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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22765 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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A post is blowing up on my part of twitter where a guy is saying he only wants to spend 10 minutes a day with his kids.. This has a surprising amount of scissor power, with people coming down on all sides.

Relevant quote:

My feelings of love toward them are perfectly strong, but if I have to watch them or entertain them for more than about 10 minutes my blood starts to boil. I just want to be working, or accomplishing something. I try to be grateful, but it doesn't work...

Am I a terrible person? Or is my feeling within a certain range of historically normal and it's modern parenting norms that are off? Whether it's my fault or not, I don't even care, I just want to figure this out. Something is wrong and I no longer have the excuse of being new to this.

The one straightforward argument is that, well, he's a shitty dad. Especially since he says he wants to be working, accomplishing something, and what is his work? Well, he's a creative director at some random tiny crypto business working on "building digital gold." So... easily mockable.

The other side says that modern parenting norms are fucked, as he aludes to, and that kids used to be a lot more free range. Normally I'm sympathetic to this, but the guy's kids are below five, so idk. I think infants and toddlers definitely need a lot of attention.

Either way I'm curious how parenting norms might break down along culture war lines, and what people here think?

ETA: Also, a great and extremely sassy quote tweet:

This post has everything I despised about Silicon Valley: the narcissism paired with extreme neuroticism, the intense focus on “how you feel” on a meta level, the inability to appreciate anything non-“productive”, the therapeutic public confession, and finally, the utter selfishness towards the needs of children when it is you who are the adult and should take responsibility for yourself.

I don't think it's fair to label the guy "a shitty dad" over one tweet but the this tweet displays exactly the sort of behaviors I had in mind when I described the post-modern liberal ethos as "incompatible with forming healthy relationships and families" in last weeks thread.

Neuroticism, extremely short time-preferences, hyper-feminization, lack of emotional regulation, pre-occupation with one's own validation/gratification. These are not healthy qualities to have in a partner but they are endemic (and often celebrated) within the liberal striver class because they are the qualities celebrated and promoted by the philosophies of "Emancipation", "Self Actualization", "Deconstruction", "Breaking down barriers", and "Following your bliss".

It is trivially true that there are downsides to having kids.

We currently have a new baby in the house which means I have been getting less sleep than I would like and I have been getting less sex than I would like. I also have a lot less time and energy to pursue my own interests than I would like. Additionally, the former baby has noticed that he is getting less attention from mom and dad than he is accustomed to, and has been acting out a bit. We have had to rearrange the house to make space for the new arrival and reinstall a bunch of the "baby-proofing" we had previously removed which annoys me, it annoys the kids, and it annoys the animals. Every living thing in the house is annoyed. The thing is that these sorts of issues have been a fact of parenthood for as long as human beings have been making babies so complaining about them has the same energy as complaining that the sun rises in the east.

My point is that it is ok to feel tired, or bored. It is ok to not always be enjoying everything all of the time. What is not ok is to be a grown-ass man with apparent emotional maturity of a toddler. In that sense I suppose I am echoing @iprayiam3 and @PokerPirate user, irrespective of the kid aspect, if you can't handle 10 minutes of tedium or delayed gratification that's really something you need try and fix about yourself.

To come at the issue from a different angle. Are there downsides to being physically fit? Yes absolutely.

Do you think I like eating leafy greens more than I like doughnuts? Or that I like drinking water more than wine? Do you think I "enjoy" doing cardio. Do you think that there isn't some part of me that would just love to throw back a half-pint of tequila smoke a bowl and do a bunch of shrooms right now?

Eating healthy, working out, and having to behave responsibly are all very clear and significant downsides to staying in shape so why stay in shape?

Because despite all reason and logic to the contrary, good things are good.

It is good to take a kids bunch of kids and dogs to a park and play "kick the ball". It is good to catch your romantic partner looking at you like you're a snack.

Good things justify themselves.

So the mother of his kids is effectively a single parent then? If she knew what she signed up for beforehand, and decided that him bringing home a big paycheck is enough, then I do not see a victim. She should probably get the kids some male role models who are willing to spend any amount of time, but if we say it is not immoral for a single woman to conceive a child from a sperm donation, then I see no reason to call what they are doing immoral either.

Of course, it is not the kind of relationship I would wish for, personally. If the guy just wants offspring, he could become a sperm donor instead.

It's been very amusing seeing all the speculation in this thread, as a friend of the couple in question. All I'll say is that his wife is a formidable woman - she's a reporter covering energy/space/defense, works hard but doesn't take bullshit, and certainly didn't marry for money.

He said he went out and played ball anyway, despite bing annoyed about it, so his wife is presumably mostly annoyed that he's complaining in public about it, not that he's actually negligent.

I think you're leaving out that his oldest is four. Interacting with a four year old is drastically different from interacting with a ten year old.

Children are generally not very interesting before the age of ten. Maybe it's my Extreme Male Brain, but women can take care of em before then.

If a kid wants to hang out with me, it's okay, but I'm not going to actively engage. I supposed if I ever had a wife, I could be coerced into kid minding duty, but there's a small slice of time where they're smart enough to be worth teaching and 'mature' enough to not want to hang out with their stupid dad. That time is worth maximizing. The rest? Eh.

A few thoughts

Not expressing these thoughts, or better, working to shift them, will make getting a wife much easier. Women aren't woo'd by "if we have kids I have no interest in minding them until they don't bore me, that's on you"

If a kid wants to hang out with me, it's okay, but I'm not going to actively engage.

If you have children, I hope you show them slightly more interest than this, so they don't develop textbook daddy issues. That being said, kids want literally nothing more than their parents attention 24/7, so you won't have to worry about this, they'll find you!

I could be coerced into kid minding duty

I get it logically, but I really would hope you'd have more respect for your biological offspring. They need your minding for healthy development. It's like when my friends were younger and would say "I'll never change a diaper, my wife can come handle that when she's free" and my response, after making jokes about the inevitable divorce, was "even if you think it's gross, you should respect your infant child enough to not want them simmering in their own shit for any longer than necessary"

That time is worth maximizing.

You will receive very little of this time if your kid, after a decade+ of living with you, correctly deduces you are not interested in them and thus resents you.

Love your kids! Spend time with them, if not for your sake, than for theirs.

Children are generally not very interesting before the age of ten. Maybe it's my Extreme Male Brain, but women can take care of em before then.

Personally, I would beg to differ. I will grant you that below an age of one, kids are effectively extremely needy pets without the brain power to set them apart from most other mammals. There are certainly people whose dream job it would be to take care of cute crying babies, but it would not be mine.

But I guess that at an age of two or three, kids far surpass other mammals in intelligence. I think a lot of people enjoy watching a human level intelligence in the making, just like some car enthusiasts would also enjoy toolgifs of cars being assembled, rather than going "ew, that thing is not even self-propelling yet, call me when it is ready for the autobahn".

For example, reading the (paywalled) posts by Scott Alexander on the development of his twins, it is apparent that he takes great joy from observing their development. Personally, I have two nephews (aged 7 and 5). I will confess that when they were very small, I was not interacting with them much -- holding a baby is not something which would bring me much joy, I would probably mostly be worrying about holding it wrong and injuring it or something. But from the point where I can communicate with them, I've had a lot of fun interacting with them, playing games and the like. Young kids have a whole world to discover, and I find their joy in discovering new things infectious.

For people aged 10 or 15, I guess the quality of the interactions would depend on shared interests. If there are shared interests (say math), then one can have a blast ("and this is how we know that sqrt(2) is not a fraction"). If there are no shared interests (e.g. "STEM is boring, I only care about rap music", given that I do not know anything about rap), then these interactions will probably be as painful as interactions between adults who do not share any interests.

But I will totally grant you that this is all very subjective.

... I would probably mostly be worrying about holding [the baby] wrong and injuring it or something.

This is a normal feeling, but once you hold a baby or two for a while you get past it fairly quickly.

I believe a big issue with child rearing discourse - relationship discourse for that matter - is that people really need to define what they are talking about. Before this one sleep training blew up on my feed where the range of believed practices seemed to be from letting your 3 week old scream until they pass out to not immediately running to pick up your six month old if they made any noise whatsoever.

