I’m a currently childless man who may continue to be childless. Sometimes I think about teaching as a means to contribute to the betterment of society.
That’s a funny way to frame it 😄 At the end of the day, everyone’s just choosing the life that fits them best—and there’s room for all kinds of happiness.
everyone’s just choosing the life that fits them best
pressing X so hard rn
Thank you for your service. Please continue engage in weird, wonderful, time-absorbing hobbies in my honour.
What if my hobby is breeding?
Go breed! Quickly. And furiously.
This is how I live my life.
What really dislike about child-free adults…is when they become child-free great-aunts and great-uncles.
They want to spoil the kids as if they are grandparents while also having no idea what kids actually need or want, or what is healthy for them.
And then they ignore the kids parents because they are still the parents aunt/uncle and to them, they are just a kid.
That seems very specific ngl.
I am one of these child free uncles. I believe I have two nieces, one of which I guess to be 7 or 8 years old. I have seen one of them once.
I’m sorry, I clearly have no idea what’s good for them.
On a positive side, I live with two children and hopefully that’ll be enough for me to learn how to become a better uncle.
Childless uncle here. My role is to love my nephew and support him in whatever way he needs me to.
Sometimes he just needs me to be a responsible, safe adult he can count on who isn’t burdened by the need to act parental.
I just help mine with computer problems. Don’t have much else to offer. Last week one called me about an issue they were having and they had already tried all the troubleshooting I knew for the issue off the top of my head (which included some fairly technical stuff she had researched on her own). I was really proud of her.
I said great-uncles and great-aunts.
Uncles and Aunts tend to mind their own business. They see the kids parents as peers (because they are) and generally respect their decisions.
It probably has more to do with being old and not seeing your baby nibling as someone who can handle being a parent themselves, now. They wrongly assume age=wisdom and totally forget that they have 0 parenting experience to look back to.
And they come out of the word work for it, too. They’re retired boomers on that good DINK money. They got wads of money and nothing but time. So now they want to be involved all the time.
I’m sure all child-free adults are exactly as you described.
It’s always a bit surreal to see people insist “As a childless adult, I get to have hobbies while you don’t” when - as a childed adult - I find myself picking up hobbies I’d never even considered before kids.
My little guy stumbles on things and gets into them, needs some help, and suddenly we’re both neck-deep in a jigsaw puzzle or a TV series or a train kit or a pile of half-painted miniatures.
I think its more that those hobbies are thrust upon you by the child. Your willingness to engage with them smooths it all out. Not everyone has patience for kid friendly activities and some find them incredibly boring.
For instance… I work in childcare. Almost all of my personal favorite activities are very non-child friendly… (then again I also engaged with many of my favorite non-child-friendly pass times way younger than most people would be comfortable with…) I find most sanitized “kid friendly” activities pretty unbearably boring.
The kids themselves are fine though. And if anything I think they’d agree with me. If I busted out a super violent video game or something they’d probably cool with it. It’d be my fellow counselors and parents who’d take issue.
If anything my experience with kids almost softened my desire to get sterilized and cement my child free life. Kids seem fine to me. Its just all the social restrictions and expectations around them and obviously the energy, money, and time commitment. (Also I’m a soft-anti-natalist.)
Not everyone has patience for kid friendly activities and some find them incredibly boring.
In my experience, kids love to imitate whatever their parents are doing. But they struggle to operate at an adult level. So you provide them with kid-friendly activities to bridge that gap with an eye towards full participation as they get older.
When my son was 1-year-old, I couldn’t put a baseball glove on him and toss a baseball around. But I could kick a rubber ball back and forth. I could get him to throw his ball into his toy box. I could roll a ball to him and have him pick it up, then two-hand throw it back. I’d do this with an eye to the future. And then he got older and stronger and more dexterous, and we could elevate what he tried to do.
I get that this isn’t the most stimulating for the adult. But, at some level, you need to enjoy being around your kids generally speaking. Otherwise, I’ll spot you that having kids is going to be miserable. At another level, learning how to teach is its own hobby and challenge. Experimenting with what your child can do is interesting. Reading about the next milestones and testing whether your kid can do them is exciting. Watching your kid improve over time is fascinating.
