Are there people in your life where you just think ‘ I can’t wait until you’re a parent and finally get it and rub that smug look off your face ‘?

[doyuever]

This is a bit tongue in cheek and I know I’m evil. But DH has younger siblings and they just get on our nerves SO much. They just DON’T get it and have NO idea how hard it is to be a parent.

granted, neither did we. My DH was such an unsympathetic dick when my older sister had kids. She had her first and then two years later, she was blessed with twins. It was an absolute fucking nightmare.

a beautiful blessing, but very very very difficult time for her and her husband. I used to give a lot of moral support and try my absolute best to be there to help practically too. It was really tough and took it out of them.

my DH would say stuff like ‘ they’re not the first to have kids ‘ and ‘ they’re too dramatic and not the only people to have problems. They’re not the centre of the universe ‘.. he just didn’t get it at all.

now we are parents with small kids, he kicks himself for being such a dick and says how wrong he was.

now we have his siblings coming to see us a fair bit and they just don’t get it at all. Obviously. They try to give absolutely rubbish ‘ advice ‘ sometimes. They try to visit at 5-6pm sometimes and we’ve had to try to explain why that’s just not good right now. When we do talk about things being hard or we seem frazzled, they never have the emotional intelligence to say anything kind. ( we don’t generally say anything anymore about it being hard going as it’s just pointless ).

SIL just thinks it’s pretty much normal for mums to do it all. SIL was saying how when they were kids, the dad would go on overnight fishing trips with his friends almost every weekend… I said quite horrified that it must have been hard for their mum and she was like ‘ but why ? ‘… so no fucking clue what so ever!

me and DH say quite frequently that we just can’t wait until the have kids and we can finally understand each other again. ( they all want kids btw ).

can anyone relate ? It’s kind of funny but also annoying.

But yet you pop onto mumsnet and come on threads about kids just to demonstrate your own resentment.

That’s also really annoying.

You haven't been here long, have you?

Come on over to the MN childfree board - expand your horizons!

There seems to be a big lack of empathy. I by does someone have to go through something to see? Why don’t they believe the people explaining? I would find that annoying.

My mil is like that and tbh it makes me want to see her less.

I think I was that person before I became a parent. I was never;

1. going to carry may baby in a carrier - I'd carried him for 9 months and I wasn't going to carry on.
2. going to be a short order cook
3. going to vaccinate 4.once they went to bed, they stayed there, no up and down for drinks etc

I loved carrying my children and had an assortment of slings and carriers for them. Two of my children have autism and I completely ended up as a short order cook. My firstborn was given vitK orally and was so violently sick that I immediately went for the injection. I was always going to do the "baby vaccines" but the MMR was an issue (23 years ago in our case). I did the research to back up my arguments but couldn't find any credible arguments against the MMR so all three have had it. Bed time was always a bit issue but once they were settled, there wasn't much up and down.

I was as strict as I said I'd be but I had clear boundaries and they always knew where the boundaries were.

We were fortunate in that I was at home with them when they were young. It was isolating a lot of the time and relentless but I have memories of us having lots of fun. We had lots of days out, we took short trips with them and spent lot of time just doing things at their pace.

I think people lack a lot of emotional intelligence and honestly, they often think they’re better than others nowadays ! People have pretty high self esteem and think they could do everything better.

A colleague who said she didn’t understand how anyone ‘let their child get away with’ not sleeping and that she’d firmly explain that night time is for sleeping and day time is for being awake. She actually said this to a bloke who had a toddler who woke every 2 hours during the night! Unfortunately I didn’t work with her anymore by the time she had kids so don’t know how it worked out.

Maybe they'll swerve the entirely optional horror of having kids and you will sadly be unable to watch them getting their "comeuppance". What a ridiculous thread. If it's that hard and unbearable - don't do it!

Yes we have had a few bizarrely all from friends who are primary school teachers.

