Any parent will tell you that having kids is not going to help your sleep, but most parents find sacrifice unequivocally worth it on the net.
Not sure if this is truly what you meant but I would find it highly abnormal that a child does not bring your sufficient joy and meaning that would offset sleep loss.
1. Most people would never say bad things about parenting because it makes them look like demons. I basically tell my friends and colleagues that it is OK and I'm still not sure whether it worths it or not. That's as far honest as I'm willing, although it is pretty close to truth nowadays. I was a lot more snarky a year ago.
2. Humans are very good at adapting. If you told me 3 years ago that I have to go through all these, I'd never think about getting a kid. But somehow it actually feels OK now. And that's what I tell other people.
3. Having kids basically means having a completely different life style for me. I can see why some people actually feel so excited about it because their life style actually fit. It's about trading one life style to another, and this is something we rarely told others, who nevertheless never bother to ask anyway, because they don't know what to ask. Nowadays, I'd tell any young people to get their dreams done before getting a kid, unless they really really want it. You want to go travel the world? Do it before getting a kid. You want to teach yourself a long chain of Mathematics/Physics topics? Do it before getting a kid. I'm not saying you can't do them after having kids, but it's a LOT safer to do them before.
On point 3, I've never met a parent (at least a first time parent) who knew exactly what having a child would be like. I don't know that people can have a life style that "fits" children without having them. Of course, with such a subjective topic I'm sure I'm bound to be mistaken.
In my experience, the original excitement and expectation fade away slowly after birth and is replaced by paternal/maternal love, as well as different excitement and expectations. Then over a longer time, you start understanding how profoundly your life is being reordered and how you've become a different person, for both the positive and negative. No one can know this a priori.
This resonates. For me personally, having kids has been amazing both because of the direct benefits in joy and love and fun, and because the challenging aspects of having kids are the challenges that can make you grow as a person.
Probably different for everyone but for me the kid-driven growth areas are time management/prioritization and patience. Having kids forced me to prioritize how I spend my time in a way that has made me more effective in life because while I have fewer flexible hours, I am putting them to much more intentional use. And learning how to speak kindly and patiently to a toddler who is being difficult has made me much better in a slew of professional and personal types of interactions.
Obviously subjective but I don't agree with the final bullet point.
I believe that human happiness is primarily determined by the amount of meaning and impact we have.
If someone is learning math/physics because they are committed to furthering the world through some breakthrough then yes kids would be deteminetal to that
But if you are just randomly amusing yourself learning topics and one day you are 50+ the ship on family has basically sailed. And you look back on your life as a bunch of short term amusement that gets you to a very depressing place.
how old are your kids? Based on everything i've read on the matter, your satisfaction with having kids just continues to increase over time and by the time they are independent adults its probably more rewarding that almost anything else you could possible imagine doing.
It can be difficult, but it's also just a blip on the radar.
I don't know if this is your first or second, but I found that everything was significantly easier the second time around. I didn't realize how much my wife and I had learned to handle things more efficiently and split the load better over time.
You learn quickly.
> I now fully understand why some people don't want to get kids.
I don't know about that. I think the current trend is greatly overestimating the lifetime impact of some of these short-term difficulties of child raising. If someone actually wants kids but avoids it because they don't want their sleep inconvenienced for a couple percent of their entire life, I'd question if they're weighing the tradeoffs appropriately. It's a choice for the rest of your life, but some people treat it like those first several months are the entirety of the decision making process, which is weird.
I also heard that the second is easier, but it is still some drain so we decided not to get a second one. I think it really depends on 1) How much energy one has stored before getting the kid, and 2) How easy/difficult the kid could be.
It's definitely not just a few months. It has been 3 years for me and I don't really think it's going to end soon. Again this is just personal, not an average experience.
Difference between parental experience can be wild.
Sometimes up to literal survivorship bias talk from other parents; can be mildly annoying but ultimately I always feel happy for them and their kid(s) that they just don’t seem to (want to?) really know better. Again, good for them - and us all - lest we’d have gone extinct long time ago ;)
I’ve also had a few friends who manage to burn out in every situation. They’ve burned out in every job they’ve ever had, they burned out in college, they burned out in high school, etc.
So of course, they’re burning out with parenting now too.
At some point, we have to acknowledge that personality plays a big role in this. Some people create their own stress in any situation.
I actually agree with you. I'm exactly the kind of people that are easy to burn out. Your description 100% matches me. This is such a perfect match that I'll write it down and paste it somewhere.
I really really hate being bored. I do not have the will power to grit through a lot of things that many other qualified people can grit through (so this is conditional probability, think P(dropping college | getting pretty good grade first year)). I didn't fail high school -- I actually ranked some top 25% in my first year but dropped to bottom 25% at some point and barely dragged myself to median at the end. I didn't finish my first college. I got completely burned out that I got a zero GPA for one term (I didn't drop any class, I just sit at the finals and handed in empty). I did drag myself through the second college and a master with B+. But it took me a couple more years to get it done. Occasionally I'd drop all courses just because I don't want to do it. I never completed any hobby project. I bite my nails and fingers frequently from childhood. I just don't have the ability to walk through any medium-long term plan, and it's getting worse.
Well, not something I can fix quickly, especially at my age, so I'll drag myself along. I can see my son having some of the same attributes that I have. It runs in the family. I'm going to get some therapy.
Not sure if this is truly what you meant but I would find it highly abnormal that a child does not bring your sufficient joy and meaning that would offset sleep loss.