There are some huge changes.

The largest is a lack of the mental downtime where deep thought and problem solving could occur.

I can't get off work, hop on my car, and drive around for an hour mulling over technical work. I can't stay an hour past with coworkers and noodle solutions on a white board. I can't get up at 2 am to try something out that just popped into my head.

I need to be in bed by 10pm every day. I have to get up at 7am every day. On weekdays 2 meals a day need to be planned, on weekends 3 meals a day. I can't try experimenting with some random new recipe that may fail, my kid needs to eat lunch on time not 2 hours late.

Yes it is a lot of fun (theme parks! Trick or treating!), but I'm thankful I did a ton of amazing engineering work before I had a kid because there is no way I can dedicate the absurd amount of time to innovating/solving hard problems, that I used to.

Plenty of truly bad parents shrug responsibility off by making the "technically correct" claim that all kids throw tantrums, therefore they're not a bad parent. They then proceed to provide an unstable environment to raise their kids and the tantrums don't end until well into adulthood.

I was raised overseas (Dad[0] in the CIA).

Both good and bad. First, if it's just "traveling," and not "living" overseas, I suspect that it's not so bad, but military brats have common quirks, for a reason. Our lives get torn up and replanted regularly. It's hard to make friends, and we often end up having a difficult time, retaining long-term relationships, later in life.

But, man, the life story that it gives you. There's few cures for xenophobia, better than immersion.

[0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm

They go to bed when I am also tired. Trying to having an hobby past their bed time means sacrifying sleep time.

Travelling is also a challenge, since they lack interesting in seeing something new, but just want to have fun playing, especially playgrounds.

Nearly everyone I know with kids is more similar to this story than yours.. to each their own but it's certainly not for me:)

I CAN explain to others who don't. It's just that most of the time others aren't interested in hearing.

Things you can’t explain to other people. But others with the experience just know.

So my advice is: find activities to do with them that you would both enjoy. Maybe going to parks, museums, have them help you on house chores... You only have a few years left under they get to middle school and start becoming more distant.

I find the days that I forget myself and throw myself into trying to be a good dad are the days I find joy in fatherhood. Weekends especially I try to forget the stresses of work and productivity and everything else and try to spend as much time with them as possible. Playing, teaching, and learning with them.

Not saying it's universal. Just a datapoint from me.

have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else

At some point when our kid was still young, I started working 4/5 FTE, taking the afternoons off after ~14:00. I feel like that provided a lot of mental space. Since I was working part-time, I did not feel bad/guilty about not working the afternoons and I would be focused on being very productive from 8:30 to 14:00. The free hours were for doing stuff together or accommodating their playdates (picking up from school, ensuring the house doesn't get torn down).

Now they are an age where they want to do things without parents, so I am working full-time again, but do miss those early days where she would be with me in her seat on my bike and we'd cycle to the city and she'd be singing aloud from joy.

But every person is different and I think that there are also parents that start enjoying having kids more when they are older. So, your years may still come :).

dark comment

My dark comment would be: we are all learning on the job and I feel like I could do some things better with the experience I have now.

Seeing them grow was fun, seeing them turning teenagers is a pain.

That's some pretty ironic copy xD

My kids have been really easy, no big problems, but sometimes I see other parents dealing with really serious issues with their kids.

It starts with babies, some of them sleep easily while other cry all the time, to teenagers who can be nice kids with no problem at school to being called to the director's office all the time and have to seriously worry about their future.

Good parents = kids not 100% glued to phones/tablets, social around friends and family, not throwing tantrums at 8-16 yrs old.

Bad parents = kids always throwing tantrums, kids basically always getting their way because they've learned parents will always give in, parents and kids 100% ignoring each other.

One set of friends - I go to visit, I play with their kids - we go out to dinner, we interact with both adults and kids

Another set of friends - I go to visit, they sent their kids to their room - we go out to dinner, they give the kids tablets and they're entirely ignored for the whole time.

> Then I learned it’s easier not to judge at all.

A skill we should all cultivate, IMO. Life is happier when you do not waste it constantly judging.

You think that this is what kids are like. They sit there, they walk a little, they giggle on the playground, they look cute as all get out, etc.

Then you have kids and you know.

You know.

Those kids sitting there in the booth sipping on their milk quietly while mom and dad happily eat their lunch? Those are the top 5% most calm kids out there. The other 95% of kids are with their adults screaming and throwing fits and covered in who knows what.

