I mean, wouldn't we have evolved to enjoy it more? Find it easier? To encourage us to have more children?
That's aside from the dangers of pregnancy and giving birth which seem designef to deter women from having kids. Ever.
If evolution "wants" us to have and raise children, why is taking care of children so... Unpleasant?
I also don’t think it’s ever been harder (in terms of day to day effort) than it is now. Until very recently children had a lot more freedom than they do now. When I was growing up we were always off outside with our friends, parents who worked had latchkey kids who were trusted to keep themselves alive until they came home, we walked to and from school alone etc.
Parenting looks really hard now because you’re expected to be present in a way that previous generations weren’t, and it’s more expensive because there’s more childcare, more supervised activities and things. Having a kid in the 80s is nothing like having a kid now
This is the answer. I grew up rooting around the yard and the neighborhood, playing games, building things, from a young age. We hardly knew we had parents. Now, with everything scheduled and run by adults, after school sports, activities, and hobbies, parents never get a break.
And the schools are the worst! My parents never came to school, we did everything on our own. Now, your child comes home with a folder and a list of things you need to do, things to bring to school, a roast turkey for our Thanksgiving day, a homemade hobby horse, a pinata, 5 coyote outfits, pajama day, Mexico day, dress like someone they admire, can you volunteer to read to the class, can you bring donuts…
It is endless. Endless. It’s like the schools invent busy work for parents.
It’s like the schools invent busy work for parents.
More like hold the hands of clueless parents around how to properly be involved in their children’s’ educational experience.
If you haven’t noticed, each American generation is progressively less literate and numerate for real world adulting. It’s because parents are increasingly useless (but also because they are unsupported in home life).
My parents don't even have a high school graduate education, don't even speak English and were never involved in my school life. They were nowhere close to being as supportive as I am as a parent today. What they did drill into me was that if I don't get a good paying job I will suffer.
don't even speak English
What they did drill into me was that if I don't get a good paying job I will suffer.
As a fellow immigrant, I can attest to how much more energy immigrants put into teaching their kids how to navigate practical aspects of life - particularly legal and financial.
Some of the best educated people were the children of immgrants from 100 years ago. Their parents never went to school for anything---that would mean missing a day of work. Older siblings handled the situation, then told the parents. A lot of those kids would be lucky to graduate h.s.
"best educated people were children of immigrants" or "would be lucky to graduate hs"
Either I am illiterate or you need to pick one of the two.
Also, people think that behavior by kids that was absolutely normal during my Gen X generation is Child Abuse now: I.e. going out all day and coming home for dinner completely unsupervised.
Which is so dumb, even if you live in a dangerous area the importance of having adventures in preteenhood is insurmountable
I think I would be a healthier adult today if I had trekked through the woods with my friends to see a dead body when I was twelve. I really do.
But you'd also be less likely to ever be an adult.
Child deaths from injury have gone dramatically down. (Around 25% in the 80s, to less than 10% now)
I’d be interested in your source because I find this interesting. This is kind of where that “they left me out and I was FINE” falls apart. It’s a heavy confirmation basis because no one that dies can say “hey guys, I’m kind of the reason you shouldn’t do that.”
I mean, my brother died at 7 riding his bike delivering papers. To be clear, I am NOT saying that he is a reason kids shouldn’t ride their bikes. They totally should be assuming you live in a place that’s reasonable. But I imagine he’s an example of that extra danger. I know it’s one of my mother’s greatest regrets letting him go out that day. I wasn’t even born yet but my understanding is that she took her other kids out to see her mother but he was slow getting home from school so she left him with the oldest (13) and they went out delivering papers together which was when he was hit by a car and died.
Honestly, my sibs and I almost died on multiple occasions from either accident or dumb choices while unsupervised.
Someone described a toddler as “a tiny human with a death wish”, which was true for my one sib who kept getting in dangerous situations as soon as they learned how to walk. As the eldest, I got burnt out by parenting before I even became an adult.
My partner apparently climbed an unsupervised ladder onto a neighbour's roof when he couldn't even walk yet. Just crawling around happily and pushing himself up into a standing position.
Oh, and he actually drowned in a pond at age three, had to be revived for half an hour by his father.
That's the spirit!
Honestly, at 44, this is one single aspect I feel the worst about for kids. The unfettered freedom was such an amazing and empowering feeling that gave so much confidence in one's self. Kids miss out on the adventures that could be had. The excitement of exploration is stymied. Not to mention it taught your brain a lot about risk tasking and rewards. You enabled kids to think for themselves.
I have an eight year old now and it is honestly exhausting. I love her to death and she will always be my PiC. But I wish she could just go do something else sometimes. I'm very introverted and always having to be on is so "exhausting."
Kids will one day have to be grown ups with structure and planning. But their childhood now is absolutely filled with structure and planning. An overwhelming sense of time constraints. Soccer, martial arts, school, playdates. Everything is just a constant calendar event.
I think it was probably safer and more enriching than seeing all those videos online
Watch out for leeches, though.
Old parent here, and toddlers always needed attention. School age kids are different. I see them riding bikes and playing unsupervised just as they used to.
4 year olds can play on their own, but need an eye on them.
It's still present, just maybe not as prevalent. We live in a neighborhood where almost everyone has kids of multiple ages, and a massive greenbelt where they all play if not at another kids house. Our kids have been out free all day after school since they were about 7 (had gizmo watches, ages 8 and 11 now, older has phone) and we just call them back when it's dinner time. Never once felt unsafe about it, but we also live in one of the top 10 safest places in US.
