Comic Strips

One big one is that today's parents put too much pressure on themselves (both individually and as a group) to always be supervising. Some parents don't feel that they can leave their child alone for 30 minutes while they shower or clean, or watch TV, because we've built up expectations that everything is structured and that we're supposed to sacrifice our individuality for the kid. Some recent research has shown that millennial parents are spending a lot more "hands on" time with their kids than any previous generation, rather than passive supervision like when kids are playing in the house while the adults do something else.

Plus there is a significant line of people who feel compelled to do high effort, high visibility shows of parenting effort: Instagram worthy birthday parties, more structured play and learning, high effort cooking of things from scratch rather than convenience foods, etc.

Finances (and working hours) are definitely a big part of it, but a bigger part is the shift in norms and expectations that we're expected to be much more for our kids than prior generations.

Yeah. Not having retired family in hood health nearby is an issue. Someone had to move for their career. Or died. Or is too fragile. Or still working.

Nearly need polygamy for the economic certainty.

It's really straightforward to understand, there's no "third places" for kids and kids are generally undesired in US society. It used to be, even if you weren't religious, you had community because everyone in the neighborhood looked out for each other's kids.

It's a lot easier when you're not outnumbered by kids and can swap with other adults, even if it's 30 minutes to get a shower. Everyone is so isolated these days, it's much more difficult to build support like that unless you are religious or have family involvement.

I have twins.

Can confirm. totally accurate

While they are <5 years old yea

But let me tell you, once you cross that magical school threshold things get significantly easier. Though you'll have to deal with more and more social type problems, but those are easy IMO as it's mostly just talking with them

Each year after that is easier...at least until the teen years, but again that's more social/attitude type problems, at least you can just leave a 15 year old at home by themselves and go socialize by yourself and stuff

I assure you, many of us were drinking copious amounts of coffee before kids, too.

Married 18 years, no kids. I think I drink something like 36+ ounces of coffee a day. Myth disproven, I guess.

It's not that easy. Things change.

I am happy to have made the decision. However, I might have decided totally differently if I had known back then:

How badly the environment is going south (for humans) How bad my health would be (most critical things came up suddenly)

Among other things.

It definitely can. It took me 5 years after my kids were born to feel relatively normal again. 5 years is a long time to feel like you're essentially trapped in your home. Granted, covid certainly didn't help with that, but the pressure to act like everything is amazing all the time never made sense to me.

Kids are hard. There's good moments too but as a percentage of your time they are more rare than the bad. Your brain does a good job of filtering out the bad when you look back on those times but that doesn't make it easier to deal with in the moment.

It is because people are different.

Not living in the USA most definitely helps. The age of your kids makes a difference. My youngest is 16 months old and in his phase where he has no awareness of danger and sleeps like shit still and my gas tank is empty 24/7 by the shitty quality of sleep with the constant mental energy spent making sure he doesn't kill himself. And that is when everyone is healthy.

I would litterally kill for them, but it is easy to understand why people feel like they do, especially with the current economic and societal context.

We have twins, currently 11 months old. Even we haven't been this degraded after the first 3 months. The first three were more surviving that anything else and to this day are the most challenging period of time I had to get trough in my life. After that it startet getting better. I even shower sometimes now.

Actually, I held a baby once. It wasn't hard at all. It was actually super squishy.

My two year old has been two for the past 5 years...

The urge to cum inside is the siren song of many

According to this study, after adjusting for income, having children is actually associated with higher happiness and well-being.

From a Psychology Today article that summarizes it:

However, household income may not be a good indicator of financial stress. A family with low income that lives in an area with a low cost of living might experience less financial stress than a family with a higher income that lives in an area with a much higher cost of living. Therefore, the researchers conducted an additional analysis in which they included a direct measure of whether or not the family experienced difficulties in paying bills in the last year. This analysis showed that difficulties in paying bills represented a central influence factor for the relation of having children and parental well-being. When the researchers statistically controlled for financial difficulties, having children was actually related to greater well-being in parents.

The study also said that people with children felt more fulfilled over all 🤷‍♀️

They measured basically immediate happiness and long term happiness. In immediate happiness, the child free group won. In longterm happiness, the parents won. Did a lot of research into that before deciding to have a baby.

Just gotta decide what works best for you and your life style

Oh that's easy. When you have kids, you stop having time for those hobbies. So you don't have to worry about spending money on them anymore.