[MRD85]

I made the opposite choice. I'm a single father and I've prioritised my children over my career. I'm not going to pretend it's an amazing lifestyle. If you're intellectually driven then looking after two young children isn't fascinating. However, I love them and they rely on me. I made a choice to bring them into the world and I'm not going to neglect them. I have the kids more than their mother does, and I also pay significant child support as I earn far more than her.

It's affected my career choices. I started studying Comp Sci, as I felt it's a field where I can have more flexibility than my current field. This degree is getting closer and closer to completion and it's looking 95% likely that my career will be changing in January.

It's affected my love life too but I won't go into detail here.

One thing this article misses the mark on is the quote " I also remind myself that if I were a dad, I would be getting accolades for all the times I scheduled a doctor’s appointment or arranged a play date.".

My experience as a dad is that people simply don't trust my parenting skills or assume I'm simply helping the mum out. It's incredibly sexist and somewhat hurtful. There has been times I've been battling with my workload and then people drop innocent comments which feel like a knife in the back.

[yomly]

>If you're intellectually driven then looking after two young children isn't fascinating.

I've never understood this viewpoint - children are simply the most fascinating things!

They're born with next to no inborn knowledge and yet have the potential to learn about quantum mechanics. Someone with the same potential would only have learned about fire some hundred thousands of years ago.

In the early days you get to see a baby slowly mentally program the things we take so for granted we forget that you actually have to learn them - how to walk, how to speak, language.

YMMV but for me to see the world indirectly through the eyes of children is like rediscovering everything there is to the world we live in!

[jon-wood]

On the scale of months and years children are amazing, and I agree it’s fascinating to watch as they develop into their own people.

However, on the scale of hours and days they can be mind-numbingly boring, as anyone who’s played hide and seek with a four year old who repeatedly goes and hides in their bedroom cupboard can probably attest. I love my boy dearly, but I am so, so, bored of playing the first hour of Minecraft now - he loves it though, so every few days we start up a new world, and we mine our way down to some diamonds, at which point he loses interest.

[novok]

I don’t think parents were ever meant to play hide and seek with their children for hours on end, but to let them go play with the other 4 year olds and relatives in the village, give them bandaids and hugs when they fall, have them be back by sundown, feed them food and tuck them into bed by 8pm.

But in todays atomized and helicopter parenting with liability world, you can’t do that and thus parenting is a lot more work than it should be.

[BigJono]

Damn, maybe I should have kids. I've played the first hour of Civ V over 500 times now and never finished a game.

[rlonn]

Sounds like you need to try some Minecraft mods :)

[zarify]

I think Adventure Mode and also the stuff available in Education Edition might make Minecraft a bit more of a long-term prospect there. You can make stuff for your kids to explore or do (either on rails or unguided), and there's quite a decent body of work out there shared in the education space.

I personally love Education Edition for the coding interface, but there is some other neat stuff in there as well.

Mind you, my first daughter is coming up on 2 years old, so there's a ways off until I get there. I'm just speaking as a teacher who uses it. My daughter is fascinating though - it's really interesting watching her figure out skills like sorting, and also discovering all the little ways my wife and I have unconsciously confused her with our use of language, which she then picks up without us realising it.

[tathougies]

I cannot remember my parents ever playing hide and seek with me. I don't think adults need to feel that they need to play with children for hours on end. That's incredibly dull. Find your kid a playmate.

[jackhack]

Yes. Parenting is fascinating, wonderful, but also exhausting to do it well.

Childhood is long days and short years.

[a-saleh]

That happens like 10% of the time if you are lucky.

Rest of it can be kinda monotonous? Like, getting my daughter from bed through breakfast, dressing up, and walking to kindergarten. Or getting her to walk all the way to her friends house for a play date. Or getting her dinner, showered, and to bed ...

I still like it, but the day to day is stressful and monotonous

[lonelappde]

A paying job is usually stressful and mnotonotous and the main upside is the salary.

[therealdrag0]

I donno. I love my paying job. I find it generally very stimulating.

[ulisesrmzroche]

Literally apples and oranges

[rlonn]

I agree. There are lots of things about raising kids that are intellectually stimulating and fascinating. I really enjoy seeing them grow mentally and figuring out ways to help them along, and also think up ways to make things fun of course, because everyone needs fun.

For us, this has meant quite a lot of shared cultural consumption. I've bought hundreds of story books 2nd hand, and read to them, and I think it has helped their vocabulary (which is amazing). We've seen tons of children's movies together, we've played Minecraft and other comp. games together, we often play board games. I have also built things for them, like a huge outdoor swing set and a crossword puzzle game to help them get started with reading - https://puzzlepirate.net (also available as a free Android app).

There are so many things you can do with or for your kids that is fun or challenging to you also, if you just use some imagination (and have the time).

[MRD85]

Are you doing this solo or do you have a partner? My experience as a single dad is that I can go entire days without having a single conversation with another adult. My adult friends aren't too interested in hanging out parenting. They are also demanding enough that I'll get zero time to do anything I wish to do while they're awake.

