Female Founder Secrets: Fertility • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#441

Post by yanslookup » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

u678u wrote: post #178

Its interesting I had a friend who got pregnant at University. I thought it would be ruinous to their career but maybe its a better solution. When she was 40 her child was already an adult and she could fully concentrate on working.

Grass is always greener for me but I often think if I could do it over I'd rather have children as early as possible instead of in my late 30s.

I think if I had known how young late 30s and 40s actually is it may have resonated. Like, I still do all of the hobbies and activities I did in my 20s and am arguably in the best shape of my life, pandemic bod not withstanding. I think I truly felt my youth was fleeting and I wanted to be able to "enjoy it".

The reality is I squandered it in some ways and I feel a bit of sadness that my children will have a dad in his 60s by the time they are out of the house. Should have given that youthful energy to them with something to spare as adults. In reality I probably won't have much left when they become adults.

Such is life!

EDIT: Someone down thread makes another point that applied to us. By the time we were "ready", we found we had "unexplained infertility". Science helped us out but it wasn't fun, it was stressful, and pushed our parenthood even later than planned.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#442

Post by 29athrowaway » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

It is not only about eggs.

Childcare requires a lot of stamina: waking up at night, multitasking all the time. It is not something you want to start doing in your 40s until your late 50s.

You do not to have a huge age gap between you and your kid and be a parent that is tired all the time.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#443

Post by dcow » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #188

dcow wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I didn't say it needs to be a women, I am highlighting that there’s a stigma against women performing that role today. 2. The problem is exactly with the characterization (that you made) of the “more ambitious” route being the career route. Why do we assume having a career requires more ambition than wanting to raise a healthy family?

>1. I didn't say it needs to be a women, I am highlighting that there’s a stigma against women performing that role today. I'm not aware of any stigma from women being stay at home moms. My impression is that most, if not all, people are aware that money gives you power (or freedom, if you will). And who doesn't like freedom. There's also less security of income for everyone, so a household relying on one spouse's in…

True about income security. I am interested in a solution that looks something like the homemaking person operating as something that resembles a sole proprietorship focused on the care of children. Not a perfect solution but something in that vein.

Re “too easy”: I’m not talking about just wanting to raise a healthy family, the implication is that you actually do it. And that takes a lot of hard work.

The suggestion that two working parents provides optimal results is not true or sustainable in my experience and seems to be the undertone of the discussion: in order to have both parents working, someone probably sacrificed their most fertile years to build a resume. And this isn’t necessarily good for the future of our species.

Is a household with two stable incomes nice? Sure. At the expense of the woman’s fertility.. the sacrifice is questionable. Would also love to see our society support mothers of older children who need less immediate care entering the workforce not just young blood fresh out of high school and college.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#444

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

ljf wrote: post #409

as300 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I just don't think it's a tenable position to assert that women (or men) should be able to take 2-4 years off of work and not be disadvantaged in their career for doing so. I wholeheartedly support the idea that, as a society, we ought to value childcare/child-rearing and (perhaps monetarily) support those who perform this service. But I don't believe corporations ought to be the ones making a space for…

Genuine question, who should?

The society as a whole seems to be as300's idea - which, in practice, means the government. If parents give up 10% of their career in order to give their kids a better childhood, are we willing to pay to make it up to them? My money is on "no way".

If not that, the only other answer is the parents. Are you as parents willing to give your kids a better childhood at the price of throwing away 10% of your career, with no (monetary) compensation? I suspect, very few. (More will do so with only one parent giving up the years.)

"You can have it all" is a lie. You can't both have a wonderful career, a great marriage, and give your kids all they need from their parents. You can't. What we really need is for people to stop believing that "having it all" is possible, and therefore expecting that someone owes it to them. Instead, people need to prioritize and choose what they want out of the tradeoffs that reality imposes.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#445

Post by jacobolus » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #392

dcow wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. As if wanting to be pregnant and not working at the same time as being sleep deprived and wanting to spend time with my own baby when they are at their youngest is some strange outlandish fantasy. And this happens way more than people lead on and for the exact BS reaso…

As a father who had his first child at 23 years of age, the corporate/SV world is just AWFUL to women who don't want to have to rely on IVF to have kids. And often the worst perpetrators of said awfulness are other women who themselves are delaying having kids. They have sacrificed, and really don't like the women who they view as "not making the same sacrifice". It's all around just awful to pit human biology agains…

Your comment would be a lot more effective if it didn't suggest that women's rights activists only care about landing jobs at Google and are "absolutely corrupt". The sentences linking identical twins to "twisted and toxic" are also weird.

There are some kernels of insight there, but this is not a remotely accurate characterization of any of the women's rights activists I have ever met, and it largely comes across to me as paternalistic victim-blaming.

20-something feminist activists have limited power and influence, and are not responsible for toxic workplace culture in industries dominated by middle-aged men.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#446

Post by zo1 » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

ARandumGuy wrote: post #189

llimos wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000% this. > Why do women have to emulate men to be valuable? Growing up in a "traditional" family, the first thing that struck me when I went to work at a big investment bank was how the women did everything they could to be like men - all the way down to dress. I remember thinking, this is called equality? That what men traditionally did is clearly so much better, so women now need to become men, and we should cel…

Did they act and dress like men because of "equality," or because that's the only way they can actually be taken seriously?

Sounds like we jumped the gun a bit on that? Maybe we should have "changed" people's minds and values regarding gender first before we shoved everyone into a conforming box, and then wondered about the "consequences" and their unwillingness to play along.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#447

Post by pantalaimon » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #69

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that as a hobby, or you can do it as a startup but treat the startup as a 9-5. (Your leisurely pace of work might hurt your chances of staying ahead of your competitors, but that's only important if you want the wealth and fame part.)

Hmm I don't think that's quite right. In order for me to continue building something nobody has built, I need it to be generating revenue. And in order to generate revenue I need to stay ahead of the competition, which probably requires not treating it like a 9-5. So yes I'm pursuing money, but not to achieve vast personal wealth, but rather to ensure my (hopefully) novel business is long-term viable.

if you build something nobody else had built, wouldn't that mean there is no competition?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#448

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #266

vecplane wrote: post #207

Wait, why is the advice to 'do something invasive, risky, and unnatural' when the actual advice should be 'have children when you're younger, not older.'

Because your actual advice also implicitly includes a 'just give up on having a career' part.

So? Does that make it bad advice?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#449

Post by lr4444lr » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

astan wrote: post #67

Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that…

that the two genders have different strengths and capabilities

Even the concept of two genders is under attack, let alone whether they have categorical behavior patterns.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#450

Post by coryfklein » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #435

astan wrote: post #67

Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that…

Thanks. This is something dudes can't write about. My wife & I simply decided decades ago that one of us would always not work. We lived cheaply so we could accomplish that goal, but we wanted a good family life. I would have been happy to be a househusband because she's about 50 times the programmer I am, but she doesn't love business and I do. We ended up doing great, but we had to start out assuming that a 2-caree…

Why can't men write about it?