51–60 of 292 posts
Man or woman... It's egoistic to get kids and if you really can't spend the time needed with them, that's pretty egoistic too.
> 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…
Here's another one for you - "The days are long, the years are short."
There's a song that I also often play in my head during frustrating times "You're going to miss this." To me these are both good daily reminders.
Very important side note for your health! NEVER EVER say any of the above three things to your spouse when they're stressed or had a bad day. They don't want to hear that. Just listen & comfort them. Remind them on a good day only.
> I remember chatting with a woman at a work event one night and asking if she needed to go home soon because of her kids. She replied, “No, I see my kids on weekends.” I couldn’t help but cringe thinking about what it would be like to only see my son on weekends. It seemed horrible! If you work 9-5 (really 8-5 most places) this is basically true anyway. Most of the time you get with them on weekdays may have some qu…
>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.
Easy to ask, Free to use community driven child care. People who are less-fortunate are better in forming communities than wealthier ones. Cities dwellers lose out on such things.
As a whole, we need to do better to support parents and extra more for moms. I would not hesitate to offer to keep my friends / neighbours / colleagues children under my care for few days / hours if they need it. No fuss / No fee - just classic pure help to my fellows.
Investing in children / women lot more than we do now is vital for all our success, sooner we realize it is better.
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…
but more importantly, it illustrates a genuine hole in economics that naturally disadvantages women, because the value generated from the work of domestic caretakers isn't being accounted for in our overall understanding of economic productivity. if domestic work were paid, we'd certainly reconfigure our societies to take that into account, and having children in workplaces wouldn't be so disfavored.
incidentally, denser mixed-use urban environments allows for kids (and pets!) to be close by, filtering in and out of the workplace as needed, but not necessarily underfoot all the time, which to me, is the best compromise.
What is unacceptable to me is why this question is never asked of Fathers. I don’t think anyone would blink at hearing that a dad only sees his kids on weekends, but is it not just as harmful? Ultimately though, I fail to understand why anyone without the proper time to devote to a child would chose to have one.
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.
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…
I think there are issues here though.
> you shouldn’t have to choose between a career and having children.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. If ones chosen career consumes a lot of time, the time comes from somewhere regardless of your gender.
> In the EU they mandate equal paid leave for both parents and require holding a job for them when they return to the workplace [0]. This means that not only are parents given the opportunity to share actual parenting, but also that their children wind up with better care by their actual parents for the vital early months of their existence.
Indeed, and this is reflective of many things. One of which is the idea that society should encourage and/or protect the decision to have progeny beyond the gender imbalance inherent in the fact that men as a sex cannot bear children.
It's possibly a harder sell in the US because of the immense value placed on individual liberty.
My experience matches closely to that of the author. Our second kid got born a few months into my startup and on average I think I've spent more time raising our kids than my wife has. I'm a man, but in terms of old-fashioned gender roles, I've become the mom.
I think that this has profoundly influenced the kind of startup we've become. Even if I wanted to, I could never do those typical mad coding frenzies, or spontaneous multi-day deep dives, or working through the night because of some important customer/opportunity/deadline. After all, my kids wake up at six (if I'm lucky) and much it's going to be on me.
Our company became the kind of company that has a healthy work/life balance, lets people work flexible hours and trusts that they do the work. No pressure to do overtime, no arbitrary deadlines just to create a sense of urgency, no chaos just because we're a startup so there's gotta be chaos, right? We ship fast not by stressing everybody out but by aggressively scoping down and then shipping that when it's done.
Thing is, my personality is actually much more hectic than that. I could've totally been that enthusiastic founder that drives half the team into a burnout through sheer passion. Mad beer-fueled coding nights, going for the Ballmer Peak. But I have two kids, I'm off at five, you're gonna have to drink that beer without me. Might do a few hours in the evening but to be frank, I'm often all out of energy once I finally got the boys to bed.
I sometimes envy those male founders who just drop everything and go all-in on the company, and just "let the wife handle the kids". In some ways it's almost offensive to me, what is it, 1960? Give your wife some space too, man. But it also sounds exceptionally luxurious.
At the same time, why would I want kids if I didn't want to be with them? That context switch twice a day is harsh, it's killing. But I think it's also the only thing that keeps me sane.
EDIT: I just noticed that the author makes a related argument in an earlier article: https://femfosec.com/start-a-startup-before-you-have-kids/ I don't fully agree, but I do think that you're unlikely to be able to run a stereotypical VC-treadmill super-high-intensity startup while raising small kids.
> 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,…
In your early 20s, a couple years of hard work sounds like an eternity.
In your 30s and later, you realize a couple years is barely a blip on the radar.
The infant/toddler phase is only a couple percent of your overall lifespan. Yes, it's work, but it's not subscribing to a lifetime of sacrifice and misery.