Life lied to you. It did it directly to your face, unashamed. The bias is real.

Had a very similar feeling. When my wife told me the "getting pregnant" worked I mourned a little bit. I recognize we were exceedingly lucky to have had such a wonderful kid, and it has worked out very well.

For the first 6 mos. a lot did change, but after that things seemed to skew back to a new "normal".

It will be 13 years in May since we had our daughter. I'm so glad we did it.

I know that it could have gone a lot differently, though. I'd never suggest that it'll be great for everybody.

How do you keep a baby happy and quiet on long international flights? I currently have no kids but I may find myself in this situation in the next couple years. I'm dreading being the guy with a screaming infant on a 13-hour trans-Pacific flight that keeps everyone from sleeping.

We were the same ;-)

None of this is conducive to starting a family.

But as you say, I suppose everyone ends up becoming strong. Because there is no other way...

This bullshit excuse that somebody can't afford to have kids is proven wrong by the fact that poorer people have more kids than rich people. You can even be unemployed. Gone are the days of destitute single mothers having to give up their child to the church and work in the poorhouse. We have social welfare for that.

Maybe the fact that poor people can have lots of kids has taken away their value as a status symbol for wealth?

I think a lot of people miss the simple fact that some people just don't want kids and are unable to reconcile their personal experience with anyone else's.

My partner and I are both wealthy enough that we could both afford children and we can afford to not have children. But neither of us think our lives would be improved by having them.

I think that's really, really hard to understand for a lot of parents and people who want to be parents: being (relatively) wealthy creates choice, and that a growing number of people are choosing different things now that they have the ability to do so.

Mostly due to chronic illnesses, of either the physical or mental variety.

Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?

EDIT: Just to be 100% clear: I mean absolutely no judgement. I'm not going to tell you off or try to change your mind. I ask out of pure curiosity.

If I have a second life, I don't know what to do though, I probably will first make enough money before having kids at least.

I will say that a lot of those issues have gotten better as they have gotten older (they are now 10 and almost 7). They don’t require the same level of constant attention that they used to, they are getting more and more interesting to talk to, and have developed interesting personalities and senses of humor.

And I'm frankly annoyed by the growing activism to ban kids from public places in the name of "adults quietness".

I'd wager that you picked a good wife and that your kids are healthy and bright.

Things can go from satisfying to draining real quick.

Everything you're observing is even more likely to occur if you don't see them that often. Your friends probably want to spend more time focusing on you. The kids are not that familiar with you and are less likely to engage with you. Which also makes the parents more likely to want to distract them with something else.

Whether or not you're bringing children with you matters too. It sounds like you don't because you're focusing on child-adult interactions. If someone has kids the kids run around and be kids with their loudness, and child-adult interactions are going to be much more likely. If you're not bringing kids in tow my kids are much more likely to just go off and do their own thing.

Much of what you're pointing out can also be down to individual child temperment. Which changes as children age. By your standards many parents turn into a bad parent once their kids become a teenager.

That is not to say that your observations are 100% wrong. But just that there's so many variables, most of which I didn't even mention here, makes trying to analyze your statement make my head spin.

Not to lean too much on anecdotes, but I have a friend who has extremely well behaved kids. He has said a couple times that he feels like he has placed too many adult responsibilities on his kids. Is he a good parent? Based upon outside observation, he seems good. But he seems to be questioning some of his own choices. Maybe that alone makes him a good parent? I don't know, who am I to judge?

Parenting children is impossible, therefore all parenting lies on a spectrum from terrible to catastrophic, and it’s hard to know how you did until they grow up (if ever) because there’s a lot of sensitivity and subtle emotional stuff, especially at very young ages, which are the most important and the ones you remember the least. I’m certain there are screen-free parents who are worse for their kids than a good chunk of tablet-hander-outers

Honestly the only certainty is that unless you have been 100 percent responsible for a very young child for more a few days, you have no idea what you are talking about. I don't mean that directed at you. Just my own generalisation based own experience and the opinion of every other parent I know.

Life as a parent is completely different than life before.

I saw a woman completely lose her shit in a museum with her kid. Before I became a parent I would have judged. But when it happened I just thought "poor woman, I know how it feels, just giving it her all and she's got nothing left to give right now, how many times have I felt like that, how many times have I failed to live up to my own ideals as a parent".

