Why parents hate parenting

As I make my travels across the series of tubes that is the internet, I occasionally find an article that rings so true to my own experiences that I can't help but wonder why people actually needed to conduct a study to prove the point. As the father of two children, this article rings of such truth.

Its hard to summarise such a long article while keeping the key message intact so I strongly urge you to read the full article if you have the time. In brief though, the article talks about how parenting doesn't make the parent happier and, if anything, actually makes the parent less happy.

Anyway, two points in the article resonated with me in particular and I wanted to add a little more comment on those points from my own perspective.

Moments of transcendence
It's possible that the author doesn't buy this argument herself but one of the points mentioned in the article is that children "offer moments of transcendence, not an overall improvement in well-being". The author labels this as being a "fatalistic explanation" but I'm not sure that I concur.

As a father, those moments of transcendence are unbelievably powerful and pack one heck of an emotional punch. I've talked before on this blog about one such moment with Gerry. Another such situation occurred over the weekend.

Normally, Gordon doesn't like me much. He spends most of his time cozying up to either his mother or the maid. In fact, the only time he willingly lets me hold him is when we are getting into the car (I'm the only one who knows how to put him into the baby seat). However, over the weekend, Gordon deliberately held up his arms for me to hold him. And this was despite the fact that the missus was holding him at the time.

Moments like this are treasures for which words cannot do justice. Moments like this make all of the other crap you have to put up with as a parent worth it.

Kids destroy every other joy
One of the other quotes in the article which really resonated with me is on page 3. Kids are "a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit".

The reality is that I have given up all pretence of having a life, with the exception of videogames which can be played after the kids have gone to sleep. All of my social activities have basically died as a result of the time I spend with the kids (although I do go out and meet with some friends whenever there is a blue moon). This is likely to continue until the kids get a bit older and realise that hanging out with your parents is seriously uncool.

This used to bug me a lot. I used to regret having to give up all the fun things that I used to do like badminton, snooker or just hanging around with friends in a pub. As you can imagine, this isn't a healthy state of mind and over time, it would probably have negatively impacted the kids as well. Luckily for me, I eventually came to a realisation which helped me get over this.

In the end, I realised that my favourite leisure activity was playing videogames and that I was damn lucky to be able to have kids while keeping my favourite hobby.
:)