this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
1494 points (98.5% liked)
memes
20085 readers
2053 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's always a bit surreal to see people insist "As a childless adult, I get to have hobbies while you don't" when - as a childed adult - I find myself picking up hobbies I'd never even considered before kids.
My little guy stumbles on things and gets into them, needs some help, and suddenly we're both neck-deep in a jigsaw puzzle or a TV series or a train kit or a pile of half-painted miniatures.
I think its more that those hobbies are thrust upon you by the child. Your willingness to engage with them smooths it all out. Not everyone has patience for kid friendly activities and some find them incredibly boring.
For instance.... I work in childcare. Almost all of my personal favorite activities are very non-child friendly... (then again I also engaged with many of my favorite non-child-friendly pass times way younger than most people would be comfortable with...) I find most sanitized "kid friendly" activities pretty unbearably boring.
The kids themselves are fine though. And if anything I think they'd agree with me. If I busted out a super violent video game or something they'd probably cool with it. It'd be my fellow counselors and parents who'd take issue.
If anything my experience with kids almost softened my desire to get sterilized and cement my child free life. Kids seem fine to me. Its just all the social restrictions and expectations around them and obviously the energy, money, and time commitment. (Also I'm a soft-anti-natalist.)
In my experience, kids love to imitate whatever their parents are doing. But they struggle to operate at an adult level. So you provide them with kid-friendly activities to bridge that gap with an eye towards full participation as they get older.
When my son was 1-year-old, I couldn't put a baseball glove on him and toss a baseball around. But I could kick a rubber ball back and forth. I could get him to throw his ball into his toy box. I could roll a ball to him and have him pick it up, then two-hand throw it back. I'd do this with an eye to the future. And then he got older and stronger and more dexterous, and we could elevate what he tried to do.
I get that this isn't the most stimulating for the adult. But, at some level, you need to enjoy being around your kids generally speaking. Otherwise, I'll spot you that having kids is going to be miserable. At another level, learning how to teach is its own hobby and challenge. Experimenting with what your child can do is interesting. Reading about the next milestones and testing whether your kid can do them is exciting. Watching your kid improve over time is fascinating.
If that's not for you... okay, fine. Maybe you take your kid to daycare and let them figure it out. And you just treat your kid like an appliance - fed, rested, healthy, etc. I'll spot you that this isn't very fun (on its face, anyway).
I mean, I don't see an enormous difference between Splatoon and Team Fortress. I got Sonic: The Hedgehog collection for my son, and we can play it without any serious fear of trauma (although he has thrown the controller a few times). You can curb the degree of gore and still keep all the elements that make an activity fun.
More power to you. Just crazy to see people blot their own childhoods from their heads and insist you simply can't have fun under the age of 20.
I don't think they are saying you gave up your life because of your children but that you shift your time towards other things. Rightfully so because having a child is a huge responsibility and people better live up to that.
But I don't think you would have gotten into jigsaw puzzles and probably did something more alike the things You did before you had children.
Or maybe you are the exception to the (from what I can observe) the norm and haven't given up any or most of your adult hobbies when having a child. If so, good on you!
In closing I would like to say that I respect people that want children, I understand some people want children and can't have them (fertility, no partner, discrimination against non hetero) and I understand the anger they might feel when seeing this meme. I also understand those who don't have children and are fine with it or even happy about it because they actively pursued this life concept. So to me that meme is funny without making fun of the other groups but (as ever joke needs) using them as a reference to make it funny in the first place.
Live long and prosper 🖖
I find the entire concept of "childless" or "childed" surreal
We would love to have kids. We can't (easily or realistically). So gloating about having free time because no kids, or how amazing it is to be a parent... just seems, insincere sometimes. Idk, maybe it's a little bitterness talking and I should just let people have fun with their memes. I guess I just find gloating about having or not having children to be weird, when for some people it's not really a choice
By no means am I trying to say that you're gloating about anything, I thought your comment was sweet. I was just adding a third perspective to a random comment
That’s fair, and I’m sorry to hear that’s your situation. I find it incredibly unfair we live in a world mixed with infertility and unwanted pregnancies.
I agree on behalf of parents we should be careful about what we drop casually. It’s like the whole, “So when are you going to have kids?” question everyone gets from the previous generation. This stuff is coming from a good place, but I think in the future it’ll be avoided, and reflected upon as very crass.
One thing I’ll say is that as a parent who often fantasizes about the “other path”, there’s a catharsis in memes like this one. I want to live vicariously through adults without children. I know this may not help from where you’re coming from, but just stating it in the spirit of increased understanding.
A lot of people don't understand what it takes to raise children, completely overlooking what you just listed. You seem to be a good parent, which is rare.
No, we do. It's why we opted not to have any. We want to do what we want to do. Not whatever our children are into.
My oldest wanted to learn guitar. So did I. We are taking lessons together.
My youngest loves video games. Highlight of his week is when I can sit down and play with him.
Both my kids love reading and arts and crafts, which my wife also enjoys much more than I do.
Why can't you and your kids have overlapping interests? When you're raising the kids, it's normal for them to be curious about the things you enjoy. Kids hobbies and interests end up overlapping or reflecting their parents more often than the other way round.
My oldest also likes Minecraft. My youngest loves soccer. Neither of us really enjoy either of these things. But we do also enjoy seeing our kids developing interests and personalities of their own. If that means we have to spend an hour a week going to Pee-wee soccer (and, meanwhile, hanging out with other parent friends), so be it.
They can I suppose, but it's certainly not guaranteed. I've seen enough of my friends have kids and the resulting impact to their social life and ability to do what they want to know that it isn't for me. Yeah it got a little better for most of them when the kids got older and more self sufficient but it was still a massive trade off up til that point and I don't see it as being worth it for me.
What kind of miniatures?
He found the box of "Kingdom Death: Monster" board game figures I'd been sitting on since he was born.
Rad.
Same. This week I rode the new tramway network blind in a coastal city to have adventures with Kid. We bought copper wire and made jewellry with pretty pebbles (harder than I thought.) We played Split Fiction (and like It Takes Two better.) We showed her The Good Place (she loves it, because duh.)
Whe have fun.
Same.
Also I get to share my hobbies with them. We got a d&d group, we paint minis and play video games together. Which is stuff I'd do anyways.
I also picked up inline skating as my kids do that all the time and just standing there while they skate was boring.
Plus I still got hobbies as does my wife. Yes there is less time but we have each other's backs so everyone can have some time for their own interests like once or twice a week.