Complaining about 10 minutes is weird, but it's not like I spend hours playing with my 2 year old. On weekdays I probably "actively play" with him less than 30 minutes a day. We interact more then that but it's just touch points. We'll interact for a minute and then he'll go back to doing his own thing.

Yeah, there's negligence and then there's normal and then there's overbearing. God forbid I pretend to be the arbiter of normal, but what I think is normal and what works for my family (ages 2 through 7) is this:

  1. When there's food to cook, I'm cooking it in the kitchen with the kids upstairs. If there's something really finicky about the food and the kids have been rowdy, I might put on TV.

  2. Next priority - house cleaning/maintenance. Do the chores while the kids play. Get interrupted every ten minutes to kiss a boo boo or settle a dispute.

  3. When there's nothing to cook or clean or I just want to sit, pull out some knitting to work on in the same room as the kids. Sometimes I get looped into a conversation with them for a few minutes, sometimes they just want me to look at them or what they're doing. I make appreciative comments.

  4. A few times a week, do a family activity together. Take them to a playground, take them to the library, etc. At home, play Go Fish for 20 minutes. Or set up two forts and throw stuffed animals at each other. This is really only the "concentrated play with kids" time and it's not even every day.

  5. Help kids with school work, make sure they're reading, and then read to them for 40ish minutes (we read a story to the younger two before bed, which the older two are able to listen in on if they wish, then a chapter book to the older two after.)

There is no "play with kids for hours at a time." There is sometimes "shepherd kids around a children's museum for hours at a time" which is different. And it's always work, it's not fun. The enjoyment is in watching the slow growth of the children. The fun is that moment when a kid shares a toy on their own and you think to yourself, "I taught them that." But why would anyone feel guilty about not having as much fun as their child when playing a game for four year olds?

I think you're right about this. I'm trying to think of what 10 minutes of "play" with my kids would look like and I'm not sure. I don't think a 2-4 year old could hold 10 straight minutes of interest in a single game of play.

We'll play hide and seek a lot, but the kids version of this is having my wife and I "hide" in the exact same place over and over while they find us. It is really fun, and they laugh and laugh while we do it, but I don't think bouts of this last much longer than 10 minutes or so.

Reading to them takes longer than that for sure, but is that the same as playing? I think we just spend about 45 minutes reading all the kids favorite stories to them before bedtime.

I'll spend a lot of time with them "playing" outside, but that's usually just me supervising them while they play with each other, interspersed with a few minutes at a time where they show me something interesting or the climax of a pretend play that they're doing "Dad come and see our bunny house! [pile of sticks]" etc. Or if they "help" me cook dinner it's a few minutes of them watching me cook something before they get distracted and want to do something else.

Thinking about this some more and we do go on a lot of really long bike rides where it takes up most of the day, but thinking that through it's a lot of short stops at a lot of places. 10 minutes at coffee, 20 minutes at the park, 10 minutes at the grocery store, etc. etc.

I think this person is just way overanalyzing themselves.

Justin Murphy? Wow. Nothing much to add except to say I've seen him evolve from a UK lecturer to an American influencer who'd interview e-thots to now a dad. Frankly, the best work he ever did was in the UK.* His eagerly going the entrepreneurial, attention-getting route in Austin has compromised his integrity, though he believes most assuredly it's the other way around.

*https://youtube.com/watch?v=me5t2btkuU8&list=WL

I think it would be reasonable to say “I don’t want to spend 3 hours a day with my kids”. (By the way, the same courtesy should be extended to women who think this, which is a lot of them.)

10 minutes is pretty low though, it’s a way of relatively directly saying that you only had kids to have kids (whether for religious, legacy, accidental or other reasons, or some combination of the above) and don’t really care about them independently of that. Which is OK, but maybe less socially acceptable now.

I was largely raised by nannies until I was old enough to go to school (and I guess the person is talking about preschool aged kids). I have no resentment toward my parents; I had dinner with them most nights from maybe 4 or 5 years old and I spent most vacations with them except for camp in the summer, and that wasn’t all summer anyway. They were loving and nurturing and I still have a strong relationship with them. My mom would take me to the doctor, my dad would read to us at night, both parents always made time to meet the teachers a couple of times a year. That seems reasonable to me.

I don’t know that 10 minutes would.

I was largely raised by nannies until I was old enough to go to school (and I guess the person is talking about preschool aged kids). I have no resentment toward my parents; I had dinner with them most nights from maybe 4 or 5 years old and I spent most vacations with them except for camp in the summer, and that wasn’t all summer anyway. They were loving and nurturing and I still have a strong relationship with them.

I like the chillness of your parents. Soft Caplan-maxxing ahead of their time. Just being relaxed, happy, and doing their own thing if need be with the confidence that their children will turn out well.

That’s the vibe and energy I’ve been trying to share with my extended family from the time I was a late teen.

Well yes, it’s entirely reasonable to prefer not to personally play with your kids for hours a day(child’s play is mind-numbingly dull) but for most families adults have to do this anyways, unless they have enough kids it doesn’t matter. Complaining too loudly is at least bad form.

I think most adults have forgotten how to have fun.

And this isn't a new problem. When Jesus said "unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven", I think he was telling his followers that they need to have fun like children.

One of the main reasons that adults can't have fun is because we worry too much. This worry causes us---and this tweeter in particular---to focus on "productive things" instead of "fun things". But fun things done right are actually highly productive! One of main evolutionary purposes of play is to teach us new skills: Building legos is fun because we learn new techniques that can help us build bridges. Basketball is fun because it improves our body's conditioning. Reading is fun because it expands our imagination.

I am a father of 4 young kids (7m, 4m, 3m, 2f). It's obviously exhausting at times, and I don't begrudge any parent who complains about the exhaustion. But most adults I know are just genuinely not fun people. They are either too addicted to their "productivity" or wireheaded by social media/tv/literal drugs. But kids are untainted. They still know deep in their bones how to have fun, and are constantly seeking it out.

Someone also quote tweeted that with a quote from Naomi Wolf's book Misconceptions:

When Nico was about 9 months old, I was in the floor with him playing the way you do with a nine-month baby- sorting cubes. We were doing this for what seemed to me to be a really long period of time. Ed came in, saw this scene and said, "Oh you're just entranced." And I said, "Are you out of your mind? I am bored silly." And he was stunned- he had no idea.

I am not myself a parent but I have a lot of experience being around smaller kids at various ages due to having siblings with kids in a wide age range. Playing with younger kids is definitely something I often found boring or tedious, both as a teenager and adult.

I don't think there's anything wrong with him (or any parent) feeling this, nor does it make him a bad parent. I suspect most parents feel this way some of the time. The things that are entertaining for kids are just not that entertaining for adults!

Probably most dads think this. I don't know Murphy well enough to say what is going on here: is he just too autistic to realize he is supposed to lie; or if he just likes trolling. Based on a cursory read of his other takes, it seems he is basically just trolling.

I don't have children, and other than largely raising my one brother I don't have a clear and visible "childcare pedigree". The end result of this is that a lot of my friends and acquaintances who do have kids tend to confide in me because I appear to be an uninterested party.

So far as I can tell, what this guy is saying is true for a majority of men who have young kids. Pretty much every father I know has admitted that he can't wait until his kids are older, and that simply being around them is exhausting.

If you go in for evo-psych, that makes sense. In an ancestral environment, the man would be away from children, hunting. He probably wouldn't be interacting with them regularly until they were old enough to be taught.

I think this guy's mistake is simply being either too honest or too autistic for his own good. A solid 90% of modern society functions on rampant lying - no normal guy wants to admit that they'd rather work a sixteen hour shift getting his balls crushed at the ball crushing factory than take care of a toddler, and whether they consciously recognize it or not, they don't admit it because they know it'll make everyone else around then experience an uncomfortable amount of self reflection about their own life. It's better to just say Kids Are Wonderful And There Are Absolutely No Exceptions Full Stop so everyone can feel like they are good people doing good things.

A guy like this breaks the social contract, which is probably part of why it blew up. This is pretty much the childcare equivalent of saying that yes, that dress does make you look fat.

