I love spending time with my kid, but it really is hard work. Taking care of my kid is my real job, the one I work for money is much easier to do. Weekends are exhausting, not really about rest, the week is much more relaxed. Many parents would say similar, is that surprising?

Daycare is great for the kid. The teachers can provide much more attention and direction on things that I simply can’t, and he really gets a leg up on social skills being with other kids, not just mom and dad. Spending long stretches at home with just mom and dad (and given COVID, without many play dates), he tends to become a bit wild…three day weekends or week offs aren’t just harder in a linear manner.

That all makes sense. Thanks for sharing. I guess I'm still interested in considering- how could your life be better if you did have some you time too? A lot of parents really lack any kind of time, it's always work or family, and it seems unreasonable in extreme to me; I really want to see a world where parents have some self time too.

I feel even worse for layering on more here, but I think, ultimately, one of the best things a parent can give their child is a sense of personhood. It's one of the slowest, least clear lessons, and the impact seems slow to naught, but having hobbies, doing things, having your own interests as a parent is setting a model of being interested in the world: of engaging yourself & demonstrating control & direction & volition. Parents- in living- to demonstrate what a self is.

That idea- of a world where we can visibly see others who are motivated, have intrinsic motivations desires and pursuits- beyond subsistence & survival- I think that's a keystone factor in the world, in what has made humanity enduring & interesting & capable. I worry after it, significantly. And I want, very much, for parents to have time & permission, for their self to continue to mature & engage, and to not just have to always be engaged, always be tending or working.

I have plenty of time & I spend a lot of it somewhat-inertly, so I can't expect too much from 1 day a week where there might be no work & not constant family. But I do have lots of pursuits, and they do help me shape myself, help me grow & see myself over time. I want very much everyone to have some option, some time to explore on this earth, engaging, not just being engaged.

<puts hockey coach hat on> Semi-off-topic, but did you try taking your kid to play ice hockey? It is one of the best sports for kids that have a lot of energy and need to shake it off. And they have so much padding it is really safe. Where I live we have lots of 5-6 year olds (and a few 3-4 year olds) who really enjoy it. Usually clubs have old kids equipment that you can borrow for the first couple of months while you try it out.

He takes soccer classes, will do basketball also in the fall. We are trying to pack his schedule with fun things to do as those things reopen. Going through the 3-5 stage during COVID wasn’t fun.

Sounds good :) Yeah, the lockdown periods were really hard on all the kids. It seems even the most die-hard "I hate school and it sucks forever" kids were openly admitting they missed going after a couple of weeks of online home school and being mainly confined indoors.

Plenty of people, me included, (males and/or high performance in particular) care more about things than people and will find extremely tiring to talk to people or take care or their kids. Coding doesn't tire me, dealing with kids does.

There are people who have the opposite experience and people who feel ok with both.

This idea that parents should uniquely and equally be caretaker for their kids is absolutely against biological reality for a lot of people; I'm happy to be around my kids for a limited amount of time (and the less they're toddlers the more I can spend with them without going insane) but my main contribution is providing them food, shelter and protection.

My mandated paternity leaves, while being economically advantageous, were an absolute nightmare.

This is besides the point you're making, but I personally feel that being a parent is mostly a ghost job. You need to figure out how to put the children in positions where they'll find things to play with themselves, and then let them do it.

For me, I just bring a package of crackers, some water, then go out in the streets with my kids, visiting nearby playgrounds or lots with trees. They'll then start playing, perhaps needing a little help getting started, and my involvement is mostly coming up with a plan for where to go next, and watching out for signs of exhaustion. So most of the time, I'm actually not active.

I also enjoy having limited help with say cooking or cleaning, but yeah, that's exhausting, because you need to multitask and both do the job and monitor their state and the job they are doing.

If you're doing it right, it's pretty boring. Kids need to play and you're just kind of hanging around the playground. Good opportunity for reading, or sometimes I listen to a podcast with one ear and keep the other one free for kids.

Mandated paternity leaves is to provide an equal part contributions towards children for both the mother and the father. Otherwise the mother take most of the hit ( as evidence in countries without it ).

It's also to create gender equality in the work place. If there's only maternity leave then hiring a woman of childbearing age has a higher risk for an employer than hiring a man. This leads to discrimination in the workplace with women having lower salaries, less access to interesting projects etc.. because the thinking goes that she is likely to become pregnant and have maternity leave.

In countries where men have mandatory paternity leaves that are significant this imbalance is greatly reduced.

Holy shit. Your motivation to spend time with your kid sounds terrible.

You could actually spend time on thinking what you could do with your kids.

Why did you get kids in the first place?

It seems to me like you actually don't want to be a parent?

To me it seems he doesn't like spending time with toddlers. It's a big jump from here to conclude that he doesn't want to be a parent. Toddlerhood is just a temporary state.

He literally said he cares more about things than people and his parental leave was a nightmare. To me it seems he just hates toddlers more than other people.

But even if what you say is true I'd still say he doesn't want to be a parent. You don't pick and choose with parenthood.

Many new parents always go through some depression when their first kid is just born, the life changes are drastic and sacrifices have to be made. My wife got hit with more of this than me, so I took a couple of years off of work to take care of our (then) baby so she could go back to work earlier (she just moved to the USA and was unemployed, and I just got laid off from YCR, so we got to make a choice). Always got to look out for the mental health of your partner, and judging isn’t very useful.