Do people regret having children?

 

“Regrets should never be condemned, especially if their regrets are based on honest words.  Those who paint an untrue rosy picture, often get caught with their pants down.” 

 

Considering it is a female narrator, this is about as honest an evaluation you will find regarding the pros and cons of having children:

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Of course I did, and I find it hard to believe you can find anyone who didn’t.

At some points.

Children are an enormous drain on you, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, financially. Pregnancy is miserable, and if you’re a man, the fact that your wife is miserable is also going to make you miserable, and you don’t get the hormonally charged rewards, nor do you have the hormonally charged brain mechanism that makes you forget the misery. (If the latter didn’t exist, the human species would die out, as no woman would have more than one child)

Once the child is born, you’re up feeding every two hours, and struggling to perform all the functions for a helpless infant who cannot even communicate their needs… even their one communication channel, crying, is also used merely for exercise, so it doesn’t even communicate that there is certainly a problem to solve!

This combination of stark terror, utter confusion, and extremely poor sleep goes on for months, and only gradually tapers out. When they are thirty, you’re still going to be feeling some degree of it.

But that leads to the opposite complaint; there’s an awful sense of loss that is continuous, as your child gradually grows away from you, away from needing you for everything, to needing you for some things, to needing you less and less… and it’s SUPPOSED to work like that.

The flip side of the coin is, it’s very rewarding, particularly if you had them on purpose, which suggests you have the sort of personality that WILL find it rewarding. I would not give up the experience for anything and ON BALANCE do not regret any of what it cost me.

But I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t regret some of the costs.

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Unless you are blessed enough to be born into great wealth, or you somehow fall into vast money via other sources, any honest person will tell you that the following are a negative consequence of having children:

·       Less money for yourself.

·       Higher stress and anxiety levels (mainly through financial implications children bring, but also just the natural day to day worry of being a parent).

·       Less time for yourself.

·       Less energy to do anything in life.

·       Less opportunity to accomplish what you would like to in life.

·       You will often physically appear, and likely feel, older than you are.

The female narrator pretty much travels her thoughts through three paths.  I will nuance my own take on it.

1)    When the baby is born, and probably up to a year or two, the positive feeling of bringing a child into the world is like nothing anyone can explain.  Their reliance on you is absolute, concurrent to you having to learn on the job (especially for the first one).  Nevertheless, the sleepless nights and constant worry cannot be totally ignored, and this negativity only compounds the higher the stress and longer the hours are within your profession.

2)    Pretty much from kindergarten through to further or higher education (and in some cases, even beyond), children will generally travel a linear line where their expectations and expense to their parents goes up and to the right, simultaneous to their appreciation and emotional dependence of their parents moving down and to the right.  Some children and adolescents are better than others in this respect, but what I write is a fair generalization. 

3)    Post leaving home, a typical sibling no longer has as much inclination to spend time with their parent, irrespective to whether said adult was a good parent or not.  The narrator as good as says this, and she alludes to the narrative that when a parent has done all to navigate their son/s and/or daughter/s to the independence line, the siblings are not so forthcoming in giving back.

Q-tip:                                                                                                                                          By and large, a parent is the giver, and the sibling is the taker.  This dynamic is unsurprising and to be expected, such is the fact it was the parents’ choice to produce the child in the first place.  Some children of parents may even think in later life, such is their bleak view of what life offers, that they wish their parents had never of bothered.

A common thought of men

I always remember sitting in an office a few years ago when the discussion revolved around having children.  My line director, aged just under sixty at the time, came out with these precise words:

“As much as I love my three kids to bits, if I had my time again, there is no way I would have any of them.”

My neighbour across the road effectively said the same thing.  He loves his daughter and son, but knowing what he knows now about the world, if he was in his twenties or thirties today, there would be no way he would desire to be a father.

I do not think it is any coincidence that both these men are of similar age, and more pertinent, with similar aged children (in their thirties).  When you and the kids are of elder years, I believe it is easier for men to be truthful to what they sincerely feel.