If that’s not for you… okay, fine. Maybe you take your kid to daycare and let them figure it out. And you just treat your kid like an appliance - fed, rested, healthy, etc. I’ll spot you that this isn’t very fun (on its face, anyway).
If I busted out a super violent video game or something they’d probably cool with it. It’d be my fellow counselors and parents who’d take issue.
I mean, I don’t see an enormous difference between Splatoon and Team Fortress. I got Sonic: The Hedgehog collection for my son, and we can play it without any serious fear of trauma (although he has thrown the controller a few times). You can curb the degree of gore and still keep all the elements that make an activity fun.
If anything my experience with kids almost softened my desire to get sterilized and cement my child free life.
More power to you. Just crazy to see people blot their own childhoods from their heads and insist you simply can’t have fun under the age of 20.
I don’t think they are saying you gave up your life because of your children but that you shift your time towards other things. Rightfully so because having a child is a huge responsibility and people better live up to that.
But I don’t think you would have gotten into jigsaw puzzles and probably did something more alike the things You did before you had children.
Or maybe you are the exception to the (from what I can observe) the norm and haven’t given up any or most of your adult hobbies when having a child. If so, good on you!
In closing I would like to say that I respect people that want children, I understand some people want children and can’t have them (fertility, no partner, discrimination against non hetero) and I understand the anger they might feel when seeing this meme. I also understand those who don’t have children and are fine with it or even happy about it because they actively pursued this life concept. So to me that meme is funny without making fun of the other groups but (as ever joke needs) using them as a reference to make it funny in the first place.
Live long and prosper 🖖
I find the entire concept of “childless” or “childed” surreal
We would love to have kids. We can’t (easily or realistically). So gloating about having free time because no kids, or how amazing it is to be a parent… just seems, insincere sometimes. Idk, maybe it’s a little bitterness talking and I should just let people have fun with their memes. I guess I just find gloating about having or not having children to be weird, when for some people it’s not really a choice
By no means am I trying to say that you’re gloating about anything, I thought your comment was sweet. I was just adding a third perspective to a random comment
That’s fair, and I’m sorry to hear that’s your situation. I find it incredibly unfair we live in a world mixed with infertility and unwanted pregnancies.
I agree on behalf of parents we should be careful about what we drop casually. It’s like the whole, “So when are you going to have kids?” question everyone gets from the previous generation. This stuff is coming from a good place, but I think in the future it’ll be avoided, and reflected upon as very crass.
One thing I’ll say is that as a parent who often fantasizes about the “other path”, there’s a catharsis in memes like this one. I want to live vicariously through adults without children. I know this may not help from where you’re coming from, but just stating it in the spirit of increased understanding.
Adults Im talking to are like “I have no spare time or do anything interesting, my children consumes me completely”. I say fuck no to that. I have personal growth to pursue.
Adults Im talking to are like
It’s funny, because I hear this from childless adults all the time, as well. More often than not, they’re complaining about being overworked (and underpaid) at the office. The parents I know more commonly complain that they don’t get enough time with their kids, bemoaning how much time (and money) go to day cares and after school activities, while they’re stuck working weekends or extra shifts to make ends meet.
Sounds like you come from the fascist regimes of america.
Texas is a hell of a state
A lot of people don’t understand what it takes to raise children, completely overlooking what you just listed. You seem to be a good parent, which is rare.
No, we do. It’s why we opted not to have any. We want to do what we want to do. Not whatever our children are into.
My oldest wanted to learn guitar. So did I. We are taking lessons together.
My youngest loves video games. Highlight of his week is when I can sit down and play with him.
Both my kids love reading and arts and crafts, which my wife also enjoys much more than I do.
Why can’t you and your kids have overlapping interests? When you’re raising the kids, it’s normal for them to be curious about the things you enjoy. Kids hobbies and interests end up overlapping or reflecting their parents more often than the other way round.
My oldest also likes Minecraft. My youngest loves soccer. Neither of us really enjoy either of these things. But we do also enjoy seeing our kids developing interests and personalities of their own. If that means we have to spend an hour a week going to Pee-wee soccer (and, meanwhile, hanging out with other parent friends), so be it.