I think you make an important point- it really helps if that’s the norm in the area you live in. It’s much more difficult if helicopter parenting is the norm and no other children are allowed out
Yeah. My kids are 16 and 12 and have been raised more aligned with the ways things were done in the 80s and my friends can hardly believe it. I have a friend whose son doesn’t know how to ride a bike and my kids are chopping shit up with axes on our farm. My 16 year old works for my husband’s friend in a shop, my husband stopped by the other day and witnessed him moving all kinds of shit around with a forklift. Let them take risks, we’re all going to die anyway, live a full life.
Step 1: “Have a farm”
Yeah, it's a lot easier to give your kids unstructured outdoor time when you have access to private outdoor space. There's an interstate highway between my apartment and the nearest green space, and I'm in a super safe teensy town in New England - but still in town, in an apartment. There are only so many adventures my kid can have on the balcony deck.
Who's expecting this and who cares?
I saw a few 10 year olds biking down the road the other day and my heart sang
I think it's just people projecting their trauma onto kids instead of talking to their own parents or just fucking relaxing in general.
Just because there are more judgmental cunts in the world today doesn't mean you gotta listen to them. The kids will be fine if you let them be their own lil people.
Not when a stranger can interject themselves into things and falsify information when they themselves summon police or whoever else for that kind of thing these days.
It's a legitimate fear now. One Karen with an oblong complaint will try and tear your world a-fucking-sunder because little Timmy and Susie were off biking around their backyard. Of their parents privately owned home.
Yeah people have been lying to cops since they existed. I think y'all are just cowards tbh.
They aren't going to take your kids or doing anything because some lady calls the cops lmao. They'll come say hi and tell you she's dumb and they just need to do their job lmao
In some places you can be arrested for letting your children roam unsupervised. The minimum age for going out unsupervised varies and is as high as 12 or more. It's not always a parent's choice.
Can confirm. I will say that parenting now is more lonesome than before. The guideline that many people have given my wife and I is "Don't be a helicopter parent while trying to be a helicopter parent." Personally, we hear a lot of useless or contradicting advice - i understand what they're trying to say, but still.
However, childcare makes everything slightly more difficult. The more modern belief that I've come across is usually, "You need to figure all of this out on your own until I feel like offering little to no assistance." That one was a hard hitter when I learned that my "enthusiastic" babysitters/daycare don't want to change a dirty diaper or do their fucking job, and my son has been sitting in his shit all day. Soooo... yeah. Childcare is tough when it comes to finding a good babysitter or daycare.
I can't wait for my son to be old enough to be responsible enough to be left alone at home.
I would assume a lot of parental stress is caused by trying to conform to "standards" all the other little mommies and daddies seem to think is "important."
It's like, "Am I a good enough parent? Am I doing everything right?"
Whereas in the 1960s parents were smoking cigarettes in front of the kids, driving them around without seatbelts (in some cases while drinking a beer), kicking them out of the house with the command "Go out and play, and don't come back until dark!" etc. and somehow those kids didn't turn out to be serial killers.
Except for the ones who did turn out to be, I mean.
I want to turn this around: it’s not that kids had more freedom, it’s that parents had less pressure.
You’re pregnant? You can absolutely not make one side-step because that might affect your child.
Babies should get everything they might possibly need. 10 seconds of crying and uf… bad!
Young children? Don’t go to a restaurant because they disturb others. Also, they have to be in bed super early so what are you doing even thinking about going out for dinner? Don’t have a drink because you’ll badly influence your child.
I feel like we put a lot of pressure on parents now to do everything a 100% perfect.
Yep, there were aunts and grandparents and neighbors and the 9 older siblings to take care of them. Plus as long as they were home by dark, they could pretty much take care of themselves after toddler age.
Before that they were working in the mines or factories 16 hours a day.
And if you go way back, there was the whole tribe taking care of the kids.
The loner helicopter parenting of a single child, and treating them like an infant until they're in their 20s is a very new thing.
A new thing or reserved for royalty.
Even royalty had their own households to run usually starting around their first birthday.
This is the answer. A whole village. As well as a multigenerational household
This. In tribal groups the whole group raised the kids. It's just that the parents were (generally in most tribes) responsible for specifically taking care of them.
A bunch of people, "neighbors" can help teach ya to hunt, your dad is the guy who actually makes sure you have your shit together before you get thrown in the deep end and you don't get anyone into danger while youre being taught.
America, as a whole, is an anti-kid nation.
Today I spent the whole day with my 2 year old all by myself. Now that is hard in itself- very few cultures in the world have a situation where a kid has to spend hours alone with one person. But it’s completely normal and common in America. And that’s hard for both the kid and the adult.
But what makes it harder is the lack of spaces where kids and adults can both have fun, be safe, and have support.
You have two options. Spend the day in a kid friendly space like a children’s park. While that’s fun for the kid, it is mind numbingly boring for an adult to spend hours at.
Or you can go do the things you enjoy. But those make it very difficult for a kid to enjoy. You can’t really go to a bar, or walk around in downtown in coffee shops, or eat at some random restaurant you find downtown, or window shop. Each of these places is designed with adults in mind though they may tolerate kids.
Or you could head to suburbia, where everything is kid friendly in theory. But not in reality. No kid or adult likes to walk around amongst dozens of identical houses doing nothing.
Or you could head to rural areas. But the concept of individual ownership is so strong in America that you can’t really do anything. You may be just shot for ambling down some farm or stream that you found interesting.
People are so indoctrinated in this way of living that they cannot even begin to understand how anti-freedom and anti-kid American society is.
I spent my time with my toddler recently in Spain. And I had the same situation- a day to spend entirely with my toddler. The entire day passed by without me feeling for a minute that it was a chore. I had a blast, she had a blast. That’s how raising a kid in a regular healthy nation feels like.
Would you elaborate on what was different in Spain?
