Your Parents Truly Loved You If They Sacrificed These 11 Things When You Were A Child
Being a parent is far from easy, and when you truly love your children, there are plenty of things you'll need to give up.
mentatdgt / Shutterstock Parenting is a labor of love. Having kids means making a lifelong commitment to caregiving. And if your parents truly loved you, there were several things they likely sacrificed when you were a child.
Parents trade peace and quiet for playful chaos. Date nights get replaced by educational cartoons and cold mac and cheese. Moms, in particular, give up sleep for their children, especially during the school year. Loving parents give so much to their children, including energy, attention, and unconditional emotional support. They put their dreams and independence on hold so that they can provide a full life for their children, and they believe it's all worth when they see those children thriving as adults.
Your parents truly loved you if they sacrificed these 11 things when you were a child
1. Sleep
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Newborns arrive earth-side on a 24-hour cycle. Their circadian rhythms don’t stabilize for a few months, which means they mix up night and day. When they’re not sleeping, they’re eating, which means parents are always on call. For new parents, the sleep deprivation struggle is real.
Grace Pien, a sleep specialist at Johns Hopkins University, acknowledged how hard this adjustment can be.
“With a baby, you need to be flexible and expect nighttime awakenings,” she explained. Even so, it’s important to try to get restorative sleep, which often means shifting your sleep schedule, so you sleep when the baby sleeps, and leaving household chores undone.
“If you’re getting enough sleep, you’re going to be better able to fulfill your new responsibilities of taking care of the baby,” Pien shared. “You’ll be more patient and more likely to feel good about parenting.”
Even after infancy, parents accrue many sleepless nights, tending to disrupted sleep schedules, bad dreams and requests for just one more book before bedtime (which always turns out to mean five more books). If your parents gave up on getting a good night’s rest, they truly loved you.
2. Alone time
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Loving parents are laser-focused on providing for their kids’ practical and emotional needs, which means they lose out on any semblance of alone time. Parents are always on duty. They’re short-order cooks, chauffeurs for the family carpool, and breathing encyclopedias for the endless questions their kids ask.
The daily demands of parenting are as depleting as they are joyful. Research shows that chronic stress can send parents into a state of complete burnout. According to a measurement known as the Parental Burnout Assessment, the first stage of parental burnout is exhaustion, followed by emotional distancing, then a loss of fulfillment from parenting. These symptoms are often compounded by guilt and shame, which build up, making it hard for parents to find a way out.
“Some of these feelings of resentment, shame, or guilt for parents come up because we live in a society that says we should love our kids unconditionally, and if we’re frustrated, we’re bad parents,” said health behavior and education professor Riana Elyse Anderson. “But that you love your child and acknowledge parenting as a very difficult thing can be true at the same time.”
3. Peace of mind
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A parent’s love knows no bounds, and neither does their capacity for worry. Becoming a parent means taking on your child’s universe. There are small worries, like wondering if your kid will ever put their shoes on the correct foot, and there are big worries, like protecting your kid from harm and heartache. Parents carry their family’s mental load, which means that peace of mind is fleeting, if it exists at all.
According to Janelle E. Wells, Ph.D., and Doreen MacAulay, Ph.D., a key part of making parenting more sustainable “means acknowledging the time, effort, and emotional investment that parents pour into their families. It means appreciating the countless tasks that often go unnoticed and unthanked.”
While there might not be an immediate answer to the existential stresses of parenting, putting them out in the open helps people realize that they’re not the only ones who feel like this.
4. Expendable income
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To say that raising kids is expensive is a massive understatement. From birth to college and beyond, parents are under intense financial pressure. As of 2024, the cost of raising a child in the U.S. was estimated at $313,939. Child-related costs, like housing, daycare, and groceries, show no sign of easing up anytime soon, and those are just the basics.
A key part of raising kids to be well-rounded, successful adults involves shelling out money for dance classes, music lessons, and after-school programs. Families can spend up to an average of $731 on extracurricular activities each year for just one child. So if your parents poured their expendable income into activities that boosted your development, they truly loved you.
5. Their social life
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Your parents truly loved you if they put their interests on the back burner and devoted their free time to you. As comedian Michael Hollan pointed out, part of parenting means, “Being forced to be friends with people based on whether your kids like each other.”
