For the past week my girlfriend’s sister has been visiting us along with her 1.5 year old baby. The baby is very cute and I’ve really enjoyed some of my time with her, but I’ve also found it pretty overwhelming and chaotic at times. Overall it’s made me more confident that I don’t want kids.
It’s also made me think that it’d make a ton of sense for someone who does want kids to spend a week or so babysitting in order to test help test that assumption.
It seems hard to be confident that you do in fact want kids.
Anecdotally I feel like there are a fair amount of examples of people who have kids and end up regretting it, at least to a meaningful degree.
Babysitting for a week is a relatively cheap test.
The decision to have kids isn’t really a reversible one (once they’re born; most of the time).
Perhaps this makes more sense when you think about it more in the abstract. Like if you want to make a decision that is very, very important, hard to be confident about, not really reversible, and relatively cheap to test, it makes sense to test it.
I suppose finding someone to babysit for a week might be hard. The parents would need to trust you. So I guess ideally you’d be able to babysit for a family member or close friend. If that isn’t possible, maybe a friend of a friend. Or a coworker.
If none of that works, I’m thinking something like Care.com. I suppose people hire caregivers on platforms like those when they go on vacation and stuff. It might be a little tough since you presumably don’t have experience or a reputation as a caregiver, but professional caregivers manage to overcome this 0-to-1 problem and boostrap, so my guess is that with a little brainstorming and hustle, someone who wants to spend a week babysitting will find a way to do so.
>> Anecdotally I feel like there are a fair amount of examples of people who have kids and end up regretting it, at least to a meaningful degree.
The social desirability bias against saying one regrets having kids is very intense. So although I would very much not say that the following observation is anything but a highly biased sample: I personally have never met a person regretting having children in real life. I’ve heard parents complain for sure—true regrets seem to be rare.
Yeah, the fact that it is so difficult to acknowledge such regret definitely makes hard to get good data. Personally, for people I know, I’m aware of a handful of examples of true regret, and then there’s another handful where I don’t know for sure but suspect it.
One thing to take into account is other peoples’ kids vs. your kid. It seems like a lot of people like their own kids in particular, not kids in general. Your test only checks how you feel about kids in general.
Since part of this is genetic, it would be interesting to hear how your girlfriend felt about taking care of her sister’s kids (and if you have any close relatives with kids, an experiment taking care of them might be an interesting data point).
Although I agree with you that if you don’t think your want kids and all of the evidence points against you wanting kids, then not having kids is a good plan.
Yes. Babies are cute but also require a lot of stressful work. When they are your babies, an important part of the entire experience is knowing that this shall pass and that it is a necessary step towards having older children, which are less stressful. You also get some pleasure from watching the child grow up and gain skills, which won’t happen much in a week.
Yeah that makes sense about other people’s kids vs your own kids. My thoughts on this are similar to my thoughts about Justis’ point about how having kids is likely to transform you: it’s probably true that there’s a difference but it’s also probably true that the difference isn’t large enough such that babysitting is unlikely to be helpful.
As a data point I was extremely confident I wanted kids, and didn’t especially vibe with most babies/never had changed a diaper before my kid was born, and my confident prediction, so far, was if anything an underestimate. I doubt a week of babysitting would have changed my intent whatsoever, but it would probably have been stressful and not that fun.
Sure, some of those. But also I just expected parenthood to change me a bunch to be better suited to it. Like, it’s a challenge such that rising to it transforms you. With babysitting you’re just skipping to a random bit pretty far into the process, not already having been transformed.
Gotcha. That makes sense that this transformation should be factored in. However, it still feels to me like despite the possibility of transformation, babysitting would still likely be useful.
As an example, today I was babysitting while my girlfriend and her sister went out. The baby was eating lunch and got food everywhere, including her hair. And when I tried to clean it she’d cry and push me away. Before this I knew in principle that this sort of thing happens but I didn’t realize how overwhelming and stressful I personally would find it.
As another example, I’ve been feeling anxious that the baby will get sick or hurt under my watch. On Friday I had her on my lap during a work call. She was holding my mousepad in front of her face as if she was camera shy which was cute. Then there was a point where I spoke for 30 seconds or so. During this time I lost track of what the baby was doing. Turns out she was eating the gel for the hand rest part of the mousepad! There’s been a handful of similar situations where a moment of losing focus lead to her doing something potentially harmful. Before this week I didn’t understand how frequently this sort of thing happens or how anxious it’d make me feel.