I retract my post above.

@sarker has a link below that disgusts me enough that I can't even pretend to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.

It's not just men, many women feel the same, it's just not productive to bring it up in public.

So far as I can tell, what this guy is saying is true for a majority of men who have young kids. Pretty much every father I know has admitted that he can't wait until his kids are older, and that simply being around them is exhausting.

I'm a father of a one-year-old and I'm also an attorney who works a lot of hours. It's true that taking care of young kids gets exhausting or boring at a certain point. On the other hand, it's still way less exhausting and stressful than working an actual job.

If I had to choose between spending 12 hours a day with my kid and 10 minutes a day working, or spending 12 hours a day working and 10 minutes with my kid (assuming all other things, including income, remained equal) I would certainly choose to spend 12 hours a day with my kid. Yes, it would get exhausting at times, but it's still way more fun and rewarding than work. I have a hard time understanding the psychology of anyone who would choose otherwise.

If I had to choose between spending 12 hours a day with my kid and 10 minutes a day working, or spending 12 hours a day working and 10 minutes with my kid (assuming all other things, including income, remained equal) I would certainly choose to spend 12 hours a day with my kid.

I would agree 100% with this - kids are lots of fun. However, that caveat is a big one. The trade-off isn't 12 hours of play vs 12 hours of work; you have to include all the other things you don't get to do in order to hang out with them. As someone who is childless (but has a niece and nephew who I adore spending time with), my schedule looks something like:

  • 7:30-8 wakeup/shower
  • 8-12, 1-5 work
  • 5-6 cook dinner
  • 6-11:30 whatever I want.

If I were parenting my niece and nephew instead, it would look more like:

  • 6:30-9 wakeup, shower, make kids breakfast, get kids ready for school, drive kids to school.
  • 9-12, 1-6 work
  • 6-7:30 cook and eat dinner (convincing kids to eat is definitely worth at least half an hour and you can't convince me otherwise).
  • 7:30-9 bedtime for the kids
  • 9-10:30 whatever I want (probably spending time with my spouse)

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there definitely isn't as much room for deviation in it. If I wake up and I've got a migraine, I still have to do the morning routine. If I get off work and I'm super stressed because my boss is hinting at layoffs, I still have to prep and cook dinner. I can't decide I'd rather go out to the bar with my wife for drinks; we have to put the kids to bed or they'll be hell the next day.

(Before anyone asks; I'm assuming both parents are working in the above, and that some of the time blocks (like dinner) could be done by either parent, but the other parent is almost certainly in charge of managing the kids during this time. I didn't schedule pickup from school, for example, because I did dropoff and presumably my wife is doing pickup in this hypothetical).

All parents talk about children being exhausting, and it's not any sort of secret. I am the father of 4 young children. The easiest way to start up a conversation with another parent (at a park/school/cub scouts/whatever) is to observe that their children have a lot of energy and commiserate with them. I've easily had this conversation with >100 different people.

I've encountered several of Justin Murphy's takes before and don't have a very high opinion of the guy, but this actually makes me respect him a little more. Kids are a blast sometimes and kinda boring a lot of the time - I don't have them myself, but I have a lot of experience being the adult cousin and babysitter. I've never had a "blood boiling" internal reaction to hanging with small children, but I've certainly felt like doing something other than engaging with them for eight hours. Sometimes you have to just do the virtuous thing, and it's actually good that he's airing out that he's finding it difficult. It's presumably pretty disheartening to feel like you're the only person in the world who doesn't want to spend a ton of time with your kid, and so it's probably encouraging to learn that someone else is struggling with the same thing but still doing it anyway.

Important context: the guy only had kids in the first place so he'd have cover for his pursuit of his socially useless crypto business: https://x.com/jmrphy/status/1305527478635630596

This is basically no different from women who delay having kids so they can girlboss at a fake email job. Except that since he doesn't need to actually birth the kid he can work the fake job and have kids at the same time.

This is a remarkably good scissor statement, in that I find the people being mean to him insufferable, and even inasmuch as I might find the Sillicon Valley Crypto Guy of it all mockable, I still have an innate rage at people dismissing him as a shitty dad.

So despite knowing that I'm falling for a scissor statement and starting a fight for no reason, I'm going to do it anyway: if you want to call this guy a shitty dad I don't want to hear you bitch about the TFR.

There was a letter to the editor in the WSJ this morning that I took a picture of to remember, from Leah Libresco Sargeant, replying to a prior article by William Galston title "America Needs More Husband Material" about how men need to shape up so they can get wives. Sargeant cites surveys of high school seniors showing that a declining percentage of young people feel that they will be "very good" spouses. The money quote that stuck out to me:

Giving [kids] more lectures on how important marriage is won't do it, they think so highly of the institution that they judge themselves incapable of living up to it.

((She goes on to say kids need more self organized play to develop into marriage material, citing her homeschooled husband's experience running a youth theater company. I should look her up and see what her arguments are outside two paragraphs of newsprint.))

My brother-in-law is a fantastic dad, he spends a ton of time with my niece and nephew, he dedicates himself to them, they are always the number one priority, he values nothing else. My own father, who was a great father to me*, frequently jokes that BiL makes him feel bad about the time he spent with us growing up. Frankly, if I couldn't have kids until I wanted to be a dad the way my BiL is a dad, I will never have kids. I will never want to spend all day with my two year old. If that's the standard for having kids, I will never meet it, and a lot of other people won't either.

If we are trying to convince people to have kids, especially conscientious neurotic high achieving people who we really want to have conscientious high achieving kids, then setting impossible standards will not achieve it.

As to the "this is distasteful and shouldn't be shared" thing, it feels very odd to me, like a blue haired wokie screeching about misogyny because of a bland "women be shopping" joke. Just a massive example of the political correctness commissars telling people what they are and aren't allowed to feel, and what feelings they are and aren't allowed to talk about. "YOU WILL PLAY WITH THE TODDLER, YOU WILL ENJOY IT, PARENTHOOD IS JOY!"

When parenthood was more normalized, bitching about it was too! Don't start the politically correct cycle of gatekeeping who is and isn't allowed to be a parent and how they are allowed to feel about it, it will not increase the number of people having kids one iota.

*Your opinion of the results may differ.

This is why I hate the TV show Bluey. It is actively TFR reducing.

Explicate!

Explicate

Nothing too complicated, take your post replace your brother-in-law with Bandit (the Dad from Bluey) and you've got the argument.

I agree with this, and I know Justin well enough that I know this was a crafted scissor statement (he even called his shot with the Jake Paul post immediately after).

What gives me whiplash is hearing that Bill Galston wrote an article with the phrase "Husband Material" in the title. Either that was imposed by an NYT editor, or that old Brookings fossil's banging an intern 50 years his junior (or, possibly, it was a common phrase in the 1970s before its recent recurrence in modern gender war discourse).

WSJ, but same difference.

Don't know how I misread that from the google results, I even thought to myself "huh, WSJ columnist gets a feature in NYT".

Yeah one of the best scissor statements I've ever seen. I do think that one of the best things the rationalists are into is unschooling and free range kids. Just the idea that childcare is way more intense than it used to be, and really than it needs to be due to cultural norms.

This is a remarkably good scissor statement, in that I find the people being mean to him insufferable, and even inasmuch as I might find the Sillicon Valley Crypto Guy of it all mockable, I still have an innate rage at people dismissing him as a shitty dad.

I don't think this is a scissor statement, I think it's a different (and more traditional) social failure mode.

Plenty of things in life everyone knows but can't say, in an increasingly feminized society this is way worse.

It's the "all my girlfriends are perfect 10s dressed impeccably all the time and even look great without makeup!" bullshit.

Yes having kids sucks. It is also great. Society has decided some parts of having kids you are allowed to complain about and some you are not. Society has decided nerds are fair game to criticize. Etc etc.

This is just a matter of what thoughts are approved to be voiced in public, and what types of people are allowed to be supported.

The most scissorish bit is the way it triggers a bunch of other conversations, but that also happens with "you can't say Sara looks fat in that dress!" "But she clearly does! She weighs over 300 pounds! And she asked!"

