[mr_mitm]

Is it like this for everyone? I sometimes wonder how large the number of cases is where the parent does not feel like that at all but refrains from sharing it due to societal expectations and fear of being judged. It would introduce a bias regarding these stories.

[youoy]

Of course it's not like this for everyone. Even for him it is not like this all the time :) but if you listen to the world around you there are these bits of beautiful life that appear here and there.

He says this at some point:

> That was the second thing Theo taught me. The first thing he taught me, at 430am in his first week, when he wouldn't stop crying, as a rage started bubbling up in me, was that no amount of urging, forcing, or frustration will get this tiny baby to do what I want him to do. All I can do is surrender and listen; find peace and meet him from a place of equanimity. Then maybe I'll have the presence of mind to change the wet diaper that was making him cry.

Ask yourself how many times per day do you take a moment to surrender and listen... If you do it (even without a kid) you will find beauty in every aspect of life. The thing about kids is that it can be so overwhelming that they give you no other choice. Of course you still have the choice of not doing it, and this can make you start building a lot of frustration against the kid, your partner, life itself...

[mattgreenrocks]

Took me about 2-3 years to find my groove as a father.

Later I found out that post-partum depression is a real thing that fathers can go through. I went through all the stages of grief for my old life that I’d grown too attached to. Only when I’d gone through that could I actually open up to accept a newer, bigger life.

My son is 7 now. I love him dearly and am so grateful that I can be a father to him.

[youoy]

I unexpectedly went through that when my second kid was born. I somehow felt that my first kid grew up suddenly and I was not able to say goodbye to the little boy that he was while a single kid.

[e1g]

My wife experienced a similar reaction to the second - it’s obvious in retrospect, but we didn’t realize that “one-on-one with an infant” is a unique chapter of parenthood that happens very quickly and only with the first born.

[munksbeer]

No, it certainly isn't. But it is a social sin to admit otherwise.

For me, it led to depression, therapy and medication. The first time in my life I'd experienced actual clinical depression. We do have a particularly challenging situation though. I'm always tired, ill, stressed, eat unhealthy, don't exercise enough. Being a parent is all consuming.

It has been getting easier as they get a bit older, and I love my children in all the ways a typical father does. I'd literally die for them. But a lot of the time I just do not enjoy it.

[camgunz]

My partner and I have two kids (21 months and 5 weeks) and we absolutely hate the caretaking phase... which lasts a year? Our oldest can be pretty hilarious now so she's net worth it, but it was a journey of misery to get here, and the reason we dove right back into the icy pond of abject awfulness is that we just wanted to get it over with ASAP.

Why is it so torturous? For me, I'm a software engineer, and I became one because I'm obsessive. I like to think about a thing all day every day. The most I get now is maybe three 90 minute chunks a day, maybe a couple three hour chunks a week. If you're not like this you won't understand how it feels, but if you are, you'll know what I mean when I say learning to live without this kind of thing (I guess the term is need for cognition?) has made me into a completely different person.

It does get better though! We do daycare so when they're old enough I get a regular work schedule back. Definitely no nights or weekends though; those days are gone for the foreseeable future. But, like you, I'd do anything for them and I don't regret it. It's just hard to overstate how huge the change is--you legitimately are forced to become a different person (or, I guess, you can choose to not be a very good parent, idk)

[munksbeer]

My children are older - five and three - so I've passed the early care taking phase. We suspect our eldest has mild autism or some form of adhd and sensory processing issues. He is the sweetest little boy at times, I love him so much, but he is incredibly challenging. The entire five years have been hard, hard work and we're constantly on edge and having to help him cope with the world. The youngest is a bit more typical, but also extremely high energy. It's just physically and mentally exhausting.

But yes, it is becoming a bit easier. And as it becomes easier, I actually relax a bit more too and my mood lightens, which makes the meltdowns a bit easier to handle.

[moconnor]

This was the most accurately description of first-time fatherhood I've read. It was a bit light on how debilitating constant lack of sleep can be but everything else: yes.

I would strongly encourage all fathers to become as closely involved with day-to-day care of their babies as possible. Don't wait until they can walk and talk.

[mberning]

I absolutely do not share my true feelings about fatherhood. They would not be viewed kindly or understood by most. Also, how I feel about things does not matter, at all. My obligation is the same regardless of how I feel. So I do my best to adjust my attitude and soldier on. This is just one of the many alienating and lonely aspects of fatherhood.

[ricksunny]

Thank you for sharing genuinely in face of societal pressures. Yes so the autosquelching of valid voices to the conversation like this are part of what keep are from seriously considering taking that big, and especially irreversible, life step.

It's like, in this day and age where anything and everything is said by somebody, we can detect, however subconsciously, an artificial absence of expressing a position expected to exist. So, societal pressure (per the comment) in this case evidently.

