Don't sacrifice everything for your children

[Anonymous]

My mom made huge sacrifices for me as a widowed parent.
When I thanked her and told her how much I appreciated it and respected/ loved her, she said I could repay her by doing the same for my children/ her grand children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine come first. Why have kids if they don’t come first?

+1. I have and will continue to do so.

Your kids will move on. Hope you didn't sacrifice your marital relationship.

To keep things in perspective, some marital relationships aren't worth keeping after the kids move out.

Some could have been worth saving if you had worked on maintaining the relationship beyond the kids. I didn't pick a spouse for breeding purposes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine come first. Why have kids if they don’t come first?

+1. I have and will continue to do so.

Your kids will move on. Hope you didn't sacrifice your marital relationship.

If you have a good marriage, both will put the kids first. My parents put each other before us. Then, they divorce when I was an adult. The strained relationship became more strained. Now as a parent, it was clear I was never a priority and I cannot imagine doing that to mine. Our lives revolve around ours and we are happy to do it. We get pleasure in watching them enjoy their passions.

That clearly seems unhealthy. It is also a Tiger Mom phrase which I assume you are.

The vast majority of Tiger Moms have nothing going on in their lives and now are trying to live vicariously through their kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine come first. Why have kids if they don’t come first?

+1. I have and will continue to do so.

Your kids will move on. Hope you didn't sacrifice your marital relationship.

To keep things in perspective, some marital relationships aren't worth keeping after the kids move out.

Some could have been worth saving if you had worked on maintaining the relationship beyond the kids. I didn't pick a spouse for breeding purposes.

Most marry for love; however, sometimes things turn sideways (abuse, serial cheating, the spouse becomes a liability for a variety of reasons such as financial infidelity, substance abuse, gambling), resentment builds, and we've stayed married to keep our children under the same roof as us until they are legal adults and for little other reason. It's a big sacrifice, but for many, it's one worth making.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine come first. Why have kids if they don’t come first?

+1. I have and will continue to do so.

Your kids will move on. Hope you didn't sacrifice your marital relationship.

If you have a good marriage, both will put the kids first. My parents put each other before us. Then, they divorce when I was an adult. The strained relationship became more strained. Now as a parent, it was clear I was never a priority and I cannot imagine doing that to mine. Our lives revolve around ours and we are happy to do it. We get pleasure in watching them enjoy their passions.

That clearly seems unhealthy. It is also a Tiger Mom phrase which I assume you are.

The vast majority of Tiger Moms have nothing going on in their lives and now are trying to live vicariously through their kids.

Really? The tiger moms in my circle are doctors, lawyers, and professors (I think the most famous tiger mom is a Yale law school professor). Women who have high standards for themselves generally do for their children as well.

[Anonymous]

Tiger moms are usually accomplished themselves but perfectly open to put their careers on side to focus on their children's academic success, not that different from parents focused on children's acting, athletic or music careers.

[Anonymous]

I know highly successful mom who moved to university town to let her child prodigy attend college at 12.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know highly successful mom who moved to university town to let her child prodigy attend college at 12.

There are so many stories like this one - behind almost every child prodigy, Olympic athlete, etc, are parents who made very big sacrifices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine come first. Why have kids if they don’t come first?

+1. I have and will continue to do so.

Your kids will move on. Hope you didn't sacrifice your marital relationship.

If you have a good marriage, both will put the kids first. My parents put each other before us. Then, they divorce when I was an adult. The strained relationship became more strained. Now as a parent, it was clear I was never a priority and I cannot imagine doing that to mine. Our lives revolve around ours and we are happy to do it. We get pleasure in watching them enjoy their passions.

That clearly seems unhealthy. It is also a Tiger Mom phrase which I assume you are.

The vast majority of Tiger Moms have nothing going on in their lives and now are trying to live vicariously through their kids.

Really? The tiger moms in my circle are doctors, lawyers, and professors (I think the most famous tiger mom is a Yale law school professor). Women who have high standards for themselves generally do for their children as well.

They probably aren't Tiger Moms...just Asian. You need to separate the two. None of my 2nd generation Asian friends are Tiger parents...they were Tigered themselves and hated it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know highly successful mom who moved to university town to let her child prodigy attend college at 12.

There are so many stories like this one - behind almost every child prodigy, Olympic athlete, etc, are parents who made very big sacrifices.

Except...the kid that attends college at 12 almost never turns out well. Yes and no...the founder of Tumblr dropped out of HS to create it and his parents just let him do that, but they didn't sacrifice for it. Most people probably thought they were terrible parents. Same for Dave Grohl. His mom also let him quit HS (and she was a HS teacher). Again, she was probably considered a terrible parent...but she needed the job and she let him start touring with a band at 16.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your kids didn’t ask you to sacrifice everything. So why did you do it? That was your choice. And don’t be bitter about doing something no one asked you to do

I am from the generation where a lot of women gave up their careers to be SAHM's and bitterly resented it and had no problem telling their kids that. My mom had two master's degrees and gave up her teaching career, which she loved when she had three kids. Later, she went back to work as a receptionist at my dad's dentists' office, because it provided more flexibility -- but she bitterly resented having a dumb job that didn't challenge her intellectually. We were well aware of this and we felt really guilty. It was all our fault for wanting piano lessons or whatever. Granted, some of this was probably my mom's mental health issues and maybe there are some remarkably well adjusted women (and men) who can walk away from a rewarding, fulfilling career that they have dreamed about since they were little in order to drive car pool who don't resent it or take it out on their kids -= but it's unreasonable to think that everyone is going to be that selfless. And if you say "Well, anyone who's not that selfless should never have children", well, don't be surprised with the current population declines.

