Reflections on One Year of Parenthood
Three Things #78: July 23, 2023
The other day my son turned 14 months old. I very rarely write about family here but I feel called to write about the experience of becoming a parent, and in retrospect it’s hard to believe that I haven’t written anything about it in the 14 months since it happened. I think it took me that long to get a handle on parenthood and figure out what I might say. Becoming a parent is not something that happens instantly. It took me a long time until I was comfortable with the idea and it “fit” naturally, but now that it does I feel more confident speaking about it.
I feel called to write about parenthood because becoming a parent has made me a better person in a number of ways. I see and understand things now that I couldn’t see or understand before, and when I try to discuss them with childless friends I can tell that they don’t see or understand what I’m talking about. This is my small attempt to convey these ideas to them, and more generally to reflect on how parenthood has changed me these past 14 months.
I’ll say upfront that it’s been an absolute whirlwind. Every parent says the same thing: time flies and kids grow up so, so quickly, it’s essential to make the most of every moment. They won’t be tiny for long. I feel like it was only yesterday that I was pondering when I’d start to feel like a dad: when things would start to feel differently, and how they’d feel differently. For most moms the reality of the baby’s existence starts with pregnancy, but as with most dads for me it didn’t really begin until my son was born and I met him. Now with the benefit of some hindsight I think I can see pretty clearly the ways in which the experience has changed me and allowed me to grow.
Thing #1: Bigger Than You
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." - Dalai Lama
The ego is one of the biggest impediments to a healthy human society. It was a huge obstacle in my own life, even though I couldn’t see this and had absolutely no awareness of it for most of my life. Eventually I began to understand and come to terms with the ego and how to deal with it through meditation and other practices. If I had to change a single thing about society, it would be to find a way to help more people achieve ego death by any means necessary—whether through meditation, psychedelics or… parenthood. This is one aspect of parenthood I never previously considered and didn’t see coming. It’s not something other parents talked to me about, either.
I try to be a good person and to be there for the important people in my life, but the reality is that up until the moment my son was born I lived my life first and foremost for me. I suppose this isn’t the case for everyone—some people do live for a larger cause, whether their country, their community, their religion, or something else. But I never felt that way, and I suspect the same is true for many, many other people. Our entire lives we’re told things like, “Study hard and get a good job so you can live a good life,” which translate directly into individualistic hedonism. (A much better, more prosocial message would be, “Develop the right values and strong character and find something bigger than yourself to pour yourself into so you can be happy.”) I did the things I wanted to do, went the places I wanted to go, and by and large had a good time in the process. But as anyone who’s spent even a modicum of time reflecting on hedonism knows all too well, it’s not at all sustainable. True, lasting, sustainable happiness must come—indeed, can only come—through loving relationships with other people and, specifically, work that helps other people. It can only come through being part of something bigger than oneself.
Before becoming a parent, I was able to construct a narrative and convince myself that the work I was doing wasn’t really for me, it was for some nameless, abstract “other” in the world who was less privileged than me, or vaguely for future generations. In the crypto world this abstract notion often manifests itself as phrases like “the unbanked” or “the global south”—the nameless other. This sort of worked but it wasn’t terribly fulfilling, probably because it was so abstract. But I also couldn’t see that at the time.
All of that changed when I had a child. All of a sudden I had something—someone—else to live for. And there was nothing abstract about that someone: he was crying and pooping right in front of me. There was now another sentient being in the world who was totally dependent upon me for survival. It was the first time I’d ever experienced that and it’s a powerful thing to experience. It changes you in lots of positive ways. It sobers you. It makes you more responsible and it makes you take things more seriously. And it gives you a much deeper, more specific sense of purpose: rather than the nameless other, when I contemplate my life and my work and my legacy, I now see my son’s face, plain and simple. This is true both in the “little” sense of literally putting food on the table and feeding him, and in the “big” sense of building a better world for him.
After becoming a parent I realized that in spite of having had some awareness of ego and the problems of ego, and in spite of a lot of meditation, I was putting myself and my ego first in ways I didn’t even realize. You could make the case that having a child is in some ways perhaps a little selfish, but in essence I believe it to be a selfless act. It means dedicating a massive portion of your time and resources to the care of another person. Unless you’ve had a similar experience in your career, e.g., you’re a teacher or a doctor, the only way most of us will experience this is by having children. And it’s an experience I wish everyone could have. Creating a family is creating something bigger than yourself that you’re fully invested in.
