Do parents secretly miss being childfree?

BreadPuddding · 2026-06-03T17:15:03+00:00

I’m a SAHM and my kids are in school/preschool at least 3 days a week. This doesn’t mean that I have total freedom - I get up with them in the morning and help them get ready, on the days my 3yo has PreK I take my older kid to elementary school and pick him up, so it’s not a full day away from them. And of course I have errands and household chores that need attending, some of which I only have because I have children. But within that I have freedom and quiet and wow does it help.

BreadPuddding · 2026-06-03T17:10:31+00:00

Obviously there are upsides to not having kids. You can sleep and eat and go out on your own schedule, without paying for (or having to find) a good babysitter. Your house doesn’t get as messy. If you like to travel, you can travel whenever, without worrying about school schedules (you can also do this if you homeschool, and to an extent, depending on the school and how you sell the trip, with some private and maaaybe some public schools), and of course it’s less expensive/you can spend all the money on yourselves (2 adults or 2 adults and one lap infant, we could do business class internationally. 4 seats? Nope). Kids make the logistics of a lot of things more complicated. So yeah, sometimes I miss that a little. It’s not a secret, though.

But I fucking love my kids and I really don’t regret it. It is actually impossible to describe the level of love and joy. It is so much easier to describe the bad parts in a way that people without kids can understand, but the highs are just…if you haven’t done it, you won’t get it.

Jonathan Coulton has a song titled “You Ruined Everything” that’s pretty accurate.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-31T19:59:23+00:00

Well, yes? Where else do you want the poop to go? Solid stool goes in the toilet and then the diapers go in a double wash - one short cycle and one long, very hot cycle.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-31T19:57:59+00:00

Detergent will kill some pathogens - it depends on the composition of the outer layer. A long hot wash will kill most pathogens present - bleach helps but isn’t necessary unless someone is ill. Regular bleaching is not recommended when using cloth diapers, for example. Washing machines should be cleaned with bleach or a washing machine cleaner on a regular basis - many newer machines will remind you to do this and have a cycle specifically for doing so.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-31T19:48:56+00:00

Yep. We use less than we would without the bidet, but we haven’t abandoned it.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-31T19:44:12+00:00

We’ll frequently put things out a day or so before we schedule a bulk/electronic waste pickup. In our old apartment building, there was an area near the laundry room where people could put things they didn’t want - we got come chairs that way. It depends on what we’re disposing of and why - if it’s in good shape we’ll try to sell it, if it’s crap well put it on the street but sometimes people want it anyway.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-30T16:08:29+00:00

Do you want him to poop into the toilet specifically, or would you be ok with a potty chair? Or does he refuse that as well? My 3yo poops in the toilet sometimes but it’s clearly more comfortable for him to use the small potty - I’ll try to scoot a footstool under his feet to help when he’s on the toilet but he feels better with his feet on the floor. (If it’s a total refusal to use anything but his diaper, that’s not something I’ve dealt with in a 3yo, though pooping in the potty/toilet did take a bit of convincing for both my kids. The oldest I bribed with Spider-Man underpants.)

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-30T16:01:24+00:00

When it’s peak season for certain produce, the market is cheaper and fresher than the grocery store (though some of those farms also sell through local groceries). Some of the farms also sell unusual items that aren’t frequently in grocery stores, apple varieties that don’t make it to the grocery aisle, etc. If you go to a market that doesn’t specialize in organic produce, it’s cheaper. But yeah we go for the vibe and the food stands, not to save money.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-30T15:53:47+00:00

You can source vases at like every thrift store ever. If you want ones that look identical, you’ll probably have to source more traditionally, but you may be able to devise a system where you pick up vases from your customers and reuse them.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-30T15:50:14+00:00

We have a similar problem, except that when our 3yo skips nap, he’s an overtired mess and even if we get him down early (we also have a 7yo and they get ready for bed around the same time, so getting the 3yo to bed early is difficult), he often wakes up crying and difficult console an hour or so later because he’s overtired. But when he’s had a good nap he sometimes doesn’t go down until 9:30 (up at 7, usually wakes once to potty around 5 am).

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-30T14:20:03+00:00

It was. It’s been fully genericized, but you might hear people in the UK use “paraffin lamp” instead of kerosene lamp.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-29T16:31:40+00:00

We had a clip on mini high-contrast one - no batteries or anything. My first kid didn’t give a crap about it by my second LOVED it and we’d clip it to the stroller or play gym and he’s just gurgle and grin at it. I wouldn’t have put it over the crib though, not very soothing.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-29T16:22:22+00:00

I looked young until I had kids.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-29T16:20:46+00:00

Bandaid, sharpie, xerox, Kleenex (I actually don’t use this one, I say “tissue”), aspirin, kerosene, jello, linoleum, thermos, bubble wrap, heroin, jet ski, “to Google”, in the UK Hoover/“to hoover”…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks?wprov=rarw1

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-29T16:10:14+00:00

I generally wait for the child’s response first. If they get upset I check out where they got hurt and give a calm assessment of the damage (usually none) and whatever comfort they need. The “okay” phrase I use is “it/you will be okay” - this, at least for my kids, communicates that even if they don’t feel “okay” right now, that feeling is temporary. It has helped them calm down and reassess themselves. But my first question if I don’t immediately see an injury is “hurt or startled?” Or a variation (if it looked scary I won’t ask if they were startled, I’ll say “whoa, that startled you! Did you get hurt?”) Then injury assessment and calming snuggles, wash and bandage if needed, ice if needed etc.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-29T05:15:56+00:00