It's given me plenty of time to think about my dadness and boy do I have regrets. I can't help but think about all the things I would do differently if I could do it again and I know that if I ever have grandkids, I'm going to be a way better grandparent than I ever was parent.

Your daughter is 13? For us that was a time of great change. It was when the dependence / independence balance really started moving.

It's only once they're old enough to have more sophisticated feelings (like boredom) but not old enough to communicate them (except by screaming) you get in trouble.

Having all the stuff that could happen during the day if it were (if you will) someone's full-time job, instead get crammed into evenings and weekends when you're trying to also do non-chore stuff with your kids (or, for god's sake, maybe get just one measly hour to do something you want to do, alone... or spend time with your spouse, without kids...) and take care of things that have to happen each evening (dinner, bed time stuff) really, really sucks.

Not having chores piling up through the week to ambush you both on the weekend would be amazing. I can hardly even imagine how much more free we'd feel. With two working parents it's like neither ever gets any actual time off that they're not carving out by neglecting something they really ought to be doing (usually several somethings)

There's a well known aphorism about this...

In the past both poor and rich tended to have tons of kids, this is because kids tended to die young regardless of being rich or poor.

Then you're trying to compare massive social changes in the west that occurred around the same time. For example womens suffrage, women being allowed to work, sexual revolutions and birth control.

If you look at countries that tended to develop later, the rate of childbirth tends to drop with accessibility to birth control and education.

It's fairly obvious the world will be very different and much less pleasant place by 2050. A lot of people don't want their kids to live through that.

It's possible aliens will arrive before then and fix all our problems, or some other Salvatio Ex Machina, but it's not exactly a high-odds bet.

Comments like the parent one (pun semi-intended) basically sound the same to me as what my boss had said to me that day. Assuming that your own experience is universal is a flawed way to view the world, even if your experience is relatively common. If there are exceptions, it's not going to be easy to see them if you have an assumption already about it being universal, and if the people in the majority are loud enough and annoying enough about it, those who aren't will be even more incentivized not to share their experiences with you; I'd argue that people who regret having kids will potentially be reluctant to publicly say so. Most importantly, doing something because of societal pressure rather than genuine desire is going to greatly reduce the chance that someone truly finds it fulfilling, and there's an emotional cost for children who are raised by parents who basically regret having them.

It's totally reasonable to say "I never truly understood how much I'd enjoy having kids until I did, and I suspect it's the same for a lot of other parents". There's no reason to go further than that unless you're pushing an idealogy rather than actually trying to say something you know is correct.

I wanted to be a dad more than anything in the world, and I absolutely love my kids and I love being a dad.

Most of the time.

There is a TON of things you have to do as a parent that objectively sucks, and you have to do it no matter how you are feeling and no matter what else you also have to do. It is impossible not to feel trapped, at times, by the understanding that it never ends, that you are a parent 24/7/365.25 and that your kids dominate your life. I don’t care how much you love your kids, you are going to feel that sometimes (or you are so strongly into the self-denial that you force yourself to pretend you always like it).

That doesn’t mean you aren’t a good parent, or even that you made the right choice to be a parent. Most of the best things in life involve sacrifice, and doing things you don’t want to have to do, and powering through even when you want to give up. It’s cliche, but the struggle makes the rewards even sweeter. Doesn’t mean the struggle doesn’t suck sometimes, and you might want to give up, and you have to use all your self-control tricks to maintain.

I feel even worse for parents who did IVF or other fertility treatments, or who adopt. In my conversations with some close friends who are in those situations, they talk about how much pressure they feel to never complain when it is hard. They spent a ton of money and effort and used insurance money and many doctors and procedures (or all the interviews and inspections and money for adoption) so they could have kids, and now they want to complain about being a parent? Of course, they still have all the same struggles and pains and nostalgia for their before life, no matter how much this is what they want.

Anyway, I am not sure what my point is. I just want people to be honest with themselves, and other parents and future parents, about what the entire parenting experience really is. Sometimes I think parents don’t want to scare potential parents off of being parents, which I think is understandable but overstated. There is simply no way to convey to non-parents what it is actually like to be a parent, and this applies to both the good and bad things. I thought my wife and I were prepared and knowledgeable and ready, and we were to the extent we could be. But so many things we imagined about what it would be like is not the reality at all, but even if we had a Time Machine I couldn’t explain to my previous self what it is actually like. You just have to experience it… if you want to. I would never tell people they should have kids, because it is such an all-encompassing thing that everyone has to decide for themselves… all without knowing what it will actually be like.

