> It's not an easy thing, but some of the histrionic claims about child raising on the internet are really out there.

Have you considered that objectively difficult infants/toddlers/children exist? Children with O.D.D., for instance, show symptoms early, but diagnosis usually doesn't come until much later.

Perhaps the comments you came across online were from the parents of those kids.

-A parent of a very challenging child with Level II Autism

I think that might be the thing. Parents whose children are more challenging might more often "be at wits end" and turn to online communities for guidance, help, or other insights, whereas parents whose children are not as challenging just breezes through, and thus do not end up as a data point online on how difficult parenthood is.

Also, even though I don't know you, I am certain that you are a good parent, and that you are doing your very best, and that your child is lucky to have you as their parent. :) Stay strong.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

No one remembers when their friends or family tells “we are doing well everything is nice”.

Everyone passes on or remembers horror stories.

This is true of many communities. The internet is full of complaints because people rarely take the time to say just “my car works just fine”. There’s no value in that info. People go out to talk about it when they have a problem, that’s a real conversation starter.

Discussion groups aren’t a balanced slice of how the overall situation looks like. They tend to sway towards the negative side because discussing about everything being fine gets old fast.

I can 2nd this. As a parent of a level II autistic son and then 6 years later a now 1 year old girl that does not appear to have any autistic traits. We delayed having the 2nd child by years because the first was so draining. They are night and day. During parental leave I found it hard to play with my son in ways where he acknowledged that it was fun. He mostly did repetitive activities alone like flexing a folding rule or similar. My daughter is completely different. As parents our son Ahmad thought us a lot about not projecting our expectations onto the children and meeting them where they are.

It's not that. IME people with kids with actual conditions are somewhat less likely to complain, and are far, far less prevalent than mums who just inhabit "complaining about my kids" culture.

I’m on hour five of putting this child to bed.

People were always amazed at how our kids went to bed with no problems. In that spirit I offer what worked for us which may not work for anyone else. First we limited nap time. Second we did the exact same routine every night. Rocking and a bottle then bed. When they got bigger it was rocking, reading some books, bottle then bed. Then we added in teeth brushing. Every night same thing. Bed time was lights out (with night light) and stay in bed if you need anything holler. I’d go back a few times for “I’m hot/cold can’t sleep” then they’re out. Wake up same time every day. I love routine so it’s easy for me. Others may struggle.

This. Without this consistency within 2 days you have a kid ready to receive a label!

People have different personalities and so do infants. Parents can find one child easier than another and this changes from person to person.

How strong the family and well situated the family is also likely plays a factor.

My second child's terrible 2s is approximately 600x worse than her sisters.

Joking aside, it's actually surprisingly way way tougher.

One similar funny experience I had was that I've never had any trouble with poop or diapers, but a family member said "Just wait till she starts eating solids!" and then she started eating solids and there was no step function in experience. Changing her was still the same.

I had a similar experience to your family member. I have a 2 year old and when she started eating solids, the smell got to me much more than before.

Still not too hard but much harder in my case ;-).

My kids were considerably larger and smellier when they started eating solids, but still nothing crazy. Changing diapers is basically nothing, but having all the stuff that they need related to diapers and just being at the age when they are in diapers is mildly challenging if you travel a lot.

Well, the smell definitely changes, but otherwise it was obviously the same.

But like it was mentioned already, changing diapers remains the easy part .

> It's not an easy thing, but some of the histrionic claims about child raising on the internet are really out there. It's no wonder kids are horrified by the thought.

Could 'the horrors of parenting' be something that is promoted to younger people, to discourage then from having children? A sort of governance marketing to help address the perceived issue that there are simply too many people?

There's an accelerating population crisis. Who would have motive to push birth rates lower than they even are, and how would they "push them"?

The world has enough people and can trivially import some from places with too many to places with too few.

That process has some social complexities, because as it turns out, human cultures are not all the same.

Governments usually rather have homegrown babies, where they can influence everything from day one, than importing different ones.

So .. if this is a conspiracy, it would have come from a private entiety (like club of rome, who lamented overpopulation a long time ago).

But I don't think so. Lamenting and whining has just become a sport for some.