Scenario 1: The over-achiever parent
I see this frequently, a parent that wants to be a super parent. This manifests in a bunch of different ways, but usually it's enrolling their kids to 15 different activities essentially running all over the place being glorified taxis for their kids.
Then their kids don't know how to function if there is nothing to do.
Scenario 2: The I'm missing our parent
Parents that either had kids too early, or not by choice. They feel like they missed out, so they lament about all the fun they didn't have. This is a weird form of resistance to reality. What usually happens is that they will get a divorce, to somehow escape their children. I am 40, so I see it with people my age, they divorce, see their kids 2-4 times a week and do crazy stuff to somehow recapture their youth.
In my opinion it's about keeping a good balance. If you never make time for yourself that's a mistake. If you put the bar too high as a parent you are bound to miss. The simplest approach is to carve out some time to yourself, balancing things out with your significant other. Enrolling your kids in 1-2 activities out of school and recognizing that not every single minute of a day needs to be hyper-optimized.
I know plenty of people who don't have this kind of support group and/or are unwilling to use sitters in any form.
Part of this is just having a kid under 5 apparently, but I can't imagine being able to survive with more than one, much less retain a creative pursuit.
...and since I have a bunch of kids. It gets easier. People talk about terrible 2s, but I feel that 3 and 4 are much harder. They are old enough to know what they want, but not old enough to get it. They can communicate but not 100% or with appropriate level of specificity. They also have the amazing ability to know how to push buttons, part of carving an identity for themselves.
Each year though it gets easier. It's true for all four of mine, and they do have different speeds, they mature at different rates, but overall the trend is always less dependency, which as a single parent you need.
I totally feel your pain though. So I hope you are doing OK.
As an extra tip, totally unsolicited of course. Start doing chores, boring tasks with your kid. Even if they are little. It does a few good things.
1. You have to do the chores anyway, might as well do them when you can't relax (since the kid is going to ask/need things). This way when they go to sleep, you don't have a bunch of things to do, you can fully relax.
2. You are teaching them life skills. They learn by watching and doing. This will also allow you to bond over simple life stuff
3. As they get older, they can have their own chores and lighten your load and if nothing else appreciate what you do for them a tiny bit more
You said your kid is under 5, so I'll give you some examples.
Age 2: pickup toys (I pretend that the toy bin/bucket is a monster that's hungry for toys). Press buttons (for example to start the dishwasher). Throw things in the garbage (hungry garbage can)
Age 3: they can start wiping things, taking their place to the kitchen counter, take items from one room to another. Dusting
Age 4: can start help you cook safely, things like dumping a teaspoon of salt in the food, stirring (obviously no boiling stuff), mopping (rather badly, but they have a blast), sweeping (make sure you duck :), putting dirty laundry away, folding kitchen towels
Age 5: I let them start cutting simple things like bananas, start making breakfast (cereal, toast then scrambled eggs). Pickup their room with some pointers. Assist in cleaning the bathroom and kitchen counters.
Hope it helped.
I didn’t say it was always easy, but that’s fine by me because it’s not actually soul-crushingly difficult (again, another misconception popular among young people without kids that turned out to be wrong).
The older I get, the more I realize that my friends who optimize for minimal effort (no kids, reluctant to leave the house, picky about what they attend) are gradually sliding into very boring and unfulfilled existences.
YMMV and don’t let my experience be your only guide
But I had the same exact feeling. After the first year or two (infant stage is tough, no denying it) I’m actually right back to my hobbies just as before.
It takes more planning now to do the weekend hobby events that are out of town, but it’s still plenty doable.
I’ve also realized that the number of years that your kids are young and require a lot of attention is actually fairly small. I plan to live to at least 80 and the most attentive child-raising years are only a small fraction of that.
I know I'll likely figure it out, as I have everything in my life so far. That doesn't prevent that dread from creeping up, though.
The hobby is sports. I'm relatively gifted as a "hybrid" athlete, if I work hard at it I can get podium finishes at OCR / Hyrox type events. I'd still do it without that though, it produces an emotional state that, while not taking away the rational thought that there's ultimately not much purpose to anything that I do, makes me not really care about that at all. Makes things make sense even when they don't.
However, the fact that it (a) combines really poorly with a lack of sleep and (b) has an expiration date (athletic ability is of course age bound) do contribute to the sense of dread.
But now that I think about it, it's the same with children. When a 30 year old parent hits the 50 year old mark his children would likely be already left from home. So it's almost the same, still many years left.
PD: No notifications from HN is great. Nothing will happen if you forget to answer to an stranger on the internet. I'd have forgotten to check your response if I hadn't manually be looking for something in my own comments' history
I think by and large it's a good thing, but in certain cases "nothing will happen" isn't the outcome I'm looking for ;).
The reason I started thinking about having a family is that I was done with partying.
The idea of going out for drinks doesn't sound too appealing, but it's the popular thing to say