It is a hell of an adventure, though.

It is true that some people are not really cut out to be parents. But unfortunately it is difficult to tell whether that will be you or not. I see people looking at comments in threads like this and then chiming in with sentiments along the lines of "see, this is why I never wanted to be a parent." There is no way to know that, and such statements strike me as cope. Becoming a parent changes you, but you won't know how until you do it. There is a lot of biology and psychology in play, for certain.

As I tell my own kids, however, be careful because you only get to become a parent one time. Cannot blame someone for opting out of the risk, even if the counterfactual is that they would have been amazing parents with amazing children and been much happier.

Holy mother of autism. “my life is like a video game”. Please tell me you don’t have kids. They’re doomed if so.

Even if you compare to other parents, you are judging the reference-parents.

If you have data over time you can draw conclusions on things you want to try as a parent.

But sometimes there are legit behavioral issues that are extremely challenging, and are not the parent's fault. Sometimes what looks like a "tantrum" on the outside can actually be autistic overwhelm and meltdown, which can happen with even the best parents. Not to mention stuff like Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

All this to say...if you see a kid in public throwing a "tantrum", you still shouldn't judge the parents without knowing the full picture.

It sounds like you always wanted kids. I don't say this to criticize - it's great that those who want to start families do so - but I don't think your experience is universal.

My son has been actively involved with meal planning since he as a a year and a half old. "What type of bread today? What type of fruit in your yogurt tomorrow?"

I won't judge kid's behavior, so long as they are acting like kids. Sometimes that means they act out, that is normal.

But, damnit, let them live in the real world and not just try to distract them with shiny things all the time.

I remember going to restaurants in the 90s and early 2000s and kids would be running around playing with each other between tables. That is kids being kids, and it is perfectly acceptable (heck desirable!)

This is a very difficult subject since there exists un-imaginable suffering and it's hard to reconcile that. That life is a gift under the umbrella of un-imaginable suffering. Perhaps, that's what spirituality tries to do, I don't know.

It's okay if you don't want to learn Spanish, but when people discuss the struggles and delights of reading Cien Años de Soledad they're not necessarily being arrogant, just stating their lived experience.

Critically: I give them my full attention.

I could choose to spend all that mental effort on myself, but I choose to spend it on them. That’s as good a demonstration of love as any, in my book anyway.

Edit: no offence taken! I didn’t interpret it that way at all.

I think you’ve hit the key difference.

I waited until I was 40 before having kids, and it just feels like I’m doing it on easy mode.

We had time and money sorted out, and tons of free baby stuff donated from all our friends who had done it already.

It’s still lots of work, but you’re at a place in life where you can handle it. I can’t imagine trying to raise kids in my 20s, with my crappy stressful office job and no money in my little studio apartment.

Hats off to anybody who can do that.

You'll be fine. Being responsible for someone else gives you quite a bit of boost.

Hmm, this seems pretty condescending, but hopefully it is just in jest.

With four kids I understand there is a unique set of skills and emotions that come along with it and I am personally grateful for, but there are also a lot skills and emotions you won't have and experience if you never go to war, never become a leader, never experience losing a parent when you are young, never win a gold medal in a team sport, never live in a different culture, never volunteer, etc. It seems short sighted to claim someone is an incomplete person if they can't experience one of those things, because likely no single person can.

There is a great tapestry of human experience and we can only experience most of it second or third hand (and probably not even that in most cases).

I now make it a point to be honest with people when they ask "Should we have kids?" and tell them about how hard it can be, etc. Most importantly, I tell people that they shouldn't have kids unless they would still want to do it if their experience doesn't land in the middle of the bell curve. We tend to romanticize the decision, and expect that everything "just gets even better" with kids. There are all sorts of ways your experience can be less than ideal. Unless you're evaluating your decision with those potential outcomes in mind, you're doing yourself, your partner, and even your future children a disservice.

I think people struggle with losing their identity when they no longer get long periods of focus time or can participate in their hobbies with the dedication they would like.

My parents managed four kids, albeit for most of that time there were only 3 living in the home at a time (13 years between the oldest and youngest).

A friend of mine had eleven (!!!) siblings. That horrifies me. Cliques could form in that size population! Utter craziness.

Yeah sure we also risk some micromorts and the life-altering-disability equivalent every time we drive a car or get a sunburn, all right.