"Spending time with small children is boring and I hate it and would prefer to do as little of it as possible" is a classic scissor statement: some large portion of the people who read it think it is obviously true and no right thinking non-lobotomized person could think otherwise, and some large portion of the people who read it think it is obviously false and no right thinking person with a soul could think it was true.

Isn't the answer "this is obviously true and you have no soul" ?

Small children are frequently annoying, and frequently not very stimulating. Sometimes they are interesting and stimulating, but anyone pretending that is common is biased.

On the other side, spending quality time with your children isn't optional, and to complain that the life you brought into the world, with the full knowledge that kids are attention black holes, is stupid? And cruel, and soulless.

If you hate kids, don't have them. If you have kids, give them attention so they don't develop attachment issues, even if that's annoying. Complaining about it just makes you sound stupid or evil.

gr8 b8 m8 8/8

I genuinely meant all of this, in all seriousness, I have no idea how "yes kids are annoying but no you can't neglect them as a result" is bait

Again, most people hearing that statement both agree and disagree with it to some extent, and have a variable level of feeling across their lifespan both acutely and chronically (ex: I'm pissed at my kids right now so I say X) and also have a wide disconnect between how they feel about it and what they are saying in public.

It is a sliding scale of both interpretation of the statement and also of disconnect between private and public presentation of beliefs.

Scissor statements are more binary Yes or No, Left or Right, Up or Down.

Just because something creates argument doesn't mean it is a scissor statement.

I like playing with kids, always have, and I totally get it. No, he's not a bad dad- but maybe saying the quiet part out loud(kids games are usually rather dumb, even if you like being a human jungle gym. Few adults particularly like hide and go seek) is a bad idea. And I think he might want to give it a few more years, see if he likes kicking around a soccer ball with a seven year old a bit more than whatever make believe a four year old comes up with.

Having a three year old myself, I certainly feel the mental exhaustion and lack of patience this guy feels. Nothing I have ever experienced has demanded more of my attention. Having less time to myself, less sleep, less sex, and less money is not ideal. All that being said, it has forced me to appreciate things that I wouldn't have otherwise appreciated. Hanging out with a three year is exhausting, but it is also hilarious and endearing.

His tweet feels inappropriate to me. Saying the quiet part out loud does nothing constructive but give this guy a momentary sense of relief while dragging everyone else into a pointless argument about how much you’re allowed to resent your own kids. Also, writing something like that with your name attached to it gives off toaster fucker vibes. I understand the feeling he has sometimes, but I'd be willing to bet at least some of us wanted to fuck one of our hot cousins when we were in our teens. Should we be sharing that too?

Should we be sharing that too?

Probably not, but I imagine seeing that Tweet is a relief for parents experiencing similar feelings.

I know that it is, but is relief in this context a net good? I'm not so sure about that. Some sacrifice is necessary, and I believe that sacrifice is good. I don't think he's a terrible person. I know parents feel like this from time to time, or even most of the time. I just think he's oversharing and overlooking the value of his sacrifice.

I know that it is, but is relief in this context a net good?

That's not an easy question to answer. At a minimum, I would say that it's extremely rare for a situation to arise where it's a good idea for a parent to publicly say anything negative about such parent's children or about the parent's relationship with such children.

Very interesting. 11 million views on this.

My first thought is to look at how much time primate fathers spend with their children. They do spend more time playing with their own children than with those not their own. However, I can’t find how many minutes they do this. This study indicates that for hunter gatherers, after toddlerhood, it is rare for fathers to play with their children, as they have similar-aged playmates in the neighborhood.

Lancy’s (2007) review of collected ethnographies from the Human Relations Area Files suggests that, except for some foraging societies where children have little access to playmates, children rarely play with mothers and almost never play with fathers. Playmates are almost al- ways other children. Even children are the main caretakers for each other, especially past infancy (Weisner and Gallimore 1977). With regard to work, we acknowledge Bradley’s (1993) pioneer- ing and detailed study of children’s work discussed in more detail below

I would say we are in a society “where children have little access to playmates”, because in primitive societies children play pretty much all day, but today they have school and don’t have access to playmates to do this unless they are in a lucky neighborhood. And even then, it’s an insufficient amount of play. To throw another variable in, hunter gatherer children play based off of what they see their fathers and elders doing. Our environment is double unnatural: they never get to model behaviors from their elders, and they never get to play. This leads me to believe that father-child play is an essential replacement activity to the sort of play that children typically enjoyed with other children in their ancestral environment. Play with their father today is now essential because (1) he is the only male elder they will ever get to have rich personal experience with, (2) the child gets to model the father’s accumulated social-emotional wisdom, eg learning motivation and emotional processing and planning even just in a simple game of catch.

Another thing worth noting is that Christianity is unnaturally (supernaturally?) concerned with the Father-Son bond. It is possible that Christian culture boosts the interest that a father has in the wellbeing of his son, given that this is a microcosm of the Christian’s relationship with God, and that the decline of this culture corresponds to less interest in the father-son relationship.

I should register the customary skepticism of hunter-gatherer (ad venatorem-collectorem?) arguments:

  • Present-day hunter-gatherers don't necessarily live lives similar to those of the distant ancestors of present-day non-hunter-gatherers, because it's only in very distinctive environments (e.g. places poorly suited for farming) that that lifestyle persisted.
  • The 10,000 Year Explosion and its ilk would argue that evolution has continued apace in historical times, so even our own hunter-gatherer ancestors don't necessarily share much in common with us.

If a variety of distinct hunter-gatherer societies spread across the globe all have the same behavior, it’s reasonable to believe that this behavior was a common hunter-gatherer behavior. Most evolutionary psychologists hold that the Hunter-Gatherer lifestyle informs modern behavior but maybe that book has a compelling argument against the majority position? Agriculture would need to present some pressure on the genes related to paternal love and play to affect those genes; I suppose that’s possible but I don’t think it should be assumed.

If you look at an agricultural society which is still primitive like the Yanomami, it appears the fathers play with their infants for 15-30min in the morning: https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/irenaus-eibl-eibesfeldt-human-ethology . Maybe someone with a good AI can trawl it to see what else it says about play.

Argumentum ad antiquitatem should cover it, no?

Though it would be funnier to file it under “genetic fallacy.”

It is not a fallacy to look at the conditions humans evolved in to determine whether someone is a “monster” for not feeling a particular way about a behavior lol

Especially in context of the fact that the agriculturalists were demonstrably more evolutionarily fit.

I don't have kids, but I always imagined that's what it would be like for me. I feel very awkward around babies and little kids. I like the general idea of having kids, and I think I'd be decent at raising older kids, but with little kids I'm totally lost. I just don't feel that sense of cuteness that other people seem to feel.

I think it's OK to be honest and admit that's how we feel (although you probably shouldn't say it publically or admit it to your family). I feel like that's a very natural state of affairs for men, really. Just let it be. We'll step up for the big emergencies, but we really don't want to be there in "house husband" mode babysitting the kids nonstop. We'd probably have more kids if society in general was OK with us being mostly hands off in child rearing.

My dream is to have kids, then spend most of my time hanging out at some old school mens' social club talking business over cigars and brandy, seeing the kids only briefly for the big events.

My dream is to have kids, then spend most of my time hanging out at some old school mens' social club talking business over cigars and brandy, seeing the kids only briefly for the big events.

Hypothetical future college seniors will absolutely love your hypothetical future freshman daughters with daddy issues, Jesus Christ.

"I want my children to grow up with attachment issues"

Have some respect for your children and their wellbeing.

I like the general idea of having kids, and I think I'd be decent at raising older kids, but with little kids I'm totally lost.

I was like this when I was young, but I didn't realize what became obvious in hindsight: your own little kids will be your own little kids. They'll be genetically half you and half your spouse, and environmentally some mix in which (especially when they're little) you're still a plurality.

