Where did the time come from? What activities did you have to give up? How did that feel, emotionally?
How did this change in going from one kid to two?
(I say this as someone who:
Can’t really imagine working less and still being reasonably successful in my current line of work
needs a certain amount of sleep to be productive and happy
has a life full of other things that bring me joy and feel important to me
At the same time, I have a strong felt sense that I would like to have a child. So I am currently betting that I will find the time mainly by cutting out most of my time with friends / other leisure activities, and that the meaning and joy of raising a child will make this worthwhile. But I worry that I will feel resentful / inclined to prioritize my needs over my child’s fullest flourishing.)
The time for parenting, in my experience, comes mostly from spending less time watching less TV, playing computer games, and reading; doing less traveling and socializing with friends; and working in a different way—cutting out wasted time on low-priority things, learning to say no to irrelevant distractions, and learning how to collaborate, outsource, and delegate more efficiently. It’s very important to have a partner/spouse/co-parent who’s smart, efficient, and pragmatic at organizing life, and figuring out good, sustainable, divisions of labor.
My older daughter (age 26) was fully grown when I had my younger daughter (age 6 months), so I haven’t had the experience of raising two young kids at the same time. However, I was raising older daughter at the same time as I was helping to care for my teenage step-son, and task-switching between them could be challenging (i.e. not treating a toddler as if they’re a teen, or vice-versa).
Regarding sleep: it’s absolutely crucial to sleep-train a baby starting around 3-4 months old, using behaviorist learning principles that can be emotionally challenging to implement at first (e.g. ignoring baby crying for certain lengths of time), but that are hugely beneficial in the long run (e.g. having to wake up with them only twice a night, rather than six times a night.) Once a kid is about 2-3 years old, they’ll typically sleep through the night. And remember, young kids sleep MUCH more than adults—our baby typically goes to sleep around 6:30 pm and wakes around 6:30 am—plus has four 40-minute naps during the day. So there’s quite a bit of time when they’re just sleeping in their crib.
Regarding the dangers of working less: I was very worried about this as a post-doc (age 30) having a kid, and being concerned about getting an academic job and tenure. However, I found that having a baby was enormously motivating. The book I’d been procrastinating about writing for 3 years suddenly got written within a fairly short period, because I really needed the advance money to buy a bigger house for the family. My career strategizing, which had been rather self-indulgent and haphazard, got laser-focused on getting a good stable tenure-track job with decent pay and good colleagues—and it worked. All because being a parent forces one to get very realistic about money, time, job stability, and career goals, very quickly.
Regarding job and fulfillment: every parent I know says there’s a qualitatively new kind of fulfillment that comes from having kids. When my first daughter was born, I immediately thought, ‘Why did I waste so much of my life before this, in things that now seem meaningless?’ This might be a trick that evolution plays on our brains, but it works! Also, competent and effective parents can still find plenty of time to socialize, enjoy Game of Thrones, read, relax, etc. It’s not nearly as easy to travel or go to Burning Man, but it’s possible, especially with older kids.
I want to add that sleep training is a hot-button issue among parents. There is some evidence that starting to sleep-train your baby too early can be traumatic. My advice is simply to gather evidence from different sources before making a choice.
Otherwise, I agree with Geoffrey Millers reply. Your working hours as a parent are usually shorter, but you learn how to set priorities and work more effectively.
It’s true that sleep training is quite controversial. If you look at Reddit parenting forums, it’s one of the most viciously debated topics.
There’s a strong taboo against explicitly training humans of any age using behaviorist reinforcement methods (which my wife Diana Fleischman is writing about in her forthcoming book). And there’s a naturalistic bias in favor of kids co-sleeping with parents, frequent night-time nursing, etc. -- some of which may have an evolutionary rationale, but some of which may be parents virtue-signaling their dedication, empathy, etc.
Maybe sleep training too early can be traumatic, but it’s not clear what ‘too early’ means, and I haven’t seen good data either way. I’m open to updating on this issue—with the caveat that a lot of parents throw around the term ‘traumatic’ in a rather alarmist way, without a very clear idea of what that actually means, or how it could be measured in a randomized controlled trial.
(There’s an analogy to dog training here—a lot of dog owners do very little training, very badly, on the view that training is manipulative, oppressive, and mean, and doesn’t allow their dogs to ‘be themselves’. Whereas owners of well-trained dogs understand that the short-term frustrations of training can have big long-term benefits.)
Regarding what prehistoric, hunter-gatherer, and traditional humans do in terms of parenting, it’s useful and fascinating to look at the book ‘Mothers and others’ (2011) by anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
Thank you for doing this!
