn during peak Covid, Amazon Prime for virtually everything. “Acquiring consumer stuff” is fairly solved. We had a nanny for a while, and that had a lot of upsides, but having a family-like relationship that’s actually transactional is extra overhead to manage. Nice while it was working well, though. My local pizza joint’s app has a “repeat last delivery order” that comes in handy. Ultimately, though, the hard parts remain hard. When a kid is sick or doesn’t sleep through the night, who’s skipping work tomorrow? How do we tag-team our way to survive till bedtime? Do I not bill out a client today so my wife can get enough of a break from the kids to stay sane—and vice-versa? It’s very isolating. This feels like a fabric-of-society issue to which the product-and-services-to-solve-it mentality, however well-intentioned in the moment, is kinda how we ended up here in the first place. There isn’t an app or a service that’ll make living in the states (or, I gather, much of the west, albeit to a lesser degree) less individualized and more communal.
  - ericd 5y ago
    To your point about becoming more communal, we found this the other day: https://www.cohousing.org/directory/wpbdp_category/comm/ https://www.cohousing.org/directory/wpbdp_category/comm/ We haven’t tried it, but this looks like it could be great if you find a group you’re compatible with.
    - Arubis 5y ago
      That looks like a cool resource; thank you! We’re pondering making a move at some point in the next year or so, and this is gross for that particular mill.

leokennis 5y ago

Having kids is weird. I love them a lot, but I also severely miss my life and relationship with my wife from before I had them.

beardyw 5y ago
Wait till they grow up and leave home. Then you will miss them, and they don't call.
- watwut 5y ago
  You dont get life before kids back when kids grow. Too many years passed in the meantime. The world is not the same. You are older and a lot of activities you have done before are harder. The former friends moved on and you have to build new ones.
  - ip26 5y ago
    Yeah, but you might also realize many of those activities were (unbeknownst to you) essentially performative displays to attract a partner, with little inherent worth.
    - watwut 5y ago
      Might. But very likely won't. And even if they were, it does not matter. You are still need to find the replacement, still need to fill the void. Otherwise you will just sit on sofa depressed and feel pointless.
Arubis 5y ago
I can relate; that said, a confounding factor I’ve been unable to disambiguate is raising young kids _during a pandemic_. How much of the challenge was typical parenting? How much was doing it in a world on fire when it was unsafe for the kids’ grandparents to travel and help out, and mothers’ groups weren’t a thing, etc.? My wife and I just recently had our first no-kids date night since last Father’s Day (just short of a year ago). It was pretty great! The connection is still there. But it was also _surreal_, and I can totally see how couples just lose themselves in the chaos. It worries me sometimes.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Not surprising really as having young kids is like having a grenade set off in your relationship I heard this a lot before I had kids. Then we had kids and it was not only fine, but actually enjoyable. Yes, there was a short-term increase in stress and reduction in personal time, but the key factor missing from online discussions on the topic is that the stressful low-sleep, diaper-changing period isn't all that long. A couple percent of your lifetime, really. The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids and spending time with them. There's so much media that portrays children as some sort of endless chore and drain on your time, but it turns out that it's actually a ton of fun to play with your kids and help them grow.

jethro_tell 5y ago
Heh, we were about the same. Add in that sweet tech oncall lifestyle for me and sleep deprivation was either not an issue or didn't change my personality basis so the stress was quite limited. The under one years were at a time in my career when I was working at 2am most nights anyway. A few minutes to hang out and take care of someone no love was a nice break. Mom slept pretty much through the night after the first couple of weeks. Decade and 1/2 in and I can't see things getting worse, but we'll see.
balfirevic 5y ago
> The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids and spending time with them. Well, that's the core of the issue, isn't it? I know people who were really looking forward to having children, wanted them, and anticipated that they would enjoy it - so expected personal sacrifice was not that big of an issue. It's just what you had to do to enjoy having kids. Media that portrays children as a chore, on the other hand, matches the thought process of someone who looks at having children (potentially including their own childhood) and thinks "why would someone want that?". It was a welcome balance, speaking as someone who barely came across portrayal of children as anything other than the source of joy and something that everyone - surely - wants. It was a different media landscape 10-15 years ago, and I like the current one better even if not maximally nuanced.
5y ago