I would assume once you have kids your whole outlook and value system changes. however when i see peopel with kids i see contradictory information, some of them have a new set of values and are not as bothered by negative events (unless they negatively affect the family) and some are the same people they always were.
does having a child permanently change you in any signifigant way, or does the change wear off in a few years? do your priorities change in regards to money, careers, friends, self, family, etc. or are the changes temporary and transient, then you go back to how you were before you had kids?
I vote for the “permanent changes.” My life changed in odd ways I never expected when my kids were born.
Here’s an example- movies where children were in peril or harmed never really bothered me. But now, I simply can’t watch. It freaks me out on my deepest level, even if it’s just the suggestion of peril, like all those beautiful blonde children at Helm’s Deep!
My values are still the same, I guess, except that now I might make different decisions because there are more people’s lives at stake. Protecting and nurturing those children is my primary purpose in life. Just part of the deal.
Being a parent never “wears off” IMHO. I may be more relaxed in terms of discipline or something with subsequent kids, but it doesn’t mean I love them less or take the responsibility of being their mom any less seriously.
It used to mildly bother me when I heard a news story about some kid that got abducted and was later found murdered. Today it really gets to me and I usually have to change the channel so I won’t have to hear it. Movies affect me the same way.
Another way having kids has effected me that I never expected… I now know almost all of the Disney movies word for word.
Well, I think that my values and so on are largely unchanged, but then I had always expected to start a family. My own focus is no longer so much on myself, but on the kidlets; they’re my primary responsibility now. Currently, my ‘job’ is keeping my home and family running. It’s a chapter in my life, and one day that will change to include more career-type stuff for myself. But the changes there are are permanent, I think.
Like the others, I can no longer stand to see children in peril. Neither can DangerDad. Helm’s Deep made me cry (and especially that first scene, where the children have to leave their mother before the orcs get to the village). I once saw an old photograph from WWII with a baby crying alone in some wreckage, and I just freaked out. I often can’t deal with news stories about children, at all.
I spend a lot more energy and time thinking about issues like school, child care, child welfare worldwide, and stuff like that. I hope I’m more thoughtful of others.
That was my first thought, too. I don’t have the ability to read or see even fictional events where kids get hurt. We read Maus for bookclub, and the Jewish kids dying at the hands of the Nazi’s haunts me like it wouldn’t have before children.
I get worried about reality more now, too. Before I had kids, I just had to look out for my own future. Now I worry if my children will have jobs (they are 4 and 5), what the economy will be like, if we will run out of fossil fuels with no replacement before my grandchildren die. I still worry about next week, but now I worry about some hundred year horizon as well.
Some of the money and career and free time stuff changes because it pretty much has to. Unless you have a very understanding spouse, or are a particularly lousy spouse and parent - your free time is significantly cut. You don’t take a four year old to see Kill Bill. Diapers and daycare need to be paid for, regardless of how much a priority you make them - three year olds don’t handle being alone all day well, and few four month olds potty train. And as they age, the places you spend your time and money just change - and you can start to get some of your old life back as they become old enough to fend for themselves and participate in activities that don’t involve cartoon characters.
The movie thing again: Pre-children, I laughed at the scene in Pet Sematary where the little boy gets run over by a truck.
After having children, I ran across that movie on TV, and started sobbing uncontrollably as the scene approached. I do whatever I can to avoid news stories, fiction or non-fiction books, movies, etc. which might contain anything about children being hurt or neglected.
I also used to never ever cry for any reason. After having children, I notice I can tear up at anything! It doesn’t even have to be about kids. I guess I just didn’t feel emotions in general as deeply before.
Ugh. To this day, I cannot watch Ransom or Don’t Say a Word, and I flat out refuse to go see that Tommy Lee Jones movie. Uh Unh. Not happening.
As for my values…well…certainly they changed. Having children changes little ingrained perceptions you’ve carried around with you and opinions you’ve developed over time, because you’re no longer just responsible for yourself.
There’s this whole other person, and they’re watching you all the time. Everything you do and say, every reaction, every decision will effect them. That’s huge. And scary.
Plus, you are now responsible for that person. And, you can’t give them back when you’re sick, or tired, or just want to stay in bed and not deal with it. They have their own problems, and they expect you to help them solve those problems and be there when they need you. And everything that happens to them has an impact on you, as well.
Someone on this board (Ms. Robyn, I think) recehtly described being a parent as having your heart ripped out and walking next to you. That’s probably the best analogy I’ve heard yet.
Oh. I’m also a lot less selfish than I was before I had my kids. I’m more patient. I try to consider other people’s feelings more than I used to…probably because these are some of the values I want my children to have, and they don’t learn by being told. They learn by what they see in you.
Just some thoughts from an ex-party girl, now boring basketball/soccer mom.
becoming a parent has certainly changed me, and permanently, I think, in many ways. One that immediately springs to mind is that I am much more safety-conscious now, to the extent that I was talking to the Graphic Design guy at work and I kept looking at the scalpel on his desk, thinking “That’s not a safe place to leave that thing!”
