There’s a phrase that used to make my skin crawl.
“You wouldn’t understand — you don’t have children.”
It always felt like the highest form of condescension. Dismissive. Wounding. As though empathy was something you either earned through parenthood or didn’t possess at all. As if my experiences, my capacity to care, or my exhaustion didn’t count.
Worse still, it ignored something deeper: that not everyone without children chose that. That for many, it’s a source of grief, not a lifestyle. And so that phrase, delivered casually in conversation, could be so unconstructive. Even hurtful.
And yet — five weeks into being a father, I now understand where that sentiment comes from. Not the delivery of it. But the deeper truth it’s trying — and often failing — to communicate.
Because something happens — something huge. You go from being an autonomous adult with your own rhythm, overlapping with your partner’s, to suddenly… everything changing. You walk into a hospital as two people. You walk out as three. And your entire world flips.
Every minute of every day is now tied to this tiny human. Your brain doesn’t just shift — it rewires. Priorities you thought were non-negotiable suddenly feel less urgent. Work, emails, even basic things like meals and sleep — they get squeezed to the edges while you deal with this immediate, constant, beautiful chaos.
And it’s not a choice — it’s instinct. A complete internal shift you can’t pre-empt or fully imagine until it’s happening to you.
So no, I’d never say “you wouldn’t understand” to someone. I know how alienating that can be. I’d try something more honest. Like:
“There are things about parenthood that don’t land until you’re in the trenches — not because you lack empathy, but because your whole frame of reference changes overnight. I didn’t get it before either.”
It’s humbling, this shift. And I think if I ever talk about it with someone on the other side of it — the ‘before’ side — I’ll do so with a lot more softness than I was once shown.
Because now I see both sides. And that perspective’s taken me by surprise.
3D5G 