Every couple should spend a week with children before having a family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Obviously I don't know what it's like to be a parent.
I agree with that 100%.
This experience did give me a good idea of what day to day life would be like.
These are my observations:
1. My house was an absolute mess by the time the children left.
2. I can't have nice furniture and have children.
3. I barely spoke to my husband. We were both too busy wrangling children to communicate about anything other than what was happening at the exact moment.
4. I didn't want to be touched by my husband at the end of the day.
5. I spent A LOT of money.
6. I felt like a zombie amd was exhausted the entire time.

I took 2 personal days in order to do this. I can't imagine having to work full-time, raise children and keep a house in order. These things, I feel, are fair representations of things you experience and go through being a parent. These things happen whether you're caring for your own children or someone else's child.

but OP, this is like if you didn't exercise and then ran a 10K one day. you'd be saying "wow that was hard! I had to stop to walk all the time and now I am super sore and can barely move. Running is so hard." Well, ok, but you came it at pretty differently than everyone else out there did, so your experience is not exactly comparable. Of course if I take a day in my current life and compare it to a day from my pre-kid life it looks vastly different. But I didn't get there overnight, as you are advocating. Is it harder to keep a clean house and keep a relationship with your husband and maintain your energy level? of course. but you get a lot of practice by the time you have kids as old as the ones you watched.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like the experience helped confirm OP and her DH's pre-existing desire. uh, good for them I guess? As for the generic advice to try childcare first, it falls flat to me. If the amount of work little kids take is enough to switch someone from wanting to not wanting kids, then they wanted them for the wrong reasons.

You just proved her point by proving your point. Some people do want kids for the wrong reasons and probably shouldn't have kids. Not all but there are a good chunk of people who want kids for the worst reasons and everybody ends up sacrificing and not living life as they should so it doesn't necessarily fall flat but I do what you mean though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Obviously I don't know what it's like to be a parent.
I agree with that 100%.
This experience did give me a good idea of what day to day life would be like.
These are my observations:
1. My house was an absolute mess by the time the children left.
2. I can't have nice furniture and have children.
3. I barely spoke to my husband. We were both too busy wrangling children to communicate about anything other than what was happening at the exact moment.
4. I didn't want to be touched by my husband at the end of the day.
5. I spent A LOT of money.
6. I felt like a zombie amd was exhausted the entire time.

I took 2 personal days in order to do this. I can't imagine having to work full-time, raise children and keep a house in order. These things, I feel, are fair representations of things you experience and go through being a parent. These things happen whether you're caring for your own children or someone else's child.

And yet BILLIONS of people manage to have and raise kids successfully! They even manage to have nice houses and maintain their marriages! While working full-time!

If you can stop being such a princess crybaby for a minute, you should think about that. Are you really so fragile that you can't do something that billions of people throughout history have routinely done?

Where are you getting these facts? There are billions of people who have children. Whether those children are actually "raised successfully," whether they have nice houses, and whether their marriages are maintained are questionable in my eyes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Obviously I don't know what it's like to be a parent.
I agree with that 100%.
This experience did give me a good idea of what day to day life would be like.
These are my observations:
1. My house was an absolute mess by the time the children left.
2. I can't have nice furniture and have children.
3. I barely spoke to my husband. We were both too busy wrangling children to communicate about anything other than what was happening at the exact moment.
4. I didn't want to be touched by my husband at the end of the day.
5. I spent A LOT of money.
6. I felt like a zombie amd was exhausted the entire time.

I took 2 personal days in order to do this. I can't imagine having to work full-time, raise children and keep a house in order. These things, I feel, are fair representations of things you experience and go through being a parent. These things happen whether you're caring for your own children or someone else's child.

but OP, this is like if you didn't exercise and then ran a 10K one day. you'd be saying "wow that was hard! I had to stop to walk all the time and now I am super sore and can barely move. Running is so hard." Well, ok, but you came it at pretty differently than everyone else out there did, so your experience is not exactly comparable. Of course if I take a day in my current life and compare it to a day from my pre-kid life it looks vastly different. But I didn't get there overnight, as you are advocating. Is it harder to keep a clean house and keep a relationship with your husband and maintain your energy level? of course. but you get a lot of practice by the time you have kids as old as the ones you watched.

