I'm change you.

It should change you. Everyone says that becoming the parent changes you. The responsibility,

the stress, the unconditional love, the cuteness. This is big stuff. But as the comedian Tom

Segura observes in one of its great Netflix specials, it is wrong to say that it changes

people. It's just not the right language. It's that having kids should change you. If it doesn't,

he says, if you're still the same person, if you still have the same routines, the same behaviors,

the same priorities after, that's a big problem. You're doing something wrong. But it's hardly unheard of. Having a kid is a

biological thing, an objective life event. It's not different from growing old or getting married.

Plenty of people do those things without really changing. But as we've said many times here

before, becoming a parent is something different. Becoming a parent, not just being one,

it's a choice. It produces a change. Not everyone that has a kid makes that choice, just like

plenty of people reach 40 without maturing. You have to choose to be changed, to let all this

stuff in, to change yourself around it.

It's not a given.

It doesn't happen the day you came home from the hospital with your newborn either.

It's a process.

It's a transition.

It's something you actively do as well as passively accept.

It's a role you embrace, a person you allow yourself to become. It's funny, like, I don't think I changed

the day my wife had our son. I'm embarrassed, right? I wish it had been magical and instantaneous,

but it took time. And it wasn't until even we had two kids that I feel like I fully became

the parent that I wanted to be. It didn't change me immediately.

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