I just sat and chuckled to myself and low and behold they were in exactly the same situation then asking how did you deal with X?! Our usual response is pick your battles and it's easier to parent non existent children then ones who have their own minds and meltdowns over the wrong coloured bowl being selected!

But she can still enjoy thinking about how lonely and regretful they’ll be when they get old.

They all definitely want to have kids.

@KimberleyClarkbrutal !

I have a friend who is borderline patronising , she doesn't mean it but she says things like "awww so your only going away once this year, that's a shame" I'm like you try taking young kids away with you see how fun it is. She just doesn't get it but then is all like "awww you really must go out more" 😩 ok you see how often your going out when you have toddlers and a baby

My children are angelic and easy going. It’s not about children being difficult. It’s about parenting being an insane amount of work to do to a consistently high / reasonable standard when combined with the full time work of two parents that COL and societal expectations put on us.

This work is consistently underestimated by lots of people because it ‘just’ used to be largely done by women, and women’s work is consistently undervalued, because it’s considered it mustn’t be that hard/complex/challenging if women can do it.

Read ‘round about a pound a week’ if you think ‘oh well, people just used to GET ON with it’ - it’s always been completely exhausting and the inability of women to control the size of their family pre the advent of reliable birth control is a massive contributor to why women had no voice in society unless wealthy with domestic help - ordinary women were too fucking exhausted. There’s a strong correlation in birth control and women having the time and energy to fight for their rights.

It also does children a massive disservice to pretend that good parenting can be done without huge amounts of time, effort, emotional investment, general ‘presence’ which is easier said than done when the groceries need got, the cleaning needs done, the car needs MOTed, the elderly parents need support, friends are all going through challenging life events like bereavement, illness and family breakdown.

AND that’s if your lucky! All the parents supporting kids with additional issues, kindly, patiently, selflessly, sometimes for a lifetime!

All the parents (mostly women) doing it on their own because the other one fucked off!

Oh yes but obvs we just want them to be ‘angelic’.

So I read out of that that you husband was a dick pre kids to your sister with kids because he didn’t understand parenting. Now his siblings are doing exactly that to him?

Wow great. You’re able to read ! Well done.

I had a 'friend' (she had no kids) who said 'you shouldn't be changing your routine/life to fit around kid's, they should fit around you' ha ha ha. Still makes me laugh 18 year's later 🤣

Your poor friends. Doesn't sound like they get much sympathy from your side about how difficult it must be for them if they are suffering infertility/unable to have children.

People without children don’t get parenting, but people with children don’t get infertility either it seems.

Tbf my friends who are parents aren’t like this though.

Well at least I don’t get that impression!

Neither of us are smug about our different realities though and each appreciate the challenges and blessings in our respective choices.

Blimey how do you hold your tongue when their kids are running around?
I would be tempted to make a snide remark.

I don’t see why that is funny , aside from the school run I never had a routine , when mine were babies they totally had to fit in with my horses routine . One of my horses had a very strict routine and went mental if you deviated it was much easier to get the kids to just fit in 🤣. Never did them any harm , they both turned into lovely adults .

I remember my sister, who had one child, looking after my two as well for an afternoon. They were well behaved but still three under 8. When I returned she said she was exhausted and I said ‘now you know how it was for mom’ (there were three of us). That made her pause…
I definitely (inwardly) my eyes when some mum of a baby/toddler says they know what being a parent is all about, let alone someone who hasn’t had kids yet!

But you don't know till you DO do it!

And no-one is saying they don't want their children, they could just do without the smug know-it-alls who think it will be so easy and generally, it isn't.

I just don’t get how anyone doesn’t see how hard it is. It looks incredibly hard work - relentless - and it’s no doubt even harder than I think. People shouldn’t need to actually have them to figure that out.

Sounds like karma to me. He was a dick to your sister and now his siblings are doing it to you. Circle of life.

My brother was very self congratulatory about his beautifully behaved first child and what great parents he and his wife were. Highly critical of us for our 'feral' first child. Then he has a second and he had to accept that nature has a large part to play in children's behaviour.