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American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were

162 points by ozozozd 6mo ago

mlboss 6mo ago
It is also kind of forced. Modern industrial society wants to extract as much productivity out of workforce as possible. What that means is in 1965 one income was able to sustain a household but now we need two incomes. There is no dedicated support for kids now so fathers have to give up time and mothers have to exchange child-mother bonding time from kids to the company. The real benefiter of this is the capitalist who can now have twice the workforce at the price of one. How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster.
- pertymcpert 6mo ago
  Have to disagree as a father. The real benefit is the father and child who are now bonding. That doesn't mean the mother can't also bond, it just means it's not one sided.
  - thechao 6mo ago
    I got to spend a bit more than 2 years doing math homework 1:1 with my youngest. Now, she's moving up to honors & gets 100% without any help. I miss all that time we got to hang out, do homework, watch videos of cats, etc.
  - tayo42 6mo ago
    The mother's are now working. So they're bonding less. I think that's what he means not that father's are taking away mother-child bonding time.
    - pertymcpert 6mo ago
      Except if anyone bothered to read the damn article you'd see that the research showed the highly educated were more likely to have involved fathers. Those are not going to be forced as the person seems to imply.
- throwway120385 6mo ago
  My spouse and I are single-income and I still try. It's not about economic output, but rather there are things I want my son to know that I can only teach him by being present in his life. > How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster. Considering that the current political majority in the US wants people to have more kids, this would be a really reasonable thing to do if they were serious about that.
  - bombcar 6mo ago
    The US already does heavily subsidize kids unless you make a brazillion dollars anyway. Count the EITC and the child tax credit as “wife income” if you must. Also the increase in the standard deduction.
- whateveracct 6mo ago
  I help with my kid a lot, and I'm remote so I do it around the clock. I take contact naps, change every diaper, watch her for periods of time so my wife is free. my wife doesn't work. and she didn't work before we had a baby. because one of our salaries was enough, so instead we work less. and again due to remote work, work has barely been top 5 in my life focus areas for the last decade.
  - popalchemist 6mo ago
    You are by far the exception.
    - whateveracct 6mo ago
      there's a lot of remote jobs out there or were. tough out there rn.
    - bombcar 6mo ago
      He might be the exception in your circles but there are many out there mimicking him, and it’s not only the Amish. Out of close family and friends I only know of … three where they both work, and none have kids.
- SoftTalker 6mo ago
  Kind of forced economically but also culturally. In the 1950s, fathers worked and paid for everything. Mothers raised the kids. This was taught in schools, girls were steered into marriage, motherhood, and housekeeping and men into vocations or college. Let's not pretend that many women didn't go to work so they could have more, and feel like they were a more complete person. Many people just don't want to be pigeonholed into roles defined by tradition, and the 1960s were a huge rebellion against this. This wasn't some grand capitalist scheme. It's still possible to raise a family on one professional income, if you live like most people did in the 1960s. Can you do it on minimum wage? No, but you couldn't do it then either.
  - K0balt 6mo ago
    Don’t imagine that it wasn’t heavily promoted by industrialites after they saw that after ww2 they could increase the labor force by 30 percent without paying more than they were before. Everything that starts out with a few well meaning people is, especially now, immediately turned into an astroturfing campaign to fuel some specific economic or political (is there really a difference?) end.
    - bombcar 6mo ago
      The FIRE movement is in direct opposition to this and should be encouraged for that alone - as it reduces the pool of workers.
      - K0balt 6mo ago
        Yes, and it also points people away from pathological overconsumption, which is arguably a very good idea on a number of axis. And also would shrink the economy significantly if it was widely adopted… which maybe hints at the inconvenient fact that an economy based on ever-expanding per-capita extraction is ultimately unsustainable. Fundamentally, the economy is sustained by energy. In preindustrial society, that energy was provided by agriculture, which tends to be somewhat sustainable. Fossil fuels fuelled explosive expansion, leading to the paradigm that unlimited geometric expansion of the economy was desirable, which led to delusional theories that it was uncapped even in limited space. Now the world is near its carrying capacity in several dimensions, and we are going to find the limits to our delusion. Automation may help us find the economic limits of this paradigm before we hit the physical wall, which might turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing. At any create, I am convinced that the next century will be marked by systemic change that fundamentally reorganises global priorities and might best be described in terms of collapsing paradigms as economies move away from human labor, in the process changing focus from the accumulation of money, which is mostly useful for paying wages, to pure power and resource control.
- hagbard_c 6mo ago
  > The real benefiter of this is the capitalist ... Tired old socialist rhetoric. The real benefiter of this is the state which can now have many times the tax base at the price of none. Where women used to take care of the children and do the housekeeping those tasks are now often done by paid day care, taxed by the state and paid help, again taxed by the state. From a single tax payer a family - father, mother, two children - now supplies two tax payers and several 'downstream' tax payers.
  - mothballed 6mo ago
    It's hilarious how the government used Rosy the Riveter to convince women that being liberated is slaving away building death machines for the state to literally blow up all our money, while sending your kids to people who don't give two fucks for them, all while moving all that domestic stuff to the GDP so they can tax the shit out of it.
  - gurumeditations 6mo ago
    That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Yes, it’s not the capitalists making trillions from the free doubling of labor supply, it’s the politicians taking their 10%… Guess who owns the politicians! How can you be so ignorant.
    - bombcar 6mo ago
      They can be in collusion and/or one and the same. And you don’t need snidely whiplash to create an evil master plan, it can just be how everything “naturally” works out.
- watwut 6mo ago
  > 1965 You may not like it, but women benefited a lot. And fought a lot to get those benefits. Not just in terms of money. They are beaten less. When they are beaten or constantly insulted, they can leave and feed themselves.
  - lazyasciiart 6mo ago
    The benefit comes from women being able to work, not from each household needing two incomes to raise kids. When a woman needs two incomes to raise her kids that means there is still a significant obstacle to leaving their partner.
syntaxing 6mo ago
