> Those who have kids know. Those who don’t just will never understand.

Oh come on, I was agreeing with your comment until this totally unnecessary condescension.

Part of being a mature person (which you imply to claim you are) is the knowledge that whatever you know isn’t necessarily special to your experience, and that other people may arrive at it through a different set of experiences. In this case, being proud of someone whom you love and whose well-being you actively contributed to isn’t an exclusive domain of parents or step-parents, but also of teachers and caretakers in orphanages who are capable of fulfilling the role. “Having a kid” isn’t a requirement here.

Au contraire, maturity entails realizing that if you haven't experienced something, you don't know what it's like. That's certainly true of creating a new human being.

For myself, having kids taught me things about myself that I'd have been happier never knowing.

Not a better person, just happier.

On balance the knowledge is worth it to me.

That you'd be happier never knowing? I'm curious what some insights are you learned from your journey.

Not the parent but the birth of my kids and their growing up 'caused' a cascade childhood trauma to bubble up. It was overwhelming for months and it messed me up for years, including bouts of depression and lots of trauma purges. Not the kids' doing, just some mirror effect, situations triggering and unlocking memories. And I feel it's even worse if you try alternative, progressive education methods, that give lots of agency to children, that focus on understanding the emotional state of mind, on accepting everyone's emotions without judgement, with infinite patience, the absolute minimum of coercion, and go so much in opposition to the way I was 'raised'.

Not saying I agree with parent that I'd be happier for sure in some ways, but I sure didn't expect so much psychological pain in addition to the hard work of raising kids.

The is very profound, thank you for sharing what to expect. I also share childhood trauma and your perspective on the current generation and state of what is acceptable in parenting as being a little too alien in comparison to my childhood where my parents were manipulative and addicted to their own vices so I escaped playing outside all day with neighborhood friends. Nowadays helicopter parenting, ubiquitous computing/gaming, phone/social media addiction and instant gratification have eroded the working memory of the younger generation. It's only time until we realize it's akin to drug addiction and the smoking kills revelation of our times.

Heavy but hopeful reading: https://www.rewriting-the-rules.com/self/trauma-and-cptsd-10...

"[...] each time psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy have begun to take trauma seriously, it has been shut down by people denying that it’s even a thing, and suggesting that those who are traumatised are making it up or exaggerating its impact. When Freud first published a paper pointing out that most of the people with mental health struggles he was working with had experienced childhood and/or adult sexual abuse and assault, he was ignored and shut down. He went on to shift to a theory that suggested his patients had fantasised those things: they couldn’t possibly actually had happened. This is pretty terrifying now that we know the statistics on the prevalence of abuse and assault."

My new therapist asks 2-3x per session 'but no one raised a fuss with CPS'? What? I was very well treated compared to most kids from my neighbourhood & cohort. I was fed, clothed, and my health was somehow cared for, at least when obviously sick. Sleeping in my own bed in a stable home, a roof over my head. Not to much abuse, at least not everyday. Most of my mates didn't have this luck. The slaps in school by their parents, the pulled hair or ears to obtain compliance, the insults, pushing around, threats of sleeping on the ground or outside, the black eyes, belt scars, the never washed clothes and body, the 'forgotten' breakfasts or dinners, the rotten teeth, the neglected vision problems...

I mean it wasn't Oliver Twist but some of us had it GOOD.

Gimme helicopter parenting and too many activities. The pendulum hasn't swung that much on that side than it had on the other...

Sorry, I hate the 'helicopter parenting' expression.

FWIW I agree about our modern vices. Phones, twitter, HN, everything-gamification...

Yeah for me it was alcohol addiction and escapism, verbal abuse and unloving home environment that really messes with your head as a kid and is hard to understand the long term implications to my mental well being. I am slowly unraveling the issues that manifest themselves in my adult life through guided CBT. Poverty and drug addicted parents was a common theme among my childhood friends.

Good luck on your path and if anything, for all the pain and work and worry kids can be (and twins can be a handful), they're also so much... Love and fun :-) it took some time for me to believe it was directed at me, but love like this is overwhelming and life-transforming.

It doesn't have to be a great perfect day, just two minutes or twenty seconds of a hug with a person who loves and cares for you unconditionally, and you back... It's... powerful. Moving. Like a gift from you to you, and a gift to the world, trying to raise new beaming, can-do, positive-energy to build the world of tomorrow. It sounds silly but I believe the phrase.

Cheers.

Very very true... in this case, think of “having kids” as possession.

I echo this as well. I'll also add that I made very little to no investment in my mental health until becoming a father. My perspective on who I want to be and what I need to do to get there changed practically overnight.

You're making a pretty big leap of assumption here.

- he didn't say that he had biological kids

- the step daughter is his own daughter, they aren't two different things

- he didn't say that if he does have biological kids, that he didn't tear up at their graduation

- he also didn't specify the ages of any of his kids, so there's no reason to assume that any others have graduated

I'm curious as to where those assumptions came from?

> - the step daughter is his own daughter, they aren't two different things

Thank you.

Also, it's not like we're born with DNA testers. There's no reason why our instincts actually know the difference between our biological kids and others we've been with, played the same role with, and raised the same way.

Yes, but it depends on the age of the child when the relationship starts. My half sister was 13-ish about when my father married my mother (so my half sister’s step-mother).

There was always an obvious difference in the way she bonded with my mom vs her biological mom. It’s still family, but more like an aunt at best. Despite never saying it, it’s pretty obvious my mother obviously views us differently as well having basically had no say in any of her step daughters formative years.

Of course. That makes perfect sense.

That has been found to be empirically not true. As always, there is a distribution (see Homicide by Daly and Wilson, for example). Now, if we know by instinct, smell, or just because we know...

An interesting study might be parents who later learn that their kids aren't actually theirs. Did they treat their kids differently than real biological children? All kinds of ethical issues, etc., but the data would be awesome.

We can assume that nobody treats them better and some will treat them worse. It follows that non-biological parents inevitably treat on average (and, very important, this is cross-sectional, not paired) their kids worse after they know they are not theirs. Directionally, there is little doubt.

Even if you could resolve the ethical issues, the only thing that a study would prove is that “people tend not to care for children that aren’t theirs”, and not “biological relation is necessary for a parent to be able to care for an adopted child”.

No I meant how people treated those kids before they learned that the kids weren't theirs.

> - he also didn't specify the ages of any of his kids, so there's no reason to assume that any others have graduated

Well, he said he's an empty nester now. So...

True, on second reading he says "raising kids", not having them.

Have adopted from foster kid system.

Pretty quick they are YOUR kid. Emotionally, It fills the same.

I'm assuming he put in literal decades of blood, sweat and tears getting his step daughter to that point. How could you not be proud at the moment of payoff?

Merely producing biological offspring doesn't make then your kid in any meaningful social sense; ask anyone with a parent who bailed real early. Being a child's parent makes them your child, whether they're biologically related to you or not.

The biological relationship we have with our children is probably the least significant part of our relationship with them.

This is what I'm talking about. There's no limit to the pride meter with kids. It's at 11 all the time.