Contrast this to fathers in their twenties or thirties (and maybe forties, if these men had children later in life – with children aged as young as babies to teenagers.  You will not find many men, no matter how hard life seems as a primary consequence of being a father, confessing to such likely truth.  Part of this abstaining of verbal reasoning will be internal pride, and part of this will be to not upset his female partner.

A side story

One memory that always makes me chuckle is during last summer when I was waiting for a flight back home from Copenhagen Airport.  To kill a bit of time, and as a big fan of male fragrances, I had a look around the duty free area.  Stood next to me was a middle aged man with his wife and son (aged about eight).

The man clearly had a passion for nice fragrances too, as the look on his face appeared like a kid in a candy shop.  There was one particular Boss EDT which appealed to him, as he could not stop sniffing it.  I always wonder, with married men who like to smell nice, whether it is due to personal pride and good feeling, trying to impress other women, or a combination of both.

Along came the wife, and he told her how much he liked this fragrance.  He also asked for her opinion.  I could sense her apathy straight away, not so much with the scent but with the thought of him spending more of the family kitty (on himself!). 

What must have been an even bigger pill to swallow however was when the son said - “Come on Dad, you have enough already don’t you?”  His wife could not wait to agree.  As they walked off, I will never forget how he had one last spray, sniffing it as it fragmented into the air, with that insincere consoling in saying to himself – “This is what having a family does to you.”

What about women?

With women, and once more in particular younger women, it will be even more scarce to find those saying they regret having children.  You may actually find more women broadcasting how hard it is to be a parent than men saying likewise, but this is more to do with a need for drama, attention and sympathy, as opposed to any regret in being a mother.

In essence, women generally are more motivated to become parents than men.  Even in today’s world, far fewer women are career oriented than men or feel the urge to be the main breadwinner, therefore you will find greater numbers of women striving to be a parent in earlier time than equivalent or similar aged man. 

You also cannot ignore the social media whoring that now exists in the current day.  Many women possess as much of, if not a greater, inclination to show off baby and child to their army of social media followers, than the natural desire just to be a good mother.  What a sad state of affairs.

A final thought

The narrator makes the point of how rewarding having children is, especially if you have them on purpose.  What she is practically saying here is that a large percentage of people these days do not plan having children (or more to the point, the women either contrive a pregnancy, or they are just irresponsible in not taking contraception correctly).  Nevertheless, I do agree that when a child is planned, it must be a far more enriching outcome than conceiving with someone you barely know.

As someone who has never been a parent, I could be accused of being a natural pessimist of being a parent based on my own agenda.  Fair argument.  With that said, any person that knows me will be aware that I put my honest words well ahead of my ego or need to feel better about life.  If something is wrong in my life, I have no problem admitting this to be the case.

And there are not many days when I do not think about what it would be like to be a father, especially as so many people have commented on my natural comfort in interacting with children.  My response is always one of it being so much easier to appreciate children in small doses, in comparison to the day in, day out leaning on my shoulder. 

In conclusion, there is no right or wrong way in how to navigate your life.  Most of it is fate anyway.  One thing I have always stood by though is to criticize people who seem to think having children is the only sane, sensible, natural, and mature path of life. 

For anyone to know this, they would need to live two simultaneous lives – one in being a parent, and one in not being a parent.  Until such a day when AI or evolved technology caters for this, nobody can honestly say which route is the better.  But if you have no regrets, the route you chose, or perhaps the route life pathed out for you, is an easier one to accept and appreciate.

Older men broken-hearted by younger women

 

“If there is one common theme I have learnt, it is that when people come out with the truth, no matter how gruesome it seems, they all subsequently feel better about life.  When you find someone looking stressed and worried, they are most likely lying to themselves.” 

 

I have heard more than a few situations in recent times of older men who have been driven to despair by their much younger girlfriends or much younger women they became entangled with.  As a writer, advisor and, if someone wishes me to be, mentor in giving men the best understanding of emotional female psychology, this subject fills me with a cocktail of sympathy, frustration, bewilderment, and pity - all mixed into one big shit show that results in the end product.