My oldest kid binge-read the Harry Potter series when she was 5 and decided that my reading to her for 20 minutes a night was way too slow. When her little brother was 8 or 9 he thought my home group-theory lessons during Covid were amazing. Their little sister picks Babylon 5 episodes for her every turn at Family Movie Nights lately. Now, you may be thinking, "wow, what unbelievable geeks", but that's exactly the point - I'm kind of an annoying geek, and my wife isn't annoying, and it's not much of a coincidence that we got a trifecta of exactly the sort of non-annoying geeks we're thrilled with, even if they might not stand out as positively to other random adults. Whatever personality/subculture you may have and/or have fallen in love with instead, that's what you can probably expect instead, and even if you're not a big fan of little kids in general you might be much more enamored of your own little kids in particular.

modern parenting norms are fucked, kids used to be a lot more free range

What's stopping him from letting his kids be free range ? The restrictions feel self-imposed.

I don't have kids, but I was the elder cousin that was responsible for keeping the kids alive through the holidays. Kids are so much fun. They allow men to experience power and wish fulfillment like nothing else. It's the only time you get to legally play God.

Maybe it is just me, but very few emotions match the unbridled joy of watching kids frolicking. Little puppies, Sunrise hikes, a cold summer breeze. It is a feeling of wholeness, harmony, of being at peace that nothing else matches.

Some classics:

  • Godzilla/ WWE - I am the big bad. I can only throw & grapple. They can punch/ kick/ bite/ whatever. This is the funnest one.
  • Soccer - 3v1 soccer. Nutmegging 3 kids in a row is the dream.
  • Ghost stories are a fun. Especially because they stay scared for days. Ton of lasting value.
  • Game developer - You can develop games & puzzles with any arbitrary rules and keep arbitrarily increasing difficulty. It's exhilarating to see kids figure out loopholes and meta strategies as the game evolves.
  • Story telling - Converting mythological tales to a the level of a kids cartoon. Add any amount of spicy takes you like. Kids wanna hear about Half-man half-lion Narashima and mountain lifting Hanuman. At least kids in the early 2000s did.
  • The circle is round - When they get too annoying. Ask them to run around in circles as a show of manliness. Eventually their head starts spinning and then lay down for rest.

Yet for every single minute, on the inside, I just don't want to be there.

I went off on a tangent, but sounds like someone with a lot of anxiety. I have had periods of my life when I've been unable to exist in a moment, and the urge to escape was usually rooted in an external source of instability that was causing me anxiety.

he's a shitty dad

Percentiles are a better way to look at it. Divorce is the most destabilizing thing a child can go through. Only about 50-55% American kids grow up with their biological parents, who stay married to each other through their entire childhood. If the dude stays happily married, financially stable and doesn't abuse his kids, he is already above average.

So no, not a shitty dad. Above-average is all. Not good. Not bad.

What's stopping him from letting his kids be free range ? The restrictions feel self-imposed.

Zvi just did a post on this, was pretty crazy. I had no idea it had gotten this bad.

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/childhood-and-education-16-letting

What's stopping him from letting his kids be free range ?

Busybody neighbors who call CFS to report "neglect" the moment they see anyone under eighteen out without an adult hovering over them "helicopter parent"-style?

How often does this actually happen ?

I didn't grow up here, but knee-jerk CPS reporting and HOA Karens are 2 of the most fascinating Americanisms. I have no calibration on how ubiquitous these types of people are. Are they real or one off bogeywomen ?

The main example I keep coming bact was a post I read by a mother complaining online (Anecdotal, I know, and not something I bookmarked, either).

The story was basically that they live several blocks from the elementary school their kid (like 10-11 years old, IIRC) attends, such that, weather permitting it was actually faster (and definitely healthier) for the kid to walk straight home from school than take the bus, the kid preferred to walk home, and so she let them do just that…

…until some busybody neighbor — she's not allowed to know who — saw the kid walking home alone, decided that this constitutes child neglect, and called CFS to report it as such. Mandatory investigation rules meant CFS had to send someone out, subject the whole family to a week-long inquisition, with the threat of removing the kids hanging over them like the Sword of Damocles the whole time. They get through it… and then the next month, the same CFS investigator is back, to put them through the same process again. Because the same neighbor (again, CFS clearly isn't allowed to say who) kept reporting it, and while multiple reports in the same month as a "everything's fine" finding can be dismissed, once a new month rolls around, they have to investigate the report again.

And then a third time. And so on for several months in a row, until the CPS investigator basically laid it out — they all know she's not neglecting the kids, but it doesn't matter. The neighbor is going to keep reporting it, and they're going to have to keep doing the mandatory investigations, with full "due diligence." So either she and her family can try to live with having to go through this whole ordeal every single month, or they can just cave in to the busybody's idea of "proper parenting" and make the kid ride the bus home every day.

So, of course, they caved.

As for how often CFS investigations happen, again anecdotal, but my family was subjected to one once, thanks to me. I was in kindergarten, and my school had an after-school-hours Halloween event we went to… where I, being (then-undiagnosed) on the spectrum, suffered sensory overload which, combined with the stars coming off my "the constellation Orion" costume, caused me to have a crying autistic meltdown right in the middle of everything. So my mom had to hustle us all out of there, and try to get my screaming autistic ass loaded into the car. Well, apparently somebody saw this, and decided to report possible abuse.

So the whole family — me, my two younger brothers, both our parents — all spent a week going through the whole grueling inquisition, the whole time in terror that I was about to be taken away from my family forever, that we'd all be broken up, and I was never going to see my loved ones — my parents or my brothers, ever, ever, ever again, and it was going to be ALL MY FAULT, AND…

Well, as you can see, decades later and I still have Feelings about it all.

(And in contrast, just a little later in my childhood? Our neighbors out at Kinney Lake — the ones whose idea of "disciplining" their children was making them sit bare-assed on a hot wood stove? They never had any problems with CFS.)

oof.

America is confusing. A society that emphasizes individual freedom and nuclear families suffers from strange Karens in the form of CFS and HOA abuse. These laws allow Karens to ruin your life through asymmetrical warfare, with zero repercussions or risk of de-anonymization. You'd think the loopholes would be addressed by now.

As an aside, I'm surprised that it the word 'Karen' is so new. This individual is so ubiquitous, yet a term only showed up in the late 2010s.

America is confusing. A society that

Well, see, that's the thing. America isn't a society. We're big and diverse (a continent-spanning empire, really). There's still enough remnants of federalism, for now, that we are still in some ways "50 smaller countries in a trench coat," as a Tumblr mutual puts it when explaining the US to Europeans. Albion's Seed may be over-referenced around these parts, but it's still quite relevant here. The American "founding stock" included both irascible, fiercely-independent Borderers, and stern, moralizing, hyper-conformist Puritans. Many of our oldest and most powerful institutions were built by the latter — Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all began as Calvinist seminaries (the first two by Congregationalist Puritans, the third by "New Light" Presbyterians). There's a lot of diversity, a lost of incompatible cultural trends and forces, brought into ever-increasing contact, with ever-increasing tensions.

About 1 in 3 children will be the subject of a CPS investigation at some point: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283534

I'm only a few paragraphs in and already getting strong "we wrote the conclusion first" vibes.

The repeated refences to disparate impacts and constant waffling between "children referred to CPS as infants", "children referred to CPS multiple times", and "all children referred" strike me as massive red-flags.

Without diving deeper into the raw data I bet that the actual situation on the ground is something like this; Close to 30% of all kids will be referred at least once in their lives. For most of kids who get referred it happens only once and it ends up going nowhere. However If MeeMaw is callin' cause no-good baby-daddy just got released from prison, or her daughter's off the wagon, and she's worried about the baby. The odds say that MeeMaw has called CPS before, and the probability of this referral going somewhere is much higher.

The conclusion of course is that CPS is racist and should stop trying to protect underclass children

Without diving deeper into the raw data I bet that the actual situation on the ground is something like this; Close to 30% of all kids will be referred at least once in their lives.

We have now been referred to social services twice, both routine and in one case leading to a 15-minute home visit and a no-action letter, and in the other case to literally nothing at all. Plenty of mandatory reporters consider "Toddler with head injury of unclear origin" to be a mandatory report. It wouldn't surprise me if 30% of all kids get this kind of routine referral - and apart from the waste of CPS resources I don't see it as a problem.

The problem is where CPS see "free range 7-year old" as the kind of referral that needs more than a no-action letter.