Why can’t you and your kids have overlapping interests? When you’re raising the kids, it’s normal for them to be curious about the things you enjoy. Kids hobbies and interests end up overlapping or reflecting their parents more often than the other way round.
They can I suppose, but it’s certainly not guaranteed. I’ve seen enough of my friends have kids and the resulting impact to their social life and ability to do what they want to know that it isn’t for me. Yeah it got a little better for most of them when the kids got older and more self sufficient but it was still a massive trade off up til that point and I don’t see it as being worth it for me.
What kind of miniatures?
He found the box of “Kingdom Death: Monster” board game figures I’d been sitting on since he was born.
Rad.
Same. This week I rode the new tramway network blind in a coastal city to have adventures with Kid. We bought copper wire and made jewellry with pretty pebbles (harder than I thought.) We played Split Fiction (and like It Takes Two better.) We showed her The Good Place (she loves it, because duh.)
Whe have fun.Same.
Also I get to share my hobbies with them. We got a d&d group, we paint minis and play video games together. Which is stuff I’d do anyways.
I also picked up inline skating as my kids do that all the time and just standing there while they skate was boring.
Plus I still got hobbies as does my wife. Yes there is less time but we have each other’s backs so everyone can have some time for their own interests like once or twice a week.
You ever see the futurama episode what that slug was forced to party all the time.
It’s like that
Damn lol… kids or no kids, if you’re doing it right, you’re exhausted
Having to maintain a population is a kinda bizarr (hopefully not racist) concept. Humanities problem is not that we’re dying out because there aren’t enough humans …
I don’t think it’s racist to talk about the practical necessity of parenthood for the species to continue, it’s just that a lot of racist people talk about it a lot with a specific outcome in mind.
the only reason it comes up are for racist reasons - there is no reason to think the human species is dying out because populations are too low (it’s the opposite, to the extent that we might be threatening species survival by exceeding the population our planet, ecology, and food systems can sustain).
Sometimes I think parents forget that they CHOSE to have kids. There’s always a choice. Even having sex with protection has a risk that people assume.
As a childless adult, it’s my duty to be part of other people’s lives and support families by being a trusted adult (trusted by parents and kids) and be a good role model for others’ kids.
Why? Because we live in a society. Today’s kids are tomorrow’s adults. There are, unfortunately, a lot of terrible social influences out there, and parents can’t battle society alone. Young boys and girls need to learn and develop healthy relationships with men and women alike, beyond just their parents, in order to have something to model themselves after and to learn how to treat others with love and respect.
And this is especially so for singletons. A lot of the bad and warped ideas about “relationships” and even self-esteem comes from unhealthy views of romantic relationships. Ideas like if you’re not good enough if you don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Or ideas that men and women cannot “only” be friends (objectification of other sex). Ideas that men are owed relationships and sex by women (incels). Ideas that it’s better to be with a bad partner than to be single (abuse).
Parents can’t fight all of that on their own.
While I naturally want to contribute to society, I do not have a duty to it. I did not choose to be here. Much like the kids in question.
I don’t give a shit about what the parents think or want as parents. Having a kid doesn’t make your desires elevated over child-free people. In fact tbh you are under a minor moral debt in my eyes.
I absolutely envy every family that has you in their lives. Please never stop thinking that way because we desperately need people like you. Not as a free baby sitter or lunch provider, but as a role model and influence. We really cannot do it all by ourselves.
Thank you so much for saying this. It’s refreshing to hear this coming from someone else. We are divided in so many ways and need to bring the spirit of community back - the things you mention are critical steps in that direction.
Well said.
As a man with 2 young kids, yes. Yes you do. It’s an obligation for you to enjoy the free time as much as you can. I rely on my childless friends to fill me in on what’s happening in the cultured world, because for me my life is nothing but Bluey, Paw Patrol, and Cocomelon.
I respect the honesty. Also consider replacing Paw Patrol and Cocomelon ASAP.