I’m a child of Soviet Era and our parents did not think twice if they can afford children with their meager salaries. I remember going to a kindergarten as soon as I could walk.

The reality is that a family can always make choices that enable them to care for a kid, but there are of course trade offs.

Public daycare would mitigate one of those trade offs

The first is an actual problem stemming from bad parenting and as a society we should indeed shame parents who raise spoiled kids who expect everything to be given to them.

I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.

On the other hand, no one has ever called the police on me for handing the kid a tablet and melting their brain inside.

When I was a kid either of those people would be practically thrown in a loony bin for saying anything, let alone taken serious by the authorities. Now the CPS investigates almost every accusation and is legally barred from even telling you who made it, so these anonymous shitstains can exercise their cowardice behind a curtain as much as they like with no risk to themselves but every risk to you.

It's difficult to let them live in the real world not because some evil guy with a white van is waiting to offer "free candy" but that the evil person in a white van is actually the Karen who sees a kid on the street or the park as an inconvenience for her or an unacceptable risk and they can be the coward they are and make an anonymous complaint and cause weeks of harassments by CPS with the cell phone they have next to them at the ready wherever they might see a child.

Show mostly by example, not by direct mentoring.

What rich education and various cultures for 6-year-olds (or less)? That is simply irrelevant at that age and logistics of it just makes you hate everything. Do you even take your kids to dozen of arbitrary chosen classes?

Tone it down, everybody will feel better and you won't have to fake it. Happy parent is more important for family than robo parent.

I could not imagine an emptier life, than one without children.

It's such a tragedy that one might feel compelled to weigh the burdens of motherhood vs fatherhood as if either side had a choice in the matter or as if there is some kind of competition to be won.

Then you have a child and you are suddenly hyper-aware of everything going into the body and brain. Everything they eat, every doctor visit, every time they get sick and what could have exposed them, every word spoken on TV, every friend they have and how they act or how that friend passes along their parents influences, etc.

And suddenly you're very concerned about societal level macro influences on food, medical, etc because those influences are going to affect your child's life.

There are 2 further points:

1. I'd say the ideal setting is for both parents to work and hire a sitter even though it might financially net the same (or affordably negative) as having one stay-at-home parent. Because a human needs community and diverse things to do, not just one thing over and over everyday for years. Both of the parents will be much happier.

2. When people say taking care of baby/toddler is difficult, it's almost always about not eating well and/or not sleep well. Eating would take an hour of spoon-feeding because the kid wouldn't eat by themselves. Kids wouldn't be able to sleep by themselves. You must focus on solving these 2 areas first. Once they are solved, it gets a lot easier to take care of a baby/toddler.

Unfortunately, there's no way to elaborate what I mean on HN or much of the web without stirring up a ton of pointless argument. People will just get defensive and refuse to consider perspectives they can't agree with.

You can talk to the foremost mango growers on cultivating mango trees and learn everything there is to know about making mangoes. You can consult with the best chefs about how to make the best mango dishes and desserts and learn the absolute best way to prepare and eat mangoes. You can learn from the masters of how to paint a mango so lifelike that you'd think the painting was real. Etc. You can learn and truly master everything surrounding the act of eating a mango.

But until you sink your teeth into a mango and actually eat it, you've no idea what you're talking about.

So, until you actually have the kid, all this worrying is for naught.

You will be just fine, the kid will be just fine (they have their own agency too, you know), the world will keep turning and you have the agency to put a person in it and teach them what they need to know.

The real question is if you want to eat a mango or not.

It's way more work to travel with a 10-year-old than a 1-year-old. Then quadruple that difficulty for each additional kid of roughly that age...

Agreed, I should have clarified that I'm speaking more about friends and family, people's whose situation can be spoken to directly.

I have friends with neurotypical kids who still hand the kids tablets at restaurants instead of actually teaching the kid how to take turns in a conversation, or how to actually go through a menu and order!

Like I get it, it is tiring, but we all signed for the work when we chose to have kids. (At least in my social circle where kids are very well planned for in advance).

My family and friends are multi-cultural so they’re naturally exposed to several cultures, for example. It’s also important to my wife and I as the world itself is multi-cultural, so having an appreciation that different people live their lives differently is important. We lead by example simply by living in a multi-cultural life and embracing it.

Take that same approach and apply it across the rest of the points I made. Nothing is forced, I promise.

