Parenting expectations and experiences

A lot of people wonder how much they’ll like parenting. It would be great if there were a way to find this out in advance! TL;DR: Sorry, it’s not really possible to find out in advance.

The survey

I asked my Facebook friends who were parents to fill out an anonymous survey about their experience and expectations going in, their experiences of actually parenting, and any advice they’d give to people about learning what parenting might be like for them. Thanks to the people who shared their thoughts!

12 people answered the survey: 5 male, 5 female, 1 genderqueer, 1 who didn’t answer. There were no obvious differences by gender, except that women were more likely to have had more experience with kids before becoming parents.

I expected that people with more experience with kids would be more calibrated on how much they would like parenting, but that didn’t seem to be the case in this group.

The time people had been parents ranged from 4 months to 40 years. I’ve marked some responses from people who are still in the first few years of parenting, since they’re speaking about that time specifically and not about a longer spread. In general new parents were more negative on the experience, and the two who were a generation removed from their own parenting years were more positive on it.

I hope that an anonymous survey got pretty honest answers, but there are various ways I’d expect people to be biased toward positive depictions of parenting, so there still might be some slant.

Expectations and reality

Prompt: “Thoughts about what expectations you had, and how reality ended up being similar or different? For example, did you enjoy parenting more or less than you expected to?”
Of people who had little experience with kids before:

• “Close, but probably a bit more”
• “I enjoyed it a lot more” (has been parenting 10 months)
• “I heard people say that the first few months are hard, but I don’t think this adequately captures the true unmitigated horror that my life became. I knew that I wouldn’t get enough sleep, but I didn’t realise that when someone is right up against me and is crying and the suffering is real and intense, then I would start suffering too. 
  I wish I had realised that in the first few months the baby will only be in one of 3 states: (1) suffering (potentially extreme) (2) neutral (3) asleep. Also that suffering is common, i.e. every day, and probably every few hours.”  (has been parenting 4 months)
• “More – I think I found the baby stage much deeper and more fulfilling than many other people around me, and really enjoyed it. Now that [child] is a toddler I’m still enjoying it a lot but in a different way (maybe more similar to how I imagined pre-having kids).”
• “I became a parent during the pandemic so my sense of reality/identity was already out of whack, and then becoming a parent made me feel foreign to myself and I didn’t have an in person community to turn to to deal with some of the unreality of those early days. Post partum depression was a big part of that. I love my child but I do not like being a parent. If I could choose again knowing what I do now, I think I would have waited until some normalcy returned or I would not do it at all!” (has been parenting 2 years)
• “I wasn’t really expecting to be as involved of a parent as I am. I was not expecting the constant attention and energy required would mostly end my ability to have time to myself to pause and reflect. There is a sense of loss of self which is rough. I often feel as if I have to deliberately fight for an identity which came easily to me before. Social connections on a significant level feel near impossible and I think this has significantly dropped my quality of life. But I enjoy parenting itself more than I expected too, meaning the interacting with my child. My child is similar to me in many ways so I identify well with them and I can understand their needs I think better than I expected. I wonder if this would still be true if they were very different. I think we have a very strong bond and when I take moments to appreciate it there are constant rewards as my child develops.”

And from people who had significant experience with kids before having their own:

• “I always wanted to have children, and the reality was pretty much what I expected: a lot of work, a lot of time, and great rewards.  It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
• “Age newborn-1: enjoyed parenting much more than expected. Everyone had made it seem like this phase was going to be hellish. It was hard but I did actually enjoy it. I have heard some people say the opposite though (that it was much harder than anyone had told them about), so it’s hard to generalize from this. 
  Age 1+: enjoy parenting about as much as expected.
  For my brain, I think that before I was a parent I could picture specifics of the hardest parts of parenting more easily than I could conjure the specifics of the best parts of parenting. The best parts feel so specific to my kid, who I hadn’t met yet.”
• “I kind of had no idea what it would be like. Enjoyment? The question is too complex to answer.”
• “I actually didn’t want to have kids, and my child was a forced birth while in a forced marriage.  So in that context it’s been a challenging experience to say the least.  I have enjoyed many aspects of parenting more than I expected to and I believe that’s at least partly because I’ve dealt with my own childhood trauma so that I could parent my child who deserves better than to have a mother who is constantly triggered by her child’s existence.  Based on my heavily patriarchal upbringing, one of my expectations was that I would completely lose myself to the role of a mother if I became one.  While that has happened to some extent, I have fought for my ability to exist outside of this one particular role. The ability to have more than just the role of “parent” has helped me enjoy my child.”
• “I badly wanted to have children – lots. As it turned out I only managed one biological (after surgery) then one adopted. Both children were challenging in different ways – the interesting thing is that I ‘fell in love’ with my son (adopted aged 6 months from the Philippines) immediately, whereas my daughter it took some time. I loved being a mother. . . .  My parenting experience was marred or at least made much more difficult by a badtempered and verbally abusive and critical husband (now ex).” 
• “Parenting can’t be compared to babysitting or ‘liking’ children, imo. It’s a full time job that consists of understanding tons of logistics, managing schedules, being emotionally and physically present. None of those things I had experienced or could have imagined until thrown in the deep end. I enjoyed it much less than I thought if I’m being fully honest. Love my child but parenting is so hard because of terrible work life balance, ability to be there, constant exhaustion from not having a village etc”

