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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 2424950" data-attributes="member: 2205">Many of those things are self-fulfilling prophecies, not actual truisms about having children.  If your attitude is that "gaming is at an end" than it will be.  I have four small(ish) kids, and I game more now than at any point in my life since college at least, if not earlier.  My wife doesn't game with us, but she goes out with her girlfriends as often as I game (if not more) seeing chick flicks, shopping, late night blitzes to Applebees (and their half-priced appetizers on Tuesday evenings) and all kinds of other things.  We watch plenty of TV, see plenty of movies, and don't hire babysitters more than once or twice a year.  We either switch off if it's something that only one of us is doing, and swap kid-watching with lots of good friends of ours who have kids the same age as ours.  And sleep's only bad for a few weeks if you put any effort at all into establishing a schedule; although granted, twins may be more difficult than a single baby.  I don't have any personal experience with that (although a co-worker that sits on the other side of the wall from me tells me her triplets got into a schedule relatively quickly because they made it a priority to do so.)  And we still up and go places an awful lot.  Granted, not necessarily the same places we used to before having kids, but still--there's this attitude that you have to make massive quality of life changes just because you have kids, and many of those changes aren't really ones that need to be made.Now that doesn't mean that there won't be massive changes, but don't confuse the ones that you have to make with the ones you don't.  As an example, one thing my wife and I decided is that one of the best legacies we could leave with our children is a memory of parents who had a good, active relationship on which to model their own marriages down the line.  Also, since the kids are going to grow up and leave the house eventually, leaving us stuck with just each other again, we have made it a top priority to focus on our own relationship and make sure it's thriving.  Adopting this attitude means that we still go out quite a bit, we still indulge each other in our hobbies, and all kinds of other things.  I did have to prune back some of my hobbies--I've always had more hobbies than time, and of course, that only got worse as grad school, work, kids, etc. starting taking more time than ever, but in my opinion, it's a mistake to completely subsume your own identity into that of your kids.  And in the long run, I don't think it's doing the kids any favors to do that; showing them healthy, well-adjusted adults that still have fun doing things together (without the kids on occasion) and have individuality and hobbies of their own as role models means its that much more likely that they'll grow up to be the same.What were we talking about again?  Sorry; I think I've meandered a bit.  Stayed up too late reading the new Harry Potter book...</blockquote>

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