[HN Gopher] What nobody says about startup moms
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What nobody says about startup moms
Author : femfosec
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-05-03 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.femfosec.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.femfosec.com)
| toomuchredbull wrote:
| It's also difficult for fathers. I don't know if I buy the "mom's
| do all the work" line anymore. When I take my kid to soccer
| practice it's all dads.
| bena wrote:
| I'd have to say it's partly a "grass is greener" kind of thing.
|
| Just like that one person at a job who apparently "does all the
| the work". At least according to them. To hear them tell it,
| the entire enterprise would collapse if they weren't holding it
| together by sheer force of will. But surprisingly, the place
| operated just fine before they were brought on and it'll
| operate fine after.
|
| It's just that we get so focused on our contributions that we
| don't see what others do as contributions. I'm sure the parents
| who don't take the kids to soccer practice see soccer practice
| as "time off" to some degree. Sure, you have to drive and what
| not, but once you're there, you're just sitting around. And
| blah blah.
|
| I think I may be experiencing this right now. We just bought a
| house and we've been getting it set up and what not. My wife is
| an elementary school teacher at the school her son attends. So
| she's finishing the school year in that district. And since
| it's an hour and half drive each way, it's easier for her and
| the kid to stay with her mother.
|
| It's been a steady stream of ordering what we needed, building
| those things, etc. I've felt like I've not really had any time
| off. Especially since I'm doing this around work. I'm under the
| impression my wife has not seen it that way. Either through
| underestimating build times or just not being aware. I've
| pointed out things and she's said that she flat out did not
| notice.
|
| Also, there's a thing the kid likes to do. There's a certain
| game we play and it's me and him. She can spectate, but the
| actual play involves me. I'm not 100% into this game for
| various reasons, but I recognize that it's important to him and
| it's also important to spend that time with him. It may be a
| response from my own childhood, but I do not brush off his
| requests for time lightly. And I don't dictate how we play or
| socialize either. I leave that mostly up to him. He needs to
| explore his own creativity and whatnot. I think my wife gets a
| touch jealous about the ways he favors me in some regards. And
| it's hard to talk about it, because in my opinion, it's because
| if she wants to do something else, she'll push it to "later" or
| she'll try and change the manner in which he plays because it's
| not "right". Basically, she's trying to define the interaction
| on her terms, while I allow him to define it on his.
|
| But she probably sees some of the time I spend with him as
| "time off" whereas I see it as performing not exactly a chore,
| but not as leisure time either.
|
| But who gets to define work and who gets to define leisure?
|
| So, I have issues with the whole "emotional labor" movement. It
| reeks of the person I mentioned in the beginning, someone who
| can only see their own contributions.
|
| Ultimately, it comes down to the question of whether or not
| something makes your life easier or harder. If it makes your
| life easier, maybe don't bite the hand that feeds you.
|
| Personally, I think everyone should live truly alone, no
| roommates, no partners, just them and whatever pets they may
| have. See what it takes to literally do everything required. I
| think it would give a lot of people perspective.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| The thing is, before you have kids, which no one AFAIK ever
| tells you, is you completely take for granted the mental
| "downtime" of not having to worry about another human being's
| safety and emotional health (e.g., your example to whit,
| you're just "sitting" at the game, but do you think your son
| would really like if you opened up your laptop and totally
| ignored him for 2 hours?). And the "emotional labor" isn't so
| much what you're _doing_ for your kid as much as being on
| constant mental alert yourself. Every minute that your kids
| are not asleep, you're keeping a spare eye and ear and the
| attendant mental energy on making sure they're reasonably
| safe and okay, and that's damn exhausting - even when they're
| sleeping, you can't go down as soundly, because they might
| wake up and need you. And those subconscious mental cycles
| you use to work on problems, the lack of time you just "sit
| down" when you wake up in the morning or finish breakfast or
| get home from work to decompress - not to mention the sleep
| deprivation - REALLY add up.
| bena wrote:
| Indeed. I find myself in sort of holding patterns. My
| natural rhythm puts me going to bed later and my wife is
| usually in bed minutes after we've put the kid to bed, but
| he'll sometimes pop out and need something, so I've
| conditioned myself to just sort of have that in the back of
| my mind for about an hour or two after his official
| bedtime.
|
| Also, I'm an active participant in the play. I have voices
| to do, commentary to make, activities to perform. There's a
| whole universe of characters in his room engaged in various
| competitions. Ignoring him isn't really an option.
|
| Sometimes it really feels like I'm just switching between
| wife, kid, work, and friends.
| dave_sid wrote:
| I'm sure some of these points also apply to startup Dads, not
| just Moms.
| intergalplan wrote:
| > 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 quality just for _existing_ , but is really pretty poor.
| Rush around in the morning, send them off to wherever, get back
| home at 5:30 or later just in time to throw together or eat
| dinner (depending on whether your spouse stays home), then bed-
| time routine, or they run off and do their own thing for an hour
| or two (friends, bike riding because god knows they don't get
| enough time outside at school for e.g. basic eye health,
| homework, whatever) while you try to get the house in something
| resembling order for the next day, _then_ bedtime routine.
|
| Any way you slice it, weekday time-with-kids for someone with a
| normal job is pretty crap. If you're a super-parent you might be
| able to make some of it a little better or more valuable. Finding
| _maybe_ an hour a couple nights a week is doable, especially if
| you shift all your clean-up into your "alone time" and basically
| live kids, cleaning, and work all your waking weekday hours (ugh,
| no).
|
| If you're in the founder set and see loss of weekday time as a
| huge sacrifice, then I'd guess you're paying someone to handle a
| bunch of the bullshit in your life. At least regular cleaners and
| maybe you don't do much of your own cooking, and possibly you
| have one of those kid-chauffeur services. Ordinary working people
| don't spend a ton of quality time with their kids during the
| week. Again, seeing them at all may have some value, but you're
| not gonna hang out undistracted by other life-junk for any
| serious length of time.
|
| Weekends? That's where the good times are. Morning and evening
| weekday hours are just too eaten up with trying to get by. About
| the best you get is a smooth routine that's at least not a
| _negative_ experience for all concerned.
| panzagl wrote:
| >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.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| It's not crap for parents, either. I read my kids stories
| every night before bedtime. It was one of the highlights of
| my day for almost two decades. We finally stalled out 100
| pages from the end of Diary of Anne Frank when the last one
| was 13. It's not just Cat in the Hat. ;)
| intergalplan wrote:
| 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
| 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. The hours during the weekday
| are high-friction and low-freedom because they fall around
| transitions.
|
| [EDIT] of course, again, having a large amount of money can
| enable one to buy one's way to much higher-quality weekday
| time with kids, that may be a factor. If you don't clean or
| tidy (much), if you don't _have to_ cook to provide healthy
| food, if the kids have an actual nanny(!)--if any of that 's
| true, then I'm sure the character of that time at least _can
| be_ very different, if you don 't instead use that extra
| liberty for your own non-kid purposes.
| panzagl wrote:
| 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.