Dad and millennial here and this change has been very noticeable in my circle of friends including myself and I’m all for it. Men have been doing their share of housework too. But I will say, it’s not all dads but enough that I think this will have a positive effect on the next generation.
- justonceokay 6mo ago
  Im gay and because of that was disowned. My partner has a brother “K” and K has three children. Watching K show up in basic ways for his kids, like remembering what songs they like and teaching them sports is the fastest way to make me ugly cry. Thanks to anyone reading this if you’re trying to be a good dad. You’re making the world a better place in ways you don’t even see
  - pchristensen 6mo ago
    This is the rare time I wish HN had emoji reactions instead of just upvotes.
- ai_terk_er_jerb 6mo ago
  [dead]
- mekdoonggi 6mo ago
  I can honestly say that I don't have any time for a dad who isn't all-in for their kids. I understand if the responsibilities aren't 50/50, but if you're making mom handle everything I think you're a loser. All my millennial dad friends clean, change diapers, cook, whatever. And make no mistake all the moms are incredibly hard-working and involved with the kids. If I happened to meet socially a dad who wasn't doing those things I would literally make fun of them. "You're a grown man who can't change a diaper or clean a bathroom?"
  - grvdrm 6mo ago
    I’m with you mostly. Some different specifics but the point in mind is this: it’s a common thread of rapport and conversation. I sometimes feel like an alien on earth when I spend time with friends or other groups where there seems to be a atrong “ughh my family and home life” vibe.
ortusdux 6mo ago
Makes me think of this clip from Bob Odenkirk: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MNhpnEczGQA https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MNhpnEczGQA
sparrish 6mo ago
As a GenX dad and now grandfather, I couldn't be happier to read this. Every dad wants his sons to be a better father than he was. Glad to see it happening. Nothing strengthens the knees like the weight of responsibility.
- _doctor_love 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - lazyasciiart 6mo ago
    > EDIT: if you downvote this comment it means you don't think there are deadbeat dads out there. No, it means that when your attempt to extend the metaphor failed. People who avoid strength exercises just don't get stronger knees. They don't "get stronger knees but by not doing weights".
    - _doctor_love 6mo ago
      I suppose. That said I didn't anticipate the negative response. I have a fair amount of gallows humor around parents and father due to my own experiences in life, sometimes that dark humor doesn't translate well.
- bix6 6mo ago
  Yeah the weight of housing could be a little less though :)
  - red-iron-pine 6mo ago
    or groceries. or gas. or goddamn pee-wee football team costs.
    - mekdoonggi 6mo ago
      I was so happy last year to find a great daycare facility that only cost $1200/month for full time care :)
pkaler 6mo ago
Yup. Woke up at 6am. Child 1 woke up at 7am. Dropped her off at daycare at 8am. All the other children were being dropped off by their dads, too. Full day of work ahead. Dinner at 6pm. Bath at 7pm. Bedtime and story at 8pm. Usually calls with Bangalore from 9pm to midnight but it's Labour Day over there. Sleep at midnight. Rinse. Repeat.
- basisword 6mo ago
  My one concern with this is the risk of eventual burn out + mental health issues which will have its own impact on the children. Full time career + very present parent during the weekdays might just not be possible. WFH definitely helps make it significantly more possible though. Also worth not forgetting that in most cases the fathers of millennials were a hell of a lot more present and emotionally available than their fathers etc. I'm sure we'll make plenty of our own mistakes that our children will try to avoid when their turn comes.
  - mschuster91 6mo ago
    > Full time career + very present parent during the weekdays might just not be possible. Guess why birth rates are crashing - and why they crash hardest in Asia, especially Japan.
    - purplerabbit 6mo ago
      And guess why trad household structures are (still) popular in some circles
      - watwut 6mo ago
        They are way more popular among men then women. The thing is, women were mostly living that ... it is new only for men
        mitthrowaway2 6mo ago
vonneumannstan 6mo ago
Its kind of shocking after having an infant myself and hearing from his grandparents how little my wife and I's fathers did. One never changed a diaper and has never cooked dinner and the other looked like he had never held a baby in his life despite having 3 kids. I can't imagine not being incredibly hands on and involved.
- bombcar 6mo ago
  There’s often been a “kids are mom’s until they’re dad’s” thing going on - dads do whatever with babies and younger children but the older children get heavily involved. Of course, 50+ years ago diaper changing was often skilled labor (as was cooking) - it’s much easier to change a modern diaper and cook a modern ready-to-make meal.
  - rcbdev 6mo ago
    It is just as easy to cook a meal from fresh ingredients. What exactly do you classify as "ready-to-make"? I am incredibly allergic to the U.S.-American understanding of cooking as this unfathomably difficult task. No wonder there's an obesity crisis across the pond. The worst thing is, this unhealthy relationship to food seems to be exported all across the world these days.
pjmlp 6mo ago
Given the memes I see about how GenX are perceived in US, it seems now they have gone too far into the other direction.
almost_usual 6mo ago
My mom left the house as a kid. Dad worked and did it all during the week. Definitely felt like this was a rare thing growing up. I did spend time with my mom on the weekend though. As a father I try and balance it out but I definitely don’t do as much as my dad did growing up.
sjhatfield 6mo ago
I think this only applies to certain segments of society. My child has type 1 so I'm active on Facebook groups for parents. The number of mums who say their partner is not involved really at all in their child's care is so sad. The child's own father can't supervise their child solo because they can't manage the care. And then the divorced parents. Oh boy...
- compiler-guy 6mo ago
  That's the thing about trends in aggregate data. It tells very little about the details of any particular situation. There are almost certainly a wide variety of subgroups where this particular trend doesn't hold, and others where the changes are even more dramatic. But the aggregate trend is quite clear.
  - IcyWindows 6mo ago
    Isn't the point that there is no way to get reliable data on this? How would aggregation of unreliable data help?
    - compiler-guy 6mo ago
      The data is reasonably reliable, at least in the view of the team that published the paper, and those who reviewed it. No one claims it is perfect. And the post that started this sub thread was about how their experience didn’t show the trend. But no one in the social sciences expects every sample to follow the trend. There will be numerous exceptions. Just like sometimes when one rolls a pair of dice one gets a twelve. That twelve is an absolutely an accurate sample from the data but just because one sometimes gets an outlier it doesn’t mean that there is no central tendency.
- giantg2 6mo ago
  "The number of mums who say their partner is not involved really at all in their child's care is so sad." While that can be true, I wonder how much of it is true. It's pretty common in therapy to hear partners saying the other one doesn't contribute, but further investigation can often turn up observation biases.
WarOnPrivacy 6mo ago