So then, unless you have a very high degree of confidence that your transformation would be large enough to kinda offset any of these potential learnings, it seems to me like babysitting would be pretty useful. Not perfect or definitive of course, but useful.
Furthermore, it seems tough to be so confident in this transformation. If you’re a new parent it’s not something you have direct experience with. It’s a unique enough thing where I feel like it’s hard to find a good reference class, in terms of similar things you’ve personally experienced in your life. For looking at the reference class of other parents I’m not aware of good data here and I’d expect there to be a fair amount of individual differences. Affective forecasting in general is often tough. High confidence in general is often tough.
One thing is, babies very gradually get harder in exactly the way you describe! Like, at first by default they breastfeed, and don’t have teeth, which is at the very least highly instinctive to learn. Then they eat a tiiiny bit of solid food, like a bite or two once a day, to train you. So you have gotten way stronger at “baby eating challenges” by the time the baby can e.g. throw food. Likewise they’ll very rarely try to put stuff in their mouths early on, then really gradually more and more, so you hone that instinct too. Even diapers don’t smell bad the first couple of months! Hard to overestimate the effects of the extremely instinct compliant learning curve.
I think you can be quite confident in a parental transformation. Parents routinely fall in love with their babies, either immediately, or over the first few weeks or months. Increased brain plasticity during pregnancy and early parenthood is very common. If you know your genetic parents, you can check with them how their parental transformation went as a baseline.
I also agree with you that prior experiences with children (of all ages) are very informative. Ideally you combine the sources of information to make a better combined prediction.
Thesis: I will fall in love with my baby.
Antithesis: I find crying babies overwhelming. Babies cry a lot.
Synthesis: comforting my crying baby will be doing something overwhelming for someone I love.
That synthesis might or might not sound like a good time, but I think it’s more predictive than either perspective alone. Also, some people don’t want to be transformed, so it’s worth considering in both directions.
Getting more experience that might inform what you what sounds like a generally sound idea, but isn’t the “baby” stage only like 5% of whole process of raising a child? If you don’t like taking care of babies that doesn’t mean that you overall don’t want kids, right?
I think the baby stage is much more than 5% of the total hours that parents spend directly interacting with their kids. My cached memory of when I did a fermi estimate of this is that, if you’re an UMC American, 25% of the hours you spend directly interacting with your kid are in the first 2.5 years, half in the first 6 years, 75% in the first 12 years (and 90%+ before they turn 18).
Great point. Somehow that got lost on me. I agree that the “baby” part seems short enough where it often won’t actually be a deal breaker. I also think it’d probably make sense to try to get some experience with the other stages as well.
There’s actually a nonzero amount of skill involved in child care, especially for younger children. If you have no experience and you’re dumped into it, you’re probably going to feel overwhelmed. You’re also probably going to do a bad job. You’re unlikely to kill the kid, but you could very well give the kid a really bad week. I would have questions about a parent who offered their child up for that kind of “experiment”.
That makes sense. So I guess it’d probably be good to read a book or two on childcare and maybe get some experience doing something lower stakes like babysitting for a night at a time first.
From there it seems to me like a) you’d be able to find someone to let you babysit for a week and b) you’d have enough knowledge and experience such that the experiment would provide useful information. What do you think?
Going from zero to a week is a bad idea, but it would be fine to start with supervised time, move on to babysitting for an evening, then to a sleepover, and go from there. Repeat for a few nights.
There is definitely skill involved—I couldn’t be a daycare teacher. But those people are working multiple children. The job is much easier with a 1:1 child:adult ratio.
I think babysitting a baby is not very informative about whether you would enjoy having kids. Having a kid is first and foremost about having the deepest and most meaningful emotional connection of your life.
Take that away and you just don’t have a sensible test run. It’s like finding out whether you like hiking by going up and down the stairs of your apartment building all morning.
Having kids is like having parents, except the emotional connection is stronger in the other direction. Would you rather have grown up in an orphanage if that had meant more time for your hobbies and other goals?
For the past week my girlfriend’s sister has been visiting us along with her 1.5 year old baby. The baby is very cute and I’ve really enjoyed some of my time with her, but I’ve also found it pretty overwhelming and chaotic at times. Overall it’s made me more confident that I don’t want kids.