Seriously? There are thousands of posts on DCUM from parents complaining about every single thing on that list.
Hard is hard. Doesn't matter when you come into it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Obviously I don't know what it's like to be a parent.
I agree with that 100%.
This experience did give me a good idea of what day to day life would be like.
These are my observations:
1. My house was an absolute mess by the time the children left.
2. I can't have nice furniture and have children.
3. I barely spoke to my husband. We were both too busy wrangling children to communicate about anything other than what was happening at the exact moment.
4. I didn't want to be touched by my husband at the end of the day.
5. I spent A LOT of money.
6. I felt like a zombie amd was exhausted the entire time.

I took 2 personal days in order to do this. I can't imagine having to work full-time, raise children and keep a house in order. These things, I feel, are fair representations of things you experience and go through being a parent. These things happen whether you're caring for your own children or someone else's child.

And yet BILLIONS of people manage to have and raise kids successfully! They even manage to have nice houses and maintain their marriages! While working full-time!

If you can stop being such a princess crybaby for a minute, you should think about that. Are you really so fragile that you can't do something that billions of people throughout history have routinely done?

It's too early for the boxed wine Margaret.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Obviously I don't know what it's like to be a parent.
I agree with that 100%.
This experience did give me a good idea of what day to day life would be like.
These are my observations:
1. My house was an absolute mess by the time the children left.
2. I can't have nice furniture and have children.
3. I barely spoke to my husband. We were both too busy wrangling children to communicate about anything other than what was happening at the exact moment.
4. I didn't want to be touched by my husband at the end of the day.
5. I spent A LOT of money.
6. I felt like a zombie amd was exhausted the entire time.

I took 2 personal days in order to do this. I can't imagine having to work full-time, raise children and keep a house in order. These things, I feel, are fair representations of things you experience and go through being a parent. These things happen whether you're caring for your own children or someone else's child.

And yet BILLIONS of people manage to have and raise kids successfully! They even manage to have nice houses and maintain their marriages! While working full-time!

If you can stop being such a princess crybaby for a minute, you should think about that. Are you really so fragile that you can't do something that billions of people throughout history have routinely done?

But why should she have to? Everything she says is true. It's almost impossible to have nice furniture, your non-kid-centered time with your spouse is minimal, children are expensive. It's just that most of us who have them feel the sacrifice is worth it. If she doesn't, why should she have to have kids?

I agree with most of the posters that caring for others' kids is not representative of having your own. But she said she was 85% sure she didn't want them anyway. So if this was just a little push to confirm her gut feeling, I think that's fine (for her). For people who think that they -do- want kids but are afraid of the work (which really is most people pre-parenthood) I would not recommend this as a method to decide whether you're ready.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where are you getting these facts? There are billions of people who have children. Whether those children are actually "raised successfully," whether they have nice houses, and whether their marriages are maintained are questionable in my eyes.

Look around you, idiot.

But you're probably determined to be willfully blind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Obviously I don't know what it's like to be a parent.
I agree with that 100%.
This experience did give me a good idea of what day to day life would be like.
These are my observations:
1. My house was an absolute mess by the time the children left.
2. I can't have nice furniture and have children.
3. I barely spoke to my husband. We were both too busy wrangling children to communicate about anything other than what was happening at the exact moment.
4. I didn't want to be touched by my husband at the end of the day.
5. I spent A LOT of money.
6. I felt like a zombie amd was exhausted the entire time.

I took 2 personal days in order to do this. I can't imagine having to work full-time, raise children and keep a house in order. These things, I feel, are fair representations of things you experience and go through being a parent. These things happen whether you're caring for your own children or someone else's child.

And yet BILLIONS of people manage to have and raise kids successfully! They even manage to have nice houses and maintain their marriages! While working full-time!

If you can stop being such a princess crybaby for a minute, you should think about that. Are you really so fragile that you can't do something that billions of people throughout history have routinely done?