> Millennial fathers have roughly tripled the amount of time they spend with kids. I think this really undersells it. My mom parented a few hours a week. My kids (like most) lived under ceaseless 24/7 adulting. The time I spent with my sons was more like a 20x increase over my parents' generation. Past that, it seems like it's taking forever for anyone to notice the radical changes in modern parenting/childhood. Along with eliminating adult-free peer time, we've eradicated free range areas. My generation could roam (w/o adults) for miles in every direction; my kids (like most) could go from one edge of the yard to the other (credit: car culture, trespassing culture, false stranger-danger culture). The surprising part (to me) isn't how thoroughly adults have sabotaged kids growth opportunities, it's that nearly no one seems to have noticed it.
- nathanaldensr 6mo ago
  Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things. Why that is is a matter of debate.
  - mothballed 6mo ago
    I don't know if it's the parent that is neurotic so much as that it only takes 1 of 1000 assholes, who now have their little snitch device in their pocket 24/7, to call the child snatchers (CPS). And the child snatchers are legally barred from revealing who your accuser is, so the anonymous cowards can fuck up your life for weeks at no cost to themselves and with the utmost convenience. This effectively means every single person who views your child, now has veto powers on your parenting. The end result of that is people parent in the most paranoid, liability averting way possible. When I was a kid the Karens against childhood autonomy existed but it actually cost them time and money to rat us out since they would have to drive home to a telephone, so long as we didn't play near houses. If an asshole raised hell we were gone by the time they could call the authorities.
    - watwut 6mo ago
      The actual threat of CPS 8s grossly exagerrated here. And the fear is one of the symptoms.
gib444 6mo ago
I feel there is a trend of not fully appreciating what fathers who spend less time with kids actually do. I think that's unfair, frankly. Many of them do things that contribute to the family in other ways. What was my Dad busy doing? Focusing on his career in order to provide for his family. Doing hobbies that increased his skill set. Fixing the house to ensure we all had a nice safe place to live. Tending to the garden to keep the neighbours happy. Building ties with the community to increase our family's standing in the community and being able to call in favours in emergencies etc. The 4 days off he had from his primary job, he worked multiple other jobs, creating multiple streams of family income. It's so easy to view many of these things as him not tending to his family directly. That's incredibly short-sighted. My mother appreciated very little of those things, and constantly nagged that he never did enough. She admitted many years later this was a big contributor to their divorce. I think some modern opinions of parenting come from a very individualistic, transactional and reciprocal mindset. Eg "I spend 1 hour doing the dishes, you have to do something, today, and of equivalent value, to show you love us". What kind of foundation for a relationship is that? What happened to the power of a family?
- dividefuel 6mo ago
  I think you have a point: many men work hard to provide stability for their family, and are effectively sacrificing family time to provide that. This kind of hard work feels undervalued in modern parenting discourse, which seems to put most value on time directly spent with children or on direct day-to-day tasks (dishes, cooking, etc). An example anecdote: my friend works construction. Lots of long hours of hard labor. His wife is unhappy because he doesn't do more childcare, but left unanswered is how he could do more. He can't work fewer hours or move to a new job without a giant income hit. His wife can't earn enough to offset daycare costs. They already live on a fairly thin budget. From the outside, I can see how he'd feel unappreciated. That said though there are definitely also men who aren't doing childcare OR working hard, and they're happy to have their wife do everything.
  - bombcar 6mo ago
    Often there’s unsaid things that have “comparative” simple solutions - not working less but getting the wife a few hours a week “off duty” kind of things.
rhubarbtree 6mo ago
Just a note for Dads doing more than their parents - it’s quality more than quantity. Be fully present with your kids more than trying to kill yourself fitting more hours in. That’s what matters. Bad parenting tends to be more of the type that isn’t engaged. Kids don’t hate you for going to work. They are hurt if you come home and ignore them.
- awakeasleep 6mo ago
  If you’re a dad and live in the same house as your kids the time comes naturally… men have been purposefully fleeing it throughout history. So its not a matter of “killing yourself to get more time” … its a matter of not abandoning your kids and wife to make time for your hobbies or whatever
- dgudkov 6mo ago
  Yeah, what's the point in technically spending more time with kids if half of that time you stare at your mobile phone.
  - grvdrm 6mo ago
    Ture, but also, know that sometimes that just happens - the kids want to be solo, not talk, etc. Easy to kill yourself thinking you need to be perfect.
- 1970-01-01 6mo ago
  Any paper or citations on this? I don't believe it.
  - pluralmonad 6mo ago
    You should definitely follow your instincts here, but wanting researchers to show you how to raise your kids is a fools errand IMO. Put those highly tuned parental instincts to use!
    - dimes 6mo ago
kotaKat 6mo ago
Second sibling born - turns out I didn't get to be the parent, I get to look after the parents. I'm tired, exhausted, utterly miserable, barely scraping by. All those fancy ideals I thought old age provided for don't exist. Nursing homes? Hah, that's $340 a day up here in the middle of nowhere. I ain't making that a day. I get to do it myself. I wonder what percentage of folks are now stuck in caretaking instead of raising their own families themselves. I basically predict my family line is extinct after my generation.
cable2600 6mo ago
We were latchkey kids. The key to the house door was tied around our neck using a shoelace. When the street lights came on, it meant going home. Both parents worked to afford the house and the kids' expenses.
ipsento606 6mo ago
I can't help but wonder about the relationship between fathers (and, in fact, all parents) spending more time with their children, and people choosing to have fewer children, and later. I think it's unquestionably true that fathers spending more time with their children is, on the whole, much better for those children. But it's also true that it's a huge problem for society that people are having fewer children. And I think you can make a reasonable argument that increasing expectations around the quality of parenting are party of that trend.
- LeifCarrotson 6mo ago
  If fathers spending more time with their children is better for the children but worse for ~~society~~the economy, is that really even a question worth considering? Screw the economy, love your kid (or kids).
  - geodel 6mo ago
    Well it is worth considering. Unless one think they and their children can just exist beyond space and time of where society, economy exist.
    - red-iron-pine 6mo ago
      society and economy are shaped by the needs of the people in it. they easiest because of our needs. we don't exist to meet its needs.
      - mothballed 6mo ago
