What nobody says about startup moms • Hacker News Board

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#71

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

alex_young wrote: post #21

Here’s the thing - you shouldn’t have to choose between a career and having children. In the US we’ve created a set of incentives which work to put women at a disadvantage in the workplace if they become parents. Men, not so much, and largely because of this imbalance, even progressive couples fall into this paradigm. In the EU they mandate equal paid leave for both parents and require holding a job for them when the…

> Here’s the thing - you shouldn’t have to choose between a career and having children.

I actually disagree, and that's the reason I loved this article so much: it acknowledges that, at the upper end, you do have to choose.

Of course, everyone should be able to have a career and also have children, and I agree that there are a lot of things society can do to make this an easier tradeoff. However, should everyone be able to be the CEO of a high growth startup (if that's your chosen career), and also have kids? Perhaps some people can manage that, but without a good support system in place (which usually means a stay-at-home spouse or at least enough for a nanny) one or the other usually suffers.

Fundamentally, life is about choices. Time is finite, so you can either spend some specific hour going over sales projections, or you can spend it with your kids - you can't do both. Even if the government had better leave policies, it's not like they can enforce you to take it. If you want to be the CEO of a startup, and you choose to spend your hour taking care of your kids, there is a good chance some other CEO is reviewing their sales projections. This is just the reality of living in a competitive economy.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#72

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

TchoBeer wrote: post #45

willcipriano wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ordinary working people don't spend a ton of quality time with their kids during the week. Quality time was a invention of the in-retrospect rather entitled parents of the 1970s who justified their neglect with the idea of "well I don't spend much time with my son but when I do it's quality time!". The truth is kids, particularly young kids just want time. They want to see you around and have you take a active role…

I could just as easily say that quality time is actually a useful metric and as a kid I definitely would've preferred a parent who spends more time with me on the weekends and wasn't "just around". Maybe I could bring a quote from a comedian too. I don't see what any of that would bring to the conversation though.

[deleted]

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#73

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

bladegash wrote: post #24

loxs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are quite incompatible. Me and my wife have a 1y4m old and we mostly don't do anything else nowadays. Other than that we have (had?) a startup that is now mostly on hold, except for some hacking that we do now and then when one of our mothers is around. We are very lucky that we are mostly financially independent from before our son was born, otherwise I would have to go work in an office and it would be…

I really do not mean any offense by this - but how is a nearly one and a half year old requiring full-time attention from two people? I ask this as a single dad of two kids, one of them since they were < 1.

One parent serves as redundancy for the other. I don’t know how you did it, but when we had just one baby/toddler, and no other kids or relatives to watch them, one adult is constantly watching the kid, and the other is taking care of household tasks.

The person watching the kid looks like they have spare time, but it’s garbage time because your attention is diverted to the kid every couple minutes or less.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#74

Post by garmaine » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

djoldman wrote: post #39

Kids' effect on work life is an important topic. I think it's possible that male, man, men can be substituted for female, woman, women in this article and have it be just as true except for this: > But what people without kids may not realize is the extent to which people with kids want their time to be consumed by them. And, on the whole, I’d guess women more so than men. I have no data on that.

Well, I have anicdata: every working parent I have ever known wants to spend more time with their kids. All the stay-at-home moms I know (except one) complain about their kids, their repetitive daily routine, and wish they had a job or career. The stay-at-home dads I know love it, but this can probably be explained as self-selection: it's because they're so family focused that they flipped society's expectations and stayed home while the wife works.

So on the whole my expectation would have been that this desire to be home and with their kids is universal among men and women working parents, and probably equal across genders.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#75

Post by r00fus » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

cle wrote: post #40

loxs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are quite incompatible. Me and my wife have a 1y4m old and we mostly don't do anything else nowadays. Other than that we have (had?) a startup that is now mostly on hold, except for some hacking that we do now and then when one of our mothers is around. We are very lucky that we are mostly financially independent from before our son was born, otherwise I would have to go work in an office and it would be…

As a counter example, my wife started a company when she was pregnant with our second child, and then raised millions of dollars in her first round when the child was a few months old. The company is still going strong and she is prepping to raise another round. And our child is a beautiful, happy toddler now.

