I am looking for Male perspective on this issue because obviously I am man and we have whole different priorities in life. Not same world honestly like women.<p>What things you learned after having kids that you wish would have known before having kids and would
have made you to change decision of having kids?
Having kids is a personal choice. In order to have them, you should <i>want</i> to have them. It's a gut feel. Conversely, if you don't, you shouldn't need any supporting arguments or evidence to justify that choice to someone else. It's your life. I get the sense that you already have the gut feel, but are looking for supporting evidence and I would ask "why?". The worst thing someone can do is have kids when they don't want to. Keep in mind, this gut feel can change over time.<p>My perspective: always had a gut feel that I wanted kids. Now have 3 young ones. Is it hard? Yes. Would my life be "easier" without them? In some ways (practically) and likely less so in others (emotionally, spiritually). Are there <i>moments</i> where I wish I was childless? Absolutely. Do those moments last and would I rather have a life without kids? No, not by a longshot. It's cliche, but I can't imagine a life as full and changing without them. Keep in mind I'm talking about me and my life here, not generalizing. A childless life can be just as fulfilling, if not more, for someone else.
It will make you a better person. There's nothing easy about it.<p>You'll have less time for selfish things.<p>Your self control will be challenged as you try to maintain composure in many challenging situations. Some that involve diaper blowouts at 3am, the night before a big presentation.<p>You'll be forced to adapt as your lifestyle changes. Old friends without kids will invite you out less. You'll find new friends with kids. The practicality of things like minivans will become alluring.<p>You'll become more persuasive. If you can convince a 3 year old to eat broccoli, you can sell ice to eskimos.
Little kids are a lot of work, especially if you don’t have redundancies like grandparents/aunts/uncles, or daycare and other little kids to entertain them.<p>If it’s just going to be you, the spouse, and the toddler stuck in a suburban house, I hope you genuinely enjoy playing with them a lot because they need constant attention.<p>Even after having kids, I think I’d be just as happy if I didn’t have them. I certainly wouldn’t want them if it was just going to be me and spouse, but luckily I can diffuse the responsibilities between daycare/grandparents/etc.<p>I also would lean towards not having them if I wasn’t completely financially secure and could afford them a home in a good neighborhood and colleges, but that’s due to me believing the income/wealth gap will continue to increase.
I didn't plan on having kids. My wife had 3 teenage kids when we met, and didn't plan for more. Then circumstance intervened. A family member needed adopting, and we were the clear first choice. We got him at 13 months when he was released from medical foster care. It's been <i>eye-opening</i>.<p>My best analysis is that humans are <i>terrible</i> at long-term planning: hence our (at least American) level of personal retirement planning. And children <i>never</i> "pay off". If you expect gratefulness, you are likely to be dissapointed.<p>So nature doesn't leave it to that. Instead it pushes some powerful, deep-seated buttons in our psyche. Hard. I was shocked to realize on day, after about 6 months, I would kill and die for my son, and looking around realizing most parents out there feel the same. It's this weird, unspoken understanding in our society. And some scary, intense anger at his birth mom. Nature doesn't leave this to chance, instead, it hard-codes the stuff essential to survival.<p>For a small percentage of people, this button-pushing never happens, and they wonder what the Hell is wrong with them. To them I say, Nothing is wrong with you.
Honestly, I learned that deep down I hate my kids, but the societal bias against such a position leads me to appear otherwise. That adds to misery though, since now I’m just not myself. Obviously it was a mistake for me. They’re all around 7 now and I’m trying to do my best, but Id rather them grown and gone.<p>Lastly, all the talk about more fulfilling lives etc. How would you know anyway? It’s not like you took both paths and then compared.
Something I haven't seen in the comments, yet, is that kids are truly a one-way decision. I knew this before I went into it, but the repercussions didn't really hit me until after we brought the kid into the world.<p>You will find out things about your spouse and yourself that you never knew about, but your kid will have inherited them. Some of these things are attractive features, others are not. You might have to figure out how to deal with a feature of your kid that is not attractive. Some of these things can be fixed in post, others, not so much. Some of these possibilities include genetic diseases, which absolutely no one deserves, but do happen.<p>Having a kid is an enormously brave and risky decision. You roll the dice and you get what you get. There's no going back.<p>Edit: All that said, I do not regret my decision, even though I've been exhausted for coming up on two years and so has my wife. When it's bad, it's the worst. When it's good, it's the best. You will find yourself capable of more patience and resilience than you ever thought possible.