        In the 1960s when single-parent households were a thing, it was not unusual for households to have little to no indoor plumbing or regular electricity. Nowadays such a lifestyle will get social workers on your ass, unless you can get some Mennonite or Amish preacher or something to vouch for you. After a long enough period of failing to meet some arbitrary modern "quality of life" that can only be afforded by going along with the mainstreams economic system and expectations, the legal system will likely get involved in some capacity. Economy is a bit of a one way valve. If you don't flow with it they'll rip away your children and then you'll be dumped to the curb along with the homeless or other inmates at the jail.
apparent 6mo ago
> I don’t know who told MacRumors what (and their sourcing is just “MacRumors has learned”), but I know for a fact that it is not true that the teams working on the Vision platform have “been redistributed to other teams within Apple.” Good to know! I thought it was a bit weird for the team to have been disbanded so abruptly. Perhaps if this aspect of the story is not correct, other aspects will turn out to have been untrue as well.
- kotaKat 6mo ago
  "MacRumors has learned" means "our Bloomberg shill, Mark Guesser, has made another bad prediction", every time.
Ancapistani 6mo ago
Not directly relevant to the article, but I'm curious if anyone else has connected the fact that fathers are spending more time being close with their children at the same time average global testosterone levels have dropped without a solid explanation? To be clear, I'm not trying to point a causal arrow here, or even say it's good or bad. I read a study the other day that asserted that fathers who spent more time parenting have measurably lower testosterone levels, and that the delta correlates to the amount of time spent.
- gracefulliberty 6mo ago
  If that's the case, that's not a bad thing. Maybe men who aren't properly bonded with their kids have higher than normal testosterone for some reason?
- jaredklewis 6mo ago
  > testosterone levels have dropped without a solid explanation There is a solid explanation. First, before the adoption of mass spec, studies used a less accurate method of measuring testosterone that overstated testosterone levels. Also, the studies showing the population level decline in testosterone generally controlled for obesity (which naturally lowers testosterone) using BMI. But BMI is a very crude measure. When studies control with better methods like BMI + waist circumference, and only compare samples using the mass spec measurement method, the unexplained population level decline goes away. After fixing the measurement method, what remains of the decline can be explained by BMI + waist circumference. In other words, modern men are more prone to obesity and metabolic syndrome, which naturally reduces testosterone. Case closed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22150314/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22150314/
  - Ancapistani 6mo ago
    That study appears to be US only, while global studies have shown the effect. For that matter, some _animal_ studies have shown declining testosterone as well. That doesn't seem to be well-studied, but if it holds up it would make me lean toward it being something environmental (e.g. microplastic pollution)
tsoukase 6mo ago
It's a good article and, as a father, I experience and certify what it says. It presents the causes of the main observed fact (more time for kids) which happens anywhere in the Western world at least. But it can't go further and explain what general social changes cause all that. For me, in no order, they are: Financial strains (family disposable income, high cost of living, wealth inequality) Expand of electronic device use (from TVs to modern ones) and their apps Convergence of gender roles, making males less masculine General loss of classical values, promotion of easy life, short term goals and superficial qualities leading to misery and deactivation
JohnMakin 6mo ago
It isn’t said in this article, but as an elder millennial and a guy that’s talked about this exact thing with peers, it’s that we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of our parents. Boomers, the parents of millennials, are perhaps the worst generation to have ever existed and we carry a lot of baggage over it.
Balgair 6mo ago
Haha, I was just talking to family about early dad-hood. I mentioned that I really felt how a space marine feels some days: https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daily_rituals_of_a_Space_Marine https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daily_rituals_of_a_Space_Ma... Mostly in the short sleep period, but also in the 'free time' too. I tend to get about 30 minutes at the end of the day, after all have (finally) gone to sleep, but still.
talkingtab 6mo ago
This measures fatherhood in terms of time spent with children. I question whether that metric is of any value what so ever. Is a farmer a better farmer because he/she spends hours in the field? Or is the correct measure of a farmer the crops? This article, and the place it has on Hackernews and the quality of "commments" raises serious questions for me about Hacker News as a whole, the moderation, the readers and mechanism. My complaint is not that this kind of thing exists. My complaint is that something better does not.
- saghm 6mo ago
  > Is a farmer a better farmer because he/she spends hours in the field? Or is the correct measure of a farmer the crops? At the risk is stating the obvious, crops do not have the ability to notice whether or not the farmer spends time with them. If you think that a child won't notice that one of their parents doesn't spend time with them and will be affected by it, I don't know what to tell you.
  - adammarples 6mo ago
    But do they notice the difference between 4 hours and 5 hours? Or are they noticing something else entirely?
    - jermberj 6mo ago
      To make the analogy proportional (according to the article), the difference would be something like "do they notice the difference between 1h 40m and 5 hours" (i.e. 3x more). My money would be on yes, they'd very much notice.
- tmvphil 6mo ago
  Yes yes the goal of life is to flourish and this metric doesn't measure flourishing directly so what's the point? And indeed is the fact that we talk about observable metrics rather than whatever else I had in mind not an indictment of this forum, nay, society at large?
- pchristensen 6mo ago
weirdmantis69 6mo ago
[flagged]
- cindyllm 6mo ago
  [dead]
ronzensci 6mo ago
Dad of 2 under 5: would be curious to know if there has been a change in the role of grandparents and especially how parents (particularly Mums’) desire to get along with grandparents (in-laws) and what role is that playing in the increase in the ‘mental load’ and the stressful part of Mums’ parenting. Can a good part of the mental load be attributed to the need for the parents to ‘do it all’ themselves rather than share the load and responsibility with other loved ones and caregivers without the need to tightly control all aspects of parenting? On a separate note - Insta is constantly feeding my wife with versions of parenting which is completely unattainable. That really is at the heart of the mental load we are experiencing in our situation of raising two under five. If only Insta was banned, life would have been far more better for parents.
psyclobe 6mo ago
My well being is judged now by whether I took the time to watch a movie with my daughter, take my son out to fly a rc plane and so forth... so easy to dig into the daily grind ... not sure what life is about but I sure a shit know misery it born from abandoning your kids and the sickness that brings inside is insidious. If I do nothing both will be in their rooms all day. Makes me sick.
realaaa 6mo ago
in some ways it was cool to grow up without too much supervision eh?

