Why am I crying by the time I read con?!🤣 Perfectly delivered. Love this and I think you should do a new one every year of your daughter’s life to see how the good and hard things all change
I am four weeks postpartum and all of this is so true. My husband and I are so ridiculously happy, we are just grinning like idiots all day and talking about how much we love this little angel. I’m exhausted, but I’m sad when I go to bed or take a nap because I miss my baby! He does the same things every baby does, but for some reason to his doofus parents, everything he does from his little cries to his farts is perfect, hilarious, or the most adorable thing in the world.
As a 32-year-old who once dreamed of motherhood and then chose otherwise, I appreciate the joy this article brings to light, but I also feel compelled to offer a broader lens.
What’s missing here is precisely what makes parenthood such a complex, life-defining decision. Sam shares delightful, intimate moments, and that’s beautiful and valid. But many people, especially women, live in systems that render those moments costly or inaccessible.
For example, becoming a parent often means accepting long-term financial, professional, and bodily consequences most of which are disproportionately borne by mothers. Many don't have a loving partner, stable income, or generous leave. Many also carry generational trauma, caregiving responsibilities, or chronic health conditions that make child-rearing far from idyllic.
Sam’s one listed “con” is a missed video game. That might reflect his experience, but it omits the unseen labor of the other parent (likely his partner), the medical risks of childbirth, the unpaid care work that tanks careers, and the emotional toll of parenting without support in a warming, unstable planet.
I write this to name the full picture so people, especially those socialized to see motherhood as their destiny, can make choices.
When we frame parenting as a universal path to purpose, without acknowledging who pays the price, we romanticize it in a way that’s unhelpful and, frankly, unfair.
Love to all who choose or do not choose parenting.
For clarity, my partner read the piece, loved it, and feels the same as me about our experiences of parenting so far. If this wasn't the case and she was having an unhappy or traumatic experience, I wouldn't have written this article. And I wouldn't be happy. So while I agree with your wider points and think they are very important, I don't like the inference here:
Sam’s one listed “con” is a missed video game. That might reflect his experience, but it omits the unseen labor of the other parent (likely his partner)
That I am basking in the easy joys of fatherhood while my partner silently suffers. This is not the case for us.
Thanks for clarifying, Sam! I genuinely appreciate hearing more about your and your partner’s positive experiences.
To be clear, my comment wasn’t meant to imply that your partner is silently suffering, nor to question your awareness. Rather, I intended to highlight the broader systemic inequalities many mothers face, which often remain invisible or normalized in conversations around parenting.
For example, there's a well-researched concept called "the motherhood penalty," where mothers typically see their wages drop significantly after having children, while fathers often experience the opposite, and financial insecurity later in life resulting from caregiving roles and interrupted careers, disproportionately affecting women. Also, medical risks in childbirth and chronic underrepresentation of women in healthcare research contribute to serious, sometimes life-altering consequences for mothers.
I fully acknowledge and celebrate joyful parenting experiences like yours. At the same time, I believe it's important we recognize these systemic realities, so that people can make informed choices about parenthood without romanticizing or glossing over the very real inequalities that persist.
Thank you for adding these comments. I had a very traumatic childbirth, unexpected, could happen to any woman. The healthcare system is barely functioning and if I didn't have a supportive family, I would still, years later, be struggling. I also had to give up my job to recover and to care for my daughter and I'm having a hard time finding a new job now that I've been gone doing the invisible labor. My experience is the norm, it is not unique, although it is painted as though it is in "public"--I have spoken to enough mothers at this point in private to see the systems are simply not in place to support mothers in the way they deserve to be supported.
I am glad your individual experience of parenthood with your partner has been a positive one. It’s a lovely “zoomed in” piece. I am also glad that OP commenter pointed out the broad social context and gave a “zoomed out” view. I don’t think anything personal is intended toward you.
Yeah I agree with all this. Seems quite easy for a man to be so flippant about the cons when it is women who bear the majority of the costs. Every single one of my female friends with kids is struggling with either long term physical problems from pregnancy and birth, mental health distress from the overwhelm of having to do majority of the child rearing, housework, life administration AND working, or because their husband decided he changed his mind about having kids and took off to live the single life. And they love their kids, of course they do! But many admit they wouldn't have kids if they had their time again. It is just extremely taboo to ever admit this, especially to other people with kids.