Biggest thing I wish I would have known is that kids would have been way easier if I started younger. The lack of sleep and extra physical activity is seriously demanding to the point where my kids are now my primary motivation for excersizing just to keep up with them.<p>Obviously this doesn't help out older people, but for younger people debating to have kids earlier or later in life, the answer is have them earlier. I regret not spending my 20s filtering relationships by "do I want to have kids with this woman?" and breaking up immediately once I realized the answer was no.
With the first kid, I wouldn’t have chosen his mom, I should have shopped around more.<p>It’s cost me a ton of money, and my health dealing with her after the fact. Kid is 11 now, and doing pretty well all things considered, but it’s been a long road to get here. At least I have legal custody and get to make decisions vs letting conspiracy theories inform all decisions.<p>With the 2nd kid, I chose wisely, and no issues with my wife, and she’s a great step mom to my 2nd kid.
I cannot say that I did not have "what if" thoughts after my first child was born - I was questioning my ability to be a father, both mentally and physically, and this was leading to "what if" scenarios rising in my head.<p>We had our first and second child in the foreign country with no support net you usually have when living near your family. And first birth was very difficult for my spouse, pretty much making her unable to do anything but feed our newborn for the first 6 months. This period in my life was very tough. And mostly because I discovered things about myself I would not want to discover, how weak human being I am and how much do I have to work on myself to improve. And how hard it is to improve, even a little bit. Things I learned about myself are those things that make me think that maybe it would be better if I never got married, but in the same time if I never had kids I would not realize how much work I have to put to become a better person. It's twisted situation.<p>This is not a therapist session but sometimes I wonder about errors my parents made - but errors I could see only after having my own children.
Part way through the hellish first year somebody asked me a similar question (after commenting the first year is brutal) “if you could go back in time and tell yourself about how hard this is would it have changed your mind?”, my answer was and still is “my previous self wouldn’t be able to understand”.<p>My friend took this to mean I regret having and kid and wish I hadn’t; that isn’t the case, my point was it’s just hard and different in ways you can’t convey to somebody without kids and also there is no way to prepare you for it. There is a feeling in society in general that having a baby is beautiful and affirming etc and either you want to have kids and it’ll be great or you don’t want to have kids and it’ll be hard, it’s just not that simple.<p>We wanted to have kids, we also would have been ok not having kids too if that’s how the cookie crumbled, we tried and had one and he’s awesome. I think my point here is don’t overthink it, you can’t think yourself through this one :)<p>My advice would be lean on your support network early and often, we felt we had to be strong and shoulder through it ourselves and I do regret that.
As a 43yr male with 4 kids, 19G, 15G, 10B and 7G I honestly question everyday was having kids the right choice. I love them all to bits but like freshgreen9 sometimes I hate the shits..<p>Then best age is around 2 - 4, when they sleep through the night, are almost toilet trained, can communicate and eat mostly anything. At this age they are beautiful and are your world and you are theirs. Just before they get tainted by the realworld and become shits.. Then from that point, its a constant learning curve.<p>I learnt as much about myself as a man and person from my 19 yr as I do from my 7yr and as much from my 10 yr son. I am forever learning and sometime they are painful lessons, ones where you have to pull up your big boy pants and firm it, type of pain.<p>The best advise I wish I was told earlier is, just because they are your kids it doesnt mean you can expect them to be how you want them to be. We as parents are there to simply guide provide some guide rails, then step the f*k back and leave them on their journey. If you try to do anything other than step back and wait till they need you, your in for a world of heart ache and pain!!!<p>p.s. GOOD LUCK!!
I’m not sure anything would have changed my decision, but I would have prioritized adventure travel more in the years before kids. On the other side I probably would have had them a few years earlier too. (Though other life circumstances made both of those tough)
As others pointed out, your life changes. Your priorities rearrange. Given that, no regrets for me. My kids give me joy my hobbies could never match. It's work but it's worth it and love being a father and raising my kids.<p>The key thing I learned is a new perspective, I understand my parents and other parents a lot more now.
