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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27571 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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We evolved to have children not to enjoy children. It's not like the vast majority of people, at least not women, for the past million years had much of a choice in reproducing or not. The fact that rich people in every society in history offload as much of the hard work of child-rearing as possible onto servants strikes me as a very strong indicator that most people don't actually enjoy raising kids that much.

People like playing and cuddling with kids, and if those people are women they also like dressing them up in cute outfits and taking pictures of them to post on instagram. People do not like disciplining kids, making them eat their vegetables, waking up in the middle of the night to take care of them, changing their diapers, etc. For obvious reasons for the vast majority of the population the two categories go together, but I think that the first category makes people happier than the second category annoys them.

waking up in the middle of the night to take care of them

This can be rough, but when you successfully soothe them and get them to sleep again, it feels really good. Compare the popularity of Dark Souls; there's something to be said for succeeding at a challenge.

changing their diapers

This is so little trouble it's barely worth the mention.

This is so little trouble it's barely worth the mention.

It does seem like it's going to be a massive deal before you've done it though.

Only to PMC women who are afraid of dirt. Men are only afraid of it to the extent that they think it is emasculating. Traditional elite women learned to handle filth by mucking out stables as teenagers. (Old money will buy their daughter a pony, but never hire a groom for her). And working class women don't seem to have a problem with it either.

Aren't we talking about on the same level as making them eat vegetables or waking up at night to look after them? My point is about expectation childless people have of looking after kids vs the reality as understood by parents - expecting parents I talk to often seem to expect every second diaper change to look like tequila night at the burrito barn.

Ever mucked out stables and barns? Horse, cow and chicken shit is not even close to as disgusting and rank as human shit. Pig is the only kind that is even in the same zip code.

There's also the element of the distribution of tasks not being equal in many relationships; trading off 50-50 is one thing but being the designated shit cleaner for years on end is a bit much. Thankfully Millennials seem much more fair about dividing up unpleasant tasks like that, compared to the stats on single digit percentages of baby boomer men having ever changed a diaper.

Baby poop really isn't that bad. Much smaller quantities and probably much less fragrance in general. This may depend on the diet. We tend to feed babies very simple dishes like pureed vegetables, pasta, rice, cut fruits, and a lot of dairy (milk and yogurt). It may get more pungent if they eat garlic, onions, eggs, meats... It smells so little sometimes that you don't even notice it until you actually take off the diaper.

I find the biggest inconvenience to be the dirtiness of it, having to quickly dispose of a very full diaper before somebody decides to play with it and stick it on clothes or carpet. Also wiggly babies that will not let you tie them up, but eventually they calm down.

By the time it starts getting more significant, you should have them potty-trained (2-3 years old).

I agree diaper changing is no big deal. Waking up in the middle of the night during the newborn stage is just awful. My littlest is two and I still haven't recovered from sleep deprivation.

I stay up pretty late by nature (generally to 2 or 3am), and my wife has done most of the nighttime wakeups when I wasn't already awake. Taking it in shifts, we mostly get by, but there have been a couple nights where at 4:30am, the baby's wide awake and cooing, and I want to cry... but holding them while they sleep is incredibly nice. My kiddo being especially wiggly and refusing to cuddle under most circumstances is probably also part of it.

The point was throwing out the ‘work’ part in contrast to the ‘fun’ part.

sorry, was mostly reacting to the contrast between my own perceptions going in, and my perceptions now that I've had direct experience...

I can see how you’d react that way- and your point about getting them to go to sleep was genuinely a valuable contribution.

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