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| > 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.
| SECProto wrote:
| I have fond childhood memories of my dad on weekday evenings:
| card games; scrabble; quick swims in the ocean; sneaking out of
| bed if he made nachos late at night.
|
| Of course I have weekend memories too (more of the above, plus
| also trips/camping/whatever). But they actually stand out less
| in my memory than the almost-habitual kind of weeknight stuff.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Ordinary working people don't spend a ton of quality time
| with their kids during the week.
|
| Quality time was a invention of the in-retrospect rather
| entitled parents of the 1970s who justified their neglect with
| the idea of "well I don't spend much time with my son but when
| I do it's quality time!".
|
| The truth is kids, particularly young kids just want time. They
| want to see you around and have you take a active role in their
| lives. You can be around and clean the house and cook dinner at
| the same time, have the child help. Kids would much rather have
| a parent who sits on the couch to watch TV with them for a half
| hour every night then one that takes them to Disneyland one
| Saturday a month.
|
| EDIT - Jerry Seinfeld on the topic: "I'm a believer in the
| ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about 'quality
| time' -- I always find that a little sad when they say, 'We
| have quality time.' I don't want quality time. I want the
| garbage time. That's what I like. You just see them in their
| room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for
| a minute, or [having] a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o'clock at night
| when they're not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that's
| what I love."
| TchoBeer wrote:
| I could just as easily say that quality time is actually a
| useful metric and as a kid I definitely would've preferred a
| parent who spends more time with me on the weekends and
| wasn't "just around". Maybe I could bring a quote from a
| comedian too. I don't see what any of that would bring to the
| conversation though.
| [deleted]
| r00fus wrote:
| Research has indicated that there is an immersive quality
| to just "being there". Part of a relationship is rapport -
| hard to build that when you're only there 2 days of the
| week - the bonding will go to the actual caregiver.
|
| Taking your kid to school / after-school activities allows
| for bonding as well.
| exolymph wrote:
| You could just as easily _say_ that but it wouldn 't be
| equally plausible.
| adwn wrote:
| > _[...] get back home at 5:30 or later just in time to throw
| together or eat dinner [...]_
|
| I generally get what you're saying, but the difference between
|
| a) sharing dinner with your kids, putting them to bed, and
| reading them a bed-time story, and
|
| b) not seeing them at all in the evening,
|
| is _huge_.
| hvaoc wrote:
| One of the biggest issue with all this is "We lost the community
| in the pursuit of individuality". It takes a village to raise a
| child. I grew up in kind a commune. Most of the days kids would
| be on the streets playing, eat / sleep in their neighbours house.
| Moms were able to manage house as stay at home moms (hardest yet
| under-appreciated job) relatively better because of this
| community care provided for children.
|
| 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.
| scientismer wrote:
| This doesn't take care of the aspect of parents wanting to
| spend time with their kids. It's just "we need more daycare
| options so that mothers can focus more on their careers".
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >>Cities dwellers lose out on such things.
|
| I think this is true only in certain Western countries. I was
| born and raised in Turkey, and was an apartment dweller until I
| moved to the US for college. Growing up, I knew all the
| neighbors in our four or five story apartment complexes, and I
| knew their kids. So did my parents. And the community aspect
| was pretty strong -- when my parents both had to work late, I
| just headed over to one of the neighbor's condos and played
| video games with their kids, and sometimes stayed well past
| dinner.
|
| In the US though I have trouble envisioning such apartment
| communities. Maybe they exist, but based on my own living in
| apartments in America myself, the experience is a lot more...
| sterile and cold.
| kelnos wrote:
| That (sterile and cold) tracks with my experience in the US
| as well. I rented in various buildings for 16+ years and
| never knew even one of my neighbors.
|
| But a year ago I moved into a 4-unit condo building (with the
| small owner's association covering both my building and the
| building next door), and I already know everyone in both
| buildings. Not particularly well because of the pandemic, but
| I expect things to improve once things go back to normal.
|
| I grew up in suburbia, and things were a bit better then. The
| houses in our development up until I was 12 were close enough
| to each other, and there were enough kids, that we'd hang out
| all the time and ride bikes between houses more or less
| unsupervised. I didn't know it at the time, but I bet my
| (stay-at-home) mom appreciated the break when my sister and I
| would randomly wander out and hang out at a friend's place
| for a while. (And vice versa with the friends' parents.) But
| even then, it was limited to two or three other households.
| After we moved to another state during my teenage years, we
| knew the neighbors, but weren't all that friendly with them;
| I think in the six years I lived there before college I went
| into one of their houses once.
|
| I don't know what the solution is... in the US there is a lot
| of emphasis put on individuality and independence, and about
| parents providing for and bettering the lives of their
| nuclear family members. While that does have some positive
| effects, I think you end up with a lot less communal child-
| rearing, which IMO is definitely a negative.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| One of my strongest socioeconomic stances is that the nuclear
| family was a mistake.
| usrusr wrote:
| But the opposite all too often results in a situation where
| family trees become power structures and that's how you time-
| travel back into the middle ages.
| tremon wrote:
| _Cities dwellers lose out on such things_
|
| Depends on the environment. I grew up in a city, but your first
| paragraph matches my childhood pretty well.
|
| Our neighborhood was a cluster of short, twisty streets, with
| narrow roads and broad sidewalks. Our street had about 40
| houses/apartments (mixed zone), and at least 10 of those had
| school-going children. In my street, I was one of the oldest so
| I mostly played with a few other kids from "'round the block",
| but I never needed to go beyond a 100meter-radius from my home.
|
| Our moms took turns doing the school runs, supervising the
| little ones when they were outside, even cleaning or
| babysitting if needed. But right now, I don't see much of this
| happening where I live: a faceless street with a broad road and
| narrow sidewalk, more than 100 apartments but hardly anyone
| knows each other. Maybe it's just because I don't have children
| so I don't look for it, but I hardly ever see children playing
| outside on the streets here.
| wussboy wrote:
| I live in the suburbs, and that lifestyle is more or less
| impossible for my children. Everything is a car-drive away,
| which means that everyone drives which means that cars are
| everywhere. It's the opposite of a virtuous circle.
| dzink wrote:
| This perceived conflict is my bet for the next big tech unicorn.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Everything in this article can be said about _certain_ dads as
| well. I know, I'm one of them. Before I had kids I started a
| company, raised VC, and sold it.
|
| The fact is that there are 24 hours in a day. If you put 4 into
| your kids that's great, but there's someone else putting those 4
| into the company. Success is not all about time invested -- Elon
| Musk at 1 hour a day will outperform me with 8 hours a day -- but
| people make their choices in life and I don't think it's fair for
| my group putting in 8 hours a day to ask for the same outcomes
| from the market as the group putting in 12+.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I think the author makes a great point. In fact, I think that
| your attitude to parenting even determines the kind of startup
| you're able to run.