It also doesn't matter; my experience with parents (who actually love their kids) is that they'll do anything to avoid the risk of losing them.

Having it happen just once is enough for parents to rule out the risk forever.

Every HOA will have at least one HOA Karen. Big HOAs (and the US has some with over 100,000 residents) will have a certain density of them, sufficient to file complaints if you don't cut your grass or paint your mailbox the wrong color or whatever.

Not sure about the CPS people.

What's stopping him from letting his kids be free range ? The restrictions feel self-imposed.

The classic viral image showing children's shrinking ranges comes from this Daily Mail article in 2007. The article seems to agree, and to make a good case for, the idea that the increasing restrictions are unnecessarily self-imposed by parents. I mostly agreed at the time. It wasn't until years later that I saw that map again and did a double-take at the place names...

It wasn't until years later that I saw that map again and did a double-take at the place names...

You're not the only one to Notice that.

Thank you! I probably saw the reference in that very post and then forgot that I had.

What's stopping him from letting his kids be free range ? The restrictions feel self-imposed.

It's a different world man. I checked the FBI crime statistics, and in my home town, when I was allowed to bike 30 minutes as google map says, probably 60 minutes as a kid bikes, down the bike path on the parkway to the nearest shopping center for a slushy, the murder rate in my county was 0-1 per year. Entirely domestics. In the year 2025 it's closer to 50, and lots of gang deaths. To say nothing of other random tragedies caused by associated rises in drunk driving, drug availability, and the general third worldification of my homeland. In 30 years we went from random murder literally not being a thing that ever happened where I lived, to constant low level gang violence.

I get the arguments about per capita. But I think when it comes to the loss of quality of life due to violent crime, the incidents per 100,000 residents matters a lot less than the proximity to incidents. If I'm in a crowd of 100 that gets randomly fired into, versus being in a crowd of 100,000 that random gets fired into, I sincerely doubt my perception and attendant stress levels will be much different between the two. I'm thinking "I could have been killed!" either way.

And so it goes with our kids. When I was a child, it was major news when a neighbor's child wondered off and drowned in a lake. A tragedy the likes of which hadn't been seen in decades in our town. Now teenagers show up dismembered in public parks and it's a Tuesday.

It's a different world man. I checked the FBI crime statistics, and in my home town, when I was allowed to bike 30 minutes as google map says, probably 60 minutes as a kid bikes, down the bike path on the parkway to the nearest shopping center for a slushy, the murder rate in my county was 0-1 per year. Entirely domestics. In the year 2025 it's closer to 50, and lots of gang deaths.

I'm really baffled as to where you grew up, Petersburg? As far as my experiences in Virginia, it's overwhelmingly been one of gentrification - admittedly limited to NoVA and Richmond. I can't speak to Norfolk or Charlottesville. In DC, the majority of the city is unaffordable to anyone but wealthy professionals and the politicos, with the poors being pushed across the Anacostia. H street is a filthy den of hipsters (or may have progressed to a fully upscale neighborhood since I left, I don't know) and you have to go pretty far to the northeast to get anywhere grungy. NoVA is a gleaming mass of towers full of consultants milking the feds (where you possibly work making useless software?) and I'm not even sure how far you have to drive outside the city before you stop seeing Mcmansions and nice suburbs.

I don't know Richmond as well but The Fan and Jackson Ward both gentrified pretty heavily. Nice downtown core, UVA seems to be metastasizing, lots of mcmansions and farmers markets.

Are you confident that your quiet suburbia was invaded by illegals rather than most of the successful, law-abiding people being siphoned off by the gentrifying cities? Brain drain to the city cores will hollow out the suburbs and revitalize the downtowns which seems to be what's happening (although I haven't noticed the apocalyptic degradation of the suburbs you write about extensively). It's surprising that I lived in fairly similar areas to you without ever hearing about Teen Dismemberment Tuesdays. Why do you think we had such different experiences?

I can only speak to one part of this, but you don't have to go far in northeast DC to get grungy - you just have to walk around. There are basically two patterns of American urban dysfunction: two sides of the tracks, and block-by-block neighbourhoods. As an example, Chicago is almost entirely side-of-the-tracks, and modern NYC is almost entirely block-by-block. NE DC, you'll be walking through a street of fancy townhomes with Little Free Libraries for five minutes, then you'll be in the hood for three minutes, then you'll be on a nice block again but walking slow because the guy in front of you is cracked out of his head and you don't want to pass him, then you're properly back in In This House We Believe land, then rinse and repeat.

I've been thinking about this as well and my money is on @WhiningCoil having grown up somewhere around Woodbridge. Maybe just the right part of Fairfax County (Herndon, Springfield).

I also generally agree with his characterization of the changes over the last 20 - 30 years, although with a little less blackpilling.

  1. The big MS-13 story from back in the day was the 2005 murder of Brenda Paz.. A stabbed and dismembered teenage girl left on the banks of the Shenandoah was quite shocking for Virginia. That it wasn't some sort of crime of passion or schizo Green River Killer psycho, but cold and calculated gang retribution was infuriating.
  2. And it's continuing to this day. Note how, in that case, the victim was picked up in Reston, which has a median income of over $150,000 and boasts more > $1 million homes than < $1 million homes.

So, @WhiningCoil is right in that a lack of awareness is not a lack of evidence. My own semi-conspiratorial impression is that both Farifax County and Arlington County police know that most of their calls to the well to do parts of those areas will be for domestic stuff, they over patrol in the immigrant heavy parts of the counties with the clear message of; "you guys can fuck around with each other as much as you want, but if you make trouble for John Q. Taxpayer, we will destroy you."

There's also degeneration at the top. There was a time when Tysons Corner and Northern Arlington had mom and pop shops and restaurants. Local High Schools would host fundraisers and other events at these places. There were weird tarot shops that may have been mild drug fronts and, according to urban legend, classy rub-n-tug joints. You know, the things that make a small town work.

To say that NoVA is now corporatized is an understatement. It's internationally hypercorporatized. If you walk through Tysons II on any given day, perhaps on your way to drinks at the Ritz-Carlton, you will see a Saudi woman in full Burqa (fully face covered except for the ninja-slit) toting bags from luxury stores with doormen in $5000 suits. If you walk through Clarendon on a Friday or Saturday night you will see G-Wagons and Ferraris parked outside of the "clubs" there. How can this be? This isn't Vegas, LA, New York. This is a still heavily milquetoast white people suburbia full of, yes, "consultants" and political operatives who mostly make money siphoning off their portion of The Federal Trillions. Real deal finance isn't there, there is no celebrity entertainment industry, "venture" and "tech" exist but in silly reinvent-the-consulting wheel ways that would make actual Silicon Valley denizens laugh (which is saying something).

Less than two hours away you have multiple counties to the west and south that went for Trump 70/30 or better. You have the border with West Virginia (and not just the eastern pandhandle which is just extended NoVA). You have the area around Thurmont and Frederick Maryland, known as a one of the last super stronghold of the KKK. 90 minutes south on I-95 you have Quantico, VA, Headquarters of the USMC and the major FBI training center.

In 2018, Washington and Lee High School, in Arlington, VA, renamed itself (well, the schoolboard did) to "Washington and Liberty" High School. I guess Lee was removed because he was the loser slave owner instead of the winner one.

While I can't quite bring myself to the level of "intentional race replacement" that @WhinginCoil seems to have signed on to, I do think this is what it looks like when a society lets suicidal empathy and degenerative "inclusivity" run amok. It starts simple enough with an "authentic" arepas restaurant or food truck opening up. What's the harm? It ends, years later, with the high priestesses beginning the government backed erasure of history that displeases them.

If you walk through Clarendon on a Friday or Saturday night you will see G-Wagons and Ferraris parked outside of the "clubs" there. How can this be? This isn't Vegas, LA, New York. This is a still heavily milquetoast white people suburbia full of, yes, "consultants" and political operatives who mostly make money siphoning off their portion of The Federal Trillions. Real deal finance isn't there

Capital One employees catching strays.

