are super active and do all kinds of fun things with their kids all the time.
Some of the fun of parenting is sharing your interests with someone new, a complete beginner to that thing. Some of your hobbies become their hobbies (my kids have taken an interest in cooking and helping in the kitchen, love some of my favorite childhood books/movies, tinker with legos), and some of them don’t (trying to teach my kids how to play chess or sports have been mostly unsuccessful).
But it inspired me to take them to the library and museums and even vacations that I wouldn’t have otherwise done. It also helps inspire me to keep in better contact with my parents and siblings (and their kids), because it’s important for me that my kids have relationships with their grandparents and cousins. But the side effects is that it makes me stay in better contact with my own family. So it becomes a forcing function, that is only kinda a burden to the extent that I might rather be doing something else, that I learn to appreciate in the long view.
Right. It changes your perspective and priorities. It gives you the gift of community and culture in ways that someone like me won’t get unless I actively remember to seek it out.
I’m not a parent so there are many things I don’t have first hand experience with, but children have been a part of every stage of my life since I was little. I became an aunt before the age of 10, lol. I have seen the cycle of parenthood over and over and over again and now I’m going through it again with my peers who almost all have kids and their lives change in so many amazing and exhausting ways but they all recieve community and culture and the family is knitted closer. It is something I don’t know how to explain to terminally online childless people who have a very simplistic idea of what parenthood and childless lifestyles are like. I have lived that shit my whole life so I know what is coming for me and what is coming for the parents in my life and I know the ups and downs of both and I find both beautiful in their own ways. I don’t think the childless people who pull up statistics and and talk about parenthood like they know anything about it because they have read a few articles and studies that affirms their biases, I don’t think they realize what is actually coming for them.
It’s not that they will necessarily regret not having kids. But if they don’t attempt to get involved in community and culture in any way, they will be left behind at some point. Then they can brag about hobbies and vacations and sex and sleep, but it’s gonna fucking hit them like a ton of bricks one day when they realize that society moved on without them and that they no longer know how to speak the language of their peers because they will miss ALL the references and the cultural and community context that was built when they were busy jetskiing in Hawaii.
It is going to be lonely and maybe you like being by yourself like I do a lot of the time, but you still have to get up and participate and show interest and investment in other people’s children if you want to not end up completely isolated from society one day. That is my strategy and it really fixes that puzzle I could never figure out early on in my life when I realized I love kids, I just don’t want to be a mom. Now I’m an aunt, a playmate and someone whom parents can rely on if they need me. Win/win.
Some of the fun of parenting is sharing your interests with someone new, a complete beginner to that thing. Some of your hobbies become their hobbies (my kids have taken an interest in cooking and helping in the kitchen, love some of my favorite childhood books/movies, tinker with legos), and some of them don’t (trying to teach my kids how to play chess or sports have been mostly unsuccessful).
But it inspired me to take them to the library and museums and even vacations that I wouldn’t have otherwise done. It also helps inspire me to keep in better contact with my parents and siblings (and their kids), because it’s important for me that my kids have relationships with their grandparents and cousins. But the side effects is that it makes me stay in better contact with my own family. So it becomes a forcing function, that is only kinda a burden to the extent that I might rather be doing something else, that I learn to appreciate in the long view.
Right. It changes your perspective and priorities. It gives you the gift of community and culture in ways that someone like me won’t get unless I actively remember to seek it out.
I’m not a parent so there are many things I don’t have first hand experience with, but children have been a part of every stage of my life since I was little. I became an aunt before the age of 10, lol. I have seen the cycle of parenthood over and over and over again and now I’m going through it again with my peers who almost all have kids and their lives change in so many amazing and exhausting ways but they all recieve community and culture and the family is knitted closer. It is something I don’t know how to explain to terminally online childless people who have a very simplistic idea of what parenthood and childless lifestyles are like. I have lived that shit my whole life so I know what is coming for me and what is coming for the parents in my life and I know the ups and downs of both and I find both beautiful in their own ways. I don’t think the childless people who pull up statistics and and talk about parenthood like they know anything about it because they have read a few articles and studies that affirms their biases, I don’t think they realize what is actually coming for them.
It’s not that they will necessarily regret not having kids. But if they don’t attempt to get involved in community and culture in any way, they will be left behind at some point. Then they can brag about hobbies and vacations and sex and sleep, but it’s gonna fucking hit them like a ton of bricks one day when they realize that society moved on without them and that they no longer know how to speak the language of their peers because they will miss ALL the references and the cultural and community context that was built when they were busy jetskiing in Hawaii.
It is going to be lonely and maybe you like being by yourself like I do a lot of the time, but you still have to get up and participate and show interest and investment in other people’s children if you want to not end up completely isolated from society one day. That is my strategy and it really fixes that puzzle I could never figure out early on in my life when I realized I love kids, I just don’t want to be a mom. Now I’m an aunt, a playmate and someone whom parents can rely on if they need me. Win/win.