There is a lot of talk about people opting out of having kids due to economic pressure which I'm sure is a factor, but a ton of young women I speak to now just openly acknowledge that it seems like a really bad deal for women. At a time when an entire generation of young men seem captured by right wing dipshits like Andrew Tate, you can't really blame them for opting out of dating, marriage and kids.
As a pregnant woman approaching birth (so too early for me to say), I think we should just take Sam and his partners experience as it is - their experience! He gave caveats on how he is financially stable and provides a nice positive experience which we also need to hear in a world where we frankly amplify and hear the negative stories a lot more (I had almost exclusively negative conceptions and stories in my head about every stage of pregnancy and child rearing going into it than I realised was healthy).
Everyone can make up their own mind, but there’s no need to drown out the (now frankly rare) positive parenting stories.
I’m also fully aware I’m signing up for more mental and physical load than my partner for the whole duration of raising kids. It is sacrificial but that’s kind of how nature intended motherhood to be and I’m okay with that on a personal level :)
You don’t need to throw a wet blanket on a father writing about the beauty in having a child. Your take here, right or wrong, is not in short supply on the internet, it doesn’t need to be here too.
This is a beautiful list and a timely reminder of the joys many people experience when embarking on parenthood.
Personally, I don’t have children as, for me, there is a con to having kids which outweighs all the good stuff you mentioned - having my own children would mean having less time and energy to devote to building a better world for others.
That’s a personal choice that works for me, but I wanted to share it as too often there’s a focus on people not having kids for negative reasons. There are, in fact, many people making this choice for positive reasons 🫶🏽
Thank you. Completely agree. Part of the problem with this whole issue is that there is no objective ‘what having kids is like’. It’s the most subjective thing in the world! Glad you have found what works for you and thank you for sharing it.
I was just thinking that I could write this exact post about the pros and cons of being childfree, with a similarly long pro list and only one con. They can both be beautiful lives which means everyone has to make their own pros and cons list!
That was my exact thought reading this article! Though it was also sweet and well-written and gave me a soft fuzzy feeling. I wanna write my own childfree version now!
I'll tell you a secret but you have to promise not to tell anyone (especially the kiddo): grandparenthood has all the good stuff (just imagine how each bullet point translates) and way less of the difficult stuff.
When my eldest was a newborn, my sister in law said "and it gets better and better every year. I promise." And she was right. That eldest is now 23 and just graduated from college and is about to start air traffic controller school. She has been joined by four sisters and a brother. It's been exhausting to put it mildly but it's also spectacular and it does indeed get better and better. I have known life without children and with children and it's not even close. Congratulations on becoming a father and on all the delight headed your way!
This is so beautiful. I wish I had experienced it myself. I didn’t. I felt lost and alone and like my life was over. Nothing prepared me for that feeling. I’m so glad there are people who enjoyed it. You’re right that this needs airtime. I wish we could take some sort of test to see how it would feel for us! Congrats on being a dad and loving it.
That’s such a generous and kind response thank you Katie. I understand not everyone feels the same and I appreciate you allowing me this space despite that. Wishing you all the best.
My year has taken a slight pivot after finding out I’m pregnant just a couple of months ago, but we’ve decided to embrace it and I’m rather terrified as I’ve always focussed on the negatives for some reason and I really want to learn about the beautiful amazing positives too.
We were the same. We both went into it under a little bit a guilty cloud of doom because all the discourse seemed to be about how it ruins your life. In my limited subjective experience so far, it changes your life completely and makes it objectively tougher (in the sense that there’s more to do and less time for yourself), but there’s so much joy and meaning and fun it has felt completely worth it. Wishing you every happiness on your journey.
Perhaps I’m projecting, but the way I’m interpreting Sam’s con list is that the stuff you thought mattered before, just fades into the background once you have this new sense of purpose as a parent. This was totally true for us: our social lives took a nosedive, domestic and career obligations were a constant struggle, and we couldn’t attend to even the most important priorities (such as church and family) with nearly the same intensity as before. But it doesn’t matter. It truly doesn’t. You just shrug and go, “Well, the cutest baby in history calls me Mama, so who cares that I missed the deadline / cocktail party / feast day?”
Thank you for such a solid and inspiring affirmation of fatherhood!
