Man vs. Child by Doug Moe

Author:Doug Moe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2017-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

IT HAPPENED TO ME: “KINDERFREUDE”

One of the weirder things about becoming a parent is that your emotions get recalibrated in unpredictable ways. Things that you used to find cloying, you find cute. Oh man, that kid in the YouTube video has an insane laugh! Maybe you even start to enjoy pictures of other people’s children clogging up your news-feed. You cry during tampon commercials, right? No? Just kidding.

In some ways, this is just step eight in the well-trod journey to becoming uncool. Nothing new there. But there is one emotion that is new and, I think, not remarked upon enough: Kinderfreude.

That’s probably terrible German. Like Schadenfreude (the pleasure one feels at another’s pain), but a little different. Basically, since becoming a parent, I take pleasure in watching other parents struggle with crying children. Kinderfreude.

I don’t know if I should feel bad about it; I’m just being honest. It’s a sort of sympathy, sort of amusement, sort of hahaha. It’s all mixed up. It’s a little bit of “Aw, man, I’ve been there.”

But I remember when I didn’t have a kid, there was really only one way I felt about a crying, agitated child and his parent: “Please, for the love of God, shut up and get off this train.” Now it’s more complex. It’s like a weird Japanese candy: sweet and sour.

An example: One time, I was on the train near two dads and their kids when one of the kids suddenly threw up. People around me quickly moved out of the way, one kindly person gave them a huge stack of paper towels (“Work doesn’t need all these paper towels like I do!”), and I just sat there grinning like a creep, thinking “Aw, man, sucks to be that guy!” Kinderfreude.

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