Yesterday I saw a man with his 5-year-old son out for a bike ride on the beach boardwalk. That little tiny boy was confidently adeptly riding his little bike balancing on two wheels like a full-on pro. I hope your kids get enough time away from the screen to enjoy life with skills like that too.
Who would downvote this lol? No kids, but also fully am tired of the us vs them mentality with cf versus childed. In today’s world there is usually a much greater sacrifice to have kids and to be able to afford or have a community to have date nights and such, but having children is still an adventure that many parents enjoy. You probably hear a lot from the complainers, though. Similar to married guys who sigh and call their wives the old woman… the happily married are silent af usually.
That only lasts so long. My kids do their own thing, I do my own thing, and we do things together. I love hanging out with them and enjoying our shared interests. I know someday they won’t want to/be able to spend that time together, so I take advantage while I can.
I second that. The time when their interests bore you to death is so damn small. The time they need a diaper or breastfeed is so damn small. It is intense and hard, but then, just some steps down the road, you just sit there rewatching Sailor Moon instead of Peppa Pig and spending time together becomes actually cool and interesting and it feels like you have a great person around. You read great books together instead of looking at books that go like “this is a caterpillar. It likes apples. The caterpillar bites into an apple.” You make up stories. You draw together. You roughhouse. You just… hang out.
It’s the small thing we get for paying for all the many benefits parents enjoy.
This is important and highlights some problems with trends in the modern world. At one point, we had an agreement that the average family would sacrifice 40 labor hours to the economy in return for enough resources to sustain a family. Now it’s 80.
Parents should have plenty of time to engage in childish pursuits alongside their kids. It’s natural, traditional, healthy and constructive to multi-generational, extended family households. I know that’s not what everyone wants, but I feel like it should at least be an option.
It should be okay for a person to work 20 hours per week. We have the technology to make that sustainable. If someone wants to work 80 to accumulate luxuries for themselves, I think that’s fine, too. What I hate is observing people being forced to live in poverty while working 40+ hours. I am aware that almost no one working full time is below the federal poverty limit, but that’s because it’s a nonsense metric. It’s unconscionable that anyone should have to live in poverty in the modern world, but it’s insane that full-time wages don’t necessarily cover the cost of living.
I believe this creates a situation which raises children without a sense of community outside of work, and now we’re watching them burn down the village as 70-year-olds. There’s a saying about how bad times create strong people, strong people create good times, good times create weak people, and weak people create bad times. I don’t believe it for a second. Strong people and peoples are those with strong social bonds. They needn’t be biological. Screwed up families exist and it’s okay to get away and find a real family elsewhere.These communities create good times, which create even stronger people.
So therefore, go and do silly things with kids. Play Minecraft or Fortnite or kick-the-can or hide-and-seek, sing baby shark, or watch Bluey. Not just because our future depends on it, but because it’s fun. We are supposed to be happy as a minimum standard. Not all the time, but at least as an average. It’s not even the goal of life; it’s the method. We’re supposed to enjoy doing constructive things. That’s how positive reinforcement works, and the current system is not only failing to acknowledge that, but it’s diverging from it.
Go and be childish.
We also used to get to retire and do the childish hobbies for 15-20 years after our careers ended.
Our grandparents had dolls, model trains, antiques and organs to play.
You can’t give most of the shit away now, not just because tastes have changed, but I think because housing, employment and free time are all a fraction of what they were 40 years ago.
They needed more cannon fodder back in the day. Also child labour.
And children to feed to the Epstein class.
Ah yes, the modern version of the “I hate my wife”-joke.
As a childless person myself, I can tell you that I rarely have the energy to “go have fun” after a long day of work. In fact, I prefer to just be at home and be a boring, basic bitch.
I can also tell you that almost every parent I know, and I know many because almost everyone my age have kids, are super active and do all kinds of fun things with their kids all the time. Especially those whose kids have gotten older and less dependent. It is a big, big, big misconception that parents never have fun. They do. A lot. They travel, go to parks and museums, theaters, circuses and talks with child entertainers. They take part in local community activities like sports and arts and whatever else is out there and they bond with the other parents who also wish to build a good community for the kids.