[munksbeer]

> This is just one of the many alienating and lonely aspects of fatherhood.

Yes, agreed. I never share my feelings in real life for the same reason. And it is very lonely. I did therapy for six months which helped. I was in a very dark place at one point.

[exitb]

No. And that’s a bit of an issue - I’ve encountered people that plan to become parents and their understanding of the process is all wrong. Not saying that they’ll end up being bad parents - most people rise to the occasion, but it feels like society tricks people into having kids.

[wat10000]

Absolutely. It’s pushed from all angles: you may not think you want kids, but it’ll be amazing. Once you do it you’ll have no regrets. You’ll never experience joy like the joy that they bring.

And that’s actually true for a lot of people. But not everyone. And there’s zero support for trying to figure it out and come to an informed decision before you dive in, and even less for concluding that actually you don’t think it’ll be that great for you and you’re not going to do it.

[BehindBlueEyes]

Being "the village" for someone else's kid(s) can give a decent idea of what to expect. And by that I mean actually moving in and helping 24/7 for a months at a time, not just babysitting one evening here and there. Did that one full year for a sibling. I'm told your outlook is different when it is your own kid, and I did ok but it definitely taught me that signing up for the full 18 years isn't for me.

[rayiner]

We have scientific evidence that parenthood floods your brain with all sorts of chemicals, and changes how your brain responds to stimuli. It’s a deeply rooted biological reflex. It may not be true for everyone, but it’s true of close to everyone.

[snthd]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8294566/

>Surveys conducted over the last few years on representative samples in the US and Germany suggest that the percentage of parents who regret having children is approximately 17–8%.

[DoingIsLearning]

In the study linked it seems that factors like:

- Financial difficulties

- Being a single parent

- Having children with a disability

All seem to vastly influence the result.

[BehindBlueEyes]

I'd be curious to see regret vs. would you make the same choice again. I can imagine parents nor regretting it, but maybe thinking about it twice if they had known what to expect.

[orzig]

I’ll throw in another anecdata point (more than one as I have multiple children): I found them to be mostly logistical burden for the first few months he is writing about, but my love fully developed over the years. Don’t give up hope if you’re not feeling it instantly!

[ricksunny]

I'm also very concerned about self-selection bias for the positive stories like this. Ideal would be an aggregate of fathers anonymously reporting satisfaction vs those reporting dissatisfaction with their choice of having kids , and then (male) non-fathers reporting satisfaction vs dissatisfaction with having kids.

[kbelder]

>(male) non-fathers reporting satisfaction vs dissatisfaction with having kids

How would that work?

[ricksunny]

non-fathers reporting satisfaction vs dissatisfaction with not having kids. Typo.

[thefz]

Better not being much into kids and being free to not have any than being forced to and hating them for the rest of their lives. Spoken as someone who grew very close to such scenario (the second).

[wat10000]

You’ll certainly never find me stating my true feelings on the matter, outside of internet anonymity or a HIPAA-protected environment.

[mattlondon]

Not for me.

Don't get me wrong I couldn't imagine life without them, don't regret them, and I care for their well being deeply, but it certainly was not (and still is not at 5 and 3 years old) this overpowering feeling of love.

[tafka]

No. I for one am probably heading down the divorce path that the article speaks of (14mo child)

[A_D_E_P_T]

If you can hold out for another 18 months, it'll get much better.

In the meantime, if your means allow it, nannies and au pairs can be a huge help. I'd even advise you to hire a full-timer. (You might even want to consider moving to a country where this is cheaper and more easily possible.) There ought to be no shame in it.

[orzig]

There are ways to throw money at the stress you are feeling, which will still be cheaper than divorce. Children can get much easier as they mature, which might give you space to work through your marriage even if it feels impossible now.

I was deeply burned out at the 14 mark with my first child. I did lots of things since then and am much better even after more children.

[msteffen]

Yes, I also found the first child much harder than the second, which I wasn’t expecting.

I’m one of those people who had a strong feeling of falling in love with my child right away, but even so the toil and sleep deprivation ground my sanity down to a low I never reached before or since.

I was really anxious about #2, but a) we spent some savings and hired much more help for the first year, and b) she just sleeps better than her older brother, which is luck. It’s been incomparably better.

To the parent poster, look into a mother’s helper, or even a cleaner who can come daily. We also had to switch to formula earlier than we planned (biology intervened), and that transition had to happen even earlier with #2, and frankly that helped too. I’ve become very pro-formula. Nursing is nice when it’s working, but if it’s not, it’s not worth making a tough year harder—formula has gotten quite good and lets you balance the load better. The breastmilk-IQ link everyone’s scared of isn’t borne out by sibling studies anyway.

