People overlook an obvious factor: having a kid physically changes your brain, and therefore how you perceive parenting. I know of lots of instances of this change happening anecdotally, someone radically changes their stance after an unplanned pregnancy.
Neither side is necessarily wrong, but choosing one or the other impacts who you are as a person so it’s not as obvious as “I definitely [will/won’t] regret it”. So skip the social pressure and pro/anti natalist personal debates, but also don’t hold too much blame against someone who struggles to grasp your mindset.
in 2016, there was a group in Spain that first looked longitudinally at moms who were recruited before becoming pregnant and then scanned for a second time a few months after the birth of an infant. What they found is going to sound like a bad joke, but it’s actually we think a good thing, which is the brain got smaller. So it lost some gray matter volume between that first preconception time point and the postpartum scan.
It’s official folks, having kids makes you an idiot :D
I can buy this. I knew 100% I could raise a kid. I was fairly certainly I wanted children. We had my first kid, and I got more certain. Only as I had a second and they’ve grown older and I watch them develop and become people do I realize it was the right decision. I don’t think you can know it’s the right decision until it’s done.
And the inverse (maybe not inverse) is true too, with people who knew they wanted to have kids, only to discover they were wrong.
Life’s complicated for sure. That’s it. I wanted to put a but, but there’s no but. This is not a decision that has a clear right and wrong to it. It’s a thing. There’s 8 billion of us here, so it’s not some special thing, even though it is.
Totally. It seems weirdly limiting to say ‘I will never want children’. People change. I’m not saying that people who don’t want them now will want them later, but it seems odd to speak with certainty about it.
I’ve never wanted a tattoo. Low-key find them a bit silly. At 48 it’s doubtful I’ll change my mind, but you never know. I might hit 60 and develop an interest in them. Unlikely, but who knows.
People overlook an obvious factor: having a kid physically changes your brain, and therefore how you perceive parenting. I know of lots of instances of this change happening anecdotally, someone radically changes their stance after an unplanned pregnancy.
Neither side is necessarily wrong, but choosing one or the other impacts who you are as a person so it’s not as obvious as “I definitely [will/won’t] regret it”. So skip the social pressure and pro/anti natalist personal debates, but also don’t hold too much blame against someone who struggles to grasp your mindset.
It’s official folks, having kids makes you an idiot :D
I can buy this. I knew 100% I could raise a kid. I was fairly certainly I wanted children. We had my first kid, and I got more certain. Only as I had a second and they’ve grown older and I watch them develop and become people do I realize it was the right decision. I don’t think you can know it’s the right decision until it’s done.
And the inverse (maybe not inverse) is true too, with people who knew they wanted to have kids, only to discover they were wrong.
Life’s complicated for sure. That’s it. I wanted to put a but, but there’s no but. This is not a decision that has a clear right and wrong to it. It’s a thing. There’s 8 billion of us here, so it’s not some special thing, even though it is.
Totally. It seems weirdly limiting to say ‘I will never want children’. People change. I’m not saying that people who don’t want them now will want them later, but it seems odd to speak with certainty about it.
I’ve never wanted a tattoo. Low-key find them a bit silly. At 48 it’s doubtful I’ll change my mind, but you never know. I might hit 60 and develop an interest in them. Unlikely, but who knows.
Of course, if you decide at 60 you want a tattoo, you can get one.
Having a child at 60 is trickier…