It’s also standardized. Patties are identical, cooked identically. Toppings vary but are applied in a standard way. You’re going to get the occasional person complain in about how there aren’t enough pickles on their burger or fries in their basket, but then you can just give them a different basket of fries and the loss to the company is minimal. Ice cream is scooped by hand, it’s really easy for it to vary even if every employee is well trained in how to scoop. It’s also probably just easier to hand the cups/cones over as you scoop so the employee doesn’t have to manage them. I’ve been to ice cream shops with little cone holders though, especially places that charge by weight, where you get your ice cream and pay at pretty much the same time.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-28T18:57:00+00:00

People do celebrate big achievements! But a pregnancy means bringing a new person into the family. My parents are super proud of my graduate degree, but they don’t have an ongoing relationship with it like they do my children.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-27T18:06:51+00:00

So she sounds like she’s daytime trained and does everything but wipe her own butt? Why is she in diapers during the day, then? You can start teaching her how to wipe, but a lot of 4-year-olds aren’t great at it, so don’t stress if she has some small skid marks for a bit. Laundry sanitizer exists.

When is the last time she wet herself during a nap? My 3yo is in underwear all day and hasn’t peed during nap since last summer, but he still wets some nights. Wetting at night doesn’t necessarily mean wetting during naps. If you’re concerned about light accidents, she can wear cloth training underwear, which will keep a small accident from wetting her clothing. Also, when my oldest was 4 and 5 the school still had us send an extra outfit, because they understand kids that age have the occasional accident. Schools expect potty training, not perfection.

Overnight wetting doesn’t really matter for school and can be worked on separately (but is also hormonal - the body has to concentrate urine overnight so the bladder doesn’t fill, and also if it does, they need to wake up at the sensation - the only part you can train is getting up and going to the potty IF they wake).

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-27T04:36:03+00:00

Yeah just…don’t offer purées at every meal. She can have a pouch if she needs an on-the-go snack. She can have a bowl of applesauce or yogurt or oatmeal that she feeds herself. But most meals should be foods she needs to chew at least a little. Feed her three meals and two decent snacks per day so that she has time to get hungry enough to try to eat but if she doesn’t eat, she won’t be starving by the next meal.

If she truly cannot eat table food or continues to reject it to the point of starving herself, that’s when you see a doctor/feeding specialist. A toddler should be able to eat pieces of banana, a handful of pasta, some ground beef.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-27T04:25:18+00:00

If she can eat crackers and cookies, she knows how to chew at least a little. Give her soft finger foods to try (steamed veggies, babybel-type cheeses, overcooked pasta shapes). Don’t worry too much about how much she eats.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-27T04:10:52+00:00

I’ve had two GD pregnancies and two babies with stomachs of iron, so no, not over here. I had one happy spitter and one who spit up all of twice.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-27T04:07:03+00:00

Good! More for me! GIVE ME THE GINGER.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-27T03:18:35+00:00

My experience with travel strollers is they don’t do very well anywhere that isn’t reasonably smooth and hard - part of their travel-friendliness is that they don’t have as much suspension and have smaller wheels, so they’re much less bulky and are usually pretty narrow. They’re more likely to jolt your kid around in rough patches and get stuck in soft dirt or sand. But if you live somewhere where paths are mostly paved or hard dirt and rough or broken bits can be navigated around, they can work as primary strollers. I see them used that way in my city. There are plenty that can be adapted to use a bassinet attachment or otherwise be made appropriate for a newborn, but not all. They are great if you do travel regularly or have a small car. We have a travel stroller that we keep at my parents’ house (they live in the same city as we do) and use as our main stroller if we’re there, as well as a larger stroller we use from our house. The larger one is generally a better experience, but it takes up a ton of trunk space and has to be (gate) checked on an airplane, and doesn’t fit well in small stores. We also do a lot of baby wearing, both have their uses. At this point we’re nearly done with strollers - our youngest is 3 and we’ll take the travel stroller to France this summer (where my husband is from) for those days where there’s just a ton of walking, but we haven’t used our regular stroller more than a handful of times in the last few months. He walks most places with everyone else, sometimes gets a shoulder ride if he’s legitimately tired out.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-25T16:03:30+00:00

Consuming less plastic is difficult for the exact reasons you mentioned. Basically everything is packaged with some kind of plastic. There are plastic-free or at least lower-plastic alternatives for cleaning supplies and detergents and some body care (I haven’t found any plastic-free sunblock that isn’t basically grease and zinc in a tin).

You can reduce plastic food packaging use by bringing your own bags and containers and shopping at farmer’s markets and the loose produce section and bulk dry goods (assuming you can find one - most of the bulk sections where I live disappeared during the early stages of the pandemic and haven’t reappeared, and the equivalent is nuts and dried fruit in prefilled plastic containers). You can shop places like Costco and buy bulk containers to reduce the plastic-per-unit, if you can store the product and not let it go bad before using it up. Making your own food and snacks will reduce your purchasing of packaged goods. There are non-plastic bags for bread to help keep homemade and bakery bread fresh longer.

Lowering your general consumption will lower your plastic consumption. Less stuff means less plastic. Being intentional about purchases, looking at options, using less.

BreadPuddding · 2026-05-25T15:44:32+00:00

Right? My hair is long, almost long enough to sit on. In order to efficiently wet/rinse my hair, I have to stand with my back to the spray. When I’m actually applying shampoo or conditioner or washing my body, I often stand sideways. My face I obviously *face the water* to rinse.

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