Hi all, longtime HN reader here. I see the angst in some posts and would like to let you know it's possible to have time for what matters to you and good relationships with a spouse and children.
First off - I'm 44 and have 5 kids, expecting my 6th.
TLDR;
Lots of kids, lots of (good) coffee, lots of love and laughs.
My wife and I are expecting our 6th child, a boy, in April. We live in a suburb 25 min North of NYC having previously lived in Manhattan. She's from NYC, I'm from he Midwest. Neither of us come from big families.
Anyway, my kids are an 11 yo girl, 7 yo boy, 5 yo boy, 3 yo girl, 18mo boy. I'm sure people think we are nuts. We are not religious, we are not particularly wealthy, we don't have nannies or even a baby-sitter for that matter, we just want to have a big family and figure it out as we go.
Before I get into details, I highly recommend investing in a very good espresso machine and very good coffee. It's pretty important ;)
The way we have things set up is as follows: I run the business (small web dev consultancy that's basically me plus a few freelancers) while my wife runs the household, schedule and logistics for he family. This is key. Good planning makes everything flow. Kids like to understand what to expect and it enables them to contribute appropriately too.
I work from home as much as possible so that I can take my kids to/from school and schedule calls and meetings when I know the little ones are napping. I am capable of completely tuning out noise and getting into the zone so I can work from the couch if I feel like being in the mix with the little people running around. Usually I manage to snap out of my work trans at key times like when someone wants my help or attention and then return to whatever I was doing without being totally derailed.
Work/life balance? What's that? I've been documenting the good life with kids from my perspective for eventual release in a "dad" blog (for a change since there are so many mommy blogs) and I work at times when other people sleep, on vacation, pretty much anytime/anywhere but I like it.
It's gotten easier with practice, all of it. Easier to really listen to what people of all ages are really saying. Easier to share how I feel about things and elicit exchange. Easier weed out drama and incompatible clients, taxing relationships and unfulfilling habits.
Basically, the necessity to be on track with right livelihood has made the distinction between work and life kind of unimportant because I just do what needs to be done and what needs to be done is what I want to be doing... It's kind of liberating and feels remarkably clear and carefree given the responsibility I have.
It has not always felt like this. I have bouts of worry and anxiety that peel away to the eventual "back on track". 11 years into fatherhood I feel happier than at any time in the past and with greater stability.
Sometime around the time my third child was born, I had developed the "tune out noise", "tune out bullshit" and "focus on what counts" skills to recover from anxiety, work stress and life's surprises out of necessity. The skill arrived little by little, pretty much automatically without any conscious effort on my part.
On that note, my 3rd child was the hardest psychologically (in the months leading up to his birth) and to some extent logistically. Thoughts of "Where will we live?", " How will we afford to provide the things we want to?", "What if I can't do it?", "What if I can't pull it off?". The poor guy brought up all of my suppressed insecurities - in my mind going from two children to three was turning things up to ELEVEN! Turns out, he was suer cool, I was able to pay rent, we figured it out...
After an adjustment phase replete with lots of changes (moves, business changes and more) things became clearer on their own and what do you know, life went on!
I told one of my colleagues in Vietnam who is thinking of staring a family about the fear of not being able to provide or live up to some ideal and he told me a nice proverb:
"The earth gave birth to an elephant and then gave birth to grass"
I like that better than "Necessity is the mother of invention" it seems kinder...
My 4th and 5th children have been the easiest from the "have time" perspective...because I know how it works now.
Whether or not it's accurate, I perceive myself as having more time now, with five children, than how I felt with two children.
I imagine that 6 will be pretty overwhelming at first because I've been feeling the scale of meals, laundry, bathing, schedules, transportation, any activity we do as a group... but I know that we'll find a rhythm and it will work out.
Regarding work with kids schedules, they punctuate my workday to say the least but it's great. I spend a lot of time with them and get a huge charge from our relationships.
Will I ever retire? Probably not, even if I could. Do I have a lot of money to throw around, nope, not yet. I am ok with this. I would pay more than I could earn without kids to have the relationships I have with my children and to facilitate them growing up together.
Before my first child was born, I had a sort of flashy lifestyle and no sense of continuity or meaning beyond striving. Goals would be set and meet and followed by either a desire for more or emptiness. I no longer feel this way in the least.
I attribute that shift in large part to the quality of relationships I have with my wife, our children, our family and community. I am focused on things that are important to the people I care about and it works for me.
I doubt I'll ever regret the time I've spent with my kids or the "sacrifices" I've made to accommodate having a large family. I think each age offers magical opportunities to learn, connect, nurture, grow. I think that the time and investment I make in family causes me to enjoy the present, focus on what is really congruent with what matters to me, our family and our needs.
Have you ever heard of someone proclaiming any of the following on their death bead?
"I wish I had spent less time with my children" or "I wish I had been a bigger success and much richer instead of having a family" or "If I'd only had fewer children, I would have lead a fuller life..."
:)