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.

Similar when lockdown happened and people were going on about learning something new. Not in my house, DCs were off school!
Ps love your username, am currently reading this book

@MimiSunshineyeah so our manager is leaving it up to us to decide who will not attend. While they were discussing it, they kept saying stuff like : ‘ well if susie ( me ) stays behind then she can go to the next one, or we will agree to distribute any contacts we meet evenly ‘ etc. they said it a couple of times and it really annoyed me.

“SIL was saying how when they were kids the dad would go on overnight trips almost every weekend… I said quite horrified that must have been hard for their mum and she was like ‘but why’… no fucking clue”

I do think parents used to be a lot more resilient in years gone by than the social media generation who are validated by parenting influencers and psychology reels. Yes parenting is hard, but parents used to just manage without crying out for sympathy. My dad also used to go away on fishing trips leaving four kids at home with my mum. She just coped! Likewise my dad coped while my mum was working evening shifts. No one panicked if an aunty dropped in at 5pm or if a friend asked us to say please.

My SIL made a sarky comment when DS was two and was still using a potty eg 'shouldn't he be toilet trained by now?' SIL has never had children and I felt like asking her how many kids she had toilet trained but didn't know if that was a bit below the belt so I didn't bother.

Yes! But now this person is parent and literally leaves everything to the other parent. Never done a nighttime nappy, chose to formula feed so the other parent could do 100% of the feedings, never once woke in the night. The baby is left with grandparents whenever possible, and the person only takes baby out in the pram/park if the weather is favourable and for a maximum of an hour. I have seen this with my own eyes. So they are STILL painfully smug!

Talk about easily triggered.

Hilarious 🤣🙄😁

It’s not cool though is it ? It’s not about resilience. It’s about realising that it’s just not cool for the dad to fuck off every weekend, leaving the mum on her own with the kids.

we can all get on with it, but fathers used to be way too checked out and it’s not cool at all. If my SIL can’t even begin to imagine why the set up isn’t fair on the mum, she’s going to have a massive shock. She thinks it’s all the mums responsibly. It’s going to be very tough for her and she’s going to finally get it when her husband fucks off every weekend and leaves her on her own with a baby.

she really has no idea what’s up and how she’ll be likely to feel, doing the lions share of the work and working too. Which is what she wants to do

Yes the person who, after I shared that my child woke up every 45 minutes at night for several months, said ‘having a baby really is not that different to having a dog - don’t pretend otherwise.’

And some people with kids are the worst smug know it all's! They think they somehow know everything all because they dropped out a kid your not magic and there are things you don't know either 😊

Parents with teens are far kinder than those with babies and younger kids. We are older and know we are all a phone call away from disaster even the “easy” teens. My experience anyway.

One of DHs friends and their DW were dreadfully unhelpful whilst we were away with them shortly after DC2 was born.

we had two under 15mins and they commandeered the room with the ensuite bath (the only one in the house) moaned about the DC making noise wanted to split the food bill to include the 15mth as a full person and when shopping insisting we all carried an equal number of bags despite me being 4wks post partum, severely anemic and also carrying a baby.

the friend had the decency to apologise to DH a few years later when they had their own children but it really stung at the time.

This thread is vile! Am I going to be lonely and regretful if my IVF doesn't work? People are allowed to not know how things are before they do it, even the OP said they were the same so this thread is totally pointless! Also, not everybody is so switched off from the world that just because they don't have kids they can't see/understand how it is for families with kids.

I've got a kid (teen) and a dog. The dog is comparable to a toddler 🙄

I had a different experience with SIL approx 20 years ago (she’s almost 40 now, never married, never had kids, desperately wants both, this was probably behind it all - not that it matters): “ew, so your skin is actually stretching that around your belly? Aren’t the stretch marks gross? How are you going to wear a bikini after this?”, “God the thought of pushing a baby out of there actually makes me want to vomit, so gross”, “I don’t know why anyone would do this to themselves, all they do is shit, cry, eat. So boring”, “why don’t you just get a babysitter and go out like a normal person?” and so on and so forth. I snapped, eventually, which (obviously) made her cry, you don’t know what it’s like for me with everyone around me getting married and having babies blah blah blah. It’s never been the same. She has 4 nieces and nephews and did the same to both of their mothers. I actually don’t wish her to have children, I have never met a more selfish and self-centered person in my life (not just this stuff, it’s everything with her).

Right what a disgusting thing to say /think. And btw many people who work in nursing homes will tell you about parents who have zero kids /grandkids visit them. Some parents are no or low contact with their kids etc.

So yeah having kids just so you won’t be lonely in older age is not only daft as well as selfish.

And it’s just spiteful to insinuate everyone who doesn’t is doomed. Do better.

lol
My best friend had a calm child first, so she thought parenting was all about having the right attitude - until she had her second 😆. I had mine after hers and the "spirited" one was first, calm one second. Personalities pretty much established from the get go!

I didn't find raising kids that hard 😂

I realise I come across as smug, but I am just being honest. And my DH used to go away for work for weeks at a time leaving me with the kids and my family lived miles away so I had no support. And yes, I also worked full time myself.

I think maybe I just got lucky.

Yes, my friend from college who is married to another woman and they have no plans for kids

My DS and BIL were all gentle parenting- baby led weaning goddess, no forcing to do anything they didn’t want to and discussions on how kids ‘choices’ could have been better- lots of psychobabble about how it will teach their kids to be independent, more responsible/nicer humans and intrigued in new foods as they grow up….

Mine are older than theirs and although I dabbled in lots of different approaches to find what worked for us and did a bit of everything, I guess I was prob more of a traditionalist. Before they had their kids and after I would get lots of looks/comments about how I shouldn’t put down boundaries for my toddlers etc, use the ‘naughty step’ which was popular at the time, and negotiating with my kids to eat ‘3 more mouthfuls of their veg or no pudding’ for example…

At the time it was really hard that they were so vocal in what I was doing ‘wrong’… so as much as I love them all, fate has intervened already - my DH and I do smile to ourselves at times as their kids have grown into the pickiest fussiest eaters with awful manners!!

edited to add - I have nothing against the gentle parenting approach- just took exception at their smugness at telling me I should be doing everything their way!

A lot of my friends have the same attitude. A couple of them have even said while they love their husbands if anything they find marriage more challenging than raising kids which they absolutely love.

Their lives look great to me anyway haha Many of them travel a lot more than me with or without their kids and they probably socialise more than me too!

I think it’s partly because they are mainly well off people with supportive partners and family. I love that for them.

Then why are you on the thread. Is smug tower not enough for you?

This post is sarcasm, try not to get worked up.

How do you know, you didnt post it. I'll get worked up if I want to, thank you!

Once again I’m so glad my friends and family who have kids aren’t like some of the parents who frequent threads like these. And if I ever do have kids I know which kind of parent I’ll aspire to be!

maybe it’s because they’re (my friends) happier parents who really enjoy raising their kids . And just kinder more decent people.

I always suspect it’s the miserable parents who have the kind of resentment against child free adults that we’ve seen displayed by some (not all) posters on this thread.

I think we know the same person! Meeting the baby for the first time, they looked so refreshed and well, and the other parent looked like absolute shit 😂