162 points by ozozozd 6mo ago

It is also kind of forced. Modern industrial society wants to extract as much productivity out of workforce as possible. What that means is in 1965 one income was able to sustain a household but now we need two incomes. There is no dedicated support for kids now so fathers have to give up time and mothers have to exchange child-mother bonding time from kids to the company. The real benefiter of this is the capitalist who can now have twice the workforce at the price of one. How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster.

pertymcpert 6mo ago
Have to disagree as a father. The real benefit is the father and child who are now bonding. That doesn't mean the mother can't also bond, it just means it's not one sided.
- thechao 6mo ago
  I got to spend a bit more than 2 years doing math homework 1:1 with my youngest. Now, she's moving up to honors & gets 100% without any help. I miss all that time we got to hang out, do homework, watch videos of cats, etc.
- tayo42 6mo ago
  The mother's are now working. So they're bonding less. I think that's what he means not that father's are taking away mother-child bonding time.
  - pertymcpert 6mo ago
    Except if anyone bothered to read the damn article you'd see that the research showed the highly educated were more likely to have involved fathers. Those are not going to be forced as the person seems to imply.
throwway120385 6mo ago
My spouse and I are single-income and I still try. It's not about economic output, but rather there are things I want my son to know that I can only teach him by being present in his life. > How about we start paying market price to the parent who takes care of the kids irrespective of mothers or fathers ? Investing in next generation is way more important than making useless widgets faster. Considering that the current political majority in the US wants people to have more kids, this would be a really reasonable thing to do if they were serious about that.
- bombcar 6mo ago
  The US already does heavily subsidize kids unless you make a brazillion dollars anyway. Count the EITC and the child tax credit as “wife income” if you must. Also the increase in the standard deduction.
whateveracct 6mo ago
I help with my kid a lot, and I'm remote so I do it around the clock. I take contact naps, change every diaper, watch her for periods of time so my wife is free. my wife doesn't work. and she didn't work before we had a baby. because one of our salaries was enough, so instead we work less. and again due to remote work, work has barely been top 5 in my life focus areas for the last decade.
- popalchemist 6mo ago
  You are by far the exception.
  - whateveracct 6mo ago
    there's a lot of remote jobs out there or were. tough out there rn.
  - bombcar 6mo ago
    He might be the exception in your circles but there are many out there mimicking him, and it’s not only the Amish. Out of close family and friends I only know of … three where they both work, and none have kids.
SoftTalker 6mo ago
Kind of forced economically but also culturally. In the 1950s, fathers worked and paid for everything. Mothers raised the kids. This was taught in schools, girls were steered into marriage, motherhood, and housekeeping and men into vocations or college. Let's not pretend that many women didn't go to work so they could have more, and feel like they were a more complete person. Many people just don't want to be pigeonholed into roles defined by tradition, and the 1960s were a huge rebellion against this. This wasn't some grand capitalist scheme. It's still possible to raise a family on one professional income, if you live like most people did in the 1960s. Can you do it on minimum wage? No, but you couldn't do it then either.
- K0balt 6mo ago
  Don’t imagine that it wasn’t heavily promoted by industrialites after they saw that after ww2 they could increase the labor force by 30 percent without paying more than they were before. Everything that starts out with a few well meaning people is, especially now, immediately turned into an astroturfing campaign to fuel some specific economic or political (is there really a difference?) end.
  - bombcar 6mo ago
    The FIRE movement is in direct opposition to this and should be encouraged for that alone - as it reduces the pool of workers.
    - K0balt 6mo ago
      Yes, and it also points people away from pathological overconsumption, which is arguably a very good idea on a number of axis. And also would shrink the economy significantly if it was widely adopted… which maybe hints at the inconvenient fact that an economy based on ever-expanding per-capita extraction is ultimately unsustainable. Fundamentally, the economy is sustained by energy. In preindustrial society, that energy was provided by agriculture, which tends to be somewhat sustainable. Fossil fuels fuelled explosive expansion, leading to the paradigm that unlimited geometric expansion of the economy was desirable, which led to delusional theories that it was uncapped even in limited space. Now the world is near its carrying capacity in several dimensions, and we are going to find the limits to our delusion. Automation may help us find the economic limits of this paradigm before we hit the physical wall, which might turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing. At any create, I am convinced that the next century will be marked by systemic change that fundamentally reorganises global priorities and might best be described in terms of collapsing paradigms as economies move away from human labor, in the process changing focus from the accumulation of money, which is mostly useful for paying wages, to pure power and resource control.
hagbard_c 6mo ago
> The real benefiter of this is the capitalist ... Tired old socialist rhetoric. The real benefiter of this is the state which can now have many times the tax base at the price of none. Where women used to take care of the children and do the housekeeping those tasks are now often done by paid day care, taxed by the state and paid help, again taxed by the state. From a single tax payer a family - father, mother, two children - now supplies two tax payers and several 'downstream' tax payers.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  It's hilarious how the government used Rosy the Riveter to convince women that being liberated is slaving away building death machines for the state to literally blow up all our money, while sending your kids to people who don't give two fucks for them, all while moving all that domestic stuff to the GDP so they can tax the shit out of it.
- gurumeditations 6mo ago
  That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Yes, it’s not the capitalists making trillions from the free doubling of labor supply, it’s the politicians taking their 10%… Guess who owns the politicians! How can you be so ignorant.
  - bombcar 6mo ago
    They can be in collusion and/or one and the same. And you don’t need snidely whiplash to create an evil master plan, it can just be how everything “naturally” works out.
watwut 6mo ago
> 1965 You may not like it, but women benefited a lot. And fought a lot to get those benefits. Not just in terms of money. They are beaten less. When they are beaten or constantly insulted, they can leave and feed themselves.
- lazyasciiart 6mo ago
  The benefit comes from women being able to work, not from each household needing two incomes to raise kids. When a woman needs two incomes to raise her kids that means there is still a significant obstacle to leaving their partner.

syntaxing 6mo ago

Dad and millennial here and this change has been very noticeable in my circle of friends including myself and I’m all for it. Men have been doing their share of housework too. But I will say, it’s not all dads but enough that I think this will have a positive effect on the next generation.