Yah.... it doesn't make the pros any less beautiful to admit how incredibly hard it is. There are cons, lots of them, and I wouldn't recommend having kids to just anyone. Nothing in life worth doing is easy.
There are plenty of people admitting how hard it is: I’d argue it’s the dominant parenting discourse right now. I acknowledge it’s tough in this piece too. But for me the good bits outweigh the bad and it’s OK to share that experience as well.
I disagree. The dominant culture is most definitely natalist and the dominant discourse is definitely still that it's hard but worth it. That's okay too though. Your perspective doesn't have to be against stream to be valid.
It clearly isn't, right? If the dominant culture was natalist, wouldn't people be having children? Some of the weirdest and most off-putting people are natalist, but clearly that isn't translating into how young people are planning their lives.
I guess I was hoping that it would be a bit more “both-sides” considering the title. Maybe it’s my algorithm but I rarely ever come across anyone presenting anything like cons of being a parent.
Funny, I see the opposite in my feed and lot of people have told me they do too... The cons are in there – being tired, having a lot to do, etc. – the point of the last bit is to say (for me, subjectively, with all caveats in place, etc.) the downsides are so minor as to pale into insignificance. For me!
Sam, I loved this post, and I wanted to specifically reply to this idea. I’m someone who has been on the fence on kids for a long time. After a lot of thought, reading, talking it out, my wife and I are now enthusiastically hoping and planning to have a child.
Historically, I have internalized the ‘cons’ of raising children but had a hard time internalizing the ‘pros.’ I think there is this myth that people only talk about the positives and ‘no one is honest about the challenges.’ It’s a well-meaning idea, but it’s false imo. I hear about the negatives all the time!!! I know they are there, and they scare me. I kind of wish people told me about the positives more often.
So that to say, thank you again for such a beautiful post. Reading it made me even more excited.
Thanks for sharing Steve. It was a small attempt to address the imbalance as I very much had the same experience as you. Wishing you and your family every happiness.
Hey Steve. I have a 2 year old son. Every kid is different so there is really a component of luck in there as well. Our son didn’t sleep well, he had the colic’s , we had little external support. We slept very little. We were highly stressed. Our marriage started crumbling. We had several other challenges. So, yeah, for us the first year was honestly more cons than pros. The good thing is that evolution has made it so that you forget all the details after a while. I wouldn’t have remembered if I had not journaled. One of my values is honesty and I feel it’s very hard for people to admit the cons if they can’t in the end conclude it was still worth it. We repaired our marriage through deliberate exercises. And the second year was much easier than the first. From what I have read this is not an uncommon thing. The parents need to get it together by 2 or 3 years of age. Otherwise, there’s a real danger of divorce. Luckily we did. Raising kids is the hardest challenge you will take on as a couple in your life. And your life afterwards will never be the same. A pros and cons list is a really bad way to think about it because you’ll only understand if you go through the process yourself. But imo the cons are easier to list but most people won’t tell you and eventually forget them. The pros are not so easy to list but OP did a great job in this essay. Just know that there will be cons, for some in the earlier years and for some in the later years. The best thing you can do is proof your relationship before the little one is here.
Really? Where? I don't see this being the dominant discourse. I personally would welcome discourse on the very real difficulties of parenting, especially mothering, in a society that does not provide fairly basic support and maternity leave.
I say where in the article. And I agree, that sounds like a very valid discourse indeed. It's just not my personal experience or the focus of this particular piece. I'm sure we can agree there is space on the internet for all perspectives, and existence of one doesn't deny or block any other.
Obviously that comment is a little tongue in cheek. But at least from my own experience, the cons and pros are really just different categories of experiences all together. I find it really hard to compare the cons, which are numerous, but consist of things like: less ability to focus on career, less free time, less time for intimacy, etc. with the pros, which are much more tied to deep values and meaning in my life. And compared to those, the cons simply do not matter.
I have a general problem with people approaching the decision to have children from a pros and cons perspective in the first place. Firstly, it is an experiential good - you can't really see what either the cons or pros are LIKE qualitatively until you have made the plunge. Secondly, the cons are front-loaded and the pros are long-dated; having kids has literally gotten better every month and every year. Third, kids are people - they are deserving of consideration in their own right and not just instrumentally to what they do to your life (not saying people should choose to have kids, just that if they DO, it shouldn't just be about their own life). And fourth, all your priorities change after you have kids anyways.
