not to respond to the other post going around but so far parenting isn't intrinsically super hard i mean, it can be lot especially when they're infants but much of the difficulty is contextual, and if you marry well and your kids are well adjusted, that makes the load sit light

but the idea that parenting itself is necessarily a death march is just incomprehensible to me

@fkinwithu context, i was divorced after a very brief marriage that seemed great on paper but was in fact actually a total trainwreck that was the right thing to do in the context but other situations it's just harder

@fkinwithu i guess my main advice aside from "be in love" is make sure you're (1) aligned and (2) on lifestyles and on life trajectories going in, because trying to negotiate these things on the fly after the fact is a recipe for disaster