Shadows over childhood

Parents throwing punches. The ways we try to coexist. Bill Watterson and ambition. Calvin & Hobbes and the adult world. Do kids worsen our quality of life? Would my mom have lived to 83? Barcelona.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking certain things no longer happen — left behind in the hazy past of my childhood. Like parents fighting at kids’ games. It’s something I saw a lot growing up around football in Buenos Aires, and, naively, I thought it had become a thing of the past (or at least has become quite rare).

Wrong. It’s still happening. This time, it was in Italy, at a mini-basketball game between Rosignano and Follonica — kids just seven and eight years old. The final match had to be called off because a group of parents started physically fighting in the stands. The reason? A heated argument over whether all the kids should get equal playtime, or if the “better” ones deserved playing longer than the “worse”.

Yes — seven- and eight-year-olds couldn’t finish a junior tournament because their parents escalated an argument into a brawl. The police had to be called. Some of the kids were crying on the court.

“It’s clear that even a children's game becomes an outlet for some parents to vent their frustrations,” said Raffaele Battaglini, president of the Follonica team.

As the sport site La Giornata Tipo put it, imagine being eight years old and watching your coaches beg your parents to stop fighting. Imagine sitting on the bench instead of running around the court, just staring at your teammates without understanding what’s happening. Imagine seeing kids in tears because some adult decided to throw punches at a mini-basketball game. At eight years old — “imagine seeing violence unfold right before your eyes.”

Instead of brushing it off with “these people are crazy,” let’s ask: what role does violence play in something like this? Why would an adult fight in a context that’s meant to be playful, even joyful? What are they trying to defend — through violence — at a children’s sports event? What message does it send to the kids, that the very adults meant to protect them are the ones throwing punches over a disagreement?

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BARCELONA — From Wednesday, May 7 to Saturday, May 10, I’ll be in Barcelona for the Parental Brain conference. If you're around, let me know! I’m organizing an event and would love to invite you.

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When I read Umbilical by Andrés Neuman, I loved it. I underlined lines like this: “I was so afraid you would come, son, to find me again. I hope you teach me to cry all that I never cried.”

And others like: “If only I could caress the foot that lingers at the border, that walks within. I long to touch your step, but I cannot: we are almost neighbors. There you are, here I am, an abyss of just a few centimeters between us. Such is the way of men being together.”

In 1990, U.S. cartoonist Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, gave a now-famous speech at Kenyon College, where he explored the conflict between professional success and personal fulfillment. He spoke about how, in our culture, ambition is usually measured in promotions and paychecks. But having an enviable career, he said, is one thing — being a happy person is quite another.

“Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.”

Reading that speech brought back the inner tension I’ve felt about choosing to stay home with my kids. More than once, I’ve asked myself if I’m doing “the right thing” by focusing on Lorenzo (6) and then León (2½). Am I really stepping away from my career to chase a toddler and change diapers while my wife brings in the money? Who am I without my work? Will I be able to pick up where I left off once they grow up?

Watterson puts it plainly: “You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing.”

Calvin and Hobbes, among many things, offers a child’s perspective on the world — and critiques the adult one. As this article points out, Watterson wanted to remind us not to abandon the spirit of childlike joy and wonder — lest we fall into a kind of “maturity” that’s really just a loss of imagination and humanity.

A reader (Thanks, B! We’re in this together) sent me a study that’s tailor-made for sparking viral reactions online: Polish research suggesting that having daughters may increase a father’s life expectancy. But, of course, reality is more complicated.

Back in 2006, researchers at Jagiellonian University in Poland studied 4,310 people (2,147 mothers and 2,163 fathers) to see whether having children affects parental longevity.

Their findings? Sons had no measurable effect, while daughters were linked to a longer lifespan for fathers — an average increase of 74 weeks per daughter. On the other hand, each child (regardless of gender) was associated with a decrease in a mother’s lifespan — an average of 95 weeks.

So my mom, who had seven kids — would she have lived 13 more years? Would she have reached 83? Well, it’s a limited study — not conclusive or broadly applicable. It focused on a small, rural Polish population.

Later studies pushed back on it, arguing that the relationship between child gender and parental lifespan is complex, multifactorial, and hard to measure. Other studies have shown mixed results and stress that longevity depends more on cultural, social, and biological factors than on whether your kids are boys or girls.

In any case, it reminded me of a father who once told me: “Once you have kids, your quality of life goes downhill. No debate.” He must’ve had his reasons. Maybe he’s changed his mind — especially since he has two daughters.

Even the studies that challenge the Polish one agree on this: daughters often provide more hands-on care and support to aging parents than sons do. That’s well documented and could help explain the link to increased paternal longevity.

There’s plenty of sociological and gerontological evidence showing that in many cultures, daughters step into the caregiver role more readily than sons.

Personally, while fatherhood has added plenty of stress to my life, being the dad of two curious, high-energy boys has also filled my days with tender moments — like when León and Lorenzo hug me out of the blue, say “I love you” for no reason, or fight over who gets to sleep next to me. More than anything, becoming a father forced me to stop making myself the center of my world — and to put someone else’s well-being above my own.

“Being a parent is humbling,” wrote Dan Oshinsky. It captures the vulnerability and unpredictability we face raising kids — the constant sacrifices and small losses of control.

Having kids pushed me into a state of constant self-observation. I find myself telling them that I am often wrong and to admit, as Lorenzo says, that I’m “quite pavote (silly).”

It taught me that my actions and attitudes matter far more than anything I say. They’re always watching. Always copying. That mirror they hold up? It’s brutally honest and doesn’t sugarcoat a thing. Parenthood is an endless curve of errors and learning.

​​The cartoons I used are from Reddit and Dog with Blog.

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That’s it for today. If you're in Barcelona, let me know — I’m organizing an event and would love to invite you.

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Nacho

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🙏 Many thanks to Worldcrunch for translating and editing this newsletter.

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