Oh stop trying to shame the OP, Carl Sagan. Yes, many people raise children and do all those things. But not everyone and raising children is not for everyone. OP is trying to say, some people are better off not having children and if they had really experienced some of those things might have made a better decision not to have children. Just because everyone else does something, does not mean that it is right for the individual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But why should she have to? Everything she says is true. It's almost impossible to have nice furniture, your non-kid-centered time with your spouse is minimal, children are expensive. It's just that most of us who have them feel the sacrifice is worth it. If she doesn't, why should she have to have kids?

Bullshit. I have nice furniture, I have a happy marriage, and I can easily afford kids.

She's just looking for excuses not to have kids.

And by the way, when you add kids to your family, they become part of the family. When you and your spouse spend time together with the kids, that is a good thing, not an extra pain in the ass that you have to minimize and get out of the way until you can do what you really want to do (spend time alone together with each other).

[Anonymous]

OP, good for you. Do you want us to talk you into having children (you could stop at one, BTW)? Or what is the purpose of continuing with the thread? You don't have to have kids. You don't have to babysit for your in-laws. You can do whatever the heck you like without looking for justification of your choices. If youa're fine without having children, so is the rest of the world, believe me.

[Anonymous]

OP you aren't wrong. All those things you listed ARE part of having kids. It's just that, since they weren't your kids, you didn't reap any of the rewards that come along with all the bad stuff. Yes we spend a lot of money- it's to do things with our kids that they will love and always remember. Worth it. Yes our furniture is trashed. It's because they're running around the house playing and laughing- worth it. Yes the house is a mess- it can be picked up and one day the kids will be grown and gone and it will be as neat as I want. Worth it. Yes they are tiring/ but I am watching two people come into the world and transform into the people they will be. It's a reward beyond measure.

All of the negatives are for sure negative, if you don't have the positives to balance them out. And other people's kids (friends, nephews, etc) will never be able of bestowing those same rewards. So yeah, it'll always be largely negative until and unless it's your own kids.

I also don't blame you if you want to be childless. Just want to inform you it would be so so so much different with your OWN kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But why should she have to? Everything she says is true. It's almost impossible to have nice furniture, your non-kid-centered time with your spouse is minimal, children are expensive. It's just that most of us who have them feel the sacrifice is worth it. If she doesn't, why should she have to have kids?

Bullshit. I have nice furniture, I have a happy marriage, and I can easily afford kids.

She's just looking for excuses not to have kids.

And by the way, when you add kids to your family, they become part of the family. When you and your spouse spend time together with the kids, that is a good thing, not an extra pain in the ass that you have to minimize and get out of the way until you can do what you really want to do (spend time alone together with each other).

Huh? I missed the part where she needed an "excuse" from you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh stop trying to shame the OP, Carl Sagan. Yes, many people raise children and do all those things. But not everyone and raising children is not for everyone. OP is trying to say, some people are better off not having children and if they had really experienced some of those things might have made a better decision not to have children. Just because everyone else does something, does not mean that it is right for the individual.

She should be ashamed of herself. Anyone who does not have children for such puny, weak-minded reasons is a total failure as a human being.

What is she doing with her time now? Watching TV and surfing the web in her pristine house? Yaay for her. She can look back on that from her deathbed with great satisfaction. Too bad there won't be any children or grandchildren to comfort her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Huh? I missed the part where she needed an "excuse" from you

She obviously does want everyone to excuse her or she wouldn't have come here looking for validation.

[Anonymous]

I also just want to say that although unlike you I will never again go to sleep at night without wondering about my children, and I'll never stop living with the fear that bad things will one day happen to them and I can't stop them, my children are so much more than the things I will never have because of them. They made me the person I was supposed to be. Having kids deepens your compassion because suddenly in every human you see the possibility of that being your child. You know they too had a mother. You look at your child doing something and it blows you away and you realize wow, if I feel this about MY kid, my mom felt that way about ME. Their love is unconditional which makes you work that much harder to earn it, so they can be proud to say of you "That's MY MOM!" I would not be half the woman I am today if I had never had my kids. I can't imagine trading that in for brunch and some extra sleep.