Putting my son first has been a joyful experience. I travel less so I have more time with him. I come home early so I have more time with him. I pay more attention and make more prudent investments to protect his future, and I drink less and exercise harder so I’ll be healthier longer to be there for him later in life.
The most beautiful thing about this feeling is that, once awoken, it’s grown beyond even my own family. After ignoring babies my entire life, I suddenly find myself irresistibly drawn to them. And I remind myself all the time that we were all babies once, and that some parent, somewhere felt towards every person precisely the way I feel towards my son. If I can put my son’s needs and desires before my own, surely I can do the same for other people. Becoming a parent is the best exercise in empathy and compassion that I can imagine.
Thing #2: Mindful
“My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it.” –Clarence Budington Kelland
I’ve been aware of the importance of presence and mindfulness for a few years and it’s something I’ve always struggled with. Meditation is amazing but it’s almost impossible to make time and space for the long, deep meditation sessions that I need to really get there. I’ve tried other practices like periodically focusing on the breath or paying more attention to bodily movements but these haven’t worked terribly well for me either.
It turns out, however, that having a child worked wonders. I expected that mindfulness would suffer after I had a child, since I wouldn’t be sleeping well, I’d have less free time and more responsibility, more anxiety, etc. But there’s something about the fleeting nature of childhood, about how quickly newborns become infants and how quickly infants become toddlers that’s truly made every moment that I have with my son precious beyond words.
I’m not always home and I don’t get as much quality time with him as I’d like. But that means it’s doubly important that I’m totally present when I do have time with him. I always make a point of putting my phone away (ideally in another room), temporarily setting aside work and other concerns, and focusing all of my attention on him and on the moment we have together. I see how fast he’s already grown up and I know that this phase of his life, and of our time together, will never come again. I’m acutely aware of the fact that, on average, kids and parents grow further apart over time. I really want to treasure these days that we have together before that happens.
It’s remarkable how deeply you can bond with another person and the depth of communication you can achieve if you focus completely on each other. This is true even when the communication is nonverbal as it is with a toddler. I pick up small hints and “tells” and overall I know that he understands me and I understand him. And it makes me wonder what I’m missing in other relationships where I’m not as focused on the other person. I feel a sense of deep, abiding, unconditional love for him, which of course is part and parcel of parenthood but it’s still new to me. I pay attention to this feeling, too, when we’re together, and I meditate on the feeling when we’re apart. I feel like I can tease apart exactly what the feeling is like: where it starts and stops, how it began, its texture, how it changes over time and distance. I’ve done many types of meditation but I’ve never tried meditating on love before!
Interestingly, I had a similar experience with my father in the final years of his life. Knowing that he didn’t have much time left, I made an effort to spend as much time with him as I possibly could, and to focus as much on being with him when we were together. It’s fascinating how these things happen at the beginning and end of life, but in general tend not to happen in the middle. There’s something about beginnings and endings that focus the mind in a powerful way. But every moment is in itself a beginning and an ending, and we should be able to do this all the time! Becoming a father and spending time with my son has helped show me this, especially since he grows and changes so quickly. It’s shown me the potential in every moment and in every relationship.
And it’s made me more mindful and intentional about other things in my life! I’m relentlessly picky about travel and I’m only willing to go on the most important trips because they take me away from family. When I do travel, my trips are shorter and more focused. When I’m home I go out less. There’s much less FOMO and much more JOMO when I get to do “nothing” and spend time at home with the family. Overall, I’ve become healthier, more focused, and more productive since becoming a parent.
Thing #3: Conservative
"Demography is destiny." - Auguste Comte
I’ve been on quite a political journey these past few years. I never thought much about my own politics before but I was probably left-leaning for most of my adult life. I probably would’ve described myself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal, but I’m not even sure I knew what those terms meant. They sounded right and had the right cachet.
Over the past few years I’ve been pulled to the right for several reasons. One is the pure insanity of the modern Democratic party and how far the American left has drifted to the extreme left. As Ronald Reagan famously said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party, the party left me.” Another is the insane spending and money printing binge that the US government has been on for the last decade or two, with very little to show for those trillions of dollars other than inflation and unending, unwinnable foreign wars. And a third reason is Bitcoin, and conversations with Bitcoiners that opened my eyes to a lot of things. Say what you will about Bitcoin and Bitcoiners, but you can’t deny that they’re skeptical, independent thinkers with a fantastic allergy to bullshit and an uncanny ability to see the absurdity of the mainstream narrative. I feel like I’ve experienced a political awakening as a result of these ideas and these conversations. Lots of aspects of politics and policy that formerly felt irrelevant and distant, such as macroeconomics, suddenly feel very salient.