I thought this article has some of those differences
https://www.boredpanda.com/parenting-in-spain-vs-usa-anagildersleeve/
Of course, my experience wasn’t exactly the same, but the common theme was that parenting wasn’t a stressful activity by design because public spaces and the culture and behavior of people included kids. There was less of the artificial isolation created across age groups, and less of that individualism where you feel isolated in public unless you are with your specific group of mom/dad friends.
I should also say, without going into specifics deliberately, that the bar on child safety is really really high in America for some arbitrary things (while funnily being so lax on gun control), which can cause unnecessary stress
What was different in Spain?
As a single dad to a toddler I have half the time, most of my life is spent either raising my toddler or preparing to have her again.
Plus the way US society is siloed into kid and non kid spaces means that if you aren't a parent, you're rarely around children.
So expectations for children are completely effing unreasonable because people are operating off fuzzy memories of their own childhoods, where they imagine they behaved perfectly all the time and kids today are all spoiled rambunctious brats. (No, Ken, kids have always been rambunctious, they're kids. You were a total unruly punk and you mortified your mom on a regular basis.)
A lot of problems would be solved if Americans could remember that kids are not miniature adults.
They are little and they are learning, they figure out how to act in public by being in public and if you make lemon pucker bitch faces at them when they walk through the door of McDonald's they're gonna get scared and act up. If you're nice, they're gonna act nice.
This is the correct answer. Kids are much easier when you have help. Also, when people live in communities, kids have other kids of different ages to play with all day. I took my three year old to a family reunion a few months ago, and I barely saw him all day because he was too busy running around with his cousins. He only came back to me when he wanted snacks. It was great!
Yes! And our social structure is such that no parent, especially those who both work, has adequate time or energy for the job. Little children need constant attention, and do best when parents are not stressed. Capitalism strikes again!
Also keep in mind that so much of what kids needed to do was what they want to do:
You want to run around like a maniac jumping on rocks? Good thing the clan is walking by an epic rock formation today. You want to play fight with your brother? Let me show you some tricks. Nothing's a distraction from schoolwork because school work does not exist.
The first year would have been a pain, because babies are helpless, but one of the grandmothers would have been on hand to help if the parents get overwhelmed. Once the kid gets past toddling they'd spend a lot of time with an older cousin and you might only see them at meal-times. This is why those three indigenous Colombian kids were able to survive in the jungle for 40 days with no adult supervision. Their mom made big sister do a bunch of the work, so when the crash killed Mom they could function fine for 40 days. The youngest was only a year old.
Exactly this. Kids aren’t wired for modern expectations. Schools keep putting expectations on kids that aren’t developmentally appropriate. As parents we are working 40+ hours. In my and my husband’s case our parents passed away 10-20 years ago. I don’t have any family nearby. I have friends, but most of them are 45 minutes to an hour or more away and also work 40+ hours a week.
Neighborhoods have HOAs that prohibit play equipment to different degrees. Builders have cut down all the trees. Neighborhoods don’t have sidewalks like they used to. So it’s not safe for kids to just roam like we did and there’s nothing for them to do.
I have fond memories of riding my bike to the store and buying drinks and candy with my friends. Literally no safe way for my kid to do that.
HOA Karen's calling cops over black people operating BBQ grills and children playing in their own backyards.
Life has changed, for certain. Clearly not for the better.
My family (grandparents, grown sisters and husbands, and lots of cousins) got together summers when I was a teenager. I'd volunteer to watch the little kids because it got me out of housework, which I hated. I didn't hate dealing with kids.
Naturally, it was for a few hours, not uninterrupted days, and their parents liked getting a break themselves.
Exactly. Prior to urbanisation, people were within walking distance of their close relatives. It literally took a village to raise a child.
With the Industrial Revolution and urbanisation, people moved away from their place of origin and often brought their household away from all kindred.
Also, in most of history and before that, having kids wasn’t especially voluntary either. No birth control meant women (and) didn’t have a lot of control over when they had kids.
Also, evolution/natural selection only works on whether you reproduce, not how much you personally enjoy the experience of having and raising kids.
Add on to this and the convos in this thread, our childhoods are longer than previous generations. We spend 18 years minimum taking care of our kids in a somewhat dependent way. Depending on what time period we're discussing, kids were grown at 16, maybe even 14 or 12 if you're marrying off your daughter. People in the 1700s (who weren't nobility) were not housing and feeding and paying for extra curricular for a 17 year old.
In some ways it still is. Children are raised just as much by their schools and teachers than they are by their parents.
But yeah not as much as it used to be.
Yup… and out culture still tends to treat it like this. Companies for example just assume that if you’re a father you have someone else out there doing childcare
evolution doesn't "want" anything,
evolution is just, what doesn't die, lives, and passes on its genes,
and in that we formed society, which lets more people live.
To add to that, it also used to not matter as much if you wanted kids or not because there wasn’t reliable birth control so you likely had them at some point if you were having sex.
Right? People really, really like sex. They will do stupid shit even to the point of dying for sex. Children are the outcome of sex. You don’t really have a choice about the one following the other in a world without reliable birth control (that’s something to think about after sex, but first SEX!!!!)
I’m only childless thanks to the magic of my IUD.
I’m child-ful but you can still pry my IUD out of my cold dead uterus. I’d be Duggar-level without it.
On the other hand, in many aspect we've built a society that makes it harder/more stressful to raise kids.
That's the catch. "We" didn't build society. Caste and class systems existed in our civilization. So there's no we as a whole in it, there's beneficiary groups.
I think you mean "in addition to" rather than "on the other hand" as you don't seem to dispute anything in the comment above yours
Or maybe it is not more stressful or harder but people have become less accepting of hardship and stress combined with more options to actually avoid it. And children are easy to avoid and bring no immediate satisfaction, so they get opted out.
