[ipsento606]

I can't help but wonder about the relationship between fathers (and, in fact, all parents) spending more time with their children, and people choosing to have fewer children, and later.

I think it's unquestionably true that fathers spending more time with their children is, on the whole, much better for those children.

But it's also true that it's a huge problem for society that people are having fewer children. And I think you can make a reasonable argument that increasing expectations around the quality of parenting are party of that trend.

[mothballed]

I think it is. It's discouraged and unspoken, but a lot of men don't like spending time with children. I mean for weeks or months, sure, but when you have a kid it drags on for years 24/7 and nothing but having your own child will really reveal to you how that turns out for you.

As it turns out, I don't enjoy extended time with children. My bad, but I power through it for the sake of the child. In older times that would be no problem, my wife would deal with that. Instead I stopped at 1 when I realized I am not the kind of person who enjoys being equally involved with children.

[david-gpu]

In the same way you power through taking care of your kids, not because you enjoy it but because you prioritize their well-being, how likely is it that moms are generally doing the same? It seems to me like men have been historically avoiding this child-rearing responsibility, moreso than women enjoying doing so.

I can tell you that my wife and I are both exhausted of taking care of them 24/7. It is not something we do for funsies.

[mothballed]

I think it's natural that someone, whether you believe in biological differences or not, will relatively prefer child-rearing to some other tasks that the family needs to do. Modern society has brainwashed females in particular into believing that equal-childcare should be a thing and they're being robbed if one is "avoiding it" (even your rhetoric exhibits this brainwashing).

It doesn't have to be the wife per-se. When I was building our house, I did most of the carpentry. My wife hated it and did very little of that. My wife hates driving the tractor. My wife hates driving any vehicle. My wife hates doing the plumbing and electric. My wife hates taking care of the pets, so I take care of them. My wife doesn't like practicing self-defense and security for the house, and there are lots of dangerous animals and criminals here, so I handle that. I do not ask my wife to do any of those things except at worst a few small % of the time compared to when I do them. This does not bother me at all because different people prefer different things.

Modern society has brainwashed people to think they need to share child-care and ideally equally. I think this is highly misinformed utopian vision. Voluntary preference based division of labor is smart and helps us all enjoy our lives more. Very rarely do couples have absolute equal relative preference for all the tasks, even if they dislike all of the tasks.

It seems obvious that if you brainwash people to think labor sharing by exchanging tasks is "avoidance" that you increase the chance one of the two parties will just veto any additional children. But if you bring this up then it's straight to whataboutism but women also don't enjoy it which totally misses the mark about relative preference that results in imbalanced childcare, which can be evaluated even when both people dislike a task. Unless you totally reject sexual dimorphism, you should be at least open to the possibility as well that females on average might have higher relative preference for child-rearing than other things, as long as feminists aren't shaming them left and right with artificial impositions that somehow they're being robbed if a man is "avoiding" it by exchanging labor to do something else.

[david-gpu]

Treating childcare as a chore to be assigned to whichever parent dislikes it the least is not in the best interest of the children. They benefit from having two engaged parents.

[mothballed]

It's truly glorious that what's in the "best interest of the children" is whatever matches the stranger outsider's philosophical goals. Of course who could argue with "engagement." That sounds great! The devil of that is in the details, and not necessarily mean anything approaching equal time spent child-rearing. "Interest of the children" spoken by some outsider to try and force others to act towards their philosophy, might be responsible for more atrocities and misdeeds than anything else in history.

Personally I don't take your omniscient approach. I believe the parents are nearly always better position to determine the interests of their children than some random dude on HN, than the outsider trying to impose their goal of their particular vision of "engagement."

[david-gpu]

I am merely explaining why I take care of my kids. Your reaction suggests that you feel attacked by that, when it is not my intention at all. Where do you think that reaction may be coming from?

[phil21]

I think a lot of it is the type of things you do while spending time with kids.

I watch my friends raise young children, and to be blunt it largely looks miserable to me. You effectively are babysitting children activities 24x7. Basically running a tiny daycare.

The families and adults seem to simply exist as caretakers for their child's lives.

I ascribe to "the kid is just now part of your general life" for 90% of your adult activities. Could be working in the shop, outdoor chores, cleaning the house, fixing the car, shopping, whatever. The point is the kid primarily exists in your life and does whatever it is you are doing, not the other way around.

Yeah, some things are impossible to do with a kid of course. But not nearly as many as currently believed for most children. If properly socialized, kids can exist non-disruptively in plenty of situations. And the danger to them in a lot of spots is wildly exaggerated. I brought my 5 year old into warehouses and lumberyards with a bit of instruction and teaching them to pay attention. They pretty quickly adapt.

If I have another kid I'd plan on not modifying my life a whole lot. The kid will simply come with to most things and liberal use of babysitting and such will happen. I have friends who are terrified to even leave their toddlers with babysitters these days for a few hours - it's absurd.

Kids imo do best in a balanced life where the get to learn by watching and doing. Not catering to their every whim and desire and shielding them from every possible danger.

There are certainly some age ranges (infant through ~3 or 4 years old or so) that are much more difficult, but after that parents seem to prefer life on hard mode these days for some reason. Paranoia and peer pressure from my standpoint drives most of it.

My older (25 now!) son would have been a miserable experience for me if every single day was a "rainy weekend" style thing where we're stuck inside playing children's games and the like with near constant 24x7 attention and direct interaction at his level. I'd have gone insane. Having him "around" most of the time while I did things with an hour or two of direct "kid time" engagement was totally sustainable, and he seems to have gotten a lot of enrichment from most of it. Note that wasn't staring at screens though - it was physically and actively doing stuff. And part of learning as a parent and a child of a parent is the parent making mistakes. Shit happens, just correct for it moving forward. So long as no major injuries occur life moves on and typically everyone is better off for it.

