Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or they have a spouse doing all the heavy lifting at home.
Exactly. My boss's wife is at home doing all the kid stuff while both my wife and I work. Yet he talks to me like he has the exact same challenges. Just because someone has kids doesn't mean they're spending the same time with them... also age of the kids matter. High school kids don't need as much help with things as little kids.
What nobody says about startup moms
201–210 of 292 posts
Re: What nobody says about startup moms
#202One of the biggest issue with all this is "We lost the community in the pursuit of individuality". It takes a village to raise a child. I grew up in kind a commune. Most of the days kids would be on the streets playing, eat / sleep in their neighbours house. Moms were able to manage house as stay at home moms (hardest yet under-appreciated job) relatively better because of this community care provided for children. E…
Re: What nobody says about startup moms
#203Re: What nobody says about startup moms
#204Honestly, the real question in all of this is, Why have kids if you're not going to spend time with them and raise them while they're growing up? We already have too many people on the planet, yet it seems there are people who would rather hire nannies, to watch the kids while they both parents are workaholics. I guess I don't see the point.
The point is so people stop asking why you don’t have kids yet
Re: What nobody says about startup moms
#205Might be worth mentioning that actually, few people will care about you having written a book or other projects. It highlights the danger of comparing oneself to an arbitrarily chosen peer group.
Re: What nobody says about startup moms
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can be a Marine rifleman, NFL quarterback or EMT _and then be_ a successful startup founder. You can also be a parent _and then_ start a startup. There's no age limit and kids eventually grow up and move out. Unless we're relegating/gatekeeping 50+ year olds from starting startups? Especially during retirement, there's still a lot of time to do stuff.
Time? Yes. Energy and mental agility? Probably not. The vast majority of people seem to live in denial that ageing is a fact of life and that you get slower and less energetic as you age and that you start ageing immediately (at 20 you're already losing somethings you had when you were younger), not when you're 65.
Re: What nobody says about startup moms
#207> Everyone knows kids consume your time. But what people without kids may not realize is the extent to which people with kids want their time to be consumed by them. This is one of the hardest parts of parenthood to communicate to non-parents: Yes, children demand a lot of time and attention. However, as a parent you actually enjoy spending that time with your children. To the author's point: Different people will wa…
> Like there’s a single standard of interest that women have in being with their kids when, in fact, it varies a lot between women.
If you have "little" interest in being with your kids, well, what's motivating you to have them, and is that fair on them?
Re: What nobody says about startup moms
#208We can’t expect more women to succeed in the startup world until we’re able to talk honestly about how much harder startups are for those who want to spend a lot of time with their kids. I think the expectation of being able to do both is quite unfair, at least the expectation of being able to do both well. There are many things that aren't compatible with being a cofounder. For example, you're not going to start a s…
I think prospective mothers in tech should find common cause with other groups of people who suffer because the expectation is that everything in a startup is event driven and that each event is automatically the highest priority.
When a plane crashes, we expect the NTSB to be 'responsive'. The meaning we use here is a quality we generally expect large organizations to lose - the ability to notice problems, take them seriously, and aggressively work to do something about them. That's not the same definition that I see people apply to startups. Startups are instead chronically run like a Skinner box, only you're the box.
If my career has a thesis it's that we have tools, literal and figurative, that let us "move fast and not break things". For some developers these tools seem like nice to have or a distraction (the White Knuckle Crew), for others they only see the value during an incident or a crunch, but to others they're essential for sanity, be you remote, a night owl, easily distracted, disabled, long commute, a caregiver, or prospective parent/pet owner.
From my knothole it seems like a lot of the infrastructure people build up in order to become an 'adult' organization is presumed to be something that you develop in-house shortly after the Last Responsible Moment, instead of something we expect from our tools out of the box. But that's probably more a consequence of the fact that few people demand it, so it hasn't gotten done.
If everyone has to be a hero, then you get mostly unattached bachelors in moderate to perfect health. Do you want an Old Boy's Network? Because that's how you get an Old Boy's Network.
Re: What nobody says about startup moms
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you be an EMT and spend a lot of time with your kids though? Startup founder is a particularly hairy role to solve this for, since it is self-directed, but in general this is a real problem that exists across our whole society. Jobs should be flexible enough for people to spend a lot of time with their kids--even high availability/stress jobs--because it is a huge benefit to society when kids are able to spend a…
What’s wrong with some roles just not being compatible with being a parent of small children? It’s not like anyone spends their entire life as a parent of young children. Just do that role before, after, or both. Take something less demanding for the years in between. To the extent that’s impossible because you “fall off the track,” I agree that’s an problem.
Even for the roles that are incompatible we should strive to give the humans who specialize in those roles (and most such roles are highly specialized) as many opportunities as we can to take extended breaks from their duties to raise small kids if they wish without fearing for their financial security. I believe we will be very thankful for such policies once all those kids reach adulthood.
[0]https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-real-reason-companies-...
Re: What nobody says about startup moms
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Like, if that's how you feel then why did you have kids? This is something I've tried to explain to non-parents many times. One of the fundamental weird asymmetries of parenting is the negatives are visible and the positives are hidden. Visualize someone cleaning a blown-out diaper with shit everywhere and that's pretty obviously a bad experience. Likewise a toddler screaming in their parents' face in a crowded res…
I mean it sounds hippy-dippy to say "think positive thoughts, man." But there is some truth to it, speaking from neuroscience and personal experience.
EDIT: Love the first part of your comment, though I don't have anything to add to it!