|
| 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.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| I don't understand. Why is the wife taking care of kids not
| space but the man working is space. Work is not easier than
| taking kids, so why are you offended by men whose wives are
| stay at home / take on childcare along with a less demanding
| job?
| danielovichdk wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| This comment breaks the site guidelines " _Eschew flamebait_ "
| and " _Avoid generic tangents._ " Can you please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? We'd
| appreciate it.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| > It's egoistic to get kids
|
| It's egoistic to breathe oxygen, to drink freshwater and to eat
| food too.
| lainga wrote:
| I think the point of GP is - water won't hold it against you
| for being an absentee parent (imbiber?).
| ravenstine wrote:
| Aren't those more about the id than the ego?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| 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 parts of your life to
| improving the efficiency of a cat picture delivery service.
| philangist wrote:
| Some societies seem to have this figured out. I read an article
| recently about the Netherlands titled "Women in the Netherlands
| work less, have lesser titles and a big gender pay gap, and
| they love it" - https://slate.com/human-interest/2010/11/women-
| in-the-nether... - indicating that the work culture there
| provides a level of flexibility that actually allows women to
| spend significant amounts of time with their children as they
| grow up. It sounds a lot better for everyone involved than the
| American approach.
| celticninja wrote:
| Another way is to make it so we don't expect it to be the
| mother who spends most time with their kids. Fathers also vary
| in how much time they want to spend with their kids, but
| society assumes it is less than mothers, which can make it
| difficult for men to do this, which in turn limits the mothers
| ability to spend less time with their children to focus on
| work.
|
| In most situations there is usually a primary carer, that
| should not be expected to be the mother.
| clairity wrote:
| 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 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.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| 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.
| clairity wrote:
| yah, i like to think of it as the _esteem economy_ ,
| something that's even more intimately tied with human
| societies and our evolutionary survival. polico-economic
| systems are simply models on top of this underlying esteem
| economy, and over history, we've jumped from one polico-
| economic theory to the next, without earnestly
| acknowledging and perhaps even venerating this simple
| connection.
|
| how social networks could potentially better model the
| esteem economy is what most interests me about them, but so
| far, likes and follows don't seem to do a good enough job
| in general at revealing the truly estimable from the
| randomly popularized background meme.
| tester756 wrote:
| >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 parts of your
| life to improving the efficiency of a cat picture delivery
| service.
|
| I cannot imagine how it would work in practice
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| My college had a kindergarden for staff. That seemed to be a
| decent balance. Make it so you spend your lunch hour with
| your kids if it's really that important (and spend less time
| commuting as well).
|
| A lot of these problems seem to me to have been created by
| very poor urban planning. If you work in a city it shouldn't
| be a big deal to have lunch with whoever/go down to the post
| office/ get away to the park for a bit. Been doing it my
| whole life.
| tidydata wrote:
| It's important to reframe these messages, I think, to focus
| more on "child development" than to focus specifically on
| women's roles. I read this article replacing "women" with
| parents for similar reasons. My 16 month old could very easily
| sit with me in a private office space, and even WFH can occupy
| himself with books and toys. Usually he'll come to me every
| 15-20 minutes for some exclusive attention, then resumes his
| play. But alas we focus so much on "productivity " that,
| according to some metrics this makes folks like me "less
| productive".
|
| Meanwhile, I have very fond memories of my dad taking me to his
| job as an EE at Raytheon in the early 90s, and his cubicle
| buddies having so much fun with me there.
|
| This is all great to show kids and makes for a better office
| environment. I don't think the societal notion or forcing
| parents to jump through childcare hoops benefits anyone but the
| people making the most money.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| _instead of somehow implying that there is worth in forfeiting
| substantial portions of the healthy parts of your life to
| improving the efficiency of a cat picture delivery service_
|
| That's not for you decide for everyone else. Whatever happened
| to live and let live?
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| As long as the children aren't present in the actual work
| place. I can't think of anything that would make the standard
| open-pit even more dreadful than children running around.
|
| This might be an unpopular opinion in the U.S., but the
| workplace is meant for work. Stop "bringing your whole self" to
| work and instead carve out enough time in the week for your
| other priorities.
|
| I've spent time with enough successful people that spend every
| evening with their family to stop believing the work-till-you-
| pass-out mythos. Daily productivity does not go past 4-5 good
| (plus 4-5 crap) hours a day for 99.9% of humans.
| scientismer wrote:
| "I would love to write a book or get involved in other projects,
| but these things all take time"
|
| Might be worth mentioning that actually, few people will care
| about you having written a book or other projects. It highlights
| the danger of comparing oneself to an arbitrarily chosen peer
| group.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| 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.
| skrebbel wrote:
| 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)
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Hell, I'm having the same problem as the foster parent of a
| cattle dog! Near constant demand for attention, wanting lots of
| play time and exercise and mental stimulation and affection...
| I don't have kids but I imagine it is similar!
| feoren wrote:
| Yeah, as a busy new dad dipping my toes in the startup world, I
| was cringing the entire time wondering why they seem to assume
| this only applies to women.
| gazzini wrote:
| I quit my startup & picked up a boring, stable job to be a
| better dad a couple years ago, so I feel this too.
|
| If the article said it's only hard for moms, then I'd
| disagree with it... but it doesn't.
|
| It's just critiquing the assumption that every mom wants the
| same thing. These assumptions form social pressures & impact
| career decisions, and she's pointing out that you don't have
| to struggle with that decision in the way society expects.
|
| Sure, it would have been nice if they acknowledged dads...
| but given the name of the website, I don't think we're the
| stars of this show, and that's fine.
| scooble wrote:
| > If the article said it's only hard for moms, then I'd
| disagree with it... but it doesn't.
|
| I took the authors claim that dads were less interested in
| spending time with their children to suggest that this
| wasn't such an issue for dads.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| Right, that's what rubbed me the wrong way.
| lhorie wrote:
| Perhaps the issue is classifying it as a "problem" in the first
| place. As in, why is it considered problematic to want to spend
| more time w/ kids knowing it affects work-related
| opportunities? We generally accept that we can't master dozens
| of hobbies at once due to the inability to put the necessary
| time and effort into all of them, so why then is it considered
| a failure to pick one of the choices if the two conflicting
| activities are family time and main job?
|
| I think the author comes to the right conclusion: they _come to
| terms_ to the fact that spending time w / kids is a good reward
| for them, for making the trade-off of not becoming a CEO.
|
| I suppose one could argue that guilt for choosing kids over
| work is more of an issue for men because of societal
| expectations wrt income earning responsibilities. But then
| again, at the end of the day, regardless of whether you're a
| man or a woman, do you really want society to dictate what
| happiness/success should look like for you personally? If
| anything, someone who is in a position to be able _to turn down
| a CEO position_ ought to be considered a highly successful
| individual by any societal standards </two-cents>
| u678u wrote:
| Right, the most "successful" friends I have are all childless
| or divorced without children living with them.
| xbar wrote:
| Doesn't everyone say this about startups and kids for moms and
| dads?
|
| Startups take a lot of time. As much as you can give. So do kids.