My general advice for people would just be to plan for the family you want and then make your life fit that. Having the family you want (whether or not that includes kids) is going to drive so much more of your life happiness than anything else you might optimize for.
When I was 19 my girlfriend got pregnant. The trouble was that I hadn't been planning on being a dad or husband - I didn't want that kind of responsibility or commitment. I've had a bunch of years since then to reflect on why that was. What I actually wanted back then was to remain immature: I wanted to act like a boy while trying to have the privileges of a man.
I did end up rising to the occasion and growing up and in the end, my children have been the best thing to have ever happened to me. I would still be a boy if it weren't for them. I would not know very much about real love if it weren't for them. I might have gone the rest of my life believing a lie if it weren't for them. Children are a blessing, even unexpected children.
this really makes me so happy as the daughter of a single mother , 'cause makes me realize somewhere in the world there is dads that really love their sons and embrace fatherhood with so much love, that gives me a little bit of hope that maybe not all the dads are like mine and maybe one day I will find someone that thinks like this about our child.
I don’t think it’s either or. I lived a super exciting life until that actually got boring and then I got married and had a baby and he it is the most interesting, exciting thing I have ever experienced. And when he is older and doesn’t need me as much I’ll do something else. Cool lives aren’t ruined by cool experiences and having a kid is pretty cool.
Great writing! I think I can list a lot more cons as a parent myself haha, but the pros are spot on, and you elucidate them in a way that I think will help non-parents grasp just how powerfully parenthood changes you and your life for the better.
Why am I crying by the time I read con?!🤣 Perfectly delivered. Love this and I think you should do a new one every year of your daughter’s life to see how the good and hard things all change
Thanks Natasha! Love that idea.
I also got tears...I was truly expecting a list of realistic cons.
I am four weeks postpartum and all of this is so true. My husband and I are so ridiculously happy, we are just grinning like idiots all day and talking about how much we love this little angel. I’m exhausted, but I’m sad when I go to bed or take a nap because I miss my baby! He does the same things every baby does, but for some reason to his doofus parents, everything he does from his little cries to his farts is perfect, hilarious, or the most adorable thing in the world.
Right! It’s not that cons don’t exist, it’s that the pros drown them out. Glad you’re having such a good experience.
Thanks, you too! I am convinced that babies are the best people in the world.
Hehe this is so sweet! I remember that time, postpartum with our second was one of the most beautiful times in our lives.
Even as the hormones settle and daily life takes over it’s still magical and precious, we just need to remind ourselves sometimes :)
Blessings to you and your family.
It is! Magical and precious are perfect words to describe this time with our babies
As a 32-year-old who once dreamed of motherhood and then chose otherwise, I appreciate the joy this article brings to light, but I also feel compelled to offer a broader lens.
What’s missing here is precisely what makes parenthood such a complex, life-defining decision. Sam shares delightful, intimate moments, and that’s beautiful and valid. But many people, especially women, live in systems that render those moments costly or inaccessible.
For example, becoming a parent often means accepting long-term financial, professional, and bodily consequences most of which are disproportionately borne by mothers. Many don't have a loving partner, stable income, or generous leave. Many also carry generational trauma, caregiving responsibilities, or chronic health conditions that make child-rearing far from idyllic.
Sam’s one listed “con” is a missed video game. That might reflect his experience, but it omits the unseen labor of the other parent (likely his partner), the medical risks of childbirth, the unpaid care work that tanks careers, and the emotional toll of parenting without support in a warming, unstable planet.
I write this to name the full picture so people, especially those socialized to see motherhood as their destiny, can make choices.
When we frame parenting as a universal path to purpose, without acknowledging who pays the price, we romanticize it in a way that’s unhelpful and, frankly, unfair.
Love to all who choose or do not choose parenting.
For clarity, my partner read the piece, loved it, and feels the same as me about our experiences of parenting so far. If this wasn't the case and she was having an unhappy or traumatic experience, I wouldn't have written this article. And I wouldn't be happy. So while I agree with your wider points and think they are very important, I don't like the inference here:
Sam’s one listed “con” is a missed video game. That might reflect his experience, but it omits the unseen labor of the other parent (likely his partner)
That I am basking in the easy joys of fatherhood while my partner silently suffers. This is not the case for us.
Thanks for clarifying, Sam! I genuinely appreciate hearing more about your and your partner’s positive experiences.