Mine is that brief little vignette in Titanic where the women is tucking her two little ones into bed. shudder
I’d echo a lot of what people have already said. I also think that having kids can bring you out of yourself in a lot of ways. I’ve always been quite shy and nonconfrontational, but when it comes to something that I need to do for my kids, that all goes away.
I’ll echo the movie thing. Law & Order: SVU has some really difficult episodes for me to watch. Umm, I smile when I see kids in public these days, as long as they’re not being too awful. And the hardest thing that I’ve had to deal with is that my political views have been sliding more to the right. It’s something the liberal 20yo I used to be is having a big problem with.
What if something life threatening happens, how do you react differently now that you are a parent? If you have kids and you find out you have cancer and will die soon is your first thought ‘im going to die’ or is it ‘who will take care of my family’? if it is ‘who will take care of my family’ do you mean spouse and children or just children.
Me too! Me and my sisters used to tease our mother terribly because she was always getting sniffly over silly stuff. But now I know. I’d never been a weepy sort, but since the kiddies? It’s like a switch was tripped and now my emotion center is directly wired to my tear ducts. Feeling maudlin? Tear up. Feeling especially happy? Tears. Proud? Scared? Tired? Awed? tears tears tears tears tears! It’s ridiculous.
As to values–I don’t want to say my values really changed, so much as I became more aware of how much my own behavior was–or wasn’t–modeling them. I make more of an effort now to try and control my baser instincts. I was pretty wild until I had the kids, so the difference is actually pretty marked. It’s not like I didn’t know what was right and wrong, moral and immoral, before I had kids–it’s just that I was a lot more likely to say the hell with it and do what I wanted.
Priorities–of course they changed. Money was already tight, and now that 1/2 of my income immediately goes to daycare I’m a lot less able to go out or buy stuff for myself. Add to that worries about insurance and healthcare and college savings and money plays a huge role in my stress levels now.
My priorities about my free-time changed too (I work full time). I don’t really have friends anymore–I know that sounds pathetic but I’m actually cool with it. My old friends are all still doing the young-party-animal-working-part-time-just-to-fund-the-bare-necessities-and-the-next-buzz kind of thing, and a single mom who can almost never get out doesn’t really mesh well. I know someday when the boys are older I’ll end up making new friends, but right now I’m way more interested in my sons than anything else anyway. That’s *the * priority. I think this intensity will mellow with age, as they get more independant (they’re only 10 mos and almost 3 years) but for now it’s almost like a built in protective mechanism. I’m instinctually driven to devote myself full-time to the boys, and by doing so I avoid driving any outsiders mad with my inablity to focus on anything else.
I’m in the same boat as others with regard to fictional depictions of harm or danger to children. It affects me far more than it did before kids – it bothered me before, but now I feel ill or enraged.
The main thing that I noticed was that I went from being the most important person in my life (when I was single) to being tied for first (when I married Dangerosa) to being a distant third (with two kids).
I’ve referenced this before, but large portions of my brain are firmly convinced that the safety of my kids is far more important than my own. One small example: Daughter, age 4, is looking under the table. I see this, recognize the potential for her head to strike the corner of the table when she straightens up, and I… put my hand there. Which is then banged into the edge of the table when she straightens up, hurting me and leaving her unscathed.
No thinking, just instinctive “I will take the hurt to protect my child.” It’s kind of freaky in retrospect.
I am also much more sensitive to violence or other bad things happening to children. When my brother died recently (as a young adult) I was pathologically worried about how my parents would handle it. They did fine, but I think if the same thing happened to my son, I couldn’t stand it. I don’t know what I’d do.
I would like to think that having a child has made me a better person. I’m a lot more tolerant of the little imperfections we all have. When someone does something stupid or mean, I tend to view the person as a child acting out (which is what we all are, when you get down to it.) I can easily quench feelings of anger or hatred toward people by reminding myself that those people are, or were, someone’s kids.
It’s ‘who will take care of my children.’ A couple of years ago, I had a 10-month old baby and gallbladder problems, which were undiagnosed. The second episode felt exactly like a heart attack (as far as I could imagine, it’s not like I’ve ever had a heart attack), and I actually did think “great, now I’m gonna die, and I have a baby to take care of.” Those were my uppermost thoughts, while the second layer had such knowledge as that my husband would be devastated. But the major part was that I had a child to raise. As far as I can tell, a lot of that is instinctual mother-bear stuff.
It may well be different for a bread-winning man-type; I think DangerDad would likely think “who will take care of my family” and mean me and the kids. Because the fact is that I’m a SAHM and there isn’t a lot of demand for my librarian skills in this town, and we would be a lot poorer if he died.
“I’m going to die” (as in ‘oh no my life is ending’) comes in third on the list. I enjoy life and all, but it’s going to end sometime. My main concern is that it not end before I’ve done my job.
I didn’t read this post before I posted the above, but I kind of agree with the “not knowing what love really is” part… at least, that’s how it seemed to work for my wife and I.
You start to get endless amusement from the childless folks who announce that “their children will be raised bilingual” (despite they themselves only speaking English). That there kids will go to private schools (do they have any idea how expensive that is?). That their darlings will certainly be potty trained by two, that they will NEVER appease a toddler with an M&M, and that all children should be in bed by eight and until the age of four take regular scheduled three hour naps.