“Your kid needs to be around other kids their own age,” he explained. “As opposed to making friends with people based on whether or not you like being around them, you now have to be friends with people simply because they have kids the same age as yours.”
Hollan’s humorous take illuminates an essential truth about parenting that’s not often discussed: the loss of an adult social life. Gone are the days of grabbing a drink after work or meeting up with friends for a leisurely brunch. More often than not, a parent’s social life revolves around their kids. They put their adult friendships on hold so their kids can have playdates, a sacrifice that’s rooted in true love.
6. Their ambitions
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Your parents truly loved you if they sacrificed their personal ambitions. There’s a pervasive myth around parenting, particularly for moms, that they can “have it all.” Yet the truth is, no one can get everything they want. Time is a finite resource. For most people, making one choice means letting go of another.
Maybe your parents wanted to take a trip around the world, but instead, they took you to Disney. Maybe they pressed pause on a job opportunity so they could be home when your school day was over. While your parents wouldn’t change the course of their lives, they did give certain things up to devote themselves to you, which shows how deeply they love you.
7. Spontaneity
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Raising kids takes a serious amount of organization and air-tight time management. When you were a child, your parents sacrificed their spontaneity. They said goodbye to a life of carefree choices and embraced an existence that was scheduled down to the minute. They implemented nap time and snack time, swimming lessons, snuggle sessions, and even more snack time.
Being a parent meant considering what you needed and putting you first, more often than not. On days that were punctuated with meltdowns and tantrums in the grocery store, your parents may have imagined buying a plane ticket to literally anywhere. But when it comes down to it, they wouldn’t do anything differently, because they truly love you and the life they share with you.
8. Job stability
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Balancing work and family has never been easy, but it’s become a nation-wide crisis as the cost of childcare has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. Motherly’s 2024 State of Motherhood Report revealed that “access to affordable, high-quality childcare continues to be a primary concern for working moms.”
66% of moms said the cost and stress of finding adequate childcare coverage was the driving reason they would consider leaving the workforce. 4 out of 10 moms changed jobs because of a lack of childcare or needing/wanting to stay home with their kids.
Many parents have a hard time finding a job that suits their need for flexibility, a steady paycheck, and career advancement. For most people, something’s got to give. If your parents put their professional goals on hold when you were a child, they truly loved you.
9. Their preferred home aesthetics
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Before your parents had you, they were actually cool. They cared about style and design. They collected art and vinyl. They invested in a high-tech entertainment center and they set the table every night with the nice dishes.
Then, you came along, and their lives turned upside down. Their sleek, modern aesthetic got overtaken by toddler life. Childproofing the kitchen was more important than any interior design plan. They put their collection of books and all their decorations away to make room for your never-ending toy collection. They got comfortable with piles of laundry on every surface, because there was no time to fold it. They embraced the beautiful, sticky mess of having kids, and they wouldn’t change it for the world.
10. Self-care
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Parents have a tendency to put their own needs last, but that type of sacrifice isn’t actually good for them or their kids. As YourTango Expert Candice Wright explained, “When we are busy and overwhelmed, self-care or stress management is often the first thing we cut out of our busy schedule. This is when we need it the most. We need a balance of work and recovery in all aspects of our lives.”
“I know that some days it is hard to go to the bathroom by yourself, but there are little windows of opportunity,” she shared. “You need to put fuel in your tank. Ideally, you can get in more than 5 minutes, but for those who feel like they cannot do self-care for moms, this is a place to start.
Parents can love themselves and love their kids in equal measure, and making time for self-care is a key part of expressing that love.
11. Free weekends
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Your parents truly loved you if they sacrificed free weekends for you. In their pre-parent era, Sundays meant sleeping in and eating breakfast in bed.
Once they had you, weekends went from being wide open to jam-packed with kid-centric activities. They stood on the sidelines at your soccer practice and cheered. They shuttled you from one birthday party to the next. Their weekends became less about decompressing and more about how many playdates they could fit into a two-day span.
Your parents did everything they could to lift you up. They gave you unlimited time and the truest kind of love.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.