I have also seen how efficient parents are with time management. Not because they were born with that skill, but because they HAD to get good at it, so they pretty much never have a boring day ever. Are they tired and exhausted? Yes. Do they sometimes wish for a break from the kids? Also yes. But I would wager a guess that they all have lives that are tenthousand times more exciting than or many other childless people do. Not that it is a competition. Personally, I like the boring life where I get to do whatever I want without interruptions. I like that I get a break from other people because it overwhelms me to be around more than three people for long stretches of time. That just how I am and that is why I’m childless.
But I in no way feel superior to parents pr have this childish preconception that parents’ lives suck. You can only have that opinion if you’re never around people who have kids.
Sorry for being a party pooper, but I really, really hate this stupid joke and I hope it soon goes out of style and becomes something we look back at and cringe at in the same way we do with “I hate my wife”-jokes.
Unfortunately a lot of times it’s not a joke. These people genuinely think they’re superior to parents, and a lot of them genuinely hate kids and those who chose to have them. It’s a rotten mindset to it’s core that built on hatred of preconceived stereotypes. It’s something that’s irrational in both logic and the emotions that it evokes. It’s literally a new form of bigotry.
People like you should be the default. You made your choice and you respect other people who made theirs. You understand other people have their own reasons that are different than yours. That’s normal, that’s healthy. It means you’re secure enough in the decisions you’ve made to not go around trying to justify it to yourself by pretending you’re better than other people. As much as I would like to believe that people like you are the silent majority, I’m finding that more and more difficult to believe with just how prevalent these smug childless people are becoming in society.
If someone is truly that hateful, at least they’re being kind enough to remove themselves from the gene pool.
Oh dude, I know Dx back when I was still using reddit I had a few run ins with the childfree subreddits and I didn’t like the tone on the main one and asked around if there was a sub somewhere, where you could just talk with normal childfree people about the lifestyle. I was recommended the true childfree subreddit and was permabanned for my first and only post where I wanted to start a discussion about the doubts and the difficult choices related to choosing the childfree lifestyle. I was permabanned for trolling, which pissed me off enough to just give up on trying to find people like me online to talk to about it.
I actually really like kids and kids really like me, lol. They always think I’m “one of them” when I play with them at family gatherings and such. They seem to always forget that I’m adult who’s older than their parents a lot of the time. It’s just to say that I don’t hate kids. I tend to not like people who hate kids. I feel like it’s a good way of telling if I will like a person or not. Do they like kids or not? They can even be indifferent and I will be okay with them. But if they hate kids, I reserve the right within myself to label them as someone I don’t want to know.
I just could never be a parent because parenthood isn’t for me, lol. I would be really bad at it, so I leave that up to those of you who actually can do it and I respect you for it.
But to be completely honest, I think the losers who make hating kids and parents their only personality trait, those people are a very loud online minority. I don’t believe they are the majority irl. I could be wrong though. I don’t know any irl childless people who hate kids. They are either like me, they think kids are cool but they just don’t know how to be a parent or they are indifferent to kids or they just never got a chance to start a family.
There are scientific studies which show that parents are overall less happy than adults without kids.
Of course parents still do a lot of stuff but it’s because most of the time it’s even more stressful to stay at home with the kids. And as you noticed it’s stuff mainly for the kids. Of course some things parents can enjoy as well. But the main thing about being a parent is that you can’t just do what YOU what, especially not spontaneously.
And the post was about vibe and chill, which is definitely something parents do a lot less than they would like to.
Sure, I think I can find studies that affirms my biases too if I really want to.
Personally, I don’t believe that parents are so miserable and childless people are so happy. Maybe at some stage in life that can be measured to be objectively true, but longterm, dude, I think the parents win the happiness lottery if the childless people choose to never move on from their 20s and grow up and take part in their community. I invest time and money into my nieces and nephews and into my friends’ kids too. Because they are family and I care about them and their parents and it gives me joy to know that I’m a part of something either directly or indirectly, depending on circumstances. I do it because I know that there is also a day after tomorrow where I would become alone and forgotten and have no one to lean on if I don’t contribute and invest anything into the future, which in this case it other people’s children.
