Going anonymous on this one, for reasons that are, or should soon be, obvious.
Although I've always loved being around kids (I was the guy playing with all the kids at any party) and they seemed to take to me, I knew I never wanted to have any of my own. Fortunately, my wife felt similarly... until she neared 40, and then went kind of crazy with this newfound unquenchable desire for motherhood. We had trouble getting pregnant at that age, and rounds of IVF ensued; following several, one was successful, after huge time, financial, and emotional costs. Our son came along, and was healthy and quite adorable. Major success story from the outside, right?
I was immediately plunged into a seemingly endless spiral of resentment and depression (the real kind, clinical, requiring seeing a psychiatrist and going on medication). I knew at a profound level that I Did Not Want This. It completely destroyed spontaneity and flexibility; everything needed planning, and our son like all very small children needed to be watched pretty much 24/7. All our friendships were put on hold, since getting out of the house even for planned things was difficult. Work and other obligations were missed whenever he got the sniffles. As he grew, things got better, somewhat. There were all manner of pointless activities that he didn't care much about (karate, swimming, 20 other things), constant trips to school, play date planning, things that, as far as I can tell, nearly every parent dislikes, and only few are vocally honest about.
The therapist told me that this was much more common than I'd guess, but there was a huge taboo about saying you simply hated being a parent. So, I googled "I hate being a parent" and, Lo: it was all over the place. People overcome by tedium and regret.
Here's the interesting thing: by any reasonable standards, I'm a good parent. People are always pointing this out, how attentive and affectionate I am as a father. I want to do a good job, and I want my son to have a good life. I do love him. I just wish that someone else would be actually enjoying the process of raising him, since on an objective and subjective level, my own life is just markedly less enjoyable since he came along. That's simple honesty. The best analogy would be that, instead of being yourself, you're enacting a script, day in and day out, this pretending to be enthusiastic about something you hate. It would wear you down. You'd long to break free of it and be yourself again.
My wife knows all this, and is constantly upset by it. There's no sense of "you sacrificed your own happiness so I could achieve my dream of being a mother". Instead, it's more like "there's something wrong with you for reacting this way", and that alone has put a serious strain on the relationship. At the worst times, I've thought of walking out, but I could never do that to my son. Too many marriages in my extended family have fizzled, leaving the kids lost. But, to be honest, there are times when I just stand there and want to bang my head against the door frame, I just loathe being a parent so much. He's almost 10 now, and I console myself that there are 8 years more of this, then college. I think I can make it until then without losing it, especially since, although he's a very difficult child, he is gradually getting easier and not requiring such constant monitoring.
I wrote this for two reasons. First, for others who may be thinking "I think I won't like being a parent, but everyone thinks I should have kids, and maybe I'll love it!" Yes, just possibly; but, if you don't, you will be massively miserable. Second, for those who have a kneejerk reaction of "How can you say you don't love your OWN CHILD!" I'm not saying that. I'm saying that his coming along marked a pronounced negative turn in my own happiness, despite the fact that I do love him and am trying my best not to let that unhappiness interfere with his upbringing.
What's odd about this predicament is that no one, least of all other parents, has much sympathy for you, even if you are clinically depressed to the point of dysfunction. One is supposed to view having a child as some sort of multifaceted bejeweled gift from The Cosmos. How can anyone be so ungrateful to The Cosmos for a gift of such magnificence? And that, in the nutshell, is a big fraction of the problem of living with this. There are worse problems, of course, but this particular one is mine.
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