[smallnamespace]

> Chances are good that the majority of parents in your community, office, or social circle are actually very happy most of the time. There's just not much to talk about because being happy with your family is the boring, normal state.

Slightly off-topic, but this isn't limited to parenting feedback, it's true of nearly any topic online.

Some forums are full of people venting, some forums are full of people showing off how great their lives are.

It's very difficult to get an accurate view of an average person's experience with X (and maybe it's not even relevant to you—what you really want is a picture of your experience with X, which may depend a lot on your socioeconomic circumstances).

I've found anecdotes from friends to significantly outperform online anecdotes in predicting my personal experience.

[PragmaticPulp]

Very true. Even worse, there's a significant selection bias that occurs where people pre-filter for opinions that match their pre-conceived notions.

On the topic of children, someone can spend their entire life around coworkers, extended family, and friends who are happy parents without thinking twice about it. Yet as soon as they read some comments online about someone struggling with their children, they have an "I knew it!" reaction.

As a parent, I don't try to push other people to have children. I do, however, roll my eyes at how out of touch the anti-child rhetoric on the internet has become. It's almost as if young people are convinced that all parents are actually secretly miserable but we're all collectively lying about enjoying it out of a sense of societal obligation.

[balfirevic]

> I do, however, roll my eyes at how out of touch the anti-child rhetoric on the internet has become.

I guess it depends where you look, but here on HN comments seem to lean towards being pro-children - which makes sense, since most people want them and have them.

The most interesting kind of comments, to me, are the ones that try to convey how having kids is great and worth it, and yet - upon reading them - all I can think of is "wow, that sounds horrible". There is one example that is kind of like that in this thread [0].

I know it's because it's much easier to convey in words how annoying or boring something is compared to how it brings this deep, unspeakable (and perhaps, for some readers, yet unexperienced) joy. It's still a bit funny.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271156