> Apparently people become magically wise during those years and then quickly forget these wisdom after. Sample size of 1, but there is a noticeable difference

> Apparently people become magically wise during those years and then quickly forget these wisdom after. Sample size of 1, but there is a noticeable difference in my friend and family group between people with kids and without kids. Particularly around “having it together.” Children are little logistical nightmares, more so the younger they are. From scheduling around the kids schedules (I.e when they wake up, have dinner, swimming lessons, when the bedtime routine starts, etc) to being prepared to leave the house for mundane things like grocery shopping (is the diaper bag packed, do we have milk, will we be gone long enough to need to pump, etc.). There is also much less agency as a parent, a good portion of every day is on the rails dictated by your kids schedule. You are also chronically sleep deprived for a window of 6-24 months around each pregnancy and the mother has a tonne of discomfort, weight, and a new balance of hormones for a large window around the pregnancy. You’re operating in this degraded state and have to juggle the logistics of parenthood on top of the family budget because you still have bills to pay. Your kids finally go to bed, but you can’t leave them at home alone (morally or legally) so unless you pay someone to sit on your couch for the night or find a relative who can pitch in, you are literally trapped in the house and can’t leave until they wake up. People without kids say “thank god it’s Friday!” at the office, people with large families call the weekend two days without child care. People without kids mention going to the movies, people with kids haven’t been to the movies since their first kid was born unless they scheduled it a week in advance with their grandparents, and that movie had to be weighed against every other possible option for date night because you might not get to go out together again for months. I don’t know how this _couldn’t_ impact a human’s behavior. To conflate it with “wisdom” might be incorrect but, at least from my personal observations, parents operate VERY differently in their day to day lives than their counterparts without children. To your point of that having a lasting impact, it’s clear grandparents to these families have forgotten a lot of what it meant to be parents. Often suggesting unreasonable things in the face of the logistics of parenthood (like staying up late for a social gathering - as if they’ve forgotten what an over tired 20 month old is like).