Re:The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’
by jpdaigle on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @04:03PM
(#25281599)
> it's not like it's a mystery that childbirth is painful and that raising children is a mostly miserable affair
As someone with toddlers I'll take a stab at an explanation: we thought we went in with eyes open, but it turns out we (I?) _massively_ under-estimated how hard this level of sustained effort would be in the long run because there's no real analog for it in your pre-parenting experience.
Everyone says raising toddlers is hard work. You go into it accepting "sure, it's super hard work, I know what that's like, I can do it!". We thought of hard work by drawing from experience, thinking back to difficult degree programs, or working for a fledgling startup, etc. But in all of that experience, after crunch time, you always get to take an afternoon off once in a while, a couple hours here and there, even if it's just an evening of doing nothing every few weeks.
Nobody had "Well, what if there's a pandemic and you just can't drop off your toddlers at a sitter/parent to get a few hours break? For an entire year?" on their threat radar.
We simply didn't know what that child-rearing work looked like if it went on for months without a break. While you're sleep deprived. While your relationships with a co-parent might be frayed by stress, exhaustion, and cabin fever.
It's become very tiresome to use the word "unprecedented" in 2020, but it's still the word that fits.
As someone with toddlers I'll take a stab at an explanation: we thought we went in with eyes open, but it turns out we (I?) _massively_ under-estimated how hard this level of sustained effort would be in the long run because there's no real analog for it in your pre-parenting experience.
Everyone says raising toddlers is hard work. You go into it accepting "sure, it's super hard work, I know what that's like, I can do it!". We thought of hard work by drawing from experience, thinking back to difficult degree programs, or working for a fledgling startup, etc. But in all of that experience, after crunch time, you always get to take an afternoon off once in a while, a couple hours here and there, even if it's just an evening of doing nothing every few weeks.
Nobody had "Well, what if there's a pandemic and you just can't drop off your toddlers at a sitter/parent to get a few hours break? For an entire year?" on their threat radar.
We simply didn't know what that child-rearing work looked like if it went on for months without a break. While you're sleep deprived. While your relationships with a co-parent might be frayed by stress, exhaustion, and cabin fever.
It's become very tiresome to use the word "unprecedented" in 2020, but it's still the word that fits.