Babysitting as Parenting Trial?

I don't know, I see where you're coming from, but I still I think I stand by the data I got from babysitting when I was younger — which reinforced my existing preference against having children. True, I never babysat any particular kids at a deep enough level of involvement to really fall in love with them, but I did have some affection for them. What I noticed was:

1. I lacked the energy to keep up with a kid between the ages of 0 and 12 and keep them entertained. I physically could not play tag or keep up doing something entertaining for a baby because I was so exhausted, and the kids would get disappointed. (I later figured out this was related to chronic illness.) This did not seem promising, since I know parenting is much more exhausting than babysitting.
2. As a teenager, that was the first time I was exposed to the emotional weaknesses of adults. In particular, the mom who I babysat for most was incredibly insecure and often pretty depressed, and her two children were, respectively, violently misbehaved and anxious. As someone familiar with depression, general lack of energy, and insecurity/imposter syndrome, it seemed to me that raising kids to be well-adjusted was too difficult a task for me. Twelve years later I am married and I still stand by this — steering a child right is so hard and uncertain and that's just too scary for me.

Also, my sister, who at that age already knew she wanted kids, loved babysitting. Even with the terrible children who she had to look after for 12 hours a day, who smeared poop on the walls and hit their baby siblings, she found it really rewarding to spend time with them and try to improve their behavior. She went on to work in a daycare and then run an after-school program, and she found she liked childcare for every age 0 to 18.

And now she's somewhere in between babysitting and coparenting our best friend's kid and it's only strengthened her desire to have one of her own as soon as possible. I was also around in the early months of that kid's life (but couldn't stay around since I live elsewhere), and I love her and she loves me, but it didn't make me any more inclined to have kids of my own. If anything it made me less inclined, since now I can have (what I see as) all the good parts of having a kid — being involved in a kid's life from birth onwards, having some real influence on them, and loving and being loved by them as part of a family — without the pressure of the way the kid turns out being on my shoulders, and without having to give up a major amount of time and autonomy for the rest of my life.

I would go one step further and say that even if you enjoy babysitting, that doesn't mean parenting is for you. I babysat a lot as a teenager, and I can say it did not properly prepare me for having children.

Babysitting is a lot more fun because you're just there for a few hours and then you leave. Parenthood is far more demanding.

Parenting is basically a mixture of being a nanny, teacher, psychologist/social worker, and housekeeper all rolled into one. These are all things I'm especially bad at and would never take an actual job in. 

In retrospect (though it is too late now!) having kids was the wrong choice for me. 

Early childhood is extremely short: I will spend more time with my child as a teenager than with a toddler.  Thus any lessons from babysitting toddlers are irrelevant to most of my future parenting experience. Moreover, result is more important than experiencing: raising a great person is more important than having pleasure during parenting.

Parent also has to pay bills, has fears and has to solve medical problems and all these is not related to babysitting experience. Also, parent can't go home after a working day, and most difficult parts of parenting are often at night, like a child doesn't want to sleep. 

Thank you for writing this! I was wondering whether Kat's babysitting test would lead to false negatives, and was thinking of writing a post polling LW on the subject. To add more anecdata, I asked a friend who's been a dad for... 8 years, I believe, and he thought that he just cares about / likes / finds it easier to tolerate his own kids in a way that's not true with others' kids, and he expects this would generalize to other parents as well.

(I - a man in my mid 30s without much experience actually spending time with kids - have had a clear felt sense of wanting a kid for several years now, but value my time and energy fairly highly, so Kat's post really gave me pause. I still feel an emotional pull to having a kid that I don't think would be satisfied by the alternatives in her post, even though I think it will have lots of costs/difficulties.)

I feel like mentioning that for men sperm donation is something they can consider (and for women, egg donation is something they can consider!). It is of course very different from having "your own" child, but there is also overlap. 

Sperm donation can sometimes happen via clinic, while at other sperm donors and donor recipients can match via platforms such as Just A Baby, co-parentmatch.com and prideangel.com (there are additional platforms beyond this, and there are also groups on Facebook). People seeking donors include lesbian couples, couples where the man is infertile, and single women (and sometimes trans-men).

There are pros and cons to different ways of doing things. People seeking donations can save a lot of money by not paying a clinic, and they can make a more informed choice about who they choose as donor by speaking to him directly. Some donor-recipients prefer there to be little or no contact with the donor after pregnancy, while others prefer for there to be a possibility of keeping in touch. Some think it can be good for the child to be able to know his/her donor, and have some level of contact (e.g. visiting once in a while).

For people who want to learn more, there is a podcast named Sperm Donation Word.

If you google news stories with the phrase "sperm donor shortage", many stories will come up (and not just from 2022 - stories like these just keep coming). To me this is an almost comically salient example of how humans are mesa optimizers [? · GW] from the perspective of natural selection..

Parenting is much better for inclusive genetic fitness than babysitting. It doesn't surprise me that for many parenting is more satisfying. Also the economics should be a strong clue.

I do wonder sometimes about types of motivation to have kids. I've never thought about if I would like parenting, and in practice I find it quite challenging. My parents have four children and were always clear that it is a lot of work and can be quite hard. If anything, they discouraged me from having kids cause of how much work it is and how challenging etc.

However, my desire to have kids is unrelated to how much direct joy I get from parenting. It's like an end in itself, regardless of how fun or not-fun it is.

Maybe that type of motivation is not interesting to reflect on cause you either have it or you don't? Which is fair. It's just a different experience from weighing pros and cons etc.

If we assume that almost everyone who likes babysitting also likes parenting(which seems plausible to me as a rough approximation), then liking babysitting should be a huge and not liking parenting should update you negatively. You would just have to figure out how likely people are to like babysitting.