|
| Time is measured out and cannot be consumed all at once for your
| startup or kids.
|
| We can't expect people with kids to succeed in the startup world
| without kids and parents losing out.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I worked two startups where I had kids. One where I had one kid,
| and another where I had two kids. Startups plus babies is hard no
| matter what sex you are.
|
| Up all night with baby and always-on work. Its a recipe that will
| drive anyone to the brink.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I thought this was a great article, because it acknowledged a
| fundamental fact: life is all about choices, and for too long
| many people were fed the lie that "you can have it all".
|
| Time is finite. You can either spend some particular moment
| working at your job, or you can spend that moment with your kids
| - you can't do both. While some people may be better at balancing
| the two, the fact is in a competitive economy there will always
| be people without kids (or who don't spend much time with their
| own kids) who won't need to make the same tradeoffs. No amount of
| government policy will change that fact.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| Coming to the realization that I can't have it all a few years
| ago was liberating and has greatly improved my mental health. I
| used to pursue too many things naively thinking I could excel
| at all of them. I'm now content with knowing that picking one
| path 100% means you're excluding other paths, and there's
| nothing wrong with that.
| anotha1 wrote:
| The focus on "start-ups" here, while not exclusively, does sway
| far toward the VC-model, of course because that's also YC's
| model.
|
| Is that model nearly incompatible with parenting? It might be.
| But that doesn't mean that there aren't parallel eco-systems of
| "start-ups" for those with various lifestyles (I know, lifestyle
| b**** is a dirty word here.).
| loxs wrote:
| 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 a lot harder for my wife to look
| after the baby.
| cle wrote:
| 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.
| r00fus wrote:
| 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?
| cle wrote:
| 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.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That's very impressive. I can't imagine how that's doable
| based on my experience of wife's breastfeeding and sleep
| schedules.
| bladegash wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| One parent serves as redundancy for the other. I don't know
| how you did it, but when we had just one baby/toddler, and
| no other kids or relatives to watch them, one adult is
| constantly watching the kid, and the other is taking care
| of household tasks.
|
| The person watching the kid looks like they have spare
| time, but it's garbage time because your attention is
| diverted to the kid every couple minutes or less.
| loxs wrote:
| For us it's me "mostly" working - supporting our existing
| clients, taking care of investments (sometimes trading a
| bit), shopping, cooking (taking turns in this one). She
| is mostly with the kid and when he is sleeping, she does
| cleaning and other chores. Also sometimes I look after
| him and she works for clients (when she is more suitable)
| The company is definitely not progressing. At best we are
| able to stand still. I don't think when you are with the
| kid it's spare time.
| bladegash wrote:
| Ah, that makes much more sense, in that you're not
| completely stalled on the startup, just more maintaining.
| Sorry for the misunderstanding!
| bladegash wrote:
| That's fair, but perhaps there are also some parents that
| pay far more attention to their children than they really
| require or is even healthy for them.
|
| I found this especially true with our first born, where
| once you have a second, you quickly realize you probably
| gave them just a tad too much attention than was
| necessary.
|
| Children have been raised in situations with single
| parents, ones where one or both parents work full time,
| etc. Day cares are somehow able to manage with one
| teacher to 10+ young children. Have we been failing at
| child rearing since, well, the beginning of time?
|
| I'm also not sure what garbage time with a < 2 year old
| would really be...they honestly don't do much nor can
| they learn to do much at that age. Don't get me wrong,
| plenty of meaningful ways to spend time with a child that
| way, I just don't really know how you spend 8-12 hours a
| day giving focused attention to a 1 1/2 year old. But to
| each their own and not my place to judge anyone else's
| parenting style.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| By garbage time, I mean I can't productively use the time
| I'm spending being responsible for the kid to do any
| involved task.
|
| I'm not saying I interact with the kid the whole time,
| but I have to keep an eye on the toddler to make sure
| they're not hurting themselves, or more likely, the
| toddler is pestering me to play with them. They play with
| their own toys and pots and pans for a few minutes, but
| it's not long before they see you on the laptop or
| whatever and want to get up in your lap.
|
| It's easier if there are other toddlers to play with and
| how a daycare can watch multiple toddlers with one adult.
| bladegash wrote:
| I hear you, 100% - it's not easy no matter how you cut
| it. Infants and toddlers are a handful and they love
| playing with their parents!
|
| Mine are a bit older now (8 and 5), but I will be a bit
| sad when they no longer want my attention as much, so I'm
| trying to enjoy it while it lasts!
| afavour wrote:
| "we mostly don't do anything else nowadays" != "requiring
| full time attention"
|
| I still have downtime after having a kid, but I'm much less
| motivated to spend it on a side project because I'm that
| much more exhausted.
| iso1210 wrote:
| OP seems to think that looking after a single child is
| more effort than available from two parents, one of whom
| has an office job
| loxs wrote:
| 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).
| bladegash wrote:
| Oh, by all means if you're able to choose to do so via
| the means and desire, I think it's a great opportunity
| for not only your child, but also for you and your
| spouse. I was more surprised at what seemed like was a
| suggestion that you can't go back to work or else it
| would be markedly more difficult for your spouse.
|
| I guess it's to say, lots of people choose not to have
| additional children because of fears like that and while
| it is not always easy, people can work and raise
| children, and better, they still turn out just fine.
|
| Kudos to you both for sacrificing your personal goals to
| spend time raising your child!
| loxs wrote:
| Yeah, and also COVID didn't help either. We would
| definitely hire hourly babysitters, daycare etc, but with
| COVID it's not that straightforward. Probably we will try
| something like that from now on, after we got our
| vaccines
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Some children require more attention than others.
| iso1210 wrote:
| god knows how normal people cope!
| loxs wrote:
| We are wondering the same, especially during the pandemic
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The hypergrowth, VC-funded startup model virtually depends on
| founders and executives investing 100% of their time and energy
| into the company. With most startups trying to capture new
| markets, if you don't give 100% then your competitors will.
|
| Obviously any job that requires 80-hour works isn't going to be
| compatible with spending a lot of time with your kids. Like you
| said, there are plenty of other businesses and business models
| that don't have such onerous demands. They may not become the
| next unicorn and VC darling, but they leave room for a more
| normal life outside of work.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > Is that model nearly incompatible with parenting?
|
| According to the author, pretty much.
|
| https://femfosec.com/start-a-startup-before-you-have-kids/
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 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 want different
| balances between time spent working and time spent with kids, and
| that's fine as long as it remains a balance. There are different
| ways to divide up time and attention that don't require
| sacrificing everything for the children. It took me a while to
| learn that having both parents available on demand 100% of the
| time isn't necessarily great for the child's development as they
| grow up. Dropping your kid off at daycare is hard the first few
| times, but watching my child have fun and develop relationship
| skills with other kids and people was eye-opening. There are many
| ways to split the load between parents that are fine in the end.
|
| 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. I don't mean to downplay the effort involved, but
| the situation continues to change as they grow up and become more
| independent, eventually spending more time at school, on
| independent activities, with their friends, and so on.