[bombcar]

I can tell you that as you have more children the time you can spend and need to spend drops - because there’s more of them, but they also play with each other.

Three are running around yelling and I can’t even join in, as they want me to be “the base” apparently.

[munksbeer]

I can't believe I'm asking this, because it isn't even something I would remotely consider (and it is too late anyway), but, is three actually easier than two children in some ways?

I have two children and I find parenting to be utterly draining. They are 4 and 6. They are *constantly* fighting. They play together a bit, but when they do, after 5-10 minutes it leads to real fight where we need to intervene. And they still demand an enormous amount of attention.

It turns out I am one of those fathers with a personality that doesn't deal well with constant sensory overload. I was medicated for ADHD myself as a child and one of my children is AuADHD. It isn't his fault and we're trying to find ways to help him (and everyone else), but his meltdowns make life so, so hard for the whole family. He wants to control and dominate every situation, whether it is his brother or his parents.

I was wondering if the dynamics of three would have made it easier because he couldn't dominate his brother so eaily, or if that would just mean he became the isolated child.

[anon291]

Yes... Father of four here. I can't imagine having one . It was way more work.

Taking my one kid to things was much harder because they'd have to be played with.

My four kids just play with each other. Yes I play with them too, but most of the time they run off on their own to play and want the adults to go away.

It's magical. Ironically I have more free time as a dad of four. Still the same number of diapers to change but the older ones do stuff themselves.

The biggest issue is logistics of getting four kids the various places they need to go.

[tstrimple]

Two of my three kids are always getting along! Actually the fighting among my two girls has fallen off pretty dramatically as they have both matured. They are 12 and 14 now. They have learned to compromise on activities instead of getting into fights over it. They still snipe at each other occasionally, but it seems to be taken more in stride than it used to.

[bombcar]

It ... can? It really depends on the children, the dynamics, and other factors (so I'm not saying "have another kid and everything is fixed").

It does increase the network, so that if one kid doesn't want to play, the other might. Sometimes all the kids are playing together, sometimes one is off doing his own thing, sometimes there's still a meltdown.

Three might be the nadir as they outnumber you but each kid only has two other kids. But when older you likely can deal with one kid at a time and the other two play.

If it makes you feel better 4 to 6 is about the worst for "normal" kids, too, as they know that the outside world is something they have influence over but can't always control the way they want to.

[em-bee]

the question is, where does that feeling come from? from your own time growing up, based on how your own father interacted with you? from your friends/peers? others?

i can relate. when my kids were young i didn't know what to do with them. but it's not that i didn't like spending time with them. before we had kids, working part-time so i could spend a lot of time at home was my dream. it was what i wanted. when the dream became real my inability to initiate play with the children was unexpected.

i figure it was because i had no rolemodels from my time growing up, no childhood experience that i could replicate because i grew up with a single dad who wasn't as close to me as i wanted to. every interaction was initiated by my children. it got easier as they got older because our interests became more compatible. (we could play games together that i also enjoyed, etc)

all the other stuff, taking care of them, feeding, putting them to sleep, etc. was easy because it's clear what needs to be done. and it wasn't/isn't exhausting either. i relish every interaction and moments of success where we achieve something together.

[tweetle_beetle]

If your limit for being slightly out of your comfort zone is a year, why did you have a child? You don't have to be a parent to know that you are going to be challenged when a baby arrives.

[LeifCarrotson]

If fathers spending more time with their children is better for the children but worse for ~~society~~the economy, is that really even a question worth considering?

Screw the economy, love your kid (or kids).

[geodel]

Well it is worth considering. Unless one think they and their children can just exist beyond space and time of where society, economy exist.

[red-iron-pine]

society and economy are shaped by the needs of the people in it.

they easiest because of our needs. we don't exist to meet its needs.

[mothballed]

In the 1960s when single-parent households were a thing, it was not unusual for households to have little to no indoor plumbing or regular electricity.

Nowadays such a lifestyle will get social workers on your ass, unless you can get some Mennonite or Amish preacher or something to vouch for you. After a long enough period of failing to meet some arbitrary modern "quality of life" that can only be afforded by going along with the mainstreams economic system and expectations, the legal system will likely get involved in some capacity.

Economy is a bit of a one way valve. If you don't flow with it they'll rip away your children and then you'll be dumped to the curb along with the homeless or other inmates at the jail.

[mc3301]

Ugh... In the 90s, people were screaming and panicking about the future of over-population. Dystopian scenes of dense and dirty tiny living-quarters stacked on top of each other.

Now everyone's screaming about a declining population.

We should embrace and prepare for degrowth for a better chance at a wonderful future, not shout at the sky hoping people will make more babies for the economy.

And guess what, if we prepare for degrowth, where a generation or two or three of the entire planet never goes hungry, never goes to war, and has the freedom of movement, creativity, innovation, interaction... Those people will want to have many many babies, and we can once again start worrying about overpopulation.

[zamadatix]

Those outcomes seem an extraordinarily optimistic take of what population decline would lead to. I don't think it'll be all doom either, but the world was not an ideal place when the population was previously billions fewer either.

[bilegeek]

Especially when pretty much all modern political and economic systems are fundamentally incompatible with population decline, and leadership fights changes tooth and nail.

[Izkata]

> Now everyone's screaming about a declining population.

In general (don't know about the person you're responding to) the worry isn't so much that it's happening as it is the rate it's happening.