It's also difficult as a woman to look at a situation where men still often give up remarkably little and still get to have kids and family fun on vacations, etc. All of the joy and none of the sacrifice.

I'm also at the point where my kids are in their mid-twenties and it does feel a bit like they became who they were always going to be, and taking the one who is profoundly anti-intellectual and never wants to go to grad school to Kumon after school for years was probably a waste of time. Buying clothes from Target so we could afford said Kumon also kind of chafes a bit. I spent a lot on math tutors for kids who just kinda hate math, and honestly I took them to church a lot and that didn't seem to stick either. In some ways it feels like I didn't really have that much of an impact on them

As the female breadwinner (now, we switched roles over the child rearing 18 years), I can’t relate to you and your ‘sacrifice’. I was never going to give up my career for my kids, and now that they are in college, I’m happy that I didn’t.

You you poured yourself into your kids and they didn’t turn out how you expected. Your examples sound controlling. You wanted them to turn out a certain way and they didn’t. You now see that as a failure. Are they the best versions of themselves? There’s success in that if they’ve figured it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine come first. Why have kids if they don’t come first?

+1. I have and will continue to do so.

Your kids will move on. Hope you didn't sacrifice your marital relationship.

If you have a good marriage, both will put the kids first. My parents put each other before us. Then, they divorce when I was an adult. The strained relationship became more strained. Now as a parent, it was clear I was never a priority and I cannot imagine doing that to mine. Our lives revolve around ours and we are happy to do it. We get pleasure in watching them enjoy their passions.

That clearly seems unhealthy. It is also a Tiger Mom phrase which I assume you are.

The vast majority of Tiger Moms have nothing going on in their lives and now are trying to live vicariously through their kids.

Really? The tiger moms in my circle are doctors, lawyers, and professors (I think the most famous tiger mom is a Yale law school professor). Women who have high standards for themselves generally do for their children as well.

They probably aren't Tiger Moms...just Asian. You need to separate the two. None of my 2nd generation Asian friends are Tiger parents...they were Tigered themselves and hated it.

This is me. You got that right! Anti-tiger mom here!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine come first. Why have kids if they don’t come first?

+1. I have and will continue to do so.

Your kids will move on. Hope you didn't sacrifice your marital relationship.

If you have a good marriage, both will put the kids first. My parents put each other before us. Then, they divorce when I was an adult. The strained relationship became more strained. Now as a parent, it was clear I was never a priority and I cannot imagine doing that to mine. Our lives revolve around ours and we are happy to do it. We get pleasure in watching them enjoy their passions.

That clearly seems unhealthy. It is also a Tiger Mom phrase which I assume you are.

The vast majority of Tiger Moms have nothing going on in their lives and now are trying to live vicariously through their kids.

Really? The tiger moms in my circle are doctors, lawyers, and professors (I think the most famous tiger mom is a Yale law school professor). Women who have high standards for themselves generally do for their children as well.

They probably aren't Tiger Moms...just Asian. You need to separate the two. None of my 2nd generation Asian friends are Tiger parents...they were Tigered themselves and hated it.

This is me. You got that right! Anti-tiger mom here!

What does that mean? If you let your daughter try figure skating (a sport with many Asians and tiger moms), and she falls in love with it and wants to practice three hours a day before school, do you deny her? Or does that mean you just don't push your kids to do things they don't really want to do?

[Anonymous]

I don’t think we sacrificed anything for our children, we just wanted to be the best parents we could be. Did we not do many things we did before kids? Of course and I missed those fun things but it wasn’t a sacrifice. Our children are now married with kids of their own so the time we put into parenting is being paid back many times. If you have a SN child that is a different world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine come first. Why have kids if they don’t come first?

+1. I have and will continue to do so.

Your kids will move on. Hope you didn't sacrifice your marital relationship.

If you have a good marriage, both will put the kids first. My parents put each other before us. Then, they divorce when I was an adult. The strained relationship became more strained. Now as a parent, it was clear I was never a priority and I cannot imagine doing that to mine. Our lives revolve around ours and we are happy to do it. We get pleasure in watching them enjoy their passions.

That clearly seems unhealthy. It is also a Tiger Mom phrase which I assume you are.

The vast majority of Tiger Moms have nothing going on in their lives and now are trying to live vicariously through their kids.

Really? The tiger moms in my circle are doctors, lawyers, and professors (I think the most famous tiger mom is a Yale law school professor). Women who have high standards for themselves generally do for their children as well.

They probably aren't Tiger Moms...just Asian. You need to separate the two. None of my 2nd generation Asian friends are Tiger parents...they were Tigered themselves and hated it.

This is me. You got that right! Anti-tiger mom here!

What does that mean? If you let your daughter try figure skating (a sport with many Asians and tiger moms), and she falls in love with it and wants to practice three hours a day before school, do you deny her? Or does that mean you just don't push your kids to do things they don't really want to do?

I think it means if she finds figure skating on her own she may figure out a way to make it work…but most kids don’t find figure skating or the violin or other activities like that on their own. They are pushed into it from the start.

Are there any good stories about figure skaters and their childhoods? I think the bad ones (including no friends, depression, anorexia, abuse by coaches) outweigh the good like 10-to-1.