It is interesting how despite being the capital city of the US, DC and its surrounding areas are fairly devoid of private sector white-collar jobs, especially in Tech, Finance, generic corporate roles. It's often usurped by cities and their surrounding areas such as NYC, SF, LAX, CHI, sometimes even more minor ones like Boston, Greenwich, Seattle, etc.

Greater DC has an urban area population of 5.2 million vs 9.8 million for London and something similar for Paris (the French don't publish urban area population estimates). Metropolitan area population (defined by commuting patterns) is 6 million for DC, 13 million for Paris, and 15 million for London. And DC hosts a bigger, richer government and so has more government and government-adjacent jobs.

There just aren't the people to staff another industry in DC. The US is a big enough country that (apart from NYC, which does everything except government) its major cities are functionally specialised.

It is interesting how despite being the capital city of the US, DC and its surrounding areas are fairly devoid of private sector white-collar jobs, especially in Tech, Finance, or even generic corporate jobs.

Plenty of (nominally private-sector) defense-related white collar jobs though. There's a whole mostly-separate tech sector there, for instance. Aside from that, I guess there's Marriott. There's probably still some truly private telecom stuff.

Why do you think we had such different experiences?

It's remarkable the things you can be oblivious to if your news diet doesn't tell you. Then one day your coworker and their mother are murdered in their apartment (in one of the gentrified parts of town) in a gang killing. At least, that's how my wife's illusions were shattered.

My local news bends over backwards to not cover crime. Itty bitty little articles, no photos of perps, they usually even decline to provide descriptions of the suspect, though they'll mention the police have released one and if anybody has seen them to call. Never makes their front page either, you have to specifically go to this little "Crime" section that has the feel of a subsection they are just about ready to delete entirely. Sometimes a particularly heinous crime will get some attention on the regional subreddit, but usually posts about crime just get deleted because reddit and agenda pushing.

So yeah, I don't really take your lack of noticing as a proof of absence. You and a million like you.

I have a general yardstick on risk. The US has always had high rates of innocents being killed in car accidents. Being a pedestrian and driving cars are base levels of risk taken on by most Americans without much thought. If someone is safer a daily commute or crossing the street, then it is safe enough for me.

The rates of school shootings, domestic terror attacks and freak homicides are much much lower than death by car or suicide. (The 2 main sources of death for young kids). Compared to a few decades ago, kids are doing fewer drugs, cars are safer and tech has made freak accidents easier to respond to.

I worry that the fears may be overblown. Safetyist neuroticism. It's a meme, but men used to fight wars and die in trenches. The US is so much safer today than before.

People don't live in amorphous clouds of statistics. They live in particular locations and can watch those places actively get worse year over year even if national stats show otherwise (because other places are actually improving or because the stats are gamed). You couldn't pay me to raise kids in the town I grew up in even though for most of its history (including the first half of my own life) it was a fine place to live.

People's eyes deceive them. Cars and suicide risk have remained high across all neighborhoods, safe ones or otherwise. The statistics match my anecdotes. I know multiple people who have died from car accidents and suicides. I don't know anyone who has been gunned down or stabbed in a random mugging. Statistics are useful because the country has a history of collective hysteria around hoaxes like killer clowns and child kidnapping vans.

To be fair to you, neighborhoods and cities go through boom-bust cycles. So yes, some places will get worse. But, the US is not uniformly getting worse.

As of 2026, it is much easier to keep your kids safe. With find-my functionality, it is easy for parents to ensure their kids stay within safe geographic boundaries. Ring cameras allow you to leave you kids at home, fully monitored. Uber allows them to go from point A->B safely. Technically, it should be easier to let kids be independent. But, safetyism leads to the opposite problem.

urban design rant incoming

I've long believed that malls replaced all acceptable public-places in post-war America. When malls inevitably collapsed, the only safe low-supervision space was lost. IMO, Levittown style suburbs (post war suburbia) are fundamentally flawed. They eliminate all the benefits of safety in numbers. They break up common playgrounds into tiny yards, so kids have to go further away to play real games instead of playing within walking distance of home. They put cars on the critical path of everything, increasing the number of interactions that kids need to have with said cars. It's a lose-lose-lose.

I am not anti-suburbs. In fact, the US created some of the prettiest and most effective suburbs before personal cars and Levittown. Bungalow courts in LA and SD allowed families to have SFH and yards, but pooled the yards together. This allowed multiple parents to supervise the kids from the home and gave the kids a larger playground to work with. The inner courtyard also naturally cages the kids off from the road, making it unlikely that they run into traffic to collect a stray ball. This is safety by the very nature of the urban design itself. Courtyard housing is the standard way of doing this in Europe, beloved college towns and pre-war USA.

I know I am not being completely fair. Cul-de-sac style suburbs are really artificial barriers that allowed whites to self-segregate better. Now that inner city crime isn't as big a deal, the natural defense provided by the maze like structure of a levittown style suburb appears redundant to my eyes. The low density of suburbs also wouldn't have been an issue if the primary residents were young, couples had multiple children and all socializing required humans to be outdoors. In 2026, socialization is digital, people have fewer kids and suburban couples are older. These same lonely suburbs were probably bustling with social activity back during the baby boom.

But that is not a good excuse. Even during the baby boom, designers should have seen that this would not last. The success of the post-war suburb was based on a ton of unlikely things going right all at once. Baby boom Americans may have been the only generation anywhere where all the unlikely things went right. Inevitably, suburbs began giving under the weight of their shaky foundations. Parents complain that the suburbs aren't what they used to be. But really, suburbs were never going to be what they used to be. Post war America was a lightning in a bottle situation and that era is never coming back. Moreover, if they'd just let suburbs abide by design principles that'd been around for 100s of years , then suburbs would have been more resilient to the shocks that come from changing circumstances associated with changing generations.

Levittown style suburbs are unitaskers. They were good for one thing and they served their purpose. I like classic suburbs styles like Courtyards, Bungalow courts and street car suburb style designs because they're Lindy for a reason. I believe they will be able to restore some degree of lost independence to kids and lost peace of mind back to parents.

I agree with your general point, but his kids are too young to play outside unsupervised(they’ll run into the street).

It's just bait. Most kids aren't that enjoyable for most adults to interact with, plenty of exceptions of course. You're not supposed to say it because society has a guilt complex over how anti-natal we are. Here's the basic truth, so long as the kids are fed, clothed and housed reasonably well, not sexually or physically abused, the parents have done their job. Decent parenting isn't this crazy life-destroying thing that people make it out to be as if "tiger momming" was a good idea. You don't have to spend thirty-six hours a day enriching your kid. All that bullshit is posturing for other parents, not for the kids.

Probably prudent to also mention his follow-up tweet, where he acknowledges the criticisms he's been getting and commits to self-improvement.

Seems to be a lot of people who are having their first rodeo with Murphy. This sort of autismal "brutal self-honesty" stuff has always been his "thing".

if I have to watch them or entertain them for more than about 10 minutes my blood starts to boil

Why would he think this the main thing to be doing with his kids?

He has, it looks like, a four year old and a toddler. The space the kids and he are in should be relatively child friendly, and then the kids need to be taught not to mess with the outlets or whatever isn't. Four year old and toddler is a bit annoying, because the four year old talks much better than the toddler, making mutual play a bit difficult, but they can still basically interact with each other. They will, of course, need things, but getting food and drinks for the kids every couple of hours and helping them when they need it isn't fundamentally "unproductive."

Admittedly, I do sometimes feel deep focus deprivation while raising three kids and working at an elementary school. but that's the gig.

It's 9 AM this morning, Saturday, January 3. It's a sunny, warm day here in Austin, and my four-year-old son is begging me to play catch in the street. I was drinking coffee, still waking up, so I didn’t really feel like it, but at this age his desire to play is insatiable. He begged and begged, so I conceded, and with a smile.

He can just say no. It's alright to say no to things that would be good for the kids and make himself feel like a good father, if the alternative is resenting said kids.

I like Zvi's take on this. He comes across as a prickly introvert who is glad the he has a wife ad kids, but who thinks it's bonkers that people are pressuring people like him to actively supervise their children all the time, 24/7, and that this is literally causing people not to have children at all. That seems very likely. Sometimes I get along with my kids, sometimes I don't. I don't like playing ball, and never have, that's what school recess is for. I'd be in favor of more recess time for lower elementary, for the kids to throw balls around. If the man's wife feels similarly, the child can be in pre-K, with other kids who want to play.