Each tile someone ask about evolution, there is always a comment like this.
Yet it misses the point : you can just rephrase the question like that "How did we survive if we don't like raising children ?"
(Others have answered)
Well, the issue with THAT is that the answer is "Because we have."
We need to put emphasis on how evolution doesn't have a goal or want anything; it is also evolution when creatures evolve negative traits, like koalas who have evolved to be, quite frankly, awfully designed creatures.
But many people hold to the idea that evolution has a goal that leads to something positive. The very question OP posted is only a good question if we are under the impression that evolution is a force that is trying to improve us. It isn't, it has no agency and no agenda. It is simply a process that happens.
By knowing this, we can explain more things. How comes things are unpleasant about raising children? Well because x y z. To which someone would then ask "but why x y z if x y z isn't good?". And then we answer "Because it turned out that way, because evolution isn't driven to improve."
But if you just receive that answer without the understanding of all this, it will leave you unsatisfied with the answer
I mean, we're here, so I guess it's working
People do enjoy having and raising kids. And hardly anyone dislikes it so much that they kill the kid.
A colleague once said, "It is fortunate that we look at our own kids and think they are cute regardless of how ugly they are. Otherwise we'll kill them for being so annoying."
This here. I think a lot of people assume raising kids is awful because of the internet.
I was never a maternal woman and didn't like children. I've done a complete 180 since birthing my daughter and now I want to be a sahm and have heaps of kids... if we can afford it.
Evolution really helps you out with children. The brain chemistry is a wild trip. Within seconds of meeting my baby I knew I would throw myself in front of a car to protect her. When she smiles it my makes my whole week. I get separation anxiety. She gets me up all night and I never feel tired because I'm happy to see her.
I'm 100% chemically addicted to my child and that's evolution.
On the flip side, talking about regretting having children is extremely taboo in society.
Yet some some studies have found that 17 or even 20% of parents could have regrets.
(To be clear, other studies find much more modest figures like 4% - and regret isn't always "I hate my kids" but rather "this is far more difficult than I am equipped to handle and I wish I had more resources to help")
Also the 'chemical addiction' and suddenly being in love with your baby and willing to do anything for them the moment you meet them is not guaranteed. Many people struggle to bond with their babies, and don't get the instant-love. And then they think they've failed as parents.
How old is your child?
Evolution does not want anything. However, the people who have children will be the ones more likely to pass on their genetic material.
It’s like, if your goal is to”X” then people who do “X” will accomplish that goal. If you think the goal is to have kids, then those who have kids will have accomplished your goal.
Yes and if you think your goal is to raise successful children, a more difficult task, but can be accomplished. The idea is to not JUST reproduce, but to create a vessel that will provide the DNA contributed the best chance at survival into future generations.
That's why you raise a psychopath surgeon rapist, they are evolutionary winners and make tons of rich children as well.
So you have a baby, it's precious and you need to give it everything to survive, you get over the horror of a screaming mini demon and realise you absolutely love this little thing.
The little thing continues to grow, just imagine what would happen if you continued to love them as you did when they were a baby. You'd never let that little kid out of your sight.
So they fight for independence by being shouty and bad tempered. You then can't wait for someone to babysit and the necessary iron emotional grip they had in you loosens a little.
And it carries on like that, each time they are ready to move on with their life, they have to break a little more of the emotional bond. They force you to change your emotional bond, they release you back into the wild.
Then suddenly, before you know it, they're ready to be adults themselves, in some ways anyway, and they are brooding, self absorbed and hubristic teenagers... the final push.
Because, going back, if you still had the all protective love for them that you had when they were babies you could never let go.
That's not to say it's easy to change your emotional bond because it doesn't go away, it's not easy to watch your baby become a child, then become a preteen then a teen. It is however easy to mourn those transitions and the sense of loss is pretty strong sometimes...
You are making me ugly cry right now. But that really makes sense. Mine is at the preteen stage and oh man talk about testing patience some days. But you’re right, if she stayed that adorable and wonderful I’d never be able to let her go.
Watched Inside Out 2 this weekend with my 2 little kiddos and nearly ugly cried thinking that in a few short years they'll become angry and shouty teens.
That movie was SO GOOD
I'd like to toss in some points I haven't seen mentioned or discussed deeply yet.
We already have a lot of mechanisms in play to "make us want" to care for our children. First of all, sex itself is pleasant and overcomes the first hurtle of making the children. A LOT of pregnancies are unplanned. This removes the selective pressure of having couples that "really really want" to be parents as the only genes being passed on, and instead makes it a much larger group. The brain then floods the body with hormones during pregnancy, so you (hopefully) are attached enough to the baby when it arrives that you want to take care of it. Furthermore, babies are cute. We want to take care of cute things. Perceiving things with large heads and rounded bodies as cute may be an evolutionary adaptation to make us want to care for our babies.
Consider that some traits of babies that are "unpleasant" might have other purposes. I'm going to assume you mean crying as the most unpleasant trait. If babies didn't cry, I'd expect much higher child mortality. Babies cry to signal a need (sometimes). I forget to water my houseplants because they just sit there quietly and it slips my mind. Babies WILL remind you it's time to feed. Crying also helps you locate your offspring quickly once they're mobile.
Everybody's threshold for "unpleasant" varies. I don't think anybody will call child rearing a walk in the park, but some people just don't like kids in general. You may find the concept of raising children more unpleasant than the average person due to your experiences and perceptions. If so, that's okay. Having children is optional.
I don't think raising children is unpleasant. Out culture, especially our modern culture did that to us. It wasn't that long ago kids went outside all the time if they were inside they were doing chores.
Very few children looked to their parents for entertainment and families were closer so discipline was spread out more. It wasn't all golden sunshine, but I think it was probably a lot easier to have kids too.