That’s the main thing - each family and each child are different, so it’s kind of hard to base your decision on what you see and hear from others.

And this is why I pay an arm and a leg to live in Seattle.

Kids here are running around outside playing soccer in the streets with parents watching guard for cars at the ends of the block.

Mixed race is not even noteworthy here.

Kids walk to/from school (up to a mile) all the time. Huge groups of kids walk together every day.

i can't speak for my wife's experience directly, but while she complained about other issues, lack of sleep was never her problem.

and the idea that work gives you more community than staying at home is nonsense. we always had family and friends around, and taking the babies to events or visit others is also a non issue.

about swapping places, i did. when our first was 1 year old, my wife started to work. i was always working from home, and i loved the idea if taking care of the kids at home, it's been something i wanted to do all my life, except when it actually happened i was lost. i didn't know what to do with the kids and things only got better for me when i started working part-time and we hired a maid. but this was my problem, it wasn't at all my wife's problem while she was at home. also, as the kids got older, things got easier, and i'd happily repeat the experience now that i am better prepared for it.

practically speaking the most annoying part of my wife working for both of us was breastmilk pumping. the benefits of going to work are not worth that hassle.

Especially trying to control who their friends are and what they hear. Questionable behavior from friends at younger ages can actually be a good thing: it lets you plant the seed early when your kids still listen to you.

Never had a second for some reason.

Judging random people on the street isn't wise. Judge your friends and loved ones instead! :D

I couldn't imagine an emptier life than one where the only thing that matters is procreation. We're not Pacific Salmon.

(I'm a dad, who does do half of everything with the kids. It is possible, it's just a lot of stuff to do.)

For example, I wonder how many monks or priests would agree with you.

Ironically, the pointless arguments you so despise (and refuse to invite) offer more than whatever utility this comment has.

It has been encouraging to see how much more men now seem to desire being engaged and nurturing in their children’s lives (even among those who otherwise consider themselves conservative or traditionalist).

We went on to have more kids. They were all quiet and easy. We sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with them.

I know I had adults I hated seeing when I was a kid.

Growing up in a more conservative society, I've seen many people with that parenting style, who often pop a proverbial blood vessel trying to ensure that their children are more like army cadets that perfectly reflect their worldviews and don't take an unapproved step in any direction. Their rationalizations ranged from real safety concerns to arbitrary opinions like what religion is right (and exactly how someone needs to act at all times, with no limits on specificity or ridiculousness) or what large groups of people are evil (nationality, religion, identity - any group is fair game, just pick one and wall off your child from ever knowing about them). Regardless of motivation, ideology is a choice, and they could've relieved a whole lot of this burden on their own at any point.

I was labeled colicky as a baby and my own children turned out to have some digestive issues with certain common foods that make them cry a ton when they or their mother eat them (and they get it via the milk). If I hadn’t debugged the food issues I might have labeled them “colicky”, but when we avoid those foods religiously they only cry when it makes sense and when the issue is solved they stop. I’m guessing I had a similar issue as a baby, my parents definitely didn’t attempt to debug it.

No judgement by the way I’m just curious if you tried debugging things like that as I imagine “colicky” could encompass issues that aren’t possible to debug also, and it’s also understandable if you couldn’t put in the resources to debug it as in my case it’s been a gigantic and expensive pain in the ass.

Trust me, the debugging is a big part of the trouble. Everyone is telling you to debug, but that is actually the thing you have to learn to stop doing. Your brain is telling you to debug. But it can't be debugged. I watched multiple women have mental breakdowns trying to debug a baby with a 6 month streak of colic. Eventually their brain just goes psychotic because a baby screaming 6+ months non-stop with nothing wrong while people frantically try to solve the problem is basically sever mental torture. It is not the hours, or days, or even weeks of screaming that get to you, it is the months of never ending ear-pearcing torture that nothing will fix, and they will not fucking sleep because they just want to scream for all of their sleep as well and naturally the caregivers won't be sleeping either due to this. And you cannot rely on crying to figure out when to feed, when to change a diaper, when the baby needs sleep, or some gentle motion -- all of your indicators are worthless.

It is a hell for the baby and it is a hell for the parent. People struggling with this generally do not have any more children. Any other stage past baby for such child is 99% easier, I laugh when people say babies are the easiest stage.

> some job to push papers/keyboard keys around for 8+ hours.

There are tons of socializing during the work time. Nobody sits and types for 8 hours a day without moving.