
How can existentialist philosophy help with the anxiety and dread of fatherhood? - Petiver
https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-childless-fathers-of-existentialism-teach-real-dads
======
11thEarlOfMar
The best I can do, after raising two children, is that fatherhood needs to be
less about keeping your children alive (by avoiding risk in any form) and more
about teaching them to 1) survive on their own in the world, and once they're
in a good place, 2) incrementally building the life they desire. In the most
general sense, that means: How to size up a situation, analyze it for both
opportunities and risk, asses the resources available and then resolve it. You
can't really teach your kids to size up situations without, at some point,
exposing them to said situations. Moreover, there is much more of an edge to
that process when a child knows they are on their own in solving the problem.

So it's a real balancing act as a father to present age & maturity-appropriate
situations that challenge your child without presenting more danger than they
can reasonably handle. Anxiety, yes, that's the fuel to keep fathers focused
on maintaining that balance. Dread? Yes, but you'll get over it once your kids
start surprising you with insights and behaviors you didn't know you'd taught
them.

~~~
HiroshiSan
I'm currently struggling to learn this by myself (not fatherhood but surviving
on my own) in my mid twenties. It is incredibly difficult only because I am in
such a state of comfort that forcing myself to face difficult situations to
learn and grow from, is hard.

~~~
beachstartup
the solution is easy. just get rid of your state of comfort.

most people can't, because the real problem is something else.

~~~
Throwaway23412
>the real problem is something else

Would you like to elaborate or give examples of that something else?

~~~
beachstartup
fear.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Can you take the gnomicism down a notch?

------
anon1253
Schopenhauer is also famous for having an anti-natalist stance.

“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would
the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy
with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any
rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”

It's brushed off in first few paragraphs, but for those who are not yet a
parent: you don't have to be. You can have a fulfilling, arguably happier [1],
life without children. In fact, a lot of people argue against having children
these days [2,3,4]. I'm fairly lucky to have a supporting and progressive
family who, mostly, supported my decision for not having children. But a quick
gloss over /r/childfree indicates that there is a lot of stigmatism still
going on. I think it's time to do away with that.

[1]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/111/4/1328.full.pdf](http://www.pnas.org/content/111/4/1328.full.pdf)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-
radio/2013/sep/10/david-a...](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-
radio/2013/sep/10/david-attenborough-human-evolution-stopped)

[3] [http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/people-who-dont-have-
chi...](http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/people-who-dont-have-children-
benefit-our-environment-more-than-any-campaign-its-time-to-
celebrate-a7178951.html)

[4] [https://www.wired.com/2015/04/biggest-threat-earth-many-
kids...](https://www.wired.com/2015/04/biggest-threat-earth-many-kids/)

~~~
toasterlovin
I think not having children is incredibly selfish.

Life is an incredible gift. It is, after all, the substrate upon which all of
our hopes and dreams are built.

And we were given this gift. Many people made many sacrifices so that we could
be here, alive, enjoying life. To decide, then, to not share this gift with
your own children, well... I can't conceive of anything more selfish.

~~~
asdfklads
So how many children do you have? Why not more? You're not sharing gifts with
as many children as you can conceive. You are selfish in that regard according
to your own basis.

~~~
toasterlovin
Believe me, after I convince everybody to have children, I'm gonna work on
convincing them to have lots of children :P

That's certainly my own plan. Just welcomed number three into the world last
week. Definitely have plans for more, but, you know, babies generally come one
at a time.

~~~
foobarian
Luckily the process scales horizontally quite well. Also see e.g. Genghis
Khan.

~~~
toasterlovin
Well, it does for half the species. In theory. The other half kind of acts as
a damper on things, especially if you value things like women's rights, etc.

------
skissane
I struggle to relate to the premise of this article: while anxiety is
something I have always struggled with, fatherhood is not one of the things
that makes me anxious. My son is three, turning four in a few months, and
while his behaviour and moods can at times be difficult to deal with, I'd
describe the resulting emotions as more exasperation or weariness than
anxiety. Now, maybe as he gets older – maybe when he is a teenager he will
cause me anxiety – but certainly not yet.

------
Spooky23
It's difficult for me to relate to this. For me, fatherhood has been a source
of great joy.

------
nradov
This is really only an issue for neurotic over-educated upper-middle class
Westerners. Everyone else just gets on with their lives and ignores this
nonsense about anxiety and dread.

~~~
CardenB
It's still an issue to be overcome.

------
Mendenhall
Because in the long term everything you see will be destroyed and humanity
itself wont even be a thought, so don't worry.

------
gerby
I can't wait, generally, to have kids.

------
rogerthis
I'll drop the name only because I am tired: Viktor Frankl. Everything from own
is great.

------
awt
I might point out that men are not _totally_ fine. Men are imprisoned at a
much higher rate than women, enter and complete college at a lower rate than
women, and have a higher rate of successful suicide. Men also bear the vast
majority of the tax burden and have few rights in family court. Men also live
shorter lives than women.

~~~
madhadron
The rates of entering and completing college and of successful suicide are
real problems. Definitely give you those.

The others, I'm not sure I can. Some of this is biological. The rate of
sociopathy is much higher in men than women, and young men have hormonal
drives to physical violence that are much stronger than women. I would be
astonished at a society where incarceration rates are equal. Similarly, men
living shorter lives appears to be biological, as it is ubiquitous across
cultures.

As for tax burden, if you factor in systemic lower rates of pay for women than
men, lower employment opportunities for the three quarters of single parent
households that have only a mother rather than only a father, and split the
burden across couples where one does not work, is it still so?

~~~
belorn
> Some of this is biological

It wasn't a long time ago that most gender inequality for women was labeled
"biological". Estrogen was blamed for everything between unsuitability for
voting, then it was specific professions, and then higher hospital rates. All
which research in the last 100 years has found to be either completely false
or highly overrated as a factor. Culture it seems, plays a order of magnitude
bigger factor in everything we used to blame sex hormones.

> young men have hormonal drives to physical violence

So lets say we had a study that looked at hormonal levels in young men, and
tried to correlate that to tendencies to commit physical violence. We should
expect that those individuals with higher tendency of violence should have a
statistical higher levels.

And researchers did such studies and found that there was no correlation
between hormonal levels and risk of committing violence. There was a
correlation between abnormal levels of several times higher than can naturally
occur, and violence. Within the natural range however, testosterone has no
regulative effect on violence.

> men living shorter lives appears to be biological, as it is ubiquitous
> across cultures

Higher income for men is also ubiquitous across cultures, so is that
biological? At best it is a half truth, since success statistics from dating
site do give a strong correlation for women that focus on personal health. Men
in turn has success being correlated to wealth and ability to support a
family, and less so to personal health. This translate to a strong cultural
difference in incentives, possible caused by biology, but surely thats not one
that gender equality can't over come.