|
| It's very difficult for anyone trying to balance demanding
| startup needs with demanding infant needs, but I also know many
| people in the startup world who simply had young kids and did
| startups at different stages in their career rather than
| overlapping the two. There's nothing wrong with working for a
| relaxed, big company while your kids are young and need
| attention, then switching gears to startup mode after they're
| more independent.
| mattferderer wrote:
| > It also helps to remember that "they grow up so fast" is
| cliche, but it's true.
|
| 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.
| ravenstine wrote:
| 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 raising me.
| But in interpersonal discussions as well as popular media,
| parenthood is usually portrayed as a chore and even a
| "whoopsie".
| jgon wrote:
| I think a large part of it is that the good things are so
| hard to describe and the bad things are pretty universally
| understood.
|
| Trying to describe the way time comes to a complete stop when
| your infant child gazes into your eyes and you look back and
| you feel a connection that quite literally can't be put into
| words, makes it really hard to talk to people about it. On
| the other hand almost everyone can imagine what it would be
| like to have to deal with that same infant having an
| explosive bowel movement that exceeds the capacity of their
| diaper to contain it. And so, when pressed to talk about
| something related to child rearing people fall back on the
| sleepless nights (we've all been tired), the crying, the
| dirty diapers, etc. Because talking about the good feels like
| trying to describe falling in love to someone who's never
| done that before.
|
| With that said, I generally try to catch myself these days
| when I am unfairly weighing one side of the equation and
| express what an absolute blessing having kids has been and
| how much richer they've made my life. I think many (most)
| people who have kids feel the same.
| toomuchredbull wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| kbelder wrote:
| Upvoted, but I wanted to clarify that I think that's
| regional in the US.
| garmaine wrote:
| I see this all the time and I really don't understand it.
| Like, if that's how you feel then why did you have kids? But
| if I ever say that to someone they'll take offense.
|
| I think they just want to vent. Which is why it doesn't make
| sense to me because I see complaining for the sake of
| complaining as a negative-utility activity.
| afavour wrote:
| > 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 specific to parenting.
| I'll bet most of us have complained about some facet of
| programming recently even though we enjoy it immensely. If
| we went by the same logic every HN thread would be full of
| "if that's how you feel then why did you go into
| programming?"
| garmaine wrote:
| 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 those negative things and
| strengthens the negative emotional reaction.
|
| I learned this from one of my aunts who is the best
| parent I have ever seen: tireless, family-focused, and
| always positive. When I became a parent myself I asked
| her how she deals with all the stress and she told me
| it's as simple, and as hard as just focusing on the
| positives. When you feel frustrated about something _you
| cannot change_ , then find the positive and focus on
| that.
|
| It sounds dumb, but it works. It makes you happy, which
| makes for less shouting or stern parenting, which builds
| better relationships with your kids and spouse, which
| starts a positive feedback loop.
|
| On the other hand I often see parents complaining about
| their kids every time they meet up with other parents,
| sometimes when the kids are within earshot too, which
| just makes them focus on and respond more quickly with
| negative emotions to those same issues. This starts a
| negative feedback loop which starts them down into the
| "ugh, everyday is a chore" lows.
|
| Our brains are reinforcement machines, so just
| complaining by itself _does_ make the situation worse,
| when there is no expectations of the complaint causing
| the situation to be resolved. That 's what I mean by
| inherent negative-utility.
| afavour wrote:
| 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!
| munificent wrote:
| _> Like, if that 's how you feel then why did you have
| kids? _
|
| This is something I've tried to explain to non-parents many
| times. One of the fundamental weird asymmetries of
| parenting is _the negatives are visible and the positives
| are hidden._
|
| Visualize someone cleaning a blown-out diaper with shit
| everywhere and that's pretty obviously a bad experience.
| Likewise a toddler screaming in their parents' face in a
| crowded restaurant.
|
| Now visualize a parent looking at their kid while their kid
| sits there reading a book or sleeps in bed. Boring. But
| what you don't see is what's going on inside that parent.
| How incredibly proud they feel to have created a little
| world around their kid where they feel safe and secure. How
| amazingly gratifying it is to watch their little one learn
| skills and grow. Just the immense conduit of love flowing
| between them.
|
| You can't really see it, but it's all there and the parents
| all know its there.
|
| _> I see complaining for the sake of complaining as a
| negative-utility activity._
|
| The opposite is true. There is little cause to talk about
| positive things because they aren't _actionable_. If you
| 're happy, you don't want to change anything. Talking about
| negatives is useful because they represent problems that
| others may be able to help you solve.
|
| Consider a code review: you mostly comment on the code that
| has something wrong with it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Helpful to keep in mind it might not have been their
| preference to have a kid. Many pregnancies are unplanned.
| Delicate subject though for sure.
| jakear wrote:
| I think that's generally true of all descriptions of
| activities -- we simply prefer to list the bad, as
| commiserating is more socially acceptable than "bragging"
| about how nice something is. See also: chewing fat over how
| work sucks rather than how happy you are to be working on
| interesting stuff, "the ol ball and chain" not how nice it is
| to have stable relationship, "fucking landlords taking all my
| money" not convenience of having someone else pay for repairs
| and assuming risk, etc.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This is why "critical thinking" is overrated. Becoming good
| at critical thinking means that you become good at critique
| - the process of describing the flaws of something.
|
| This is the issue with the modern left in america. They do
| a great job of highlighting injustice (through teaching
| many critical thinking skills as part of "wokism") but then
| the solutions given are so poorly articulated that they're
| laughed out of the room. Most people know they are
| exploited - few know how to escape it. I'd rather not even
| know I'm exploited if I have no way out (you know,
| ignorance is bliss)
|
| You highlighted this with our own culture in small acts -
| but it's just as apparent with our body politic as well...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| This is the line I have more of an issue with:
|
| > Like there's a single standard of interest that women have in
| being with their kids when, in fact, it varies a lot between
| women.
|
| If you have "little" interest in being with your kids, well,
| what's motivating you to have them, and is that fair on them?
