A man I know recently expressed that he was feeling “baby-hungry” and it took me really off guard, since previously I’ve only ever seen that talked about as something that happens to women. It’s got me thinking the last few days about how I really know nothing about what the instinct/desire to be a parent is like for men. I’ve always gotten the impression that it manifests a little differently than it does for women, but comparatively it gets talked about way less, and I’d really love to hear from some actually men what it’s like for you? When you’re thinking about being a father some day, what’s going through your head? What parts of that experience do you think about the most? Why is it important to you?
If you’ve had kids, I’d also love to hear what you were thinking while in that headspace, or while deciding to have more.
19 comments
I work with kids. I frequently think “man, I want one of those”. I imagine holding them and swinging them around, teaching them things they’ll use for the rest of their life, and building a person that’s the best of both me and my partner.
I have a negative parenting instinct, I actively don’t want kids and I am planning on getting a vasectomy
I guess for me, I always wanted to have kids because I always liked kids. They’re fun and keep you young. My two kids constantly remind me what the world looks like through untainted lenses. As an adult, especially a GenX adult, I can be very cynical. George Carlin once said, “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.” This describes me to the core.
However, my kids haven’t been worn down by the world yet and that energy is so necessary in my life sometimes. They drive me to be a better person myself so that I can give them opportunities I never had. I’m also lucky that I have 2 girls so they just love their daddy and I’m a cuddly kind of dad too so, yeah… I couldn’t be happier to have them in my life.
Don’t get me wrong, raising kids is hard work and man, they will test your patience on a daily basis but at the end of the day, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Always wanted kids, but never really considered the details until it was actually time for the kids. Mostly it was something like seeing a dad with his kid(s) at a concert or something and thinking how awesome that would be.
Now that I have them, it’s still really surreal sometimes. I’m overwhelmed by how much and how deeply and how fiercely I love them. I have to fight myself because I want to protect them from everything and give them everything they want, but I also know that I need to let them take risks and get hurt and experience disappointment and heartbreak and everything else that comes along with being a successful and healthy human being.
I wanted two at most. I have three and I’d have more except the cost and our age at this point. The last pregnancy was tough on my wife (who always wanted three) and we decided that was it.
My instinct is to stay away from them.
I was always desperate to have kids, don’t regret it at all. But..make damn sure you have chosen the right person to have them with because you’re linked to them for a long time. It can be hard, thankless work sometimes but other times it’s really amazing.
The sheer pleasure of lying next to my wee one and she snuggles up to me and whispers “I love you Daddy” or the older autistic teen spends an hour info dumping about her imagined world while we walk through the woods. Those are the moments that make it so worth it.
The parental feelings I have are a love that feels almost overwhelming, a deep fear of anything bad happening to them. Equally I have had to learn that they will get things wrong, the will learn at their own pace and nobody is perfect, least of all myself. Especially myself. You need patience and communication and kindness. For them and yourself.
It’s hard to really communicate the feelings of being a parent effectively, but on a good day it can bring tears of joy, while a bad day can bring tears of anger.
Oh, and in the more than four decades I have been alive I’ve been in plenty of situations where I thought I might die, and nothing comes close to the utter fucking terror of watching my children being on deaths door. How someone copes with the lose of their child I can’t imagine, and pray I never find out. I think my heart would stop.
So, having a family, having children, is amazing! There are lows, and they suck, but the highs make it worth it. By a wide, wide margin!
When it comes to women, I would go as far as saying I have a fetish for knocking them up. If a woman is a 10, she’s going to be a 15 when she’s pregnant. The best sex I’ve ever had is the sex where a gal is at least *pretending* that we’re trying to get pregnant. I don’t know why, maybe I just give too many cycles to my lizard brain, but I am perpetually caught in a state of “baby fever.” I’m just wise enough to not actually go out knocking up any woman that’ll let me.
I wasn’t really *planning* to have kids when my son was conceived. I’d heard directly from the doctor’s mouth that his mother wasn’t going to be able to get pregnant without medical assistance, and three years of unprotected sex confirmed that… but apparently the doctors were wrong because – go figure – just a few short months after we broke up we managed to pull it off. Even still: I never really got that fear of parenthood that people talk about. I was in a pretty bad place when I found out about his conception, but I also knew that I could get my shit together – and I did. I was always confident that I’d be able to pull it off, and despite some pretty heavy adversity in the form of his mother and the family courts I think that for the most part things have gone well. So: I was basically just left with excitement. I was just excited to have a kid and go on that journey.