To be clear, my comment wasn’t meant to imply that your partner is silently suffering, nor to question your awareness. Rather, I intended to highlight the broader systemic inequalities many mothers face, which often remain invisible or normalized in conversations around parenting.
For example, there's a well-researched concept called "the motherhood penalty," where mothers typically see their wages drop significantly after having children, while fathers often experience the opposite, and financial insecurity later in life resulting from caregiving roles and interrupted careers, disproportionately affecting women. Also, medical risks in childbirth and chronic underrepresentation of women in healthcare research contribute to serious, sometimes life-altering consequences for mothers.
I fully acknowledge and celebrate joyful parenting experiences like yours. At the same time, I believe it's important we recognize these systemic realities, so that people can make informed choices about parenthood without romanticizing or glossing over the very real inequalities that persist.
Thank you for adding these comments. I had a very traumatic childbirth, unexpected, could happen to any woman. The healthcare system is barely functioning and if I didn't have a supportive family, I would still, years later, be struggling. I also had to give up my job to recover and to care for my daughter and I'm having a hard time finding a new job now that I've been gone doing the invisible labor. My experience is the norm, it is not unique, although it is painted as though it is in "public"--I have spoken to enough mothers at this point in private to see the systems are simply not in place to support mothers in the way they deserve to be supported.
I am glad your individual experience of parenthood with your partner has been a positive one. It’s a lovely “zoomed in” piece. I am also glad that OP commenter pointed out the broad social context and gave a “zoomed out” view. I don’t think anything personal is intended toward you.
Yeah I agree with all this. Seems quite easy for a man to be so flippant about the cons when it is women who bear the majority of the costs. Every single one of my female friends with kids is struggling with either long term physical problems from pregnancy and birth, mental health distress from the overwhelm of having to do majority of the child rearing, housework, life administration AND working, or because their husband decided he changed his mind about having kids and took off to live the single life. And they love their kids, of course they do! But many admit they wouldn't have kids if they had their time again. It is just extremely taboo to ever admit this, especially to other people with kids.
There is a lot of talk about people opting out of having kids due to economic pressure which I'm sure is a factor, but a ton of young women I speak to now just openly acknowledge that it seems like a really bad deal for women. At a time when an entire generation of young men seem captured by right wing dipshits like Andrew Tate, you can't really blame them for opting out of dating, marriage and kids.
As a pregnant woman approaching birth (so too early for me to say), I think we should just take Sam and his partners experience as it is - their experience! He gave caveats on how he is financially stable and provides a nice positive experience which we also need to hear in a world where we frankly amplify and hear the negative stories a lot more (I had almost exclusively negative conceptions and stories in my head about every stage of pregnancy and child rearing going into it than I realised was healthy).
Everyone can make up their own mind, but there’s no need to drown out the (now frankly rare) positive parenting stories.
I’m also fully aware I’m signing up for more mental and physical load than my partner for the whole duration of raising kids. It is sacrificial but that’s kind of how nature intended motherhood to be and I’m okay with that on a personal level :)
Agree. This article leaves A LOT out.
You don’t need to throw a wet blanket on a father writing about the beauty in having a child. Your take here, right or wrong, is not in short supply on the internet, it doesn’t need to be here too.
This is a beautiful list and a timely reminder of the joys many people experience when embarking on parenthood.
Personally, I don’t have children as, for me, there is a con to having kids which outweighs all the good stuff you mentioned - having my own children would mean having less time and energy to devote to building a better world for others.
That’s a personal choice that works for me, but I wanted to share it as too often there’s a focus on people not having kids for negative reasons. There are, in fact, many people making this choice for positive reasons 🫶🏽
Thank you. Completely agree. Part of the problem with this whole issue is that there is no objective ‘what having kids is like’. It’s the most subjective thing in the world! Glad you have found what works for you and thank you for sharing it.
I was just thinking that I could write this exact post about the pros and cons of being childfree, with a similarly long pro list and only one con. They can both be beautiful lives which means everyone has to make their own pros and cons list!
That was my exact thought reading this article! Though it was also sweet and well-written and gave me a soft fuzzy feeling. I wanna write my own childfree version now!
Ha! You should!
I'll tell you a secret but you have to promise not to tell anyone (especially the kiddo): grandparenthood has all the good stuff (just imagine how each bullet point translates) and way less of the difficult stuff.