I came here for this comment. I have 5 children and they are the joy of my life! I love taking them paddleboarding, camping, water parks, or just palling around at home. I love spending time with them. I have a very different experience than a lot of reddit posters.
Yes the toddler stage was hard, but for me, once that was over, it's mostly fun and games. I guess to sum it all up, it was an investment that definitely paid off (for me).
Individualism has wrecked it. It was always supposed to be the village raising the child. Now its dumped on the Mom who is constantly told in a million different ways that shes bad at it.
When it was a “village”, it was lifetime servitude for WOMEN.
I think it was dependent on the village - men and women worked the fields together in some
Yes. My family heritage is that they worked together and served/appreciated one another. So irritating when people from a crappy family tradition act like all the rest of us had the same issues.
Evolution doesn't "WANT" anything. It has no goals, no direction, no mind. It is merely how nature responds to changing environments.
Raising children isn't necessarily unpleasant.
evolutionary it was enough to make having sex very pleasant
Not really. Parental care evolved separately from sex. Many species provide zero parental care or just the mother does something. Caring for children is rewarding by itself and that's why it evolved in more intelligent species, even if it's just one parent doing it (usually the mother)
Parental care is at its core an attempt to improve fitness. If you care for your young they're more likely to survive, grow up, and pass on your genes.
You can map out the point at which parental care becomes better than "leave them be" and the connection is in the number of offspring.
Yep, when your stray cat is taking care of her kittens, that's not because she feels obligated to do so, she has the inner drive to do it and it's rewarding for her. Even if it's quite exhausting and stressful and costs her a lot in terms of energy. Same for any other animal doing parental care. The bond is rarely lifelong though, lifelong love for your offspring is a thing for more intelligent species (other than humans, elephants come to mind).
A teacher once told me, “evolution doesn’t find the best solution, it just finds the first solution.”
It's honestly not unpleasant. It just seems that way in a hella isolated economic stranglehold.
If you look back at birth rates back when child mortality was much higher people were just having a lot more kids. Evolution as a process doesn't really care about all the kids that don't make it to adulthood as long as enough of them do to ensure survival of the species.
People have this idea that evolution is about honing the most optimal version in order to survive but it's actually just about finding the version that is un-shit enough to survive long enough to pass its genes on.
Evolution doesn’t give a damn about anyone’s feelings.
Cavemen didn't have to wake up at 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 to nurse and then get up at 7 to go alphabetize insurance forms before the episiotomy scar has even fully healed, child rearing isn't miserable, laboring under capitalism is
If it makes you feel better the dental recreation of cavemen teeth show lots of cavities. The real 'paleo' diet was miserable full of grisle and parasites. These caveman would've been up at night in pain from tooth infection and starving at the same time. And a safe guess is their poo always had live worms teeming in them.. Well sometimes it helps me feel better about slaving under capitalism 😅
This is why we arranged society so that only the men were expected to labor under capitalism.
lol caveman had to hunt and not get eaten by a lion, you can probably take the remains of your savings and move to the desert of a third world countries but you may find you don’t enjoy it
Saying caveman life was easier than now is like when people on Reddit say the economy now is worse than the Great Depression, so out of touch with history imo
As a father of my first who just turned 1.. before i wasn’t really looking forward on having one, neither i had something against. Then, from the moment the baby is born ( helped with the delivery, didn’t pass out haha) your whole world changes. Suddenly you become a dad, responsible for the helpless little baby in front of you. Everything but literally everything is not important anymore except for the baby.
Then, as the days go by, you’ll discover that your limits weren’t real limits. Mentally and physically you push yourself beyond you thought you were capable off. The non stop crying, diapers, sleepless nights and a partner which is cranky same like you. And still, that one smile every time from your child, observing the new stuff they learn every day a bit more, is worth it. Every… single… bit ..of it
This is not true for everyone. There are tons of men who do nothing for their kids.
It’s also easy to bond with a baby who doesn’t have opinions yet.
Yeah it’s pretty rare to see people say they regret having their kids. I think for people who haven’t had any all they can see is the work you have to do, which is easy to see, but not the gratification, which is harder to grasp.
There are over 100,000 kids in foster care in the US and millions in orphanages worldwide. Stop lying.
Have you seen the regretful parent sub? The Breaking Mom sub? Some of the Autism parenting subs? It’s not that rare.
Evolution doesn't want anything in particular, it always settles for what works.
Evolution doesn’t “want” anything. It doesn’t have consciousness or direction. Humans are not the ultimate achievement of some grand plan, we’re just part of the evolutionary process.
I mean whilst yes tiring I don't think that many parents despise raising their kids
Sex feels good because nature has to bait us into having children.
Idk I like my kids. Maybe yours are just assholes?
Evolution made it extremely easy for humans to breed. Society has made it difficult.
You're kind of forgetting the part where most parents would take a bullet for their kids. Where do you think that unimaginably strong parental love comes from? That's years and years of evolution, where our animal ancestors and early humans who lived to pass on their genes were the ones raised by parents who would do anything to keep them alive.
Yes, raising a child is incredibly difficult work. Evolution doesn't make it easier. But evolution does lead to the development of people who will sacrifice years of their lives to raise a child and never once feel like it wasn't worth it.
Taking care of children is unpleasant because of society, not evolution.
Because we live in an isolated, consumerist, judgmental, unhelpful society centered on capitalist goals and artificially extended dependence. We evolved to live in small groups of less than 200 individuals who share duties as a community. Also evolution doesn't care if we like it, it's strictly a numbers game.
Only cause we have countless fun, entertaining, and pleasurable options at our disposal now.