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > 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, etc) than most people spend
| on a bachelor's degree. I can't imagine how fast the time must
| feel as a parent, and it helps put into perspective for me why
| it's difficult for them when kids grow up, since it's not
| necessarily intuitive to think of their growth in terms of
| quantitative time.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > It blew my mind when I heard someone say "kids are only
| toddlers for a couple of years"
|
| 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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >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.
|
| Another way to look at this is that when your youth is
| rapidly diminishing you really care about how you spend it
| but once that ship has sailed you rationalize whatever path
| you took.
| bena wrote:
| Yet a third way is that the younger you are, the greater
| the percentage of your lived life is represented by a
| year.
|
| When you are 5, a year represents a full 20% of your
| life. (And even more of the amount of life you are
| capable of fully aware of).
|
| When you are 20, a year is 5% of your life.
|
| When you are 50, it's 2%.
|
| Imagine asking someone to commit to what is effectively
| seen as 25% of their life to a project. But that's what
| we do when we tell teenagers to start thinking about
| college.
| munk-a wrote:
| That's a good insight but I think you're underselling
| things - most folks don't really have experiences of any
| sort from their <3 years. I think it's also pretty common
| for teens to consider themselves five or so years prior
| to be different people due to how fast you're maturing.
| When you're making a decision to choose which college to
| go to I think it's fair to view that as deciding what to
| do with the next third of your life from a teenager's
| perspective.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Once it's spent, it doesn't really matter how, except
| insofar as it's left you with something afterwards. Three
| people standing side by side, one of them partied their
| whole twenties, the other focused on career, the last had
| kids. They're all thirty, so that's the same, but one of
| them clearly is worse off.
| munificent wrote:
| Extend your analogy out in time: Three people in their
| 90s, laying side by side at their deathbeds. One filled
| their life with friends and experiences, the other did
| nothing but work, the other raised children,
| grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
|
| Now who is the winner and who the loser?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Now who is the winner and who the loser?_
|
| Depends on who's awarding the points.
|
| Could be either one of them. Could be all of them. It's
| not like they were competing, or even playing the same
| game.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The one with kids has visitors so probably them. Old
| people can get pretty lonely if they don't have
| descendants. It's not talked about often but it's a
| really important part of not being miserable when you're
| 90.
|
| When your body isn't good for anything anymore and you
| can't even enjoy spending money, being happy about the
| people you created is more or less the only thing left -
| and you can really be happy about it. But that's only if
| you have a good sense of empathy for the happiness of
| people you care about.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| The only thing it can leave you with that truly matters
| is fulfillment. It couldn't be any less clear which of
| the three -- if any -- is worse off.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I guess it's possible to slip in to the geriatric
| backward-looking phase of life at 30, finding fulfillment
| in memories, but that sounds pretty bad to me, to be
| honest. That's like, 12 good years in your whole life.
| jstanley wrote:
| Which one?
| munk-a wrote:
| I assume the one who focused on their career since they
| likely didn't actually accumulate any significant wealth
| while missing out on all the fun due to the way we
| compensate workers.
|
| Hiring and compensation is also quite ageist (this time
| not in the normal bad way!) where being thirty generally
| entitles you to a higher salary expectation than someone
| in their twenties.
|
| However, I think there are just as valid arguments to be
| made for each of the people noted - some people would
| view the person with kids as having a burden to deal with
| through their thirties and other folks will consider the
| person who partied to have wasted their time possibly
| killing off brain cells and doing nothing "productive".
|
| I think overall this is a really personal and opinionated
| question - I'd favor the career oriented individual as
| "failing" purely from a philosophy focused on enjoying
| and expanding the non-vocational portions of life, but
| we've all got different wants and needs - I hope the
| third paragraph helps explain the trade offs all three
| folks are making. The key thing is that nobody gets to
| live all lives - unless you're talking about The Egg[1].
|
| 1. http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
| kelnos wrote:
| It still fascinates me as to how things look from the
| outside. I'm turning 40 this year, and have no kids of my
| own, but I have a 5-year-old nephew and 1.5-year-old niece.
| Unfortunately I haven't seen the niece in person since
| before the pandemic, when she was only a couple months old.
|
| But as for my nephew, I keep forgetting that he's still so
| young. It feels like he should be much older, and much more
| capable and independent, just based on how long it feels
| since I spent a few weeks at my sister's house when he was
| a month old. But if you ask my sister, she'll of course
| agree that time has passed so quickly.
|
| Relative feelings about the passage of time is just such a
| weird topic.
| kreeben wrote:
| 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.
| mike1o1 wrote:
| The phrase "the days are long, but the years are short" has
| taken on a new meaning for me after having a child.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Some days are quite long indeed.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Who doesn't want twice as much time? I wish I didn't have to
| sleep sometimes. But if my wish came true I still wouldn't have
| enough time. Alas, we all have to decide what to spend our time
| on and, therefore, what _not_ to spend our time on.
|
| Nowadays everyone in society is lured into higher education and
| paid work. They naturally grow their lifestyles to fit the dual
| income and things are looking good. Then all of a sudden they're
| running out of time to reproduce but now nobody has any time to
| dedicate to it.
|
| Where did it all go wrong? Women are trading husbands for bosses.
| Seeking freedom as a gear in the corporate machine, working to
| line the pockets of billionaires instead of cleaning their own
| houses, cooking their own food and, yes, raising their own
| children.
|
| Expect more and more women to come forward as they realise that
| choosing to be a wage slave probably wasn't the best idea after
| all.
| djoldman wrote:
| Kids' effect on work life is an important topic.
|
| I think it's possible that male, man, men can be substituted for
| female, woman, women in this article and have it be just as true
| except for this:
|
| > But what people without kids may not realize is the extent to
| which people with kids want their time to be consumed by them.
| And, on the whole, I'd guess women more so than men.
|
| I have no data on that.
| scooble wrote:
| The data could also be misleading. You could look at the
| numbers of women in the workplace in the 50s and conclude that
| women generally aren't interested in the world of work. But
| this would completely overlook the barriers they faced - such
| as gendered stereotypes of the kind the author seems to
| subscribe to.
| garmaine wrote:
| Well, I have anicdata: every working parent I have ever known
| wants to spend more time with their kids. All the stay-at-home
| moms I know (except one) complain about their kids, their
| repetitive daily routine, and wish they had a job or career.
| The stay-at-home dads I know love it, but this can probably be
| explained as self-selection: it's _because_ they 're so family
| focused that they flipped society's expectations and stayed
| home while the wife works.
|
| So on the whole my expectation would have been that this desire
| to be home and with their kids is universal among men and women
| working parents, and probably equal across genders.
| username90 wrote:
| Or its just politics, few people admit they are happy with
| anything since it gives them less leverage in negotiations.
| aklemm wrote:
| Except that society-wide these duties fall disproportionately
| to women.
| golemiprague wrote:
| There are many startups created by people with children where the
| hours are reasonable. As you grow up you realise that there is no
| real need to work so many hours, young people just waste their
| time. Saying that, startups can have unexpected situations where
| you will need to work late or in strange hours from time to time,
| so you usually need a supporting partner who can take over when
| you need to cater for those special events.
| antattack wrote:
| "talk honestly about how much harder startups are for those who
| want to spend a lot of time with their kids. Combining startups
| and kids is not only difficult, but the difficulty varies"
|
| Quote applies equally to men and women.
| causality0 wrote:
| _We can't expect more women to succeed in the startup world until
| we're able to talk honestly about how much harder startups are
| for those who want to spend a lot of time with their kids._
|
| I think the expectation of being able to do both is quite unfair,
| at least the expectation of being able to do both well. There are
| many things that aren't compatible with being a cofounder. For
| example, you're not going to start a successful SaaS company
| while being a deployed Marine rifleman, or an NFL quarterback, or
| EMT, or solo truck driver. We need to stop telling people they
| can not only do anything they want, but _everything_ they want.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Part of that is because we hear so many successful business
| people portrayed as also being great parents. I have seen so
| many of those that I knew first-hand to be fabrications that I
| just assume them to be false now.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Or they have a spouse doing all the heavy lifting at home.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Exactly. My boss's wife is at home doing all the kid stuff
| while both my wife and I work. Yet he talks to me like he
| has the exact same challenges.