At some point, we have to remember that the world is bigger than ourselves and if we only invest in ourselves our whole lives, we will end up very very very alone.
You went too hard in the other direction. Sure parents aren’t miserable, but studies do show childless adults are happier. Maybe they’re less fulfilled? That’s hard to say if you never wanted kids. Also you can enjoy being around friends and make their lives better and invest in your community, not like kids, and still be very fulfilled. If you don’t enjoy kids that doesn’t impact your life negatively unless you don’t understand how to be happy on your own.
The thing is, as you grow older, your friends tend to have kids at some point and you kinda have to give a fuck about their kids if you hope to hold on to those friendships. That’s the point. If you invest into a community, kids are bound to be a part of that community at some point. Especially if that community wants to survive and not slowly and sadly die out on its own.
It’s not about who is better, it’s the total rejection of reality that I take issue with when it comes to smug childless people who look down on people who have kids. It’s like those people think that they will be 20 forever. That’s not how life works. Better to wake up and understand what it takes to be a part of society - which includes children - than to run around in denial for an entire life and then wake up one morning and realize that you allowed yourself to isolate yourself from society for no good reason. Now nobody knows you and nobody cares about you because you never cared to know them.
You don’t have to be a total fan of children, but if you hate kids and hate parents and look down on them and act like your childfree life is superior, you will end up having to deal with the consequences of that someday and it’s not going to be pretty.
Most happiness indices use flawed methodology. I wouldn’t take them too seriously.
Having a child requires more planning for sure. Spontaneity is certainly fun but I do think that the ability to plan ahead is part of what rounds us out as adults.
I vibe and chill every night with my wife after the kids are asleep at 8. If we want to go out they stay with the grandparents.
Can you be as spontaneous as your were in college or as a young uncommited professional? Not really. But with a little planning you can still have your fun.
I acknowledge a lot of this comes down to finances and how functional your family is and so may not be feasible for many people. But I do want to gently push back at the idea that ideas of individuality, self-actualization etc must be deferred because of children.
You need a community to make it work and the problem is many people have less and less of that these days.
By what metric do we judge happiness?
Is it wealth? Is it things owned? Is the happiness a serial hoarder feels when they get a new thing the same as the happiness of seeing your first child born?
I’m starting to think we’ve gone too far when it comes to validating feelings.
I guess you just ask someone how happy they are in general.
Edit: I found the study (see my other response) and they used this:
To assess life satisfaction, respondents were asked, “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?” They were asked to indicate their satisfaction with life using an 11-point scale ranging from 0 (dissatisfied) to 10 (satisfied). This measure has been shown to have appropriate external validity and has been widely used in cross-cultural studies of life satisfaction
Ok, let me create a separate hypothetical:
You have a society that really likes ultra processed food. I mean really likes ultra processed food, to the point of addiction. There are other things that society is addicted to, but we’ll fixate on food for now.
Let’s say you take ultra processed food away from that society. Or any other harmful addictive thing. What do you think happens to their overall satisfaction in life?
It is the objectively correct decision (at least before enough regulations are put in place that ‘ultra processed’ doesn’t also mean ‘packed with chemicals’). Let’s say you assess life satisfaction after an event like this. What would their answers be? Would they be true or would they just be the thrashings of addicts?
My point is that I think if you ask a heroin addict if they’re satisfied with life, their answer will depend on how long it’s been since a needle has gone in their arm. I don’t think the average person is actually capable of guaging their level of satisfaction, not to say that the average person is a heroin addict.
I don’t think the average person is actually capable of guaging their level of satisfaction in life
One could argue they’re the only ones who can gauge it.
But there’s definitely a struggle to separate the symptoms of happiness from the conditions of happiness.
Like, if happiness is just a chemical, then OD on it and you’ve successfully maximized the raw score. But if you asked someone in advance if that’s how they want to live their lives, I don’t think you’d get many eager for it.
Good point
Got a link for that study? I highly suspect that the happyness of the adults with Children depends on which country they are from.
No sorry, but I remember that in scandinavian countries the difference in happiness was much less, because raising children there is more seen as a societal task and less as the sole responsibility of the parents.