My questions:
Where did the time come from? What activities did you have to give up? How did that feel, emotionally?
How did this change in going from one kid to two?
(I say this as someone who:
Can’t really imagine working less and still being reasonably successful in my current line of work
needs a certain amount of sleep to be productive and happy
has a life full of other things that bring me joy and feel important to me
At the same time, I have a strong felt sense that I would like to have a child. So I am currently betting that I will find the time mainly by cutting out most of my time with friends / other leisure activities, and that the meaning and joy of raising a child will make this worthwhile. But I worry that I will feel resentful / inclined to prioritize my needs over my child’s fullest flourishing.)
Good questions. In reply:
The time for parenting, in my experience, comes mostly from spending less time watching less TV, playing computer games, and reading; doing less traveling and socializing with friends; and working in a different way—cutting out wasted time on low-priority things, learning to say no to irrelevant distractions, and learning how to collaborate, outsource, and delegate more efficiently. It’s very important to have a partner/spouse/co-parent who’s smart, efficient, and pragmatic at organizing life, and figuring out good, sustainable, divisions of labor.
My older daughter (age 26) was fully grown when I had my younger daughter (age 6 months), so I haven’t had the experience of raising two young kids at the same time. However, I was raising older daughter at the same time as I was helping to care for my teenage step-son, and task-switching between them could be challenging (i.e. not treating a toddler as if they’re a teen, or vice-versa).
Regarding sleep: it’s absolutely crucial to sleep-train a baby starting around 3-4 months old, using behaviorist learning principles that can be emotionally challenging to implement at first (e.g. ignoring baby crying for certain lengths of time), but that are hugely beneficial in the long run (e.g. having to wake up with them only twice a night, rather than six times a night.) Once a kid is about 2-3 years old, they’ll typically sleep through the night. And remember, young kids sleep MUCH more than adults—our baby typically goes to sleep around 6:30 pm and wakes around 6:30 am—plus has four 40-minute naps during the day. So there’s quite a bit of time when they’re just sleeping in their crib.
Regarding the dangers of working less: I was very worried about this as a post-doc (age 30) having a kid, and being concerned about getting an academic job and tenure. However, I found that having a baby was enormously motivating. The book I’d been procrastinating about writing for 3 years suddenly got written within a fairly short period, because I really needed the advance money to buy a bigger house for the family. My career strategizing, which had been rather self-indulgent and haphazard, got laser-focused on getting a good stable tenure-track job with decent pay and good colleagues—and it worked. All because being a parent forces one to get very realistic about money, time, job stability, and career goals, very quickly.
Regarding job and fulfillment: every parent I know says there’s a qualitatively new kind of fulfillment that comes from having kids. When my first daughter was born, I immediately thought, ‘Why did I waste so much of my life before this, in things that now seem meaningless?’ This might be a trick that evolution plays on our brains, but it works! Also, competent and effective parents can still find plenty of time to socialize, enjoy Game of Thrones, read, relax, etc. It’s not nearly as easy to travel or go to Burning Man, but it’s possible, especially with older kids.
I want to add that sleep training is a hot-button issue among parents. There is some evidence that starting to sleep-train your baby too early can be traumatic. My advice is simply to gather evidence from different sources before making a choice.
Otherwise, I agree with Geoffrey Millers reply. Your working hours as a parent are usually shorter, but you learn how to set priorities and work more effectively.
Frank—thanks for your reply.
It’s true that sleep training is quite controversial. If you look at Reddit parenting forums, it’s one of the most viciously debated topics.
There’s a strong taboo against explicitly training humans of any age using behaviorist reinforcement methods (which my wife Diana Fleischman is writing about in her forthcoming book). And there’s a naturalistic bias in favor of kids co-sleeping with parents, frequent night-time nursing, etc. -- some of which may have an evolutionary rationale, but some of which may be parents virtue-signaling their dedication, empathy, etc.
Maybe sleep training too early can be traumatic, but it’s not clear what ‘too early’ means, and I haven’t seen good data either way. I’m open to updating on this issue—with the caveat that a lot of parents throw around the term ‘traumatic’ in a rather alarmist way, without a very clear idea of what that actually means, or how it could be measured in a randomized controlled trial.
(There’s an analogy to dog training here—a lot of dog owners do very little training, very badly, on the view that training is manipulative, oppressive, and mean, and doesn’t allow their dogs to ‘be themselves’. Whereas owners of well-trained dogs understand that the short-term frustrations of training can have big long-term benefits.)
Regarding what prehistoric, hunter-gatherer, and traditional humans do in terms of parenting, it’s useful and fascinating to look at the book ‘Mothers and others’ (2011) by anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.