When my eldest was a newborn, my sister in law said "and it gets better and better every year. I promise." And she was right. That eldest is now 23 and just graduated from college and is about to start air traffic controller school. She has been joined by four sisters and a brother. It's been exhausting to put it mildly but it's also spectacular and it does indeed get better and better. I have known life without children and with children and it's not even close. Congratulations on becoming a father and on all the delight headed your way!
“I am their shell”. Sob 🥹
No unsurmountable cons, only assembly lines of pros at all different ages. He is 33 now ...
Love that way of looking at it!
This is so beautiful. I wish I had experienced it myself. I didn’t. I felt lost and alone and like my life was over. Nothing prepared me for that feeling. I’m so glad there are people who enjoyed it. You’re right that this needs airtime. I wish we could take some sort of test to see how it would feel for us! Congrats on being a dad and loving it.
That’s such a generous and kind response thank you Katie. I understand not everyone feels the same and I appreciate you allowing me this space despite that. Wishing you all the best.
Really needed to read this, thank you 🤍
My year has taken a slight pivot after finding out I’m pregnant just a couple of months ago, but we’ve decided to embrace it and I’m rather terrified as I’ve always focussed on the negatives for some reason and I really want to learn about the beautiful amazing positives too.
We were the same. We both went into it under a little bit a guilty cloud of doom because all the discourse seemed to be about how it ruins your life. In my limited subjective experience so far, it changes your life completely and makes it objectively tougher (in the sense that there’s more to do and less time for yourself), but there’s so much joy and meaning and fun it has felt completely worth it. Wishing you every happiness on your journey.
Thank you 🩷 that all sounds lovely, and it’s nice to read some positivity about it.
Perhaps I’m projecting, but the way I’m interpreting Sam’s con list is that the stuff you thought mattered before, just fades into the background once you have this new sense of purpose as a parent. This was totally true for us: our social lives took a nosedive, domestic and career obligations were a constant struggle, and we couldn’t attend to even the most important priorities (such as church and family) with nearly the same intensity as before. But it doesn’t matter. It truly doesn’t. You just shrug and go, “Well, the cutest baby in history calls me Mama, so who cares that I missed the deadline / cocktail party / feast day?”
Thank you for such a solid and inspiring affirmation of fatherhood!
Missed deadline?
Was this meant to be facetious or you honestly can’t think of any real cons?
Yah.... it doesn't make the pros any less beautiful to admit how incredibly hard it is. There are cons, lots of them, and I wouldn't recommend having kids to just anyone. Nothing in life worth doing is easy.
There are plenty of people admitting how hard it is: I’d argue it’s the dominant parenting discourse right now. I acknowledge it’s tough in this piece too. But for me the good bits outweigh the bad and it’s OK to share that experience as well.
I disagree. The dominant culture is most definitely natalist and the dominant discourse is definitely still that it's hard but worth it. That's okay too though. Your perspective doesn't have to be against stream to be valid.
It clearly isn't, right? If the dominant culture was natalist, wouldn't people be having children? Some of the weirdest and most off-putting people are natalist, but clearly that isn't translating into how young people are planning their lives.
I would say it is still the dominant culture, yes. I agree that natalists tend to be weird and off-putting.
Totally fair. We need people sharing both :)
I guess I was hoping that it would be a bit more “both-sides” considering the title. Maybe it’s my algorithm but I rarely ever come across anyone presenting anything like cons of being a parent.
Funny, I see the opposite in my feed and lot of people have told me they do too... The cons are in there – being tired, having a lot to do, etc. – the point of the last bit is to say (for me, subjectively, with all caveats in place, etc.) the downsides are so minor as to pale into insignificance. For me!
Sam, I loved this post, and I wanted to specifically reply to this idea. I’m someone who has been on the fence on kids for a long time. After a lot of thought, reading, talking it out, my wife and I are now enthusiastically hoping and planning to have a child.
Historically, I have internalized the ‘cons’ of raising children but had a hard time internalizing the ‘pros.’ I think there is this myth that people only talk about the positives and ‘no one is honest about the challenges.’ It’s a well-meaning idea, but it’s false imo. I hear about the negatives all the time!!! I know they are there, and they scare me. I kind of wish people told me about the positives more often.