justonceokay 6mo ago
Im gay and because of that was disowned. My partner has a brother “K” and K has three children. Watching K show up in basic ways for his kids, like remembering what songs they like and teaching them sports is the fastest way to make me ugly cry. Thanks to anyone reading this if you’re trying to be a good dad. You’re making the world a better place in ways you don’t even see
- pchristensen 6mo ago
  This is the rare time I wish HN had emoji reactions instead of just upvotes.
ai_terk_er_jerb 6mo ago
[dead]
mekdoonggi 6mo ago
I can honestly say that I don't have any time for a dad who isn't all-in for their kids. I understand if the responsibilities aren't 50/50, but if you're making mom handle everything I think you're a loser. All my millennial dad friends clean, change diapers, cook, whatever. And make no mistake all the moms are incredibly hard-working and involved with the kids. If I happened to meet socially a dad who wasn't doing those things I would literally make fun of them. "You're a grown man who can't change a diaper or clean a bathroom?"
- grvdrm 6mo ago
  I’m with you mostly. Some different specifics but the point in mind is this: it’s a common thread of rapport and conversation. I sometimes feel like an alien on earth when I spend time with friends or other groups where there seems to be a atrong “ughh my family and home life” vibe.

ortusdux 6mo ago

Makes me think of this clip from Bob Odenkirk: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MNhpnEczGQA https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MNhpnEczGQA

sparrish 6mo ago

As a GenX dad and now grandfather, I couldn't be happier to read this. Every dad wants his sons to be a better father than he was. Glad to see it happening. Nothing strengthens the knees like the weight of responsibility.

_doctor_love 6mo ago
[flagged]
- lazyasciiart 6mo ago
  > EDIT: if you downvote this comment it means you don't think there are deadbeat dads out there. No, it means that when your attempt to extend the metaphor failed. People who avoid strength exercises just don't get stronger knees. They don't "get stronger knees but by not doing weights".
  - _doctor_love 6mo ago
    I suppose. That said I didn't anticipate the negative response. I have a fair amount of gallows humor around parents and father due to my own experiences in life, sometimes that dark humor doesn't translate well.
bix6 6mo ago
Yeah the weight of housing could be a little less though :)
- red-iron-pine 6mo ago
  or groceries. or gas. or goddamn pee-wee football team costs.
  - mekdoonggi 6mo ago
    I was so happy last year to find a great daycare facility that only cost $1200/month for full time care :)

pkaler 6mo ago

Yup. Woke up at 6am. Child 1 woke up at 7am. Dropped her off at daycare at 8am. All the other children were being dropped off by their dads, too. Full day of work ahead. Dinner at 6pm. Bath at 7pm. Bedtime and story at 8pm. Usually calls with Bangalore from 9pm to midnight but it's Labour Day over there. Sleep at midnight. Rinse. Repeat.

basisword 6mo ago
My one concern with this is the risk of eventual burn out + mental health issues which will have its own impact on the children. Full time career + very present parent during the weekdays might just not be possible. WFH definitely helps make it significantly more possible though. Also worth not forgetting that in most cases the fathers of millennials were a hell of a lot more present and emotionally available than their fathers etc. I'm sure we'll make plenty of our own mistakes that our children will try to avoid when their turn comes.
- mschuster91 6mo ago
  > Full time career + very present parent during the weekdays might just not be possible. Guess why birth rates are crashing - and why they crash hardest in Asia, especially Japan.
  - purplerabbit 6mo ago
    And guess why trad household structures are (still) popular in some circles
    - watwut 6mo ago
      They are way more popular among men then women. The thing is, women were mostly living that ... it is new only for men
      - mitthrowaway2 6mo ago

vonneumannstan 6mo ago

Its kind of shocking after having an infant myself and hearing from his grandparents how little my wife and I's fathers did. One never changed a diaper and has never cooked dinner and the other looked like he had never held a baby in his life despite having 3 kids. I can't imagine not being incredibly hands on and involved.

bombcar 6mo ago
There’s often been a “kids are mom’s until they’re dad’s” thing going on - dads do whatever with babies and younger children but the older children get heavily involved. Of course, 50+ years ago diaper changing was often skilled labor (as was cooking) - it’s much easier to change a modern diaper and cook a modern ready-to-make meal.
- rcbdev 6mo ago
  It is just as easy to cook a meal from fresh ingredients. What exactly do you classify as "ready-to-make"? I am incredibly allergic to the U.S.-American understanding of cooking as this unfathomably difficult task. No wonder there's an obesity crisis across the pond. The worst thing is, this unhealthy relationship to food seems to be exported all across the world these days.

pjmlp 6mo ago

Given the memes I see about how GenX are perceived in US, it seems now they have gone too far into the other direction.

almost_usual 6mo ago

My mom left the house as a kid. Dad worked and did it all during the week. Definitely felt like this was a rare thing growing up. I did spend time with my mom on the weekend though. As a father I try and balance it out but I definitely don’t do as much as my dad did growing up.

sjhatfield 6mo ago

I think this only applies to certain segments of society. My child has type 1 so I'm active on Facebook groups for parents. The number of mums who say their partner is not involved really at all in their child's care is so sad. The child's own father can't supervise their child solo because they can't manage the care. And then the divorced parents. Oh boy...

compiler-guy 6mo ago
That's the thing about trends in aggregate data. It tells very little about the details of any particular situation. There are almost certainly a wide variety of subgroups where this particular trend doesn't hold, and others where the changes are even more dramatic. But the aggregate trend is quite clear.
- IcyWindows 6mo ago
  Isn't the point that there is no way to get reliable data on this? How would aggregation of unreliable data help?
  - compiler-guy 6mo ago
    The data is reasonably reliable, at least in the view of the team that published the paper, and those who reviewed it. No one claims it is perfect. And the post that started this sub thread was about how their experience didn’t show the trend. But no one in the social sciences expects every sample to follow the trend. There will be numerous exceptions. Just like sometimes when one rolls a pair of dice one gets a twelve. That twelve is an absolutely an accurate sample from the data but just because one sometimes gets an outlier it doesn’t mean that there is no central tendency.
giantg2 6mo ago
"The number of mums who say their partner is not involved really at all in their child's care is so sad." While that can be true, I wonder how much of it is true. It's pretty common in therapy to hear partners saying the other one doesn't contribute, but further investigation can often turn up observation biases.

