Kids can be the best thing to ever happen to a man or woman. Raising a child and imparting your combined wisdom on a young one could be your biggest achievement, and could fulfil you with so much joy and happiness.
But it's no secret that parenting takes its toll.
You might not notice any changes in your appearance, but you might stumble upon a photo of yourself back in the day and think 'holy shit, I look completely different'. One man, who runs Dad and Buried decided to upload a compare an image of him in 2006 and a decade later after having a few kids.
The caption reads: "Wanna see something REALLY scary? Here's me, before and after I had kids! Want to play along? This October, I'm opening up @gottoddlered to your submissions of your scariest 'Before and After Kids' pics! If you're not afraid, send your photos."
The submissions have been coming in thick and fast from parents across the globe, and this dad isn't shy about describing their differences.
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He assured all the people who submitted photos that 'we're all equally screwed'. But he described one woman's transformation as: "It's like watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly, only in reverse."
He found solace in a bloke's submission, saying: "Nice to know I'm not the only dad who's been ravaged by this parenting thing. No offense, Dave."
The Instagram user noted that the 'Before' photos featured people with 'vibrant', 'happy', 'bright' and 'easy breezy', to 'patient zero', 'totally spent', 'resigned' and 'ravaged'.
Geez, sorry mum and dad, I didn't know you suffered so much.
There have been a few studies done into the effects that kids have on parents and while life satisfaction is found to be higher than in childless people, the time and money that is involved in raising a child makes a big impact.
Kids can have a profound impact on the relationship between the two parents. In a study on mums and dads in the US, Robin Simon found: "I thought at least purpose and meaning in life would be higher for parents, and we find it's just flat."
While even more savagely, University of Milano-Bicocca economist Luca Stanca tells Post Magazine: "On the basis of a purely economic approach, the optimal number of children for a rational agent is zero."
Despite these negatives that researchers have found, if everyone just stopped having kids because it was hard, our species would obviously eventually die out. So while these before and after photos illustrate the slow ravaging effects of parenthood, most mums and dads wouldn't have it any other way.
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Sources: Post Magazine
Topics: Mum, Kids, Mental Health, Dad, Funny, Interesting, Parents, Parenting