So that to say, thank you again for such a beautiful post. Reading it made me even more excited.
Thanks for sharing Steve. It was a small attempt to address the imbalance as I very much had the same experience as you. Wishing you and your family every happiness.
Hey Steve. I have a 2 year old son. Every kid is different so there is really a component of luck in there as well. Our son didn’t sleep well, he had the colic’s , we had little external support. We slept very little. We were highly stressed. Our marriage started crumbling. We had several other challenges. So, yeah, for us the first year was honestly more cons than pros. The good thing is that evolution has made it so that you forget all the details after a while. I wouldn’t have remembered if I had not journaled. One of my values is honesty and I feel it’s very hard for people to admit the cons if they can’t in the end conclude it was still worth it. We repaired our marriage through deliberate exercises. And the second year was much easier than the first. From what I have read this is not an uncommon thing. The parents need to get it together by 2 or 3 years of age. Otherwise, there’s a real danger of divorce. Luckily we did. Raising kids is the hardest challenge you will take on as a couple in your life. And your life afterwards will never be the same. A pros and cons list is a really bad way to think about it because you’ll only understand if you go through the process yourself. But imo the cons are easier to list but most people won’t tell you and eventually forget them. The pros are not so easy to list but OP did a great job in this essay. Just know that there will be cons, for some in the earlier years and for some in the later years. The best thing you can do is proof your relationship before the little one is here.
Really? Where? I don't see this being the dominant discourse. I personally would welcome discourse on the very real difficulties of parenting, especially mothering, in a society that does not provide fairly basic support and maternity leave.
I say where in the article. And I agree, that sounds like a very valid discourse indeed. It's just not my personal experience or the focus of this particular piece. I'm sure we can agree there is space on the internet for all perspectives, and existence of one doesn't deny or block any other.
Sure - we can agree to disagree. Thank you
I think the purpose was to flatter the audience, not to give a dispassionate weighing of the options
Obviously that comment is a little tongue in cheek. But at least from my own experience, the cons and pros are really just different categories of experiences all together. I find it really hard to compare the cons, which are numerous, but consist of things like: less ability to focus on career, less free time, less time for intimacy, etc. with the pros, which are much more tied to deep values and meaning in my life. And compared to those, the cons simply do not matter.
I have a general problem with people approaching the decision to have children from a pros and cons perspective in the first place. Firstly, it is an experiential good - you can't really see what either the cons or pros are LIKE qualitatively until you have made the plunge. Secondly, the cons are front-loaded and the pros are long-dated; having kids has literally gotten better every month and every year. Third, kids are people - they are deserving of consideration in their own right and not just instrumentally to what they do to your life (not saying people should choose to have kids, just that if they DO, it shouldn't just be about their own life). And fourth, all your priorities change after you have kids anyways.
My general advice for people would just be to plan for the family you want and then make your life fit that. Having the family you want (whether or not that includes kids) is going to drive so much more of your life happiness than anything else you might optimize for.
When I was 19 my girlfriend got pregnant. The trouble was that I hadn't been planning on being a dad or husband - I didn't want that kind of responsibility or commitment. I've had a bunch of years since then to reflect on why that was. What I actually wanted back then was to remain immature: I wanted to act like a boy while trying to have the privileges of a man.
I did end up rising to the occasion and growing up and in the end, my children have been the best thing to have ever happened to me. I would still be a boy if it weren't for them. I would not know very much about real love if it weren't for them. I might have gone the rest of my life believing a lie if it weren't for them. Children are a blessing, even unexpected children.
Beautiful story thank you
this really makes me so happy as the daughter of a single mother , 'cause makes me realize somewhere in the world there is dads that really love their sons and embrace fatherhood with so much love, that gives me a little bit of hope that maybe not all the dads are like mine and maybe one day I will find someone that thinks like this about our child.
I don’t think it’s either or. I lived a super exciting life until that actually got boring and then I got married and had a baby and he it is the most interesting, exciting thing I have ever experienced. And when he is older and doesn’t need me as much I’ll do something else. Cool lives aren’t ruined by cool experiences and having a kid is pretty cool.
Great writing! I think I can list a lot more cons as a parent myself haha, but the pros are spot on, and you elucidate them in a way that I think will help non-parents grasp just how powerfully parenthood changes you and your life for the better.
Very fair! Thank you, really appreciate that