This makes "raising" kids unpleasant whereas it would just be viewed as a necessary part of life that's pointless to be upset about.
It's not necessarily unpleasant as a whole. There are unpleasant moments because their brains are not fully developed and humans have complex brains so they take longer to fully develop, and during that time they impulsively do things without realising the consequences or being able to sympathise/empathise with the outcome of what they do. If the kid is a normal kid and the parent is a normal parent though, there should be plenty of good and heartwarming moments that make it feel worthwhile as kids aren't always bad and the parent should have a bond with the child making them care for them. Also it's made a lot harder by the societal and economic structure of human society. Most people want more resources for themselves so they can be happier with more freedom and be regarded as more successful and better, and also so they can have an easier time in their lives, including with rasing children (since more resources means better quality of life, better opportunities, more security in your life if an executes problem occurs, for the adults and their kids). Because most people want more resources for themselves to make their lives easier, the people who can hoard more of those resources do, which means if you're less able to do that, you get less resources and so a less easy life, which means rasing kids will also be more difficult because you are less able to use your resources to get extra help with childcare or taking care of the house, less able to get the best of the best experts to teach the kids with constructive activities that will help them become a well rounded person with the best opportunities in the long run. Your social circle is also likely to be people of similar status to you, so you're less likely to have clout with people who you can leverage to get your children the best opportunities regardless of your kids' knowledge and skills. Most people like their kids though and feel they overall contribute very positively to their lives, since they grow up and remain valued family members, but now with more ability to support their parents emotionally or in some cases, with other circumstances if needed, which is why as a human society, we keep feeling it's overall worthwhile to have kids.
Evolution is like a lazy employee. It does just enough not to get fired and not any more than that
Why do you think evolution is a thing that makes choices?
It absolutely is not in any way.
The evolutionary process is not 'survival of the fitest' that is a bad tag line used to over simplify how complicated it is and the mechanism of action behind any given feature.
I would recommend go picking up a couple books on the evolutionary process that come from a modern understanding of genetics and evolutionary theory which is so badly taught even on the college level that the whole "survival of the fitest" think keeps sticking around.
Evolution through genetics is insanely complicated. There is a massive pool of existing genetic information inside every living creature that is never used and it causes biological evolution to proceed in very weird directions that no one would choose, they happen because of unintended consequences.
I haven't even mentioned things like horizontal hehe transfer. The "tree of life" is far more complicated and internally interconnected than is depicted.
But it takes years up understand the actual biology enough to follow a lot of this, I'm not sure what good laypeople books to recommend.
It’s not unpleasant, if it’s unpleasant to you don’t have kids.
I watch my nieces and nephew occasionally. It's absolutely better when they're gone. I love em, but goddamn is that shit exhausting and difficult.
I’ve never had an issue, my kids were super easy, don’t even understand this point of view.
Screaming baby biting your nipples and sleepless nights to the point of losing sanity is not unpleasant?
Some people are lucky enough to get happy hormones from breastfeeding. It chills them out.
Some people get sad or angry hormones from breastfeeding.
Some people get happy hormones immediately upon meeting their newborn. They feel rewarded by handling the baby—physically, not just socially.
Not everyone starts that way and some people never get that.
I have friends who took weeks to connect with their children and they felt broken, like they were bad people. For them, meeting their newborn was just like meeting anybody else and the relationship took time.
People don’t talk about that kind of thing enough. And they should.
There’s a lot of variety out there and that’s just how humans are.
That's quite a short period in the child's life.
I think you underestimate how much a parent loves their child
Parents are more isolated than they’ve ever been. Humans evolved to live in small clans where everyone helped everyone, even with things like nursing. The Industrial Revolution turned people into commodities and forced us all to be as productive as possible to keep the machine running. There is just not as much time to enjoy or cherish children anymore. It’s not evolution, it’s our fault.
I thoroughly enjoyed raising mine and a few from other folks also
The fuck? I love taking care of my kid. It's not pleasant 100% of the time, but most things aren't.
It isn’t, you’re just listening to the Reddit Echo Chamber of 16-23 year old boys.
If you want children and are able to provide for them, it's really a wonderful thing. There are stresses and hard times too of course. Social media loves to paint the worst picture for clicks and laughs. It's out of style to say how much you love your kids.
In the before times, most people were serfs or some type of subistence farmer. To them, children were a source of unpaid labor.
It was much more pleasant to have a young child you could send off to gather berries or feed the chickens or spin wool than to do all of that work yourself. Having additional laborers made it possible for your family to pay their taxes to the land owners while keeping more product for yourself.
Whether it was pleasant or not to raise them didn't matter as much as the value they could provide.
Having children is an individual decision. Some have kids, and some don't. There's nothing wrong with either.
Evolution doesn't care about these basic functions, neither the having nor the raising.
Evolution doesn't WANT anything. It doesn't have a plan or agenda. It is a slow process of natural selection.
As it happens, humans have evolved upright-walking pelvises, larger heads, and are more helpless in the newborn state as a result of many small, gradual changes caused through natural selection. Raising children is a lengthy and time consuming project.
Evolution doesn't "want" anything.
It's not an entity or consciousness.
It's just "hey, living species change over time."
That's it.
Evolution doesn’t want anything. That’s not how it works, that’s not how any of this works.
Evolution only wants you to breed as much as possible with as many as possible to multiply diversify the gene pool for next generation. To sustain the species. Society and civilization wants you to raise children. With single pair of parents. That is the difference between humans and beasts.
This is more of a human society development question than an evolution question.
Evolution doesn't have wants.
You are a machine running a program that has no goals other than survival and reproduction
Everthing else is entertainment
Evolution doesn't work under optimization. It operates under "That's good enough", and as things are, it's good enough
"Unpleasant" is a feeling, and evolution DGAF about your feelings.