My biggest mistake

To illustrate where I once was, allow me to explain this short story during my late teens.  Facing up to your own mistakes, in my opinion, is the only was in truly learning how not to make the same errors of judgement in the future.

I got involved with a girl who was a year younger than me (our two ages are not relevant to the purpose of this post, but it is just to outline the scenario).  She had not so discretely shown her interest in me during the previous weeks, but it was not until late October time of that year when we started seeing each other.

I would say that her interest in me was higher than my zealousness in her at that stage.  I was attracted to her, but perhaps not in any infatuation manner.  There is most likely reasoning in this of course, in terms of a woman never being more attracted to a man than when she is the chaser.

From the point of dating up until the new year, the attraction balance moved to a much more neutral gauge to, if the truth be told, me being slightly more interested in our relationship than her.  From January up until Valentines Day, it was clear how her enthusiasm disintegrated over those six or seven weeks, simultaneous to mine staying the same.  She did not buy me a Valentines Day present (from recollection, I am not sure she even gave me a card!).

Valentines Day itself was a joke, and my naivety and lack of understanding regarding women back then stood out like a sore thumb.  When I picked her up around midday, she made it an instruction that she was only available until mid-afternoon - to which she needed to be home to prepare a dinner for her guy friend and best (girl) friend.  With a pair of balls to assist me, bearing in mind I paid for the whole day as a student during the same timeframe she worked a full-time job, I should have known she wanted out when the time would suit in the very near future.  I hate myself for not knowing this basic principle back then.

Nevertheless, it got worse on my behalf.  God knows why, but after I dropped her off and went home, I felt the need to go back and park my car near to where she lived.  I guess part of this was a lack of trust emerging, and another part was just a will to feel I was still in her life that day. 

The inevitable parting of ways occurred around early March, with her citing that her commitments to work and studies were not accommodating of boyfriend time.  Low and behold, a few weeks later I heard she was seeing someone else (a below average looking dude too, it should be said).  I hated her for all she had done, but I still loved her simultaneously.  I spent the whole spring and summer thinking about her every moment of the day, sometimes deliberately going to venues where I knew she would or might be. 

There is one big factor to all this though.  I was a teenager!

Q-tip 1:                                                                                                                                  Make your mistakes with women early in your relationship cycle of life, and then learn from each and every mistake you make.  Ensure you are never that older man making the same mistakes as your younger self.

The fatal male mistake

A few years ago, I had a friend who was in his forties.  He told me about this nineteen year old Polish woman at work who had been flirting with him, in spite of her having a boyfriend (also Polish, and who also worked there).  She was attractive from the pictures he showed me, without being unbelievably stunning or anything.

The things he told me – bearing in mind at that time I had been writing about the subject of women for over five years – made me want to put my hands over my head, and in turn strangle him in attempts to shake some sense into that brain of his.  He would tell me how one day she could not stop looking at him and would be touchy-touchy and feely-feely, followed by another day where she would blank him.  As much as I, in easy summary, tried to make him understand that she was clearly a perennial attention seeker and prick teaser who would not be leaving her boyfriend for him, he just could not get this painful truth inside his skull.

Then one early morning, I saw him in his car waiting for the gym to open.  He appeared totally dazed and zombie looking.  When in the gym, it appeared like he was struggling to breathe, almost to the point where I was expecting him to have a panic attack.  Looking back, this anxiousness on his part was because in a few minutes time he would be venturing towards the workplace.

That was the last time I ever saw him.  I later found out that he was placed on absence leave, and later still he claimed mental health issues.  Not long later, he left the firm.

Without proof, a simple jigsaw puzzle configures this:

·       His obsession uncontrollably made him harass her at work.

·       She reported him to Human Resources.

·       They put him on absence of leave due to the above events.

·       He claims mental health due to the work stress.

·       The two parties agree on a settlement, and he is gone with the wind.

Another older man / younger woman predicament

Only today, I was speaking to a gym buddy who has a few dozen labourers reporting to him in a warehouse environment.  He told me that one of the men – aged forty-four – had got involved with an eighteen year old woman.