[thuanao]

I don’t know your situation but for me everything changed once my child could speak and started going to preschool (so I got a break). The fall-in-love-with-child phenomenon didn’t happen to me until my child was around 3-1/2

[A_D_E_P_T]

It's certainly not.

To speak plainly, I wasn't terribly interested in my son until he turned 3 years old. Then he started talking, started developing a personality with interests of his own, and fatherhood then became much more interesting. But I was intentionally quite uninvolved in those very early years. I don't regret this, don't see how else it could have been, and indeed I feel that some degree of fatherly aloofness towards infants is natural.

[ariwilson]

I feel sorry for the mother or whoever was taking care of your child for the first 3 years.

Someone has to guide the small children towards being functional human beings and it's a lot of work. I found they have interesting personalities and ways of expressing themselves by 1 at the latest.

[627467]

One does the best one can. But I guess "intentionally detaching" doesn't convey the best.

Even ignoring the extra work for the mother or whoever is actually providing the care, this conscious decision is not cost free for the future of the relationship with the child. It makes it harder to straighten the ship later.

[The_Colonel]

> this conscious decision is not cost free for the future of the relationship with the child

Same for the relationship with the wife, they remember.

[apwell23]

I wasn't too interested in my son till 1 yr old but I did all the housework ( cooking, cleaning, laundry), taking my son to all doctors appointments, taking him with me to grocery shopping, outdoor walks and to the park.

[rybosome]

I’m not going to shame you for your parental experience, but it does not mirror mine as a father.

When my daughter was born I was crying with joy. And while her infancy was enormously challenging, especially as she was born right when COVID lockdowns began (which prevented ANY assistance), I was immediately and profoundly in love with her.

It was very important to me to be extremely engaged when she was an infant. I wanted to - and did - earn her trust as a caretaker and source of comfort. And now, as a 4 year old, the relationship I have with her is utterly priceless.

[bqmjjx0kac]

That's really interesting to read. I'm a man who has absolutely zero interest in interacting with babies and infants, but kids who can talk and ask questions can be pretty funny and cute even. My wife doesn't understand this at all.

[germinalphrase]

I was the same way before having my own children. Then a switch flipped.

[lproven]

100% same.

And I was 51.

[bossyTeacher]

[flagged]

[dgfitz]

Handle checks out.

When the mother breastfeeds, and dad just fills in around the cracks without directly “providing care” beyond holding the kiddo and changing diapers, how can they be judged for feeling aloof? When are they bonding?

You should consider softening your tone, being a dad is fucking hard.

[The_Colonel]

> When are they bonding?

All that time in between the breastfeeding? Somehow, this question does not compute for me (as a father of a breast-fed 8-month-old baby).

[dgfitz]

All that time, huh?

First kid?

[cbruns]

I have a child who is about to turn three who was breastfed. The notion of being aloof until now is unfathomable to me.

[The_Colonel]

Yes, the baby is in fact not feeding most of the time. You can easily find several hours a day during which you can bond with the baby, I'm pretty sure your wife is going to be supportive in this effort.

(It's our second kid)

[causal]

> some degree of fatherly aloofness towards infants is natural.

That may have been your experience, but I would push back hard against generalizing that notion.

For my first child, we bottle-fed formula, and I was very involved in her routine: night feedings, diaper changes, counting days since the last poop, all of it. I felt very invested in every tiny milestone. It was a lot of problem solving, and I was very invested in her progress.

For my second child, because my wife breast-fed that time, I felt a little bit more like an outsider. I jumped in to help where I could, but it took longer for me to feel the same kind of connection. I also got much less paternity leave the second time around, which is likely the bigger factor.

All that to say, I think there are a lot of environmental factors that can play into infant attachment. No one should feel guilty for not having attachment right away, but it should still be pursued.

[IncreasePosts]

You don't see how you could have spent more time with your kid for the first 3 years of their life?

It's pretty simple, by doing it.

[627467]

> is it like this for everyone

The answer is certainly "no". But does it matter? I guess it does in this age - after decades of social conditioning that parenthood is not much but an individual's lifestyle choice.

All this leading to worsening of social cohesion at all levels, inability to think beyond one's lifetime, extreme self-absorption, decrease in hope, demographic collapse across the world.

Not for nothing humans developed social pressure for parenthood: why would most humans willingly choose to give up their selfs for others over decades (if not lifetime)? Even laws/sanctions don't work if you don't morally know what is the right path.

[wat10000]

If the survival of the species depends on pressuring people to live their lives in a way that many of them don’t want, then maybe we should just die out.

[627467]

> then maybe we should just die out Have you consider all aspects of social conditioning/pressure existed and exist to lead you to utter those words?

[wat10000]

Yes, every action I take is the sum of all events in my past light cone, very profound.