Edit: found it: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.13116
So in short. Having kids in a country that is not driven by money hungry oligarch means both higher satisfaction in life and higher meaning in life. Welp sounds about right.
tending to be more negative for parents facing more challenging conditions
I think the above point of the study is key. If you are already facing significant challenges in life (economic, psychological, physical, etc), adding kids is not going to make it any easier, and might make things worse. I know it’s anecdotal but I’m personally pretty satisfied with my life, and that’s continued to grow alongside my kids. But as I mentioned in my previous comment, I have the resources and support I need to make that happen. I also live in a country that provides a lot more support to families than somewhere like the US. Not going to say having kids is all muffins, puppies, and unicorn farts all the time. But it’s been fulfilling to me, and if I had to go back and do it all again with my kids, I absolutely would.
Nice. Thank you. Even better, it’s a free study.
But instead of showing the coefficient of the model they derived, I would have shown figures 1 & 2 which are riveting to me.
I highly suspect happiness directly correlates to wealth and not the country.
parents are overall less happy than adults without kids
Higher levels of stress, less money in the bank, fewer hours of sleep, yadda yadda. You could say the same thing about people who start their own businesses or take up a career in politics or do literally anything that’s taxing on the human body and mind.
Want to know how to live a truly carefree lifestyle? Take up heroin. Folks in an opiate haze are consistently ranked some of the happiest on earth.
And the post was about vibe and chill
It’s this sort of weird backhanded brag that tries to make a virtue out of self-indulgence. Might as well go full Gordon Geeko with it if you’re this far in.
are super active and do all kinds of fun things with their kids all the time.
Some of the fun of parenting is sharing your interests with someone new, a complete beginner to that thing. Some of your hobbies become their hobbies (my kids have taken an interest in cooking and helping in the kitchen, love some of my favorite childhood books/movies, tinker with legos), and some of them don’t (trying to teach my kids how to play chess or sports have been mostly unsuccessful).
But it inspired me to take them to the library and museums and even vacations that I wouldn’t have otherwise done. It also helps inspire me to keep in better contact with my parents and siblings (and their kids), because it’s important for me that my kids have relationships with their grandparents and cousins. But the side effects is that it makes me stay in better contact with my own family. So it becomes a forcing function, that is only kinda a burden to the extent that I might rather be doing something else, that I learn to appreciate in the long view.
Right. It changes your perspective and priorities. It gives you the gift of community and culture in ways that someone like me won’t get unless I actively remember to seek it out.
I’m not a parent so there are many things I don’t have first hand experience with, but children have been a part of every stage of my life since I was little. I became an aunt before the age of 10, lol. I have seen the cycle of parenthood over and over and over again and now I’m going through it again with my peers who almost all have kids and their lives change in so many amazing and exhausting ways but they all recieve community and culture and the family is knitted closer. It is something I don’t know how to explain to terminally online childless people who have a very simplistic idea of what parenthood and childless lifestyles are like. I have lived that shit my whole life so I know what is coming for me and what is coming for the parents in my life and I know the ups and downs of both and I find both beautiful in their own ways. I don’t think the childless people who pull up statistics and and talk about parenthood like they know anything about it because they have read a few articles and studies that affirms their biases, I don’t think they realize what is actually coming for them.
It’s not that they will necessarily regret not having kids. But if they don’t attempt to get involved in community and culture in any way, they will be left behind at some point. Then they can brag about hobbies and vacations and sex and sleep, but it’s gonna fucking hit them like a ton of bricks one day when they realize that society moved on without them and that they no longer know how to speak the language of their peers because they will miss ALL the references and the cultural and community context that was built when they were busy jetskiing in Hawaii.
It is going to be lonely and maybe you like being by yourself like I do a lot of the time, but you still have to get up and participate and show interest and investment in other people’s children if you want to not end up completely isolated from society one day. That is my strategy and it really fixes that puzzle I could never figure out early on in my life when I realized I love kids, I just don’t want to be a mom. Now I’m an aunt, a playmate and someone whom parents can rely on if they need me. Win/win.