WarOnPrivacy 6mo ago

> Millennial fathers have roughly tripled the amount of time they spend with kids. I think this really undersells it. My mom parented a few hours a week. My kids (like most) lived under ceaseless 24/7 adulting. The time I spent with my sons was more like a 20x increase over my parents' generation. Past that, it seems like it's taking forever for anyone to notice the radical changes in modern parenting/childhood. Along with eliminating adult-free peer time, we've eradicated free range areas. My generation could roam (w/o adults) for miles in every direction; my kids (like most) could go from one edge of the yard to the other (credit: car culture, trespassing culture, false stranger-danger culture). The surprising part (to me) isn't how thoroughly adults have sabotaged kids growth opportunities, it's that nearly no one seems to have noticed it.

nathanaldensr 6mo ago
Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things. Why that is is a matter of debate.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  I don't know if it's the parent that is neurotic so much as that it only takes 1 of 1000 assholes, who now have their little snitch device in their pocket 24/7, to call the child snatchers (CPS). And the child snatchers are legally barred from revealing who your accuser is, so the anonymous cowards can fuck up your life for weeks at no cost to themselves and with the utmost convenience. This effectively means every single person who views your child, now has veto powers on your parenting. The end result of that is people parent in the most paranoid, liability averting way possible. When I was a kid the Karens against childhood autonomy existed but it actually cost them time and money to rat us out since they would have to drive home to a telephone, so long as we didn't play near houses. If an asshole raised hell we were gone by the time they could call the authorities.
  - watwut 6mo ago
    The actual threat of CPS 8s grossly exagerrated here. And the fear is one of the symptoms.

gib444 6mo ago

I feel there is a trend of not fully appreciating what fathers who spend less time with kids actually do. I think that's unfair, frankly. Many of them do things that contribute to the family in other ways. What was my Dad busy doing? Focusing on his career in order to provide for his family. Doing hobbies that increased his skill set. Fixing the house to ensure we all had a nice safe place to live. Tending to the garden to keep the neighbours happy. Building ties with the community to increase our family's standing in the community and being able to call in favours in emergencies etc. The 4 days off he had from his primary job, he worked multiple other jobs, creating multiple streams of family income. It's so easy to view many of these things as him not tending to his family directly. That's incredibly short-sighted. My mother appreciated very little of those things, and constantly nagged that he never did enough. She admitted many years later this was a big contributor to their divorce. I think some modern opinions of parenting come from a very individualistic, transactional and reciprocal mindset. Eg "I spend 1 hour doing the dishes, you have to do something, today, and of equivalent value, to show you love us". What kind of foundation for a relationship is that? What happened to the power of a family?

dividefuel 6mo ago
I think you have a point: many men work hard to provide stability for their family, and are effectively sacrificing family time to provide that. This kind of hard work feels undervalued in modern parenting discourse, which seems to put most value on time directly spent with children or on direct day-to-day tasks (dishes, cooking, etc). An example anecdote: my friend works construction. Lots of long hours of hard labor. His wife is unhappy because he doesn't do more childcare, but left unanswered is how he could do more. He can't work fewer hours or move to a new job without a giant income hit. His wife can't earn enough to offset daycare costs. They already live on a fairly thin budget. From the outside, I can see how he'd feel unappreciated. That said though there are definitely also men who aren't doing childcare OR working hard, and they're happy to have their wife do everything.
- bombcar 6mo ago
  Often there’s unsaid things that have “comparative” simple solutions - not working less but getting the wife a few hours a week “off duty” kind of things.

rhubarbtree 6mo ago

Just a note for Dads doing more than their parents - it’s quality more than quantity. Be fully present with your kids more than trying to kill yourself fitting more hours in. That’s what matters. Bad parenting tends to be more of the type that isn’t engaged. Kids don’t hate you for going to work. They are hurt if you come home and ignore them.

awakeasleep 6mo ago
If you’re a dad and live in the same house as your kids the time comes naturally… men have been purposefully fleeing it throughout history. So its not a matter of “killing yourself to get more time” … its a matter of not abandoning your kids and wife to make time for your hobbies or whatever
dgudkov 6mo ago
Yeah, what's the point in technically spending more time with kids if half of that time you stare at your mobile phone.
- grvdrm 6mo ago
  Ture, but also, know that sometimes that just happens - the kids want to be solo, not talk, etc. Easy to kill yourself thinking you need to be perfect.
1970-01-01 6mo ago
Any paper or citations on this? I don't believe it.
- pluralmonad 6mo ago
  You should definitely follow your instincts here, but wanting researchers to show you how to raise your kids is a fools errand IMO. Put those highly tuned parental instincts to use!
  - dimes 6mo ago

kotaKat 6mo ago

Second sibling born - turns out I didn't get to be the parent, I get to look after the parents. I'm tired, exhausted, utterly miserable, barely scraping by. All those fancy ideals I thought old age provided for don't exist. Nursing homes? Hah, that's $340 a day up here in the middle of nowhere. I ain't making that a day. I get to do it myself. I wonder what percentage of folks are now stuck in caretaking instead of raising their own families themselves. I basically predict my family line is extinct after my generation.

cable2600 6mo ago

We were latchkey kids. The key to the house door was tied around our neck using a shoelace. When the street lights came on, it meant going home. Both parents worked to afford the house and the kids' expenses.

ipsento606 6mo ago

I can't help but wonder about the relationship between fathers (and, in fact, all parents) spending more time with their children, and people choosing to have fewer children, and later. I think it's unquestionably true that fathers spending more time with their children is, on the whole, much better for those children. But it's also true that it's a huge problem for society that people are having fewer children. And I think you can make a reasonable argument that increasing expectations around the quality of parenting are party of that trend.

