What does Parenthood actually change?

"TomasGrizzly;c-17763944" wrote:

"EmersedCrown;c-17761686" wrote:

I don't think I have managed to fully engage with some of its features though, because the parenting skill limits you too much. Like, I never reach high enough parenting to give time outs and things like that.

Agreed there, the skill unlocks are timed poorly. The 'find out what's wrong' and 'super efficient baby care' at the very last levels are only useful when a sim becomes a grandparent, because reaching level 10 usually takes until teen years, if you even manage to max it out (hard with just one kid, doable with two). For that reason, I've never managed to complete that one aspiration because I've never managed to enter the 'full parent mode' it speaks about.

"Camkat;c-17762483" wrote:
It might work better if you play on a longer lifespan, but on normal and natural just letting sims live, they are all responsible sims who sometimes have good manners and I don't even remember what the other traits are because I've never seen them. ONCE I had a sim who had all 5 positive character values aging up and that was with aging turned off.

I have my lifespan modded to somewhere between normal and long (I think it's roughly normal x1,75 - x2 based on stage, to match the ratios of natural death at age 80), and maxing 3 values goes well. 4 or 5 is a bit harder and requires both targetted effort and a bit of luck on the random events.

If you make your sims study or research parenting and/or have 3-6 kids, they can get to level 10 parenting pretty quickly. It's easiest if they put in some basic work before they're parents.

I agree that getting all character value traits takes a little effort, but it's do-able on a normal lifespan if you have a sim regularly do the interactions that prompt them such as "help fix relationship", writing in the journal, and playing with the doctor toy as a child. I just don't think it's always worth bothering with.