Becoming a parent has been the last and most important stage of this awakening. I’ve never tried to articulate this before and I’m struggling now but there’s something about experiencing the miracle of childbirth and of becoming a parent that’s made me value life more than ever before. In short, I woke up to the fact, obvious in hindsight, that society needs children. It’s really that simple. Without lots of children our society literally begins to die. I like our society. It’s not perfect and there’s a lot that we can and should do better, but I believe it should continue to exist, and the only way for that to happen is for us to have more children, and to do everything possible to promote having children and raising them correctly. In this respect I consider myself a pronatalist and a vitalist, one who values birth and life, especially human life, above all.
Before having kids everyone expects it’s really, really hard. It is in some ways, and it’s stressful in some ways, but the thing they don’t tell you is that the sheer joy and enjoyment outweigh all of the stress and difficulty by several orders of magnitude. The stress doesn’t even come close to the joy. There are probably good reasons for some people not to have kids—and having kids is unfortunately not cheap—so I’m by no means suggesting that everyone should drop what they’re doing and start having kids. But I do think that almost everyone should do this. Why? Because it’s good for your future children, it’s good for you, and most of all, it’s good for society. (There are a thousand things we can and should do as a society to make it cheaper and easier to have and raise kids but I’ll save that for a future issue.)
If I’d known ten years ago what I know now I would’ve started much sooner, which would’ve made having kids easier in some ways. Since becoming a father I’ve had conversations with dozens of friends in their twenties and thirties and subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) urged them to consider having more kids, sooner, as I wish I had. The responses are always the same, and they’re so much the same that they’re boringly predictable: “I’m not ready yet.” “I’m still young, I have plenty of time.” “I want to have fun first.” “The thought of having kids is terrifying.”
In nearly all cases those statements are categorically false—yet nearly everyone in my social circle believes them religiously. It’s absolutely breathtaking and fascinating to behold, and to consider where these brain viruses came from. It’s worse than mask and vaccine mandates, and it’s worse than the cult of woke because it’s even more sinister. It has a much more negative social impact than all of those combined. Consider the hundreds of millions of babies not being born around the world due to this brain virus. Consider rapidly falling populations in places from China and Japan to Bulgaria to Venezuela.
Those statements are also incredibly selfish. There’s nothing wrong with having fun, and you should enjoy your life. That’s what your twenties is for. But these things are not incompatible with raising children. Your thirties is for building a career and raising kids—I see this now, as someone who had his first child at the end of that decade. (And if you’re more secure and less self-centered than most, start even earlier.)
As a global society we’ve basically stopped making babies and it’s absolutely tragic. Almost every other problem that humanity faces pales in comparison to this one. Our society has quite literally begun to die. Look no further than the terrifying forecasts of rapid population decline in places as far-fung as East Asia, Russia, and most of Europe. Could we get by with a few less people on the planet? Sure, and it’s not exactly an extinction-level event. But other things equal more is better: because it means more growth and less burden on everyone else and because it makes society more youthful and vibrant all around.
I’m not totally sure what pronatalism means for my politics but I think it makes me somewhat socially conservative. Among other things it means I’m much more turned off by abortion than I was previously. I never thought about it deeply and “women’s right to choose” always sounded reasonable on the surface. After having a child, though, and after the end to end prenatal experience and seeing my child’s heartbeat start at only six weeks and understanding that that “fetus” is actually a living, potential human being, I’ve softened my stance considerably. I also believe that we need to do a much better job of promoting healthy families, and after a year of trying I’m not sure that two parents working demanding full time jobs makes for the healthiest, most ideal environment to raise a child.
We’ve collectively stopped putting children first and we need to change that before it’s too late. Not every society is equally guilty of this, but modern cosmopolitan culture almost everywhere is—even birth rates in the places where they’re highest are falling more quickly than anyone imagined. I suppose another way of looking at the situation is that the societies that have gotten this right, whether Africans (the top 39 countries by birth rate are all African!), Mormons, Israelis, or Muslims, shall inherit the earth and all is as it should be. Never underestimate the power of demographics. But I think cosmopolitan, capitalist, high tech culture also has a lot going for it and I’ll continue to ponder how we might reconcile the two.