That's impressive - if you don't mind me asking - how much did you get involved to help out or were you 100% focused on work as well? If the latter, did you outsource (nanny) at all?

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#76

Post by afavour » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #63

ravenstine wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of that comes from parents often expressing all the negatives of parenthood rather than the positives. Even the ones who love spending time with their kids, in my experience, talk more about how much attention the kids need, taking them to school, the diaper changes, the crying, and so on. This isn't to say that all parents are like this; I've met some really passionate parents, and my parents relished…

I see this all the time and I really don't understand it. Like, if that's how you feel then why did you have kids? But if I ever say that to someone they'll take offense. I think they just want to vent. Which is why it doesn't make sense to me because I see complaining for the sake of complaining as a negative-utility activity.

> I see complaining for the sake of complaining as a negative-utility activity

I'm not sure if any studies have been done but I'd be interested to know if that's true. My instinct is the opposite: a little bitch and moan can make you feel better about getting something off your chest, especially if the person you're talking to sympathises and can maybe even give you feedback.

And let's be honest, this is nothing specific to parenting. I'll bet most of us have complained about some facet of programming recently even though we enjoy it immensely. If we went by the same logic every HN thread would be full of "if that's how you feel then why did you go into programming?"

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#77

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

I thought this was a great article, because it acknowledged a fundamental fact: life is all about choices, and for too long many people were fed the lie that "you can have it all".

Time is finite. You can either spend some particular moment working at your job, or you can spend that moment with your kids - you can't do both. While some people may be better at balancing the two, the fact is in a competitive economy there will always be people without kids (or who don't spend much time with their own kids) who won't need to make the same tradeoffs. No amount of government policy will change that fact.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#78

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

cle wrote: post #40

loxs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are quite incompatible. Me and my wife have a 1y4m old and we mostly don't do anything else nowadays. Other than that we have (had?) a startup that is now mostly on hold, except for some hacking that we do now and then when one of our mothers is around. We are very lucky that we are mostly financially independent from before our son was born, otherwise I would have to go work in an office and it would be…

As a counter example, my wife started a company when she was pregnant with our second child, and then raised millions of dollars in her first round when the child was a few months old. The company is still going strong and she is prepping to raise another round. And our child is a beautiful, happy toddler now.

That’s very impressive. I can’t imagine how that’s doable based on my experience of wife’s breastfeeding and sleep schedules.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#79

Post by stefan_ » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

alex_young wrote: post #21

Here’s the thing - you shouldn’t have to choose between a career and having children. In the US we’ve created a set of incentives which work to put women at a disadvantage in the workplace if they become parents. Men, not so much, and largely because of this imbalance, even progressive couples fall into this paradigm. In the EU they mandate equal paid leave for both parents and require holding a job for them when the…

It's not just time off, it's just straight up working time. Somehow we went from half the eligible work force (women) dropping out before 30 to everyone being expected to work full time until 65, with no reduction in full time whatsoever.

Even now with many people working bullshit jobs going part time is career death.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#80

Post by garmaine » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

tester756 wrote: post #68

scooble wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noted the article unquestioningly accepted the stereotype that men have less interest in spending time with their children than women. It strikes me that questioning this assumption would be a very good thing for improving the situation of women in the workplace.

>I noted the article unquestioningly accepted the stereotype that men have less interest in spending time with their children than women. less interest or less opportunity?

From the article:

> But what people without kids may not realize is the extent to which people with kids want their time to be consumed by them. And, on the whole, I’d guess women more so than men.

This is a straight-up sexist assumption about the intrinsic interests of fathers in parenting.