It’s also made me think that it’d make a ton of sense for someone who does want kids to spend a week or so babysitting in order to
testhelp test that assumption.It seems hard to be confident that you do in fact want kids.
Anecdotally I feel like there are a fair amount of examples of people who have kids and end up regretting it, at least to a meaningful degree.
Babysitting for a week is a relatively cheap test.
The decision to have kids isn’t really a reversible one (once they’re born; most of the time).
Perhaps this makes more sense when you think about it more in the abstract. Like if you want to make a decision that is very, very important, hard to be confident about, not really reversible, and relatively cheap to test, it makes sense to test it.
I suppose finding someone to babysit for a week might be hard. The parents would need to trust you. So I guess ideally you’d be able to babysit for a family member or close friend. If that isn’t possible, maybe a friend of a friend. Or a coworker.
If none of that works, I’m thinking something like Care.com. I suppose people hire caregivers on platforms like those when they go on vacation and stuff. It might be a little tough since you presumably don’t have experience or a reputation as a caregiver, but professional caregivers manage to overcome this 0-to-1 problem and boostrap, so my guess is that with a little brainstorming and hustle, someone who wants to spend a week babysitting will find a way to do so.
>> Anecdotally I feel like there are a fair amount of examples of people who have kids and end up regretting it, at least to a meaningful degree.
The social desirability bias against saying one regrets having kids is very intense. So although I would very much not say that the following observation is anything but a highly biased sample: I personally have never met a person regretting having children in real life. I’ve heard parents complain for sure—true regrets seem to be rare.
Yeah, the fact that it is so difficult to acknowledge such regret definitely makes hard to get good data. Personally, for people I know, I’m aware of a handful of examples of true regret, and then there’s another handful where I don’t know for sure but suspect it.
One thing to take into account is other peoples’ kids vs. your kid. It seems like a lot of people like their own kids in particular, not kids in general. Your test only checks how you feel about kids in general.
Since part of this is genetic, it would be interesting to hear how your girlfriend felt about taking care of her sister’s kids (and if you have any close relatives with kids, an experiment taking care of them might be an interesting data point).
Although I agree with you that if you don’t think your want kids and all of the evidence points against you wanting kids, then not having kids is a good plan.
Yes. Babies are cute but also require a lot of stressful work. When they are your babies, an important part of the entire experience is knowing that this shall pass and that it is a necessary step towards having older children, which are less stressful. You also get some pleasure from watching the child grow up and gain skills, which won’t happen much in a week.
Yeah that makes sense about other people’s kids vs your own kids. My thoughts on this are similar to my thoughts about Justis’ point about how having kids is likely to transform you: it’s probably true that there’s a difference but it’s also probably true that the difference isn’t large enough such that babysitting is unlikely to be helpful.
As a data point I was extremely confident I wanted kids, and didn’t especially vibe with most babies/never had changed a diaper before my kid was born, and my confident prediction, so far, was if anything an underestimate. I doubt a week of babysitting would have changed my intent whatsoever, but it would probably have been stressful and not that fun.
Why do you say that? Some hypotheses:
Having a kid is a pretty terminal goal of yours and doesn’t depend much on how enjoyable or stressful it is.
You didn’t think babysitting someone else’s kid would be representative of what it’d be like taking care of your own kid.
Your prior was really strong.
Sure, some of those. But also I just expected parenthood to change me a bunch to be better suited to it. Like, it’s a challenge such that rising to it transforms you. With babysitting you’re just skipping to a random bit pretty far into the process, not already having been transformed.
Gotcha. That makes sense that this transformation should be factored in. However, it still feels to me like despite the possibility of transformation, babysitting would still likely be useful.
As an example, today I was babysitting while my girlfriend and her sister went out. The baby was eating lunch and got food everywhere, including her hair. And when I tried to clean it she’d cry and push me away. Before this I knew in principle that this sort of thing happens but I didn’t realize how overwhelming and stressful I personally would find it.
As another example, I’ve been feeling anxious that the baby will get sick or hurt under my watch. On Friday I had her on my lap during a work call. She was holding my mousepad in front of her face as if she was camera shy which was cute. Then there was a point where I spoke for 30 seconds or so. During this time I lost track of what the baby was doing. Turns out she was eating the gel for the hand rest part of the mousepad! There’s been a handful of similar situations where a moment of losing focus lead to her doing something potentially harmful. Before this week I didn’t understand how frequently this sort of thing happens or how anxious it’d make me feel.