How to learn what it might be like

Prompt: “Are there ways you would recommend that people learn about what parenting might be like for them before they decide to have kids?”

• “Talk to parents who are otherwise similar to you and a bit older”
• “I wish I could, but I really don’t think spending time with other people’s kids is very informative here. If you’re going to try for that, I’d try for kids of people you really like a lot and who are important to you, and I’d see if you can take *full* responsibility for some period of time, b/c I feel like a lot of what makes a relationship to your kid special is something like “We’re really in this together, you depend on me, we’re going to be important to each other for a long time.” 
  Another thing I might try is just asking yourself whether you’d like someone in your life that you love a lot but who also requires a ton of work, doesn’t hold up their end of any bargain or treat you particularly well, etc. This sounds kinda obvious but I feel like some people (including my previous self) tend to imagine having a kid as if they’re a random person, and I think it’s reasonably safe to assume that someone is going to love their kid.
  A final thing is we could use more data on how much time people actually spend on their kids and how much it takes away from their lives. My sense is that at least one parent is going to spend enormous amounts of time, unless you’re going to spend a huge amt of $, and probably one parent will spend a lot more than the other (creating an awkward dynamic.)”
• “I don’t know. In depth conversations with parents, I guess. I did a bit of this before becoming a parent but still didn’t feel prepared”
• “I found Naomi Stadlen’s book “What Mothers Do” a very helpful framing for entering early parenthood. Relevant for expectations is the discussion around the “hurdle” model in education (e.g. taking tests, exams, etc) and how this framing can be counterproductive when taking care of a baby. My guess would be some EAs might fall into this trap, and consequently enjoy parenthood less.”
• “Offer to babysit kids, spend time with young children if you can, and read books about parenting.”
• “Spending time with kids is always a good idea IMO, and anecdotally I would recommend that more AMAB [assigned male at birth] people spend time with kids before parenting.”
• “Do what I did” (several weekends as the only adult with family members’ children, lots of time with friends and their kids.)
• “I won’t say to babysit or get a dog or things like that because I would guess enough people will say those.  I think the loss of personal freedom is huge, especially in the first year of a baby’s life.  So I’d say to imagine not having much personal freedom at all for at least a year, on top of not getting enough sleep for that year and constantly being on call for a small person’s needs.  There can be plus sides, especially if you have enough other supporting adults in your life, but I know enough people who wanted kids but resent not having the life they expected that I think having your eyes wide open about the loss of personal freedom is very important.”
• “I can’t imagine anything that prepares for for 18 years of service to another human. The baby years aren’t what’s hard, but it’s what everyone talks about. It’s the longevity of providing, and nothing but real life can do that.”
• “Spend time with friends and their children?”
• “I have no idea, except to say that if you’re at risk for postpartum depression or anxiety you should pursue medication before you give birth so that it is fully working by the time you are postpartum, instead of waiting because most medications for these things take a while to start working and those are the weeks when you really need it.”
• “This is hard. I don’t think enjoying spending time with kids is a great indicator of enjoying parenting (I know someone who LOVED kids, had one, and couldn’t handle it). I also don’t know that spending time caring for someone else’s kids would help much. There’s an endurance you need to have, and a willingness to do very long-term projects that aren’t captured by quick interactions. Plus the fact that kids vary wildly. And you have your own child on bad days and busy days. Maybe my recommendation would be something like (1) volunteer to help out for a few days at a daycare center or elementary school to get lots of interactions with different kids, especially work on trying to get them to do things like getting ready, eating, etc (2) take responsibility for taking care of a friend/family child for a couple of days, eg babysitting when they’re away, but ALSO attempt to plan and accomplish other things for yourself on those same days (work, exercise, etc goals). If you put your own life on pause it doesn’t count. And (3) reflect on your experience executing other very long-term projects that require regular attention (school, career, friendships, pets, etc). How much attention can you still give them on bad days / busy days?”

Takeaways

I was surprised by how widely varied the responses were.

Experience with other people’s children might be helpful for realizing you don’t want children, but might not be enough to get a real picture of whether you do want them.