When it comes to kids: I don’t particularly enjoy babies. I love my son and I always have, but most of the first few years of his life were basically a waiting game for me. I wanted to be able to take him out and *do* stuff… not just roll him around in a stroller and make sure he doesn’t commit suicide. Our relationship was never *bad*, I was basically the only one taking care of him for most of his life, but I’ve definitely enjoyed it *more* as he’s gotten older. Up until he turned into a fuckin’ teenager about a year ago, anyway.
I did want *a lot* more kids, but at this point he’s 14. I’ve got a similar age gap with most of my siblings, and I know that if I go and have kids now he’s not going to have much of a relationship with them so… it’s probably off the table. It’s disappointing, especially considering how fuckin’ sexy having kids is and how common that goal is among women my age, but I’ll live.
As for why it’s important: I guess it’s not. I’ve enjoyed raising a kid, though. Watching them grow and learn is fun. Lonely moments are, or rather *were*, few and far between. Even as a fuckin’ teenager, he’s evolving and becoming more of his own person and it’s… interesting… even if it’s not particularly fun at times.
I could probably go on, but I’ve already vomited out 5 paragraphs so I’ll stop.
Pretty neutral.
When I’m in a long term relationship I’m looking forward to kids. When I’m single they don’t even factor into my thoughts. I have a stronger drive to be with a nice women, than have children.
Look up videos on youtube that show dads saving their kids from getting hurt, thats dad instinct
I have 2 kids and from a young age I knew I wanted to be a father. Not sure I’ve ever been ‘baby hungry’. I think babies are cute and were a big part of my life for awhile, but that phase was just part of the journey.
My wife felt the same way about children and family as for me it was a non negotiable so I guess I got lucky as we are going on 20 years of marriage.
Men do have paternal instincts but we can’t talk about them because we’ll be accused of being pedophiles, which is completely unfair.
When I had young kids, I couldn’t even go places with them without getting suspicious looks from strange women who seemed to think my kids belonged to them and not me. Like I hadn’t gotten permission from womanhood to spend time with my own children in public. Fucking disgusting.
When I was 20 I was seeking out a woman who would make a good mom because I wanted kids. In time that faded and we broke up a while later.
In my early 30s I would get this overwhelming feeling that I wanted to have kids, I can’t explain it but it persisted for a couple years and went away in time.
In my late 30s I became a stepdad to a girl and my wife and I had a kid of our own. I love our girl, I can’t explain it but it doesn’t compare to the love I have for our boy, could be because he’s a baby and just has that innocent curiosity about him but they’re both great kids. I do feel guilty and helpless that I feel differently towards him, as bio dad is out of the picture the word luck doesn’t begin to describe how o feel about getting to be her father, both the good and tough moments, it’s a gift for me to share them with her.
Honestly the pregnancy leading up to my first child was super weird for me. I felt a sense of duty and responsibility to my wife, but I felt very little for the baby/fetus. I knew it was something I would have to provide for and protect, but there wasn’t any deep emotional connection to the child itself, just to my wife.
Once she actually had the baby, everything changed. The first time I held my daughter, I had an intense realization about the levels of violence I was capable of if anyone ever hurt my little girl. There’s nothing in this world that I wouldn’t do for her, and if anything ever happened to her, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from doing something worse to her assailant.
If I knew that crying would get her to put her nipple in my mouth, I would have done that years ago.
being a father is terrifying but also gives u a sense of purpose.
I’m definitely wishing I had kids right now. I’ve just always wanted to have them someday.
The desire to feel like you have left a mark on the world around you. To see something you invest time and effort into grow and flourish.
I never wanted kids until recently which is too late now, that parental instinct for me is a protector and guide role, someone i can teach the values of life and the passion for history and nature, whilst still being the mountain between them and any danger, especially with a daughter, had a dream a while ago that really shook me up, just a little girl maybe 5-6 running up to me in a flowery blue dress and jumping in my arms saying “I love you daddy”, that fucked me up, I woke up in tears and never felt an emptiness like that before. Not sure if that’s a normal parental instinct, or if it’s more like wanting to reassure an upset child you notice in public, never had anything like it so I’m clueless on it.
I never thought I wanted kids until my oldest was born. I have 2 kids now and every once in a while I would get “baby fever” for a short time, usually just a half day or so. That went on for about 3-4 years and since I had a vasectomy, I haven’t had a single baby fever moment.
Usually that desire to have another child would come up in some moment where I just felt really content, especially if the kids were being awesome and everything just felt like a perfect moment. Then all of a sudden my brain would want another child as soon as possible. It’s a strange feeling, at least to me, and it would last a while and then just fade away.