LeifCarrotson 6mo ago
If fathers spending more time with their children is better for the children but worse for ~~society~~the economy, is that really even a question worth considering? Screw the economy, love your kid (or kids).
- geodel 6mo ago
  Well it is worth considering. Unless one think they and their children can just exist beyond space and time of where society, economy exist.
  - red-iron-pine 6mo ago
    society and economy are shaped by the needs of the people in it. they easiest because of our needs. we don't exist to meet its needs.
    - mothballed 6mo ago
      In the 1960s when single-parent households were a thing, it was not unusual for households to have little to no indoor plumbing or regular electricity. Nowadays such a lifestyle will get social workers on your ass, unless you can get some Mennonite or Amish preacher or something to vouch for you. After a long enough period of failing to meet some arbitrary modern "quality of life" that can only be afforded by going along with the mainstreams economic system and expectations, the legal system will likely get involved in some capacity. Economy is a bit of a one way valve. If you don't flow with it they'll rip away your children and then you'll be dumped to the curb along with the homeless or other inmates at the jail.

apparent 6mo ago

> I don’t know who told MacRumors what (and their sourcing is just “MacRumors has learned”), but I know for a fact that it is not true that the teams working on the Vision platform have “been redistributed to other teams within Apple.” Good to know! I thought it was a bit weird for the team to have been disbanded so abruptly. Perhaps if this aspect of the story is not correct, other aspects will turn out to have been untrue as well.

kotaKat 6mo ago
"MacRumors has learned" means "our Bloomberg shill, Mark Guesser, has made another bad prediction", every time.

Ancapistani 6mo ago

Not directly relevant to the article, but I'm curious if anyone else has connected the fact that fathers are spending more time being close with their children at the same time average global testosterone levels have dropped without a solid explanation? To be clear, I'm not trying to point a causal arrow here, or even say it's good or bad. I read a study the other day that asserted that fathers who spent more time parenting have measurably lower testosterone levels, and that the delta correlates to the amount of time spent.

gracefulliberty 6mo ago
If that's the case, that's not a bad thing. Maybe men who aren't properly bonded with their kids have higher than normal testosterone for some reason?
jaredklewis 6mo ago
> testosterone levels have dropped without a solid explanation There is a solid explanation. First, before the adoption of mass spec, studies used a less accurate method of measuring testosterone that overstated testosterone levels. Also, the studies showing the population level decline in testosterone generally controlled for obesity (which naturally lowers testosterone) using BMI. But BMI is a very crude measure. When studies control with better methods like BMI + waist circumference, and only compare samples using the mass spec measurement method, the unexplained population level decline goes away. After fixing the measurement method, what remains of the decline can be explained by BMI + waist circumference. In other words, modern men are more prone to obesity and metabolic syndrome, which naturally reduces testosterone. Case closed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22150314/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22150314/
- Ancapistani 6mo ago
  That study appears to be US only, while global studies have shown the effect. For that matter, some _animal_ studies have shown declining testosterone as well. That doesn't seem to be well-studied, but if it holds up it would make me lean toward it being something environmental (e.g. microplastic pollution)

tsoukase 6mo ago

It's a good article and, as a father, I experience and certify what it says. It presents the causes of the main observed fact (more time for kids) which happens anywhere in the Western world at least. But it can't go further and explain what general social changes cause all that. For me, in no order, they are: Financial strains (family disposable income, high cost of living, wealth inequality) Expand of electronic device use (from TVs to modern ones) and their apps Convergence of gender roles, making males less masculine General loss of classical values, promotion of easy life, short term goals and superficial qualities leading to misery and deactivation

JohnMakin 6mo ago

It isn’t said in this article, but as an elder millennial and a guy that’s talked about this exact thing with peers, it’s that we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of our parents. Boomers, the parents of millennials, are perhaps the worst generation to have ever existed and we carry a lot of baggage over it.

Balgair 6mo ago

Haha, I was just talking to family about early dad-hood. I mentioned that I really felt how a space marine feels some days: https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daily_rituals_of_a_Space_Marine https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daily_rituals_of_a_Space_Ma... Mostly in the short sleep period, but also in the 'free time' too. I tend to get about 30 minutes at the end of the day, after all have (finally) gone to sleep, but still.

talkingtab 6mo ago

This measures fatherhood in terms of time spent with children. I question whether that metric is of any value what so ever. Is a farmer a better farmer because he/she spends hours in the field? Or is the correct measure of a farmer the crops? This article, and the place it has on Hackernews and the quality of "commments" raises serious questions for me about Hacker News as a whole, the moderation, the readers and mechanism. My complaint is not that this kind of thing exists. My complaint is that something better does not.

saghm 6mo ago
> Is a farmer a better farmer because he/she spends hours in the field? Or is the correct measure of a farmer the crops? At the risk is stating the obvious, crops do not have the ability to notice whether or not the farmer spends time with them. If you think that a child won't notice that one of their parents doesn't spend time with them and will be affected by it, I don't know what to tell you.
- adammarples 6mo ago
  But do they notice the difference between 4 hours and 5 hours? Or are they noticing something else entirely?
  - jermberj 6mo ago
    To make the analogy proportional (according to the article), the difference would be something like "do they notice the difference between 1h 40m and 5 hours" (i.e. 3x more). My money would be on yes, they'd very much notice.
tmvphil 6mo ago
Yes yes the goal of life is to flourish and this metric doesn't measure flourishing directly so what's the point? And indeed is the fact that we talk about observable metrics rather than whatever else I had in mind not an indictment of this forum, nay, society at large?
pchristensen 6mo ago

weirdmantis69 6mo ago

[flagged]

cindyllm 6mo ago
[dead]

ronzensci 6mo ago

Dad of 2 under 5: would be curious to know if there has been a change in the role of grandparents and especially how parents (particularly Mums’) desire to get along with grandparents (in-laws) and what role is that playing in the increase in the ‘mental load’ and the stressful part of Mums’ parenting. Can a good part of the mental load be attributed to the need for the parents to ‘do it all’ themselves rather than share the load and responsibility with other loved ones and caregivers without the need to tightly control all aspects of parenting? On a separate note - Insta is constantly feeding my wife with versions of parenting which is completely unattainable. That really is at the heart of the mental load we are experiencing in our situation of raising two under five. If only Insta was banned, life would have been far more better for parents.

psyclobe 6mo ago

My well being is judged now by whether I took the time to watch a movie with my daughter, take my son out to fly a rc plane and so forth... so easy to dig into the daily grind ... not sure what life is about but I sure a shit know misery it born from abandoning your kids and the sickness that brings inside is insidious. If I do nothing both will be in their rooms all day. Makes me sick.

realaaa 6mo ago

in some ways it was cool to grow up without too much supervision eh?