|
| Just because someone has kids doesn't mean they're spending
| the same time with them... also age of the kids matter.
| High school kids don't need as much help with things as
| little kids.
| scientismer wrote:
| You have the exact same challenges. He just was able to
| overcome them better than you, by
| having/picking/convincing a wife who takes care of the
| home. You all made your choices.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Yep. And, as 90% of startups fail, those spouses also need
| to bring money to the table.
|
| It's not a great deal to raise the kids _and_ support the
| household while your absent S.O. spends all their time
| trying /failing to become some V.C.'s lottery ticket.
|
| (I'm not talking about CEOs of well-funded startups. I'm
| talking about all the people who throw their lives away
| chasing that dream in circles around the startup-industrial
| complex.)
| c22 wrote:
| Can you be an EMT and spend a lot of time with your kids
| though? Startup founder is a particularly hairy role to solve
| this for, since it is self-directed, but in general this is a
| real problem that exists across our whole society. Jobs
| _should_ be flexible enough for people to spend a lot of time
| with their kids--even high availability /stress jobs--because
| it is a huge benefit to society when kids are able to spend a
| lot of time with their parents. Especially at the beginning.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| What's wrong with some roles just not being compatible with
| being a parent of small children? It's not like anyone spends
| their entire life as a parent of young children. Just do that
| role before, after, or both. Take something less demanding
| for the years in between.
|
| To the extent that's impossible because you "fall off the
| track," I agree that's an problem.
| dundercoder wrote:
| My wife went out of town for 5 days and I _tried_ to take care
| of my 4 kids while working my FT job. I somehow managed to work
| 3/4 time just barely by working before they woke up and after
| they went to bed, and was mostly able to keep the kids fed,
| clean, and semi-entertained. It was not sustainable, not by a
| long shot, and I'm not a founder or co-founder.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| You can be a Marine rifleman, NFL quarterback or EMT _and then
| be_ a successful startup founder. You can also be a parent _and
| then_ start a startup. There's no age limit and kids eventually
| grow up and move out.
|
| Unless we're relegating/gatekeeping 50+ year olds from starting
| startups? Especially during retirement, there's still a lot of
| time to do stuff.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I don't think you can join the armed forces after a certain
| age. (I don't think any field should have an age limit,
| especially if you can pass tests.)
| concordDance wrote:
| Time? Yes. Energy and mental agility? Probably not.
|
| The vast majority of people seem to live in denial that
| ageing is a fact of life and that you get slower and less
| energetic as you age and that you start ageing immediately
| (at 20 you're already losing somethings you had when you were
| younger), not when you're 65.
| lazyant wrote:
| https://hollandfintech.com/2020/06/research-the-average-
| age-...
| vmception wrote:
| > I have to remind myself that it's not that I'm an
| underachiever, but that I have different priorities
|
| But you also might be, which is very important to add to all of
| these motivational quips
| intarga wrote:
| 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.
| serjester wrote:
| I'd wager that most people would agree that any dad that is
| seeing his children only on weekends is failing as a father.
| Obviously there's some extreme exceptions but by and large I
| can't imagine anyone advocating for him.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Lots of horrible fathers in the military, logging, and on oil
| platforms, I guess.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| You have a limited window to have children who likely will
| outlive you / be around your entire life. Work / time
| constraints while intense are temporary.
| DaniloDias wrote:
| Your kids will voraciously consume every moment you can give
| them. Your ideals will dictate how many moments you make
| available to them.
| namenotrequired wrote:
| I think you may have misinterpreted the article? It does not
| discuss how much a mother _should_ see her kids. Only that the
| amount she _wants_ to see her kids may differ.
|
| AFAICT when she says "It seemed horrible", she means "I would
| not like to be in your shoes", and NOT "you are not devoting
| the proper time and that is harmful".
| anotha1 wrote:
| Unscientifically, absent mother is seen as worse than absent
| father.
|
| I agree, and will may involuntarily postpone having kids
| because of that reason alone.
| loceng wrote:
| Absence of either is more or less even-equal of a problem:
|
| Jordan Peterson and Warren Farrell on The Boy Crisis and
| Gender Politics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AA1lR3CC4s
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Don't know you're grayed out. Humans are genetically
| extremely similar, appearances not-withstanding. Nurture is
| what creates valuable and functional humans. Societal
| factors that reduce parents ability to nurture their
| children are bad regardless of the parents gender.
| thelean12 wrote:
| It's greyed because Jordan Peterson is a horrific source,
| regardless of how right or wrong he is on any individual
| subject.
| soyou wrote:
| I don't know if I would trust Jordan Peterson, I was
| follower of his, watched his YouTube videos where he mocked
| mental diseases and basically stated only weak men suffer
| from addiction, depression, stress, etc. But then he ends
| up addicted, depressed, suicidal, etc.
|
| [1]: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12331040/jordan-
| peterson-suffe...
| steve_g wrote:
| I've seen him talk about his tendency toward depression
| and I've seen him talk about his recent addiction,
| illness, and ongoing recuperation.
|
| I've watched a lot of his videos and read his books. I
| never saw him mock mental disease or say that addiction
| was for the weak (unless to the extent that all humanity
| is weak). That just doesn't sound like the type of thing
| Peterson would say. I have a hard time believing you.
| loceng wrote:
| Would love if you could actually link to evidence of him
| mocking and saying what you said, and not just linking to
| an unrelated The Sun article.
| halbritt wrote:
| The content of this discussion does an excellent job of
| explaining the reasoning of the people that have downvoted
| this comment.
| robocat wrote:
| If you would be a good parent and want kids, then I believe
| the idea of delaying is harmful, especially if you are over
| say 25.
|
| Trying to set up the perfect nest, or to save "enough", is
| not a game that most people can win.
|
| At least, the above is from what I have seen of friends that
| had kids, compared with those that delayed too long.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I experienced a super busy dad for some long stretches and it
| never felt harmful personally. Could have been mom
| alternatively. Probably could not have been both at the same
| time without feeling some consequence.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| > I don't think anyone would blink at hearing that a dad only
| sees his kids on weekends
|
| Unless it's a bad case of divorce, of course that would seem
| weird and detrimental. Who would consider that normal?
| scooble wrote:
| 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.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| A good example of how people who present themselves as
| progressive often reinforce tradition and convention at the
| same time
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > improving the situation of women in the workplace
|
| This line reads harshly on women's ability to make critical
| career decisions. Real advice is from your grandmother: _make
| ye bed and lay in it._
|
| If a person wants children, that's a conscious choice with
| happiness, sacrifice and burdens _garuanteed_. There is no
| fairy dust, wanna-have-it-all solution. I feel like people of
| all cultures and ages understood this and it 's our
| generation that's perplexed at everything like chimps let
| loose in a city.
