When I moved to the Bay, the big reason was to “not be isolated as a parent”. I knew very few people in Seattle who had children, and many in the Bay. I had a vague vision of hanging out with friends with same-age kids.
The things that were easy and hard were not obvious. Below I list some parenting/socializing scenarios in order of increasing difficulty and misery, and then go on a tangent about how much reproducing will damage your inner individual life and how you might guess the extent before you reproduce.
talking to other adults when there are no children around
Amazing. What a massive relief it is to be in a place where children are not.
childcare alone at home
My home is childproofed for my child specifically. Even if she runs out of sight, I can take a minute or two to wrap up what I’m doing before following her. I can often read or chat with friends online. And I love hanging out with my child, so this is nice way to spend time.
childcare at home, but there is a friend over
When I was working as a software engineer, I noticed I couldn’t focus starting 20 minutes before a meeting began. I set alarms 7 minutes in advance and tried to pretend there was no meeting until the alarm. Did not work. The same affliction is at play when I can’t enjoy anything other than child when child is present. My brain won’t let me sink into attention to the friend because it’s (correctly) anticipating that my toddler will want something from me or start shouting within the next 3-5 minutes. And if there’s going to be an interruption 3 minutes out, I viscerally don’t want to start at all. Home is nice enough that I can override this and make some conversation, but there’s an internal pushing sensation throughout.
being on shift at an event (away from home)
This one is pretty bad. Why am I here? This place is full of choking hazards and glass bottles and guitars. Unless I’m carrying her around the whole time, I have to watch what she’s doing so carefully it precludes conversation with adults. (My husband can do both at the same time, and thus finds events less hellish than I do.) If I’m just doing childcare I might as well do it at home. Oh my god, I’m going home.
trying to talk to other adults when there are multiple children
This is the one I thought was going to be good. This was what I moved to the Bay for. I thought we would have family-to-family hangouts! It turns out I find it quite hard to talk to other adults while everyone watches their child. The damned kids attack each other. (Usually not on purpose. But my child grabs at interesting things, including other people’s faces. And older kids aren’t always cognizant of whose skull they’re about to jump on.)
I cannot relax around my child for the same reason I think it’s classically hard to relax if you have an emotionally erratic partner: you’re around someone whose moods and needs veer on a dime, and who will escalate if you do not attend quickly to those needs. (I make this analogy because it is the most common one among the few available, but I find the reality of being a stay-at-home-parent is much happier than that – I write this between chasing her around a small ring of doors, giggling together. She finds it hilarious when I change direction and unexpectedly confront her.) And I hate having to manage disputes between two such small insane people, one of whom is attached to a protective adult with their own rules and sense of justice.
can you tell if you’re going to be fine?
I write this post the day after I went to the Bay rationalist summer solstice. It took place in this lovely picnic area where children could run around. It even adjoined a playground. I had the creature for the first half; my husband had her for the second. After the handover, I was so tired that other people seemed almost grayed out. They said words to me, but they felt like taps on a brick wall. So I went to the car and pushed code (for gallae) for two hours.
I love socializing, but even before having a baby it felt like whizzing through space at high velocity, passing through a field of asteroids, trying to enter orbit around one, and failing most of the time because gravity isn’t strong enough. Passing by rock after rock, while straining not to. Their fields grow even weaker when I am tired, and after a shift I am always tired.
On the other hand, my toddler, my projects, my thoughts, and the books I’m reading often have strong gravity. They are competitive with one another. This means I find it somewhat feasible to work on my projects in between childcare. But other people rarely win out, and so I can’t alternate between childcare and socializing.
Before I changed my mind on kids, I read Sasha Chapin’s post on interviewing parents and was haunted by this section:
“Do you feel like kids are a requirement for you to live a meaningful life?”
“Nope.”
“Great. You’re free. Do not have kids.”
I assume my facial expression was one of surprise.
“Look,” she said, in response. “I needed to have kids. And I love my kids. But I say to my husband that I think my reproductive system betrayed me. There is no question I could’ve had a richer, fuller, more meaningful life without children. I lost almost everything about myself that I enjoyed, for a long time. …
I regard this parent with the utmost sympathy. I do not relate to this right now (yet? with one easygoing child), but this experience is very intuitive to me. I feel like I’ve retained that which I enjoy about myself, because my interests pull me in about as hard as my child does. But if my interests pulled me as weakly as socializing did (and I love socializing!), I’d be a husk right now. I would have nothing right now other than parenthood.
I can envision a version of me that doesn’t care strongly about doing projects. That version of me is fine falling into a childrearing hole for 5-10 years. I find childrearing a nice way to spend time! As long as I’m not agonizing about what else I could be doing. So I think the bad combination is when you (1) really care about projects / socializing / whatever, but (2) those things don’t have strong gravity.
I think the following are decent predictors of whether you will be able to have a rich inner life while your children are young:
- You can focus right up until a meeting starts (i.e. expected near-future disruption doesn’t ruin your present focus)
- Your hobbies are so interesting to you that, at least when you’re in the zone, you can do them while kind of tired, or while someone is screaming one room over.