So then, unless you have a very high degree of confidence that your transformation would be large enough to kinda offset any of these potential learnings, it seems to me like babysitting would be pretty useful. Not perfect or definitive of course, but useful.
Furthermore, it seems tough to be so confident in this transformation. If you’re a new parent it’s not something you have direct experience with. It’s a unique enough thing where I feel like it’s hard to find a good reference class, in terms of similar things you’ve personally experienced in your life. For looking at the reference class of other parents I’m not aware of good data here and I’d expect there to be a fair amount of individual differences. Affective forecasting in general is often tough. High confidence in general is often tough.
One thing is, babies very gradually get harder in exactly the way you describe! Like, at first by default they breastfeed, and don’t have teeth, which is at the very least highly instinctive to learn. Then they eat a tiiiny bit of solid food, like a bite or two once a day, to train you. So you have gotten way stronger at “baby eating challenges” by the time the baby can e.g. throw food. Likewise they’ll very rarely try to put stuff in their mouths early on, then really gradually more and more, so you hone that instinct too. Even diapers don’t smell bad the first couple of months! Hard to overestimate the effects of the extremely instinct compliant learning curve.
I think you can be quite confident in a parental transformation. Parents routinely fall in love with their babies, either immediately, or over the first few weeks or months. Increased brain plasticity during pregnancy and early parenthood is very common. If you know your genetic parents, you can check with them how their parental transformation went as a baseline.
I also agree with you that prior experiences with children (of all ages) are very informative. Ideally you combine the sources of information to make a better combined prediction.
Thesis: I will fall in love with my baby.
Antithesis: I find crying babies overwhelming. Babies cry a lot.
Synthesis: comforting my crying baby will be doing something overwhelming for someone I love.
That synthesis might or might not sound like a good time, but I think it’s more predictive than either perspective alone. Also, some people don’t want to be transformed, so it’s worth considering in both directions.
Getting more experience that might inform what you what sounds like a generally sound idea, but isn’t the “baby” stage only like 5% of whole process of raising a child? If you don’t like taking care of babies that doesn’t mean that you overall don’t want kids, right?
I think the baby stage is much more than 5% of the total hours that parents spend directly interacting with their kids. My cached memory of when I did a fermi estimate of this is that, if you’re an UMC American, 25% of the hours you spend directly interacting with your kid are in the first 2.5 years, half in the first 6 years, 75% in the first 12 years (and 90%+ before they turn 18).
Great point. Somehow that got lost on me. I agree that the “baby” part seems short enough where it often won’t actually be a deal breaker. I also think it’d probably make sense to try to get some experience with the other stages as well.
There’s actually a nonzero amount of skill involved in child care, especially for younger children. If you have no experience and you’re dumped into it, you’re probably going to feel overwhelmed. You’re also probably going to do a bad job. You’re unlikely to kill the kid, but you could very well give the kid a really bad week. I would have questions about a parent who offered their child up for that kind of “experiment”.
That makes sense. So I guess it’d probably be good to read a book or two on childcare and maybe get some experience doing something lower stakes like babysitting for a night at a time first.
From there it seems to me like a) you’d be able to find someone to let you babysit for a week and b) you’d have enough knowledge and experience such that the experiment would provide useful information. What do you think?
Going from zero to a week is a bad idea, but it would be fine to start with supervised time, move on to babysitting for an evening, then to a sleepover, and go from there. Repeat for a few nights.
There is definitely skill involved—I couldn’t be a daycare teacher. But those people are working multiple children. The job is much easier with a 1:1 child:adult ratio.
This also has the advantage that you and the child get to know each other, which is a big thing.
I think babysitting a baby is not very informative about whether you would enjoy having kids. Having a kid is first and foremost about having the deepest and most meaningful emotional connection of your life.
Take that away and you just don’t have a sensible test run. It’s like finding out whether you like hiking by going up and down the stairs of your apartment building all morning.
Having kids is like having parents, except the emotional connection is stronger in the other direction. Would you rather have grown up in an orphanage if that had meant more time for your hobbies and other goals?