I can also tell you that almost every parent I know, and I know many because almost everyone my age have kids, are super active and do all kinds of fun things with their kids all the time.
It’s always funny to watch a guy who has been a sports buff on the sidelines for half his life pick up coaching Little League baseball or soccer and come away with a totally different appreciation for the sport. Suddenly, he’s heavily invested in rookie year players, way more interested in the training camps than any of us have ever been, and saying the word “fundamentals” until our eyes have rolled out of our heads.
It’s incredibly cute and funny. Even as he says “Listen, my son’s not going to make it to the pros” he’s got to doubles back about how Tom Brady was a bottom of the barrel draft pick. Guy just loves his kid and loves what he does.
You forgot to add:
*Wealthy parents.
How do you expect people to be able to afford traveling and going to circuses, if they have to work 80 hours a week across two jobs just to survive?
No money. No time. No fun.
That may be true in America, but not every country treats its citizens the way America does. In my country, normal families can go travel or visit zoos or circuses without being rich. Unions are your friend.
Do you really think it’s specific to the USA and the rest of the world has it easy? LOL
Let me amend it:
*Wealthy parents or parents living in one of the very few wealthy and social countries.
My point being that it’s a minority of people who can claim this in this world.
Never said the rest of the world has it easy. People online just tend to only ever look at the world through the American lens.
I’m so sorry that some of us are born in places where we get to have good lives. How terrible of us.
And you tend to look through your own lens, it seems.
And mild social democratic policies (or as they are called in murrica: COMMUNISM!!!11!1) are your friend as well.
Yeah. I’m Danish which ranks pretty high in almost all areas of social happiness, which includes parents. It’s kinda sad for me to hear that there are people out there in the supposed first world who thinks that traveling or going to the circus, or museums etc is only for the wealthy, when it’s a pretty normal thing where I live. Museums and amusement parks are pretty popular here. My boyfriend and I gifted a close colleague of mine a trip to Legoland with the whole family for Christmas one year and they had a total blast. Enough that they decided to go the next year again, lol. None of us are rich. We actually are in the lower end of the earning bracket in Danish society, but we can still afford to do fun things. You’d have to be really shitty with money or too sick to work or study to not be able to have a somewhat decent life in Denmark. The latter, I have been through, btw.
I like that I get a break from other people because it overwhelms me to be around more than three people for long stretches of time. That just how I am and that is why I’m childless.
Is that with everybody or just people you don’t know and feel comfortable with? I mean, I’m intensely uncomfortable in many social situations but my kids don’t trigger that response at all.
Which is not to say it’s all fun and games. They are immensely hard work and the choices you have about how you spend your time, what holidays or other leisure activities you do, tend to be dictated by the presence of kids. Even if it’s something you do to take time off from the kids, that’s still driven by the kids in a way. It’s a whole different set of priorities, though I don’t regret having them at all.
I very likely have some type of undiagnosed disorder which I will never really know for sure because I don’t have the patience, energy or money to get a diagnosis. There are definitely people out there with similar peculiarities to me who are great at raising kids. I just don’t want to take the chance and hope for the best when there is no guarantee that I’ll be one of the good ones. I’ll rather end up an old lady with a couple of regrets than I want to potentially fuck up someone’s childhood.
I get where you’re coming from! It IS hard work! I have seen it in the faces and voices of my friends and family for decades haha. But I also see the love and how much these kids bring to their parents’ lives. So I totally get what you mean, when you say that your kids don’t affect you the same way other people do. To me that just sounds like you’re one of the good eggs :D
So I totally get what you mean, when you say that your kids don’t affect you the same way other people do. To me that just sounds like you’re one of the good eggs :D
Thanks, but I think what it really means is that the way you relate to your kids is not like anyone else. Like I never imagined that I would be ok with cleaning up another person’s shit. People working in nursing homes handle that stuff every day but I just couldn’t. But when it’s your own kid, it’s just… different. Still objectively disgusting but somehow acceptable, in the same way that I’m ok with wiping my own ass because it’s a part of me. Well, in some way my kids are a part of me too.
Wrong comm?