If you’re looking for a “male perspective” to talk you out of having kids, sorry, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. Raising a child is simultaneously the best and worst thing will happen to you. It’s incredibly challenging in ways you never would have expected, but also infinitely rewarding.<p>One advice I can offer is that, unless you want to be one of those fathers that never sees their kids and leaves the parenting to “other people”, your career velocity will suffer. So make sure you’re at a good spot in your career before having kids. You don’t want to compete with a young person with no kids who can put in more hours and more focus. Work smarter, not harder. You should be at a point in your career where you have more team/org/company level impact than direct IC impact. It’s more efficient when your work is multiplied by other people. Delegate. Delegate. Delegate.
Nothing I’ve learned so far that would make me change my decision to have kids. I have one daughter, and am absolutely loving it.<p>That said, I can understand this isn’t for everyone. I wanted to have kids, and understood the pace of my life would change because of it. Having kids absolutely does take sacrifice, commitment, sleeplessness, stress, money, and a lot of things one might not want to give up.<p>But! I’ve learned a lot about love and sacrifice and empathize at a deeper level of understanding for other parents. Any child with a health condition becomes heart breaking in a way that’s tough to communicate. Stressed out and tired parents are doing their best in difficult circumstances.<p>There are a lot of reasons to have or not have a kid. Choose what’s right for you but make sure to be honest with yourself.
If I had known how much I would enjoy my son’s company once he grew up, I would have tried harder to have more than just the one kid.<p>I didn’t feel a connection to him until he was almost a year old. Then paternal chemicals kicked in. I began to enjoy being “devoured” by his needs. Which is weird; but true.<p>Still, being a parent was much more work for my wife than I expected it to be. Nobody tells you how hard it is.<p>It’s like becoming a monk: you are cut off from your previous social life; your days are spent in menial chores; and you do all this in service of a quasi-divine being.
As a 43yr male with 4 kids, 19G, 15G, 10B and 7G I honestly question everyday was having kids the right choice. I love them all to bits but like freshgreen9 sometimes I hate the shits.. Then best age is around 2 - 4, its when they sleep through the night, are almost toilet trained, can communicate and eat mostly anything. At this age they are beautiful and are your world. Just before they get tainted by the realworld and become shits..
When you have a child you rise to the occasion. I have way less doubt about how to live my life after kids than before kids.<p>I will say it takes a huge amount of support. Knowing what I know now I would not recommend having a kid without a partner and supportive family. But that goes without saying. Most people who are single parents didn’t plan to be.
Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.<p>But that didn't happen. We just carried on being Jason and his partner, but with a baby in tow.<p>I had spent most of my 30s cramming in as much "living" as possible, to make sure I'd stocked away a lifetime supply of it. After all, I'd probably never get another chance to travel for long periods, keep up with climbing, and all that other stuff that Independent Jason could do.<p>But it was all for naught. We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.<p>Life is just as much fun as ever. But now we have some kids to play with.
HAving kids changed my "ambivalence" about it... After infertility treatments for years I was just done focusing on it...wife wasn't....then we got our two boys...<p>So glad I didn't give up or say "enough is enough"... my life wouldn't be worth nearly as much as it is now...
Always wondered if it's more comforting to die without kids? More painful not to see them grow up, or comforting to know you left some descendants?
Be honest with your partner about this chance that you're taking, things can oscillate between amazing to really bad, so do some thinking about how you'll react.
Find out how you cope with the lack of sleep.
Hobbies went from 10-15h a week to 1-2h and I'm mostly fine with just keeping tabs with them.<p>I don't question our decision, but these seem the most important and affected for me.
If you find your life worth living, if you have found joy in existing, then that's a gift worth sharing with your kids.<p>If you haven't found such joy to share, I feel for you but will say it's out there if you'll just see it.<p>I would've had an easier time with family if I'd started earlier; but thats all I'd change about my parenting choices, had I the choice.
The only thing I realized after having kids was how in the hell did I ever live without them. There was nothing more rewarding in my life than having children and both my wife and I had very rewarding careers.<p>It boils down to the type of person you are. Are you someone who can love your children more than yourself? If not then I would suggest not having children.
I would have had kids earlier.<p>I spent my twenties building a career, partying, and traveling, and I'd give it all back to have more time with my kids (and potentially even a few more kids.)
How flexible with your life are you? Would you still be you if you didn’t do 90% of the things you do now for pleasure.<p>Any big events ahead? Masters degree, travel world? Timing is important.
Try to read/watch the news every day for some time.<p>Do you want to force someone to live on a planet where things happen which are a daily occurrence on ours?