To think most people massively underestimate what's involved with parenting?

[Soph7777]

Just that really. I haven't got kids I hope to in the near future but I have a lot of young kids around me so never once underestimated how hard it is.

A lot of people seem to just go into it without giving much thought, and then sometimes end up disappointed.

A question to those who have had kids - did you underestimate or overestimate how hard it would be?

Isabellaswann I honestly find my job (which I like) a lot harder! If I could be a sahm whilst not being financially dependent on someone I would! I have 3 under 5 and I love it.

I found the baby/toddler/young child staged very easy- the things I thought would be difficult (breastfeeding/potty training/sleepless nights) were actually ok.

I’m now at the teenage stage and I massively underestimated how difficult these years are!

I had no real idea of what to expect as I was a teenager and an only child so had never experienced life with small children. I think this helped in a way as I just got on with it, the sleep deprivation was the hardest part, I have never really had a life of my own to do what I wanted as I only had a couple of years where I could go where I wanted when I wanted so I adjusted quickly to this. Later on in my life, I did underestimate the teenage years and how hard it would be and the change in our relationships. It has got better when they hit their twenties so I will keep that in mind with my youngest 3, when they reach the teenage years.

iving people do, don’t they? If I started a thread saying that nursing / teaching / being a lawyer / being a bus driver was easy I’d get endless anecdotes to prove otherwise and they would all be totally true. But perhaps not every day.

I don’t understand what you mean. It’s a feature of MN though that a certain proportion will simply disbelieve others who have had different experiences to them. I don’t assume people are pretending when they have experienced things differently to me.

I underestimated how exhausting the baby stage was with my first born but I don’t think anyone can fully prepare for that. It’s completely different looking after someone else’s child for a few hours to actually having your own who needs you 24/7 to see to their every need. Newborns are truly the most exhausting thing imaginable, I’ve never been as sleep deprived as the first few weeks with a newborn.

Thing is, the newborn stage is fleeting and they do eventually sleep through. There are difficulties with every stage of childhood but I’ve mostly just winged it and it’s been fine.

Obviously sleep became my chief treat in life during the baby stage, and lie-ins until they were past the toddler stage, but TBH I can’t say I found any of it really hard, not even teens.
I dare say I was just lucky.

It does make me laugh, though, when couples expecting their first, insist that it’s going to make no difference, they’re going to carry on as usual, the baby will just have to fit in. Oh, the people who know exactly how to do it all - before they have any!

Of course children change your life enormously. They change your priorities - or they should, IMO anyway. But they come with their own joys and compensations for the day-to-day slog, which admittedly can seem endless in the early years.

Neither do I iving but looking after your own children is not the unrelenting misery it is painted on here as. There may be other factors that make it harder but that is the other factors, not the raising children in itself.

You literally said “I think a lot of people like to pretend that it is“ [difficult]

Yes, they do. They claim it is the hardest thing in the world, that their lives would consist of endless lie ins, weekends travelling Europe, galleries and museums without the pesky kids in the way. Perhaps exaggerate is a better word. But in any event, I do think there’s a lot of it, probably in reaction to people believing it’s ‘easy.’

I didn't realise how babies and toddlers would defy all my attempts to plan and schedule. It's many years ago now but I've never forgotten the sheer grind and battle of wanting to be organised and being constantly interrupted and delayed. I hadn't realised how unpredictable their needs would be. It really wore me down, as frankly I'd wanted to be (what people now don't like calling) a housewife at least as much as a mother.

Being a parent is the hardest thing I've ever done but it's also the best thing I've ever done. I definitely underestimated it. Sometimes I do think "what if I'd never had the kids" but then one of them gives me a hug or hands me a lovingly crafted card and I remember that, for me, all the hard work, exhaustion and stress is massively eclipsed by the love I get in return.

Isabellaswann I prefer to believe people when they say they find something difficult that I don’t, rather than assume that they are exaggerating/pretending

I think I actually massively over-estimated how hard it would be and was almost neurotic about it all.

In the first three months after my first was born he only woke once in the night to feed, but I couldn't sleep until he woke, I was so unrelaxed about it. Luckily for me he slept through after that.

What I probably found the hardest was that my life suddenly took on a very simple, repetitive cycle in the first couple of years. When I had my second child three years later, this period was the happiest I've ever been and I'll always regret not sharing that same happiness with my first child (now a lovely 6' 1" 16 year old).

I think just generally having kids is a huge undertaking whatever you were anticipating.

I miss silence, the ability to sit on a sofa without someone sitting on me with their face as physically close to mine as they can get it and having to negotiate and deal with unreasonable issues every day. I knew it wouldn't be easy but the things that bother me are t things you could prepare for really.

I love it but never realised how hard the teenage years would be, the early years are a breeze compared to what comes up …..

I underestimated how much being a parent would take over my life. Yes it's hard work, and relentless, yet so rewarding, but my pre parent life, and my life as a parent are so different they are scarcely comparable.

Being a parent is hard, but not every day. There's good days and bad days. But the bad days can be very bad. Depressing, even terrifying.

I do think there's a tendency once you've been a parent for a while to look at childless people's lives in a grass is greener kind of way. When I was childless I didn't spend my whole life travelling or relaxing or going out having fun. Childless people's lives can be mundane and / or stressful too.

I do believe them, iving. I believe that they think it’s incredibly hard. I also don’t think that it is. I think people enjoy complaining of its difficulties. We can see this on the thread - child shoving her face into yours, move her and gently but firmly instruct her not to do that. Even babies will understand that.

And I honestly am not intentionally sounding smug there, I know it can be tough. I just think the insistence that it’s so hard, nothing else could be harder, the working partner (if a SAHP) is spending their day drinking hot coffee and passing urine, is misguided and leads to problems in relationships as well as problems more generally.

I do think there's a tendency once you've been a parent for a while to look at childless people's lives in a grass is greener kind of way. When I was childless I didn't spend my whole life travelling or relaxing or going out having fun. Childless people's lives can be mundane and / or stressful too.

I really agree with this, and think it's very much exacerbated that for a lot of people their 20s are child-free and their 30s and 40s are not - I think most people, regardless of whether they have children, are more care and responsibility free, socialise a lot more, etc. when they're younger, and it's easy to conflate that with being child-free. None of my friends without children still live like they're 22, and I think it's a bit patronising and insulting to assume they would.

No, you don’t believe them. Saying “I believe they think...” is not believing them. It is still believing that your experience can be the only true one and anyone who says otherwise is deluded. That is unkind and also lacking in insight on your part. It’s a shame that you can’t see that.

I’ll be honest and say I didn’t think about it much and still don’t really. I just muddle along like most people. I wonder if people think too much about parenting these days.

And bear in mind I am one of the lucky ones who has not found everything incredibly hard - much of which is down to luck of the draw rather than me doing anything “right” - but I have no problem understanding that others have had different experiences

“ I wonder if people think too much about parenting these days.”

Haha you’re on a parenting forum just like the rest of us