When my kid was four and refusing to go to bed, he once stood at the top of the stairs, holding tight to the stair gate, looked me dead in the eye, and shit himself.

On the one hand I was impressed with the show of superiority, but on the other, I did briefly consider having him adopted.

So yeah, I get it.

Most days the kids are such beautiful creatures. They are learning, experimenting, cuddling, playing games with me... I wish I got to see more of them but I'm in office 5 days a week with a long commute, and we're all feeling it.

But every once in a a while there is the day where they smear an entire dresser with zinc cream and that shit takes ages to wash off. Or they piss on you the moment you remove them from the bath. Or they spend an hour fighting you about going to bed so you just throw them into their bedroom and use your body to block their door until they get too tired from banging it and screaming and pass out; really started to appreciate my Steam Deck after that.

You remember these events well because they don't happen often. You don't remember every time you cuddled watching a movie, worked on a project together, made food together, or felt proud of them, because that's pretty much every day.

I will add the caveat that this is for "normal" kids. I used to volunteer for a few groups for seriously disabled children and you didn't see too many couples at those events... Usually one parent wants to keep the child while the other says they cannot effectively raise them, and you can guess how that goes. Having spent a lot of time with those kids and seeing the damage families suffer because of it, I do not suggest taking on the challenge of serious disability unless you are able to secure substantial material assistance; it's far lonelier and harder than you can imagine.

Don't have any kids but I also deduce from my observations that most normal relations with kids are the ones where sometimes you love them to bits and at other times want to give them for adoption. Anything else which overly romanticises having kids has no use other than shame driving people into insanity.

I wouldn't give mine away, and enjoyed parenting more than any other job, but swear to God with every one of them I said that a parent should be provided with about 5 tranquilizer darts for each child when they are born, for the handful of situations that put you in danger of doing something you will regret. With each one, for me there were about 5 times I wished I could just toss a dart and pow! Kid falls down asleep.