I do like watching them doing other things, my six year old has taken to cutting out hundreds of tiny books, and making them tiny covers, and tiny paper accessories for her dolls. Even the one year old is kind of amusing to watch, he's been trying out different amusing stretches lately and occasionally instigating chase with me. But if they're nagging about something, even something that would otherwise be good, we have to forcefully reject the nagging, this account of trying to enjoy his coffee, getting nagged at, then eventually giving in and rejecting it is bad. He shouldn't do that. Play ball when the child hasn't nagged you into it.

Some things I've read suggest that American city child raising styles have become absolutely bonkers lately in respect to "gentle parenting," never forcefully rejecting things like nagging or dysregulated outbursts, and this is bad. It's work either way, but in the medium run he probably is setting himself up for bad times if he practices the ignore then feel guilty then give in strategy.

Four year old and toddler is a bit annoying, because the four year old talks much better than the toddler, making mutual play a bit difficult

My then-2-year-old daughter got so upset once when she was trying to play with her younger cousin: "[Cousin's name] not listening to me!!!" "Honey, she's 1. She barely understands you." It was short-lived frustration, though.

I think the fact that he plays with his kid 10-20 minutes a day and does it with a smile even though it's driving him crazy inside makes him a good dad. He's crushing it, even.

Small kids are inane. Playing with them is not that fun. That's okay. It's a familial relationship, not a friendship.

Unlike mom, dad's body is not producing MDMA every time he looks into his kid's adorable face. He has to do this shit without a chemical buffer. He is working harder at this than mom is.

I agree this is an unhinged thing to post under his own name. This is a better discussion to have with his therapist, who hears this shit 100x a week and could give him much more constructive feedback.

This is only very lightly related, but I've actually talked to Justin Murphy in another context: In 2021 he tried to set up an arranged marriage agency in which he and his partner would receive profiles and information, and then try to pair people up with each other. The Tweet below describes his process; it was also discussed in an UnHerd article. The site was arrangedmarriages.co; looks like it's not up anymore.

https://x.com/jmrphy/status/1697354879482630370

I was single in 2021 and actually signed up for this. I then had a couple of calls with him and a lady that was working with him on it, but it didn't lead anywhere - I never got paired. Their process didn't seem to be very effective in finding out what the involved people were like and what they valued. Still, I though it was a cool idea at the time, in the same vein as date-me docs etc. - kind of cringe at first glance, very not Lindy, but I thought it was neat that someone was trying something different to fix a part of modern life that seems to only get worse and worse. (I later got married by just meeting a local gal and dating her normally.)

He also runs this other entity called otherlife.co, which is a sort of private study-the-classics forum: "the Other Life community [will] focus on reading the greatest works, deepening our reading and writing, and continue cultivating genuine high-signal exchange across online and IRL events. I remember it was taking off around the same time as Urbit and other similar things. It appears he's had some modest success with that.

Anyway I certainly don't share his attitude about kids and productivity, although I imagine it's just a "lottery of the talents" thing - I have a lot of fun with kids, and outside of my 9-to-5 I'm not trying to change the world especially. But I did find him to be an earnest person who was doing his best, and I read the tweet in the OP as being more of an honest, "I don't think I'm supposed to feel this way, but I do, and I feel bad about it." I felt bad that he got piled onto, because I think he's sincerely trying to grapple with the way a lot of modern techie people are acculturated with regards to what their working lives are supposed to be.

I'm a parent of three youngish kids, my initial reaction is sort of "eh ya I get it"

Not that I really agree with them. But kids are a radically different gear speed than career.

All the instincts that probably serve very well in a career, like caring about time / productivity / efficiency are negatives when it comes to being around kids.

Kids eat slow, they do things slowly, they get distracted easily, their play isn't working towards anything specific, etc. At a young age their accomplishments are existence and survival.

It's tempting to say that the dad should learn how to slow down and get to the level of his kids. But I think that's his decision to make, and there will be trade-offs. He might get worse at his current job role. And if it's bad enough he will lose the position and resent the kid for it. The kids will speed up eventually so he will miss their younger years as a father, but being bored with them as toddlers doesn't mean being bored with them as school age kids.

Yeah idk if he's the sole breadwinner for the family, if he was and approached it from that angle I'd probably be more sympathetic.

I don't have great instincts for a career myself so... I find it hard to relate ahaha.

So, I agree with (I think) Matt Walsh who said basically:

  1. Why are you anxiety-ing about how you feel about doing something? If it’s good to do, do it.

  2. Why are you vomiting this out in public / on twitter?

Moreover, I assume this is almost certainly a case of poorly trained attention span / boredom tolerance from someone who’s gooned their dopamine with the internet. This is just doing the work of basic conditioning.

Regardless of the kid aspect, if you can’t tolerate more than 10 minutes doing something boring and are in your head about whether it’s appropriately fun, you need to fix this about yourself.

Overall, the idea of over factoring in whether something is good to be doing or virtuous with how much one enjoys it is painfully cringe and just a bad life perspective. Therapizing about it on the internet to strangers is downstream of this.

Whether he needs to be spending more time with his kids and how he ought to be feeling about it, is all very far removed from these more immediate problems of basic task discipline

Regardless of the kid aspect, if you can’t tolerate more than 10 minutes doing something boring and are in your head about whether it’s appropriately fun, you need to fix this about yourself.

IMO his cry for help is about how he feels guilt that he doesn't find it fun. He sees it as a chore and it's breaking his heart.

He sees mom doing it without any sign of remorse. He feels fortunate that he has more time than dads of yesterday to spend with his kid, and here he is feeling unfulfilled by it.

Well, yeah it's a chore. Do you think every mother is singing songs of joy while cleaning up toddler mess for the umpteenth time?

Some things you have to do because they have to be done, and that doesn't mean it's always fun and joy. Parenting is hard. This is the flip side of all the talk about "what can we do to make people have more kids?" While women may naturally be more amenable to looking after children, this is the reality of it: it's hard work. Fathers have to share in it as much as they can, otherwise you will not - no matter how many rights you strip away from women - get that elevated TFR so many solutions on here have been posted about.

Welcome to parenting: it's a job. If you want four kids, you can't dump it all on your wife, you have to take some share as well. And it's not going to be fun and laughter and bliss every moment.

I think you're missing the substance of his post.

He's not complaining about the responsibility of being a father. He's specifically saying he looks at his precious little boy in the face who just wants to play with him and he is not fulfilled by it and it makes him feel like a bad father.

He just doesn't know that most fathers consider small kids kind of inane and that we have to just smile and think about the bigger picture. It's pretty normal, even though in polite company and pop culture nobody really says so.

And not only is this normal but his way of managing it is above average! I would have been thrilled if my dad had spent 10 to 20 minutes a wee month playing with me let alone per day! I'd be very surprised if most of the fathers sneering at him actually spent that much time per day playing with their kids.

I mean, I'm glad he wants to be an involved father. I suppose I'm just surprised an intelligent guy doesn't know, or had nobody tell him, that parenthood is a slog. You may love your kids and still be delighted to hand them over to Granny or the day care so you get a few hours to yourself. You won't always feel like rainbows and sunshine when they want to play with you or want your attention.

The important part is not "I should be spending X hours a day with them", the important part is "Can I put on my big boy (or big girl) pants and take care of them even when all I want is to go off by myself?"

Kids don't need 100% focussed attention from the parent all the time, just being in the room and they are playing with their own stuff while you keep an eye on them but do your own work is enough. Neglect is the thing that does damage; Dad or Mom brushes you off and can't be bothered ever to pay attention to your game or your question or your stunning kindergarten finger painting. Even half-assed attention is better than nothing there.

So if he's at least half-assing it, good job!

Yeah I tend to agree with this. I personally find it useful and important to think about and focus on internal states more than the norm, but it's easy to go overboard and pathologize any discomfort as a problem that needs to be solved.

To be clear, I do think it's useful to reflect on internal states, and I do think Matt's bravado is performatively overstated.

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