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IVF and egg freezing, while useful tools, don't really magically change this formula in any meaningful way.
I empathize with how hard it is for a female founder in particular and for a woman in general when it comes to mixing children with a career. That said the advice to freeze your eggs (ie work now, live later) rubs me the wrong way. I wish we could live in a society where people would not have to work themselves to death and were able to... you know... enjoy life
I feel like the work ethic I see throughout the industry is extremely toxic to society, and leads to some of this. In China for example there's a so-called "996" work schedule (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) which is basically expected of everyone in tech, unfortunately, and it seems Silicon Valley is heading that direction as well with all the off-hour meetings, weekend work, and on-call requirements. Many SV companies also demand 72 hours or more of work per week, in my adecnotal observations.
What I'm often observing is:
(a) such toxic work ethic is largely set by male founders who don't care about other important things than work e.g. family plans
(b) others in the industry are forced to compete with those ridiculous standards, including females, those with disabilities, those already with family, those taking care of a family member, etc.
(c) this results in those groups being consequently disrespected by investors because they can't match up to the workaholic male founders who don't care about anything but work. I've heard several investors talk negatively about females behind their back because "they might want to have kids".
(d) this results in more workaholic male CEOs rising to the top
(e) the cycle repeats
Are my observations and inferences correct, or am I off? Open question here.
I empathize with how hard it is for a female founder in particular and for a woman in general when it comes to mixing children with a career. That said the advice to freeze your eggs (ie work now, live later) rubs me the wrong way. I wish we could live in a society where people would not have to work themselves to death and were able to... you know... enjoy life
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For highly skilled technical people and business leaders, we already do live in that society. There are many companies that will happily pay you entirely unreasonable amounts of money to work a 9-5 job. However, you can opt in to lifestyles where you work yourself to death in the hopes of getting even more excessive riches and fame than you would get by living a more relaxed lifestyle.
I don't want fame or riches. I just want to build something nobody else has built.
Having a supportive community in an educational environment would be a win/win/win for all.
As is mentioned elsewhere, it is not as fun raising kids when you are older and slower.
It’s great being able to experience youth with the new youth.
People with kids will self report higher levels of meaning and focus in their work, so a village/dorm like environment in a university might be an ideal place to take advantage of such a situation.
Or get a husband that takes care of the kids. The woman will of course have carry the children in her womb, which will be some tough months. But after that the husband can do almost everything. If she feels that it is important to feed the baby breast milk the first months, excellent pumps can be bought. This is a much better option than waiting until it almost is to late. (I’m not talking out of my ass: I’m currentl…
Lord Winston, who is professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, warned that it was "a very unsuccessful technology" and said: "The number of eggs that actually result in a pregnancy after freezing is about 1%." He later clarified he was referring to live births.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51463488#:~:text=Lord%20Wins....
“It’s not like I would discourage egg freezing. Women should be doing it because it’s the best option they have, but it is not an insurance policy,” says Christos Coutifaris, past president of the ASRM and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania. “Insurance policies usually guarantee a payoff. In this case, there is no guarantee.” https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/14/133377/mothers-j...
People who trade their happiness for money will lose their happiness and (statistically) their money as well.
Or get a husband that takes care of the kids. The woman will of course have carry the children in her womb, which will be some tough months. But after that the husband can do almost everything. If she feels that it is important to feed the baby breast milk the first months, excellent pumps can be bought. This is a much better option than waiting until it almost is to late. (I’m not talking out of my ass: I’m currentl…
I empathize with how hard it is for a female founder in particular and for a woman in general when it comes to mixing children with a career. That said the advice to freeze your eggs (ie work now, live later) rubs me the wrong way. I wish we could live in a society where people would not have to work themselves to death and were able to... you know... enjoy life
Where I live it is common for both parents to take long stretches of leave to be with their children for the first few years of their lives, and later it is common to take special childcare days off if your child is sick, has school events, etc etc. I _think_ the government pays for most or all of this time, so I am thinking there is a way for startup founders to claim it too, but I'm not 100% sure how that works.
I don't know all the ways that it affected each person professionally, but as someone on the team working closely with quite a few of these people I never got the sense that it hindered their position at the company. I've had a TD go on 6-month paternity leave for kid 1, then go back on another 6-month leave less than a year later for #2. He went on leave leading a project and came back leading another project.
Another anecdotal example: when I was joining my first project at the place, our lead producer had just left for maternity leave. Another producer was hired to temporarily fill her role. When the original producer came back, there was no question of her position: of course she was coming back to the team she'd been leading. The replacement producer was simply moved to work on another project.
I often hear in online discourse that it can be disruptive to the project when this type of thing happens, but personally I just never experienced it like that (from the perspective of the teammate who has experienced many people at the company going on parental leave, not from the actual parent perspective). I think when taking these amounts of parental leave is the norm and not the exception, we find that it isn't really as hard or scary as many companies seem to think it is. It also has the benefit of fostering a culture where no one person is absolutely pivotal to the project (or has to work themselves to death lest their project falls apart since everything depends on them...) They _will_ go on leave to spend time with their child, and you as a team/company/management have no option but to be prepared for that.