[ant_li0n]

Wow yeah you really hit the nail on the head for me. My wife and I weren't trying to have kids but we weren't trying not to have kids either, if you get my drift. Looking back on it, if we had been "smart" about deciding when the right time would happen, we might never have had kids.

Having kids is hands-down the best thing I've ever done but also the hardest. Not because of the amount of work, because it's really not that much work. It's more of the dramatically uncomfortable shift in perspective: Realizing I'm not the main character in this story. It still hits me sometimes.

[mbg721]

The thing that struck me about having kids is that no individual task is all that hard, but there are a lot of them and you have to be available at all times. It can wear you down like any other on-call situation.

[illiac786]

Something that still hits me (hard) is how you suddenly have to be a model, or at least try. You can't take the easy road anymore, little eyes are watching your every move.

I started thinking over my generous way of giving ethical and generally grandiloquent advice when I started being held up to it by ever watchful little eyes... I find this being the hardest, either way: admitting I'm not so great in some respects, or bettering myself. Both are incredibly hard.

[FeloniousHam]

> It's more of the dramatically uncomfortable shift in perspective: Realizing I'm not the main character in this story

This! I was the first of our group to have kids, and I'd "the camera isn't on me anymore". I thought of Smallville where the Duke boy was just a background father-person.

[anon291]

The entire phrase 'trying for kids' is a neologism only enabled by birth control

For most of history, people just did what you did and had the results you did

[bryanlarsen]

On the contrary, "trying for kids" was accompanied by an elaborate ceremony to kick off the process. This big ceremony was often so successful that the kids would arrive 5 months after the ceremony!

[dagw]

Trying for kids means making sure you have sex at the right times of the month, something humanity has known about for millennia. Equally people not 'trying for kids' made sure to only have sex at the 'wrong' time of the month, again something humans have been doing for millennia.