I love my kids. They were fun. And a pain in the ass. But I never despised raising them. They’ve always been a bright point of light in my life.
I loved raising my kids. Like anything else in life there are good days and bad days.
I don't think everyone wants children. It's just propaganda.
Keep in mind we haven't really evolved at all since back when half of your children die within the first 2 years, if not at birth, and raising the other half was as simple as making sure they didn't get lost as your group were wandering to the next patch of food.
You think taking care of children is unpleasant? Also, evolution isn’t a force. It’s a process. There is no expected or desired outcome. It just happens.
because they’re grotty little toe-rags
Only until recent decades raising kids cause parents that much effort/responsibilities. Not so long ago (maybe pre/post-war?), people just gave birth to kids, lose some of them as attrition and thought this was normal. Back then kids were helping hands to do household chores and support families after they can take care of themselves. Parents did not need to worry much about kids' education, social status, etc.
Now people have only one or two kids, and they just don't want their kid(s) to fail. These all make parenting unpleasant, and have little to do with evolution I would say.
I didn't find it unpleasant.
When raising a child, there are some moments that are pleasant and some moments that are unpleasant. Evolution wouldn't make all the moments pleasant to us, because the unpleasant moments motivate the parent to do something that needs to be done. For example, a crying baby motivates the parent to help the baby, because they want to get the baby to stop crying. If all moments were pleasant (e.g. if parents enjoyed the sounds of the baby crying), the parent wouldn't be motivated to do the right things. The parent could just do whatever they want and everything would be pleasant for the parent. That wouldn't maximize the survival of the child.
We can also think about the concept more broadly: For example, living is beneficial to the survival of our genes. So our genes should want us to live. But that doesn't mean living should always feel pleasant for us. Sometimes being alive is pleasant and sometimes it's unpleasant. For example, sometimes being alive makes us feel hungry. That motivates us to do things to alleviate that unpleasantness. The trick is for evolution to get the right balance between happiness and unhappiness so we will be motivated to do things to reduce the unhappy moments, without making us so unhappy that we would be motivated to end it all. Similarly, when raising children, there is a balance of happy and unhappy moments that motivates parents to do things to try to reduce the unhappy moments, without making the parent so unhappy that they would be motivated to abandon the child completely.
That's why love exists
You know the saying “It takes a village” well most people no longer have a village.
As for pregnancy and giving birth that’s an evolutionary compromise, we have big brains and are bipedal, basically our bodies suck at giving birth because our hips aren’t wide enough and our heads are too big. So we essentially give birth prematurely, so the baby can get out, and the baby’s brain continues to grow after birth.
For many mammals the young can walk and run minutes after birth.
Evolutions isn’t about developing perfect solutions, it’s about developing solutions that are good enough to be better overall for particular situations.
I've rather enjoyed watching my children become independent little creatures.
Sure, they can be stressful beyond imagination but it's worth every moment. Most relationships in life are not all butterflies and roses.
I mean, we’re not supposed to be doing any of this. Like none of it. All the things that make child rearing difficult and seem barely possible are because of modern times.
people think of evolution like its dragon ball z and they are leveling up...
the thing that really made it clear to me was this...
its not survival of the fittest as in the most fit like most strong ones... its survival of the fittest as in who fits in the best.... its about who survives and makes offspring, and whos offspring thrive and create offspring..
Gotta keep’em separated
they're not ok!
Because it used to be much more pleasant.
It’s the most pleasant thing I do.
So, evolution has the fundemental problem that, to anthropomorphize, it's really, really thick. It's an extremely crude algorithm with virtually non-existence quality control and a large reliance on random luck.
This means that evolution regularly comes up with really bad solutions to problems. Peacocks have massive tail feathers that significantly reduce their chances of survival for, best as scientists can tell, absolutely no reason. Lions have population problems because they're adapted to regularly commit mass infanticide. Human backs slowly break over the course of our lifetime because large parts of our skeleton are still adapted to walking on all fours. There are species of bacteria that produce toxins they're not immune to and thus all die out if there's too many of them.
Basically, you were designed by a complete moron who was randomly pushing buttons in the hope that it would make something useful happen. That's why so much of our behaviour seems evolutionarily odd.
It taught me about sacrificial love, and I grew up some more
Speak for yourself it’s plenty of people who enjoy raising kids
It makes you love them more and devote yourself entirely to them. Seriously, hear me out. Once they’ve put you through the hell of sleepless nights, unexplained hours-long screaming fits, the worst smelling shit you’ve ever experienced, vomit, tantrums etc etc etc, there’s nothing you can’t face for them.
It's unpleasant now becos evolution never thought the hairless monke would work 9/5 and rise a child alone. We are wired to rise child in community/groups with enough time to take care of them and ourselfs.
This is why kids are so cute cause if they weren’t we’d give them back. X
I have always really enjoyed taking care of my kids. It isn't easy, but what fulfilling thing in life is easy?
Underrated comment. People want everything to be easy and comfortable. Sometimes it’s the trials and tribulations that make the end result so much easier to appreciate.
THERE ARE OVER 8 BILLION PEOPLE!
When I was born there were 3.5 billion people on the planet. In my lifetime the population has more than doubled.
Everything about living is unpleasant. Evolution didn’t limit that to children.
thats what the emotion of love is suppose to help solve
As painful as it is it still works.
What puzzles me is how come evolution created a species relatively intelligent enough to choose whether to have children or not. I don't know of any other species that practices birth control.
People have kids for different reasons. When it's for the wrong reasons or they're not mentally/emotionally/ financially prepared it becomes difficult. Youre also assuming they're decent people to start with?
Child raising is probably a lot more stressful today than it was in the preindustrial world (and still is in some places), while there's no longer the child death factor, it wouldn't have been just mom and dad raising a child, it would be siblings, aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, cousins, all taking significant parts in it, having the child essentially just grow up in the community rather than in one person's arms
This has not been an issue until recently.
Though most of human history, families were mostly very large, with 10 or more children being common.
So those things weren't an obstacle.
Modern society and technology has changed things, and evolution hasn't adapted to those yet.
Kinda knee jerk answer here but….. social media. Having kids means being a responsible adult and not having all that fun in the world that EVERYONE else on social media seems to be having.
Historically, people lived in extended family groups so childrearing wasn't so isolating. Previous generations also didn't have the same expectations of education, enrichment etc.
I enjoyed being pregnant and I love raising my kid so far 🤷♀️ (and I also still love my job and my hobbies and my friends though obviously priorities shift in this phase).
Raising kids is actually really rewarding. It is only an inconvenience in our current, detached, work life situation. Little kids want to be around and copy adults and be useful. I still remember being a toddler and sorting through nails for my grandad when he was building the house. My kids were around whenever I was doing anything that needed small motor skills. I would suggest that in primitive societies they get involved in food prep very early on and that it would be harder for adults without kids.
Because if it wasn’t we would just forget about em and they would be eaten by an animal.
I understand your logic but I’d say evolution only goes as far to ensure we’re disgusted by the idea of not taking care of our kids.
You’re right, a lot of people don’t necessarily enjoy raising babies but almost everyone would absolutely never let their kids die. And by that, evolution has done its job.
I think back in the day people worked so hard and worked their kids so hard it only made sense to have more kids so you didn't have to do all the work all the time.
I think my parents had me and my sisters to hold the rabbit ears and change the channel on the tv
Evolution requires you to have sex, it doesn’t require you to enjoy birth. There’d be no reason for it to fix any of those issues if most infants lived.
It doesn’t have to be unpleasant. Just people that are bad at it are also the loudest.
I'm not a parent but I have been a nanny in several different families. What I observed was that parenting is not a two person job. It is really a six person job. The nuclear family is a big part of what makes parenting a nightmare in modern society. Trying to do anything important without enough resources (mental, emotional, financial) is a nightare.
Because evolution only requires children to exist, quality of life was never a concern for mother nature.
Humans evolved as a social species that raised children in larger groups. The nucular family is a modern invention, children were never meant to be raised by only two parents. Sure it can be done, but no one benefits from this arrangement, both children and their parents suffer.
Sometimes evolutionary """intentions""" conflict. Humans have disproportionately large heads for our large brains, but we also evolved to be bipedal, which narrows the size of the birth canal. This means that we have to give birth while the young are relatively undeveloped so that large head can fit out of that narrow birth canal. We've actually gone so far on minmaxxing how late we can wait to give birth that I'm pretty sure we're the only animal that straight up can't give birth unassisted, but I'm sure there's a weird fish out there that could prove me wrong. But having to have relatively undeveloped babies means that we need to spend longer taking care of them and that amount of labor and time investment just isn't gonna be fun the whole time.
Also on an evolutionary scale, there's definitely more extreme examples of all these factors. Marsupials give birth basically instantly. So so many species mate and give birth and die and have no parental care. Bee children aren't really in the habit of moving out.
I don't think that's how evolution works.
The annoying part of raising children is not stopping anyone from having them. It's not really an obstacle so it's not removed. Besides that, I really don't know how evolution would "remove" children crying, having emotions, being curious and, well, just being human?
That’s not really what evolution is about.
Because there is too much distracting us that we think would be more pleasant. Social media has ruined society for the most part in my opinion. You see your friends, family etc. out having fun talking about how where they are is the place to be and that makes you resent your responsibility at times. Also there seems to be a lopsided role with parents these days. One parent might not be as interested in taking on the duties as much as the other. Work is one thing but I’ve witnessed many men choose to find other things to do and leave the total care up to the mother. Mothers need a break too, it’s unhealthy to totally consume yourself in the care of a child 100% of the time. It’s dangerous for the mother and the child if you don’t take time for yourself. I remember working a 12 hour night shift then going straight to school all day. When I would finally get home I understood my wife needed a break from my son. I wanted to play with him and take over best I could to give her that much needed time to herself even if she just went to the store by herself.
I’m convinced if they weren’t cute, they would have been abandoned in the woods.
I love being a dad. And just because it's hard doesn't mean it's unpleasant. Working out at the gym is hard and it's one of my favourite things to do
I enjoy like 90% of taking care of my kids and my wife wants another so she must have been ok with how pregnancy goes down
Taking care of children is not unpleasant. It can be stressful because you stress over what you care about. But most people have to do strong drive to want to take care of and protect children. And humans find children adorable and cute while most animals don't
Because our society doesn’t match with our evolution. We evolved to live in small close knit traveling communities. The entire community would look out for the kids.
The majority of people do enjoy taking care of children. It is an instinctual drive for a large number of us.
I'm normally a very reserved person, but hand me a baby and suddenly I'm perfectly willing to humiliate myself for its amusement. I'm willing to get peed on, thrown up on, change diapers, and lull a screaming toddler to sleep.
It's not something everyone has, but it's fairly common. My dad says that I've got "Baby Fever" and I never smile bigger than when I'm holding a baby (just thinking about their tiny little hands and how warm they are makes me squee).
I don't understand why others aren't as keen on kids as I am, but I do accept that it's a reality. Think you kind of need to do the reverse maybe?
Child rearing actually produces a ton of endorphins that only start to level off significantly when children start hitting adolescence......so yeah....there's that.
Keep in mind that for most of history, child-raising was a group effort. It wasn't just Mom and Dad, on their own, with only occasional help when someone came to visit.