| tester756 wrote:
| >I noted the article unquestioningly accepted the stereotype
| that men have less interest in spending time with their
| children than women.
|
| less interest or less opportunity?
| garmaine wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > But what people without kids may not realize is the
| extent to which people with kids want their time to be
| consumed by them. And, on the whole, I'd guess women more
| so than men.
|
| This is a straight-up sexist assumption about the intrinsic
| interests of fathers in parenting.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I feel the same pressures. Like I'm a failure for not _wanting_
| what it feels like so much of silicon valley thinks all of
| silicon valley wants. But nope, I 'm supposed to be _passionate_
| about work. This sort of toxic work culture seems worse in
| startups especially.
|
| > 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. And, on the whole, I'd guess
| women more so than men.
|
| That last sentence makes me sad in all sorts of ways. It's
| probably true, but the expectations are self-reinforcing,
| expecting women to be more family oriented than they might want,
| and expecting men to me more work oriented than they might want.
| scooble wrote:
| Indeed. I don't think it really helps women in the workplace if
| we just go along with the assumption that men are more work
| focussed and women more family focussed.
| DaniloDias wrote:
| I've worked harder established companies than I ever did at
| startups.
|
| Being a parent is hard no matter where you work. Those who talk
| about balancing their career with their desire for children might
| as well dream about winning the lottery.
|
| All of your high minded ideals will be directly confronted by a
| screaming baby who can't clearly express their needs for another
| 6-12 years.
|
| I don't think this problem is truly unique to startups.
| aklemm wrote:
| Kids are a distraction to intense work. At the same time,
| becoming a parent is a potential growth experience that is
| unrivaled and brings value. Healthy kids are a value to society.
| Non-parents benefit from a society full of healthy children.
| Parents should be rewarded--or at least equally as compensated--
| with pay and/or status that tracks with the successes those
| unburdened with parenting achieve.
| rainyMammoth wrote:
| Most people have kids because they see it as a positive
| personal trade off (when you are older and you have a family
| that will come to visit you for example). Most people are not
| thinking about the benefits to society when they decide to have
| kids.
| aklemm wrote:
| Well, it certainly may be a net positive for the individual
| parent, but it's no doubt a service to society. I'd suspected
| your opinion was out there, but it's still disheartening to
| have proof.
| site-packages1 wrote:
| I am thinking about healthy society while trying to have a
| kid and not because I want all the benefits they would bring
| me.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Kids are a distraction to intense work._
|
| For what it's worth, I've done my most intense productive work
| after having children.
| aklemm wrote:
| Same for me due to the grow I talked about, but many people
| report not being able to do as much work as they want to
| while parenting.
| pm24601 wrote:
| Every woman cofounder needs to be able to demand that their
| partner step-up. Period.
|
| Every man who has kids needs to be there for the kids even if
| their spouse is a stay-at-home parent.
|
| I say this as a dad.
|
| I do my damnest to split parenting duties _without her having to
| ask_.
| parineum wrote:
| It strikes me that there is some kind of cognitive dissonance
| that prevents people from recognizing their time as a commodity.
| I understand and support the push to normalize women in the
| workplace in leadership positions but there seems to be a failure
| to recognize the cost.
|
| I think the "traditional" family roles of mother stays home and
| father works are outdated but I think the train goes off the
| tracks when people want to throw the whole idea out completely.
| To me, the outdated part is just the gender roles. I don't think
| both parents can be CEOs, someone has to be the primary caretaker
| because, as so many mothers have said in the past, it's a full
| time job. Couples of any configuration need to have an
| understanding of who is going to take what responsibilities when
| they have kids and often/sometimes that's going to require
| sacrifices in both career and earning potential for one or both
| parents.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I think it's because time just happens, so it's easy to not
| think about how you're spending it compared to spending money,
| for instance.
| worik wrote:
| I think the problem is different.
|
| Nobody should work that hard.
|
| Not just for the sake of our children, but yes for their sake.
| But for our sake, for the sake of everybody.
|
| We all need to spend more time working on our relationships,
| smelling the flowers, tasting the tastes.
|
| We have one life and one life only. Getting into a competition
| about how we waste it on commerce is tragic.
|
| Some people feel a need to work work work obsessively. IMO that
| should be viewed as a mental illness and needing treatment.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think the armchair mental illness diagnosis is a bit much,
| but otherwise agree.
|
| It's funny to consider that futurists of the early/mid 20th
| century expected that automation would take over most jobs
| and that people would have much more leisure time. If
| anything, the opposite has happened, with unskilled workers
| needing to hold more than one job just to get by, and many
| skilled workers -- especially salaried workers -- expected to
| put in many more than 40 hours a week in order to boost
| company productivity without increasing labor cost.
|
| And the weird thing is that most people seem to think that
| the meaning of life is work, and without work, people are
| rudderless and dull. It's really disheartening the number of
| people I talk to about my desire for early retirement, and
| the first objection they have is, "won't you be bored without
| a job?" As if I can't find enough hobbies to do to fill my
| time. I already don't have enough time for my hobbies, and
| work is the reason!
|
| Many parents say they work to give their children a better
| life. And sure, their kids might grow up having more comfort
| and fewer unmet wants than they did growing up. And the kids
| might have better jobs prospects when they become adults. But
| those job prospects probably involve similar or longer
| working hours as the parents'! Even if that comes with
| greater earning potential, it seems like a questionable
| trade.
| virtue3 wrote:
| Ill take it a step further: I think child rearing is incredibly
| difficult if both parents are entirely focused on their careers
| and view them as their top priority.
|
| I think it works out much better if one of the parents is much
| more low key about their career and can shift focus away from
| it more easily when emergencies / etc happen.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I did an exercise once where I budgeted time for a full month.
| It forced me to know/accept/realise up-front I couldn't do at
| least 40% of the things I wanted. There simply wasn't time.
| That was really unpleasant even though I knew I would never
| have actually managed to do that extra 40%. I haven't repeated
| the exercise because although it was useful, it was simply too
| unpleasant. I trade some inefficiency and disappointment later
| for enthusiasm now.
|
| So I'm happily cognitively discontent I guess.
| golemiprague wrote:
| I don't think gender roles is a problem, why did we decide that
| it is? On average women want to care for people more than men,
| it is manifesting also on the type of jobs they choose which
| are more on the care taking side. Gender is just a marker like
| any other marker, physical strange, IQ, social skills and you
| could find disparities in average work choices also based on
| those parameters. The genders are not the same, not
| biologically and not mentally and average differences should be
| expected and even encouraged, we don't want to push people to
| do things they don't want and suitable to do.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 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.
| seneca wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. It seems incredibly selfish to have
| children and then hand them over to strangers to raise. It's
| wildly unfair to the child, and as you said, unhealthy for the
| planet.
|
| I don't have a coherent thesis, but I've been thinