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Having Kids

paulgraham.com

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Re: Having Kids

#241

Post by hueving »

stevedomin wrote: post #225
legel wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The car-is-anti-human sentiment is one I can deeply empathize with. Just like oxygen and water, cars and their perils were with our generation since birth, and therefore for most are subconsciously taken for granted in life. But once you spend enough time in urban areas that have consciously rooted them out, you realize that their super loud noises, toxic smelly fumes, and omnipresent fear of death from them are inde…

Have you heard of Culdesac? It's a YC company building the first 100% car-free neighbourhood in Temple, Arizona. https://culdesac.com

It's Tempe, not Temple and the neighborhood doesn't exist yet. Just announced recently.

Re: Having Kids

#242

Post by dejv »

SubuSS wrote: post #198

One thing that I don't see much discussion on is a single income setup. My wife was employed when our daughter was born (oh lord 13 years ago) but we had hired help (this was in India - that was a very affordable option). Eventually she decided to stay at home because she wanted more family time and quite possibly that's the best thing that ever happened to our family. Suddenly all of us had time and the luxury of on…

Single income setup is quite common in some European countries. In my country you can get paid leave up till your youngest kid is 3 or 4 years old. The amount of money you get is way bellow even minimum wage (~ 200 USD/month depending on the number of months you want to take off), but most people who can afford it stay at home.

My wife is currently finishing her third year at home and there will be at least two more.

Re: Having Kids

#243

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nickreese wrote: post #11

Uhh. Just going to chime in here. It is absolutely OK if you don’t experience the emotions he writes about here. You aren’t broken. I write this because I read and it immediately messaged a few friends who respect Paul as well asking them if I was broken. Everyone experiences parenthood differently. I never had the chemical changes in my brain and often over the past 3 years have realized just how selfish I am when i…

My first child was born at 1 AM, on our third night at the hospital that week. All I felt was tired.

> over the past 3 years have realized just how selfish I am when it comes to taking care of the munchkins.

Ditto. Part of the deal with parenting is to grow out of the selfishness. It's never completely gone (at least, not for me), but I've grown to a place where I am (hopefully, at least) less selfish than I was.

Children grow their parents, too.

Re: Having Kids

#244

Post by zackmorris »

I'm curious about how to have kids in the face of failure. My truth is that I'm caught in a turbulent stream of life where I can have anything I want except success. It's a strange feeling to have time or money (but never both). To have freedom or love (but never both). And so on and so forth. If my definition of success is to have both of something, and my life is already half over, the evidence doesn't point to that ever happening.

Is it possible to be successful and have children? This is part of a larger thought experiment about spirituality, metaphysics, existentialism, etc. My feeling is that no, it's probably not. But that being human is learning to cope with the failures of everyday life and eventually life itself.

Or maybe having children is a drug that changes the spirit to realign one's truths. I know that all things of any importance that have ever happened in my life were not of my own doing. So is it just that when we give even the most minuscule effort, like skipping a stone off the river, that it changes the course of the river in some unforeseen way? I'm standing on the bank holding the stone, and am so tired that my only thought is to somehow set it down. It's no more work to throw it, but I have lost the will to do so. I guess this question is to God as much as the internet.

Re: Having Kids

#245

Post by lr4444lr »

triangleman wrote: post #131

Hey guys. Anyone else have the experience of having kids, getting a burst of energy, but of course all that energy goes directly back into the kids and house, and you have absolutely no life for 3-5 years or more? Because my kids are 2 and 4 and so far it's been 4 years of no life, no freelance clients, almost no learning/hobbies, just 35-40 hours a week of working as much as I can at the office and then everything i…

You pretty much sum up what I am going through. I'm optimistic things will improve. I think one of the more practical aspects of this essay was about "work finding a way". For me, that means an hour to 2 of quality focused time some evenings to counteract the brain fog during the day that makes me less productive.

Re: Having Kids

#246

Post by zemptime »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #237

One thing that started to bother me recently is the meaningless of life in general. Think about humans from a wide perspective - it all boils down to survival of the species and what difference does it make if we reproduce in a cave or a modern house? Sure there are more of us now, but does it really matter? We are driven by a simple algorithm - find a partner, reproduce, keep the babies alive and die. Repeat. No rea…

This assumption makes sense given the limited modern scientific view of the world, but it falls down pretty hard when you consider how incomplete our understanding of the universe still is.

The piece of knowledge which is still missing, and which you should direct your search if you feel the way you outlined in your post is, what's consciousness? What're the mechanisms by which it functions? We might be biological machines with a single, hardcoded directive in one sense, but it's very inside the realm of possibility we possess the potential to escape that.

Re: Having Kids

#247

Post by munificent »

opportune wrote: post #216

Question to people with kids: if you could do it again, would you do it at a different time of your life? Personally I’d like to wait until I’m in my mid 30s for some of the reasons Paul mentions: you have less time outside of work to do other things once you have kids. Seems like being a founder or even just trying to advance aggressively in a standard career is a lot harder if you have dependents. There’s also two…

I had my kids when I was 30 and it's worked out well. I wouldn't want to go much later. I have friends who started later and it's fine now, but when their kids are in high school, the parents will be in their fifties. I want to have a little more youth and energy to spend with my children as they enter adulthood.

My twenties were a very parenting-unfriendly time of my life. I was in a couple of bands, going out a lot, moved around a bunch. It was convenient to have that luxury for a while.

I used to work with a guy who had his kids at 18. I can't imagine being a parent when I was that young and dumb, but I gotta admit to some real envy. When I worked with him, he was in his thirties and his kids were getting ready to move out. Having the child part of parenthood "done" and still having plenty of youth and many years of time to look forward to — spending time both with and without now-grown kids — sounds pretty amazing.

Re: Having Kids

#248

Post by [deleted] »

opportune wrote: post #216

Question to people with kids: if you could do it again, would you do it at a different time of your life? Personally I’d like to wait until I’m in my mid 30s for some of the reasons Paul mentions: you have less time outside of work to do other things once you have kids. Seems like being a founder or even just trying to advance aggressively in a standard career is a lot harder if you have dependents. There’s also two…

[deleted]

Re: Having Kids

#249

Post by KorematsuFred »

triangleman wrote: post #131

Hey guys. Anyone else have the experience of having kids, getting a burst of energy, but of course all that energy goes directly back into the kids and house, and you have absolutely no life for 3-5 years or more? Because my kids are 2 and 4 and so far it's been 4 years of no life, no freelance clients, almost no learning/hobbies, just 35-40 hours a week of working as much as I can at the office and then everything i…

AS they get older things might turn up better but yeah, once you have kids you are now only waiting to die while preparing your kids to carry the mantle of future.

Re: Having Kids

#250

Post by cheez »

zackmorris wrote: post #244

I'm curious about how to have kids in the face of failure. My truth is that I'm caught in a turbulent stream of life where I can have anything I want except success. It's a strange feeling to have time or money (but never both). To have freedom or love (but never both). And so on and so forth. If my definition of success is to have both of something, and my life is already half over, the evidence doesn't point to tha…

You've hit upon one of the cruelest parts of life... Much success is due to not having any significant long term issues.

Kids, god love 'em, are a long term liability in the context of seeking your first big financial/professional success.

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