[rlonn]

I have a partner yeah, and the kids are reaching an age now (5 and 7) where they don't need as much help anymore. Dressing, eating, tidying etc they can do on their own so things are also getting easier. With them, at least. We also have a 2-month old now ;)

Anyway, your comment about friends not being interested makes it sound as if you have no adult support whatsoever. It would probably help a lot if you could make new friends w people who have kids the same age. Where I am (Stockholm) it seems this tends to happen when people go on a longer stretch of parental leave - you automatically meet and start hanging out w families w small kids, whose parents are also on parental leave. I think it really helps having other adults around who understand - as emotional support if nothing else.

I bet there are parents groups, or even single-parent groups you can join, to get in touch w others like you.

[jjeaff]

After spending some time working with machine learning and AI, the early development of the human brain is just fascinating to me.

With our best algorithms, you have to feed thousands and thousands of images for ML to be able to identify things like a certain type of animal.

And yet, my 14 month old can see a cartoon drawing of a penguin in her books a few times and then days later, recognize an actual photo of a penguin from a completely different source.

The human brain, even on an infant level is just so spectacularly amazing.

[ativzzz]

You also have to remember that our brains have millions of years of evolution to learn from, so we have had far more than thousands and thousands of images and other perceptions recognized by the DNA of our ancestors, which gets passed down to us.

[jjeaff]

Yes, but that's the programming. There aren't any penguin references in the DNA that we know of yet.

[untog]

In my experience the long term experience of parenting is fascinating and incredibly rewarding. The day to day is tedious.

[tathougies]

> I've never understood this viewpoint - children are simply the most fascinating things!

Yeah seriously. My wife and I have a six month old and simply because we want to educate her, we've both been reading way more than normal. My wife (who stays at home with our daughter all day) has already completed a university lecture series + read many books on ancient civilizations. I've started reading about philosophy on my bus ride to/from work.

Having children has only expanded our desire and ability to learn.

[14]

I have worked in health care for 15 years primarily taking care of elderly. The biggest message basically they all make is to not let time pass you by when you are young and to enjoy the time with your kids when they are young. Because before you know it they grow up and it’s never the same. I am a single dad as well. I too sacrificed my career so they got the time they needed. My love life is non existent also but I don’t mind. It won’t be like that forever. You are doing the right thing by the sounds of it so good job. When we get to our death beds our kids will be at our sides and there will be no doubt you and I made the correct choice. As for the lady in the article, the entire time I read it as her trying so hard to convince herself her choices were worth it but I fear from my experience she will later regret it. Though I truly like her cause, her own kids lost a family member much like these people going to jail away from their family. I hope she can make the balance her children seek from her.

[subpixel]

Amen. The author of the article is incorrect to think that the effect her career can have on society is anywhere near as important as the effect she can have on her children, should she take the time.

[axiom92]

> When we get to our death beds our kids will be at our sides and there will be no doubt you and I made the correct choice.

Is that guaranteed though?

[jumelles]

> I also remind myself that if I were a dad, I would be getting accolades for all the times I scheduled a doctor’s appointment or arranged a play date.

> My experience as a dad is that people simply don't trust my parenting skills or assume I'm simply helping the mum out. It's incredibly sexist and somewhat hurtful.

You and the author are talking about the exact same pervasive sexism from opposite perspectives.

[dudul]

The difference being one is talking about "how they think things would be if they were a dad", while the other is talking about the actual experience they had while being a dad. Somehow I feel like one of the two takes precedence in terms of credibility.

[pmyteh]

They're both true, though. Expectations of decent parenting are lower: just taking both my children to the park gets 'wow, that must be a handful' comments that my wife doesn't get. At the same time, I'm not assumed to be a competent caregiver, and am excluded from some of the social/mutual support side of parenting as it's in practice mums only.

GP is correct; these are in many ways two sides of the same sexist coin.

[afiori]

But they are in agreement. The same way both assuming that a [category X] can't do [stuff Y] and being positively surprised when they do are two faces of the same discrimination.

[MRD85]

My point is she thinks it would be great to have no one expect you to be a decent parent and she passes it off as men having it better in her article. I'm saying, that for a dedicated parent, it's worse.

[codernyc16]

They could both arise from the same cause, but that says nothing about how often they occur. You seem to imply they’re equivalent, potentially in frequency as well. A real world account seems to suggest the negative experience happens more often. I’d like to hear him comment on it.

[afiori]

That is hard to tell anecdotally.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/different-worlds/

[icu]

Hang in there! Excellence is dedication to completion, and by the sound of things, you are doing an excellent job.

[MRD85]

Thanks. My two children are doing amazing. My long term goal is to raise them into healthy adults with a good chance of being happy (nothing is guaranteed).

[xondono]

I can’t avoid thinking that if a man were to acknowledge things like those on this article, the story would have a far more negative feedback.

[strooper]

> If you're intellectually driven then looking after two young children isn't fascinating. However, I love them and they rely on me.

I feel you. My wife and I are managing two kids and I work from home, meaning I am home almost 24x7. I help my wife taking care of our children and I often get annoyed by the whole bunch of dumb or repetitive things we need to do to take care of them. Still, I love them more than anything in the world.

[vmurthy]

> However, I love them and they rely on me. I made a choice to bring them into the world and I'm not going to neglect them.

This is probably the most heartwarming thing that I'll read in a long time. Made my day :-).

[cheez]

Same bro, same. I feel you.