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What nobody says about startup moms

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Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#111

Post by cle »

r00fus wrote: post #75
cle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I helped at the very beginning before she had a CTO, built an alpha version that we tested with customers (which led to a very different product). This was while she was pregnant, we worked nights after we put our kid to bed, and I took some time off of work to help too. Our kid is older and was in school at the time, so wasn't around the house during weekdays. Sometimes on Sunday my wife would watch our kid while I hacked away. This was pre-COVID.

She found her CTO a couple of months after our second child was born and I haven't been involved since. Shortly after she found her CTO, they raised their first round.

(More context: we did not have much money lying around, no family to donate money to us, nor did either of us have any experience starting a company.)

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#112

Post by toomuchredbull »

ravenstine wrote: post #32
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #13

> 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…

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 was visiting my wife's family in Fiji and it was amazing how much more attention my boy, a toddler got there than in North America. Females of all ages from like 12-100 would dote on him, ask to hold him and talk to him. In North America women treat him like he's diseased whereas my dog gets lots of attention. Weird. There really is a cultural bias against kids here.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#113

Post by giantg2 »

Honestly, 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.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#114

Post by InitialLastName »

clairity wrote: post #55
thepasswordis wrote: post #12

People probably assume that women are more likely to spend more time with their kids by observing the way that parents interact with their children in primate species (including in humans). Maybe we should be doing more stuff that supports women being able to have their kids at work with them (if they chose to work) instead of somehow implying that there is worth in forfeiting substantial portions of the healthy part…

socioeconomically, children should theoretically incur debt during childhood (paid mainly to women as principal caretakers). as children grow up, they'd work to pay back that debt. while this framing may seem distasteful, it does roughly model, from an economic perspective, the natural, informal system of value exchange between generations that's kept our species going for millenia. but more importantly, it illustrat…

The expansion of our society since industrialization has been characterized by the gradual, but systematic, replacement of implicit social capital with explicit economic capital. It's been great for a subset of people (the economic capitalists and those who, for one reason or another, are unable to build social capital) but it's hard to pretend there haven't been costs for everyone.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#115

Post by afavour »

garmaine wrote: post #98
afavour wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 spec…

Asking for advice is not "complaining for the sake of complaining." Regarding the activity, it may make you feel better but my question is: does it actually improve the situation? I assert that it does not. Obviously just making a complaint doesn't fix anything, but more importantly it focuses attention on negative aspects (which we presuppose can't be fixed by merely talking), which reinforces both your view of thos…

I think you're taking a sample set of 1 and applying it to an entire population.

> Regarding the activity, it may make you feel better but my question is: does it actually improve the situation?

My counter is: yes. Yes it does. It feels good to rant, to get things off my chest. Complaining with others gives me a sense of camaraderie, that we're going through it together.

I'm glad that your aunt's tactic works for her, but it doesn't work for everyone. No-one is required to rant if it doesn't work for them!

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#116

Post by vdqtp3 »

intergalplan wrote: post #14
panzagl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Any way you slice it, weekday time-with-kids for someone with a normal job is pretty crap. It's not crap for the kids, and that's all that's important.

Right, being there at all has some value, but both the quantity and quality of actual time with them , rather than just near them but entirely distracted by other life-crap , isn't high. I'm just saying that "I mostly see them on weekends" isn't that drastic, IMO (and I suspect it was a bit of an exaggeration anyway). Weekends represent like 80-90% of the time that I'm not just badgering my kids to get stuff done so…

> badgering my kids to get stuff done so their room's clean / we aren't late / they don't look like we don't provide them real clothes / they don't entirely wreck the house / they don't get hurt

AKA, parenting. Not "having fun with my kids". The quality to which you refer is based on how much you benefit from the time, not how much they do.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#117

Post by panzagl »

intergalplan wrote: post #14
panzagl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Any way you slice it, weekday time-with-kids for someone with a normal job is pretty crap. It's not crap for the kids, and that's all that's important.

Right, being there at all has some value, but both the quantity and quality of actual time with them , rather than just near them but entirely distracted by other life-crap , isn't high. I'm just saying that "I mostly see them on weekends" isn't that drastic, IMO (and I suspect it was a bit of an exaggeration anyway). Weekends represent like 80-90% of the time that I'm not just badgering my kids to get stuff done so…

Children need consistency and reliability from their parents. It becomes even more apparent as they get older- they will not be able to take risks in their lives if they have been looking over their shoulders their whole lives trying to adapt to a capricious world of 'this week Mommy wants to be X, and Daddy's moving to be closer to his new girlfriend'. There is no amount of 'quality' you can add to a couple of afternoons that will replace the work done of being there day in, day out. It has nothing to do with quality of food or cleanliness of the bathroom.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#118

Post by skrebbel »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #60

I don't know if it's fair to classify this as just a mom problem. I'm having the same problems as a Dad.

To be fair, it's a blog targeted at female founders. I think it's treated as a mom problem because of the audience, not the problem.

(I say this as a startup founder and dad, i.e. a man in exactly the situation the article describes. I first felt dismissed until I realized what website I was on)

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#119

Post by kreeben »

silicon2401 wrote: post #48
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #13

> 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…

> It also helps to remember that "they grow up so fast" is cliche, but it's true. The most demanding early years of child raising fly by quickly. It blew my mind when I heard someone say "kids are only toddlers for a couple of years". As a kid you feel like childhood lasts an eternity, and their developmental stages are so significant, but in comparison they spend less time at each phase (infant, toddler, little kid,…

It's horrifying as a parent who used to think and act like a child, to see someone who used to be completely dependent upon you, give you unconditional love and beg for your attention, suddenly transform into an independent human being capable of all sorts of things, without your approval even. The older they get the faster they progress. Soon they'll even host their own diner parties.

And the constant worries of becoming your own parents. Kids really mess you up.

Re: What nobody says about startup moms

#120

Post by loxs »

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.

I didn’t say it’s impossible. We can optimize our time better, we can hire a nanny, she can stop breastfeeding at several months of age etc. But do we want to? It’s a personal/family decision and it’s definitely based on circumstances and necessities. Historically people have raised children in dire conditions. Still would I rather do a startup or have a regular job while raising babies? I don’t think I would ever go the startup route. Would I do a startup otherwise? Hell yeah. You may think differently, but my bubble definitely leans towards either having babies or startups, not both - I know some failed marriages and/or startups while trying both. Of course, there is also the rare success in both (I know one such).
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