The girl, as she can only be described as, started to cheat on her older lover.  Not only this, but she wanted out of the relationship.  The man went into my gym mate’s office to inform him of this dire state of affairs, and he has gone off with stress/personal reasons.

When will men ever learn?

As much as similar aged women to these two respective older men (and older men generally) hate the thought of this possibility, there is nothing illegal or necessarily wrong about a man becoming romantically and/or sexually involved with a significantly younger woman.  If they both know what they are getting involved in, why should anybody or anything stand in the way?

The problem is, if you are that man who strives to hunt down or in undeliberate process finds himself in the midst of a much younger woman, you need to attain a good amount of experience with women on a wholesale basis in order to know the waters you will be swimming in.  Women who are much younger than you will want and do much different things compared to women of similar age to you, and you need to be fully aware that a lot of these habits, pastimes, and character traits will not be to your liking.  Your dick can only work so hard to conceal what will be inevitable anxiety, frustrations, and annoyances.

Q-tip 2:                                                                                                                                       As illogical as this may seem, the logic in reality is this.  Men who attain a lot of experience and knowledge acquired from past relationships with women, are men who are best equipped to date much younger women.  Men who have accrued only pocket-sized past experience (and as a by-product, minute knowledge) with other women, are men who are better advised to get involved with women their own age, or even women who are older.

Which types of women are less or more likely to go for older men?

In the easiest summary and explanation as possible, I would categorize as such:

Girl’s girls

Girl’s girls – a woman who is prevalent for female outings/socializing and social media whoring/attention – is less likely to seek a much older man than herself, especially if he is not a man who looks considerably younger than his birth certificate.

One reason is because she will often perceive her own credibility to be reduced in dating someone much older, however the bigger reason is because dating an older man is associated with getting older herself.  Most girl’s girls, from my experience, have a greater fear of getting old than other women, therefore they will go to extensive lengths in trying to stay younger.  This is why you find a decent share of girl’s girls in their late twenties and early to mid-thirties who date a man a little younger than herself.

With this said, a girl’s girl will usually get intimate with a much older man if he is from the high wealth spectrum.  What she has to gain from this will outweigh the aforementioned distastes. 

Homely girls

Homely girls – a woman who holds a far greater inclination to always be with her male partner – is more likely to be open in becoming associated with a much older man.  Again, this will be more prominent if he looks younger than his chronological age, although it may not be a deal breaker if he is not.

I find that, due to their infrequent time spent in female girly nights, drama, attention-seeking, and immaturity, most homely girls are more mentally mature and grown up than other female characters (in particular, in comparison to girl’s girls).  With this in mind, it is rational thinking to conclude that, in possessing a greater female maturity herself, she will naturally desire a man who is far more settled and mature than the men of similar age to her.

Homely girls are also in a comparable sizeable hurry to settle down with respect to commitment, housing ownership, monogamy, marriage, and motherhood.  All this is far more likely to be located with an older man.

A final thought

I guess, in the simplest conclusion, it is a simple case of most men belonging to a male existence that is high in sex hunger, concurrent to being low in emotional female psychological knowledge.  His penis is drawn towards much younger and hotter women than women his own age, but he lacks the basic, or better still extensive, knowhow to why women act the way they act.

Because if a man thinks the way a younger woman acts – in so far as mind games, lies, disappearance, fidelity, mood swings, maturity etc – is the same as a woman his own age, then he is in for a rude awakening.  This will explain why so many older men who find themselves involved with much younger women, like the two exampled men in this post, are not as a coincidence ending up with mental health issues.

Q-tip 3:                                                                                                                                         If you deep down know you cannot mentally cope with the games younger women will play, it would be prudent to not get embroiled with them in the first place.  If you know you can easily deal with it, you should lead with your sexual urges, in knowledge that the in due course games she will play, and inevitable parting of ways which thereafter occur, will be no skin off your nose.

Q-tip 4:                                                                                                                              Women do not in fact naturally or voluntarily play less mind games with men as they get older.  Their lower desirability projected onto men, and their decreased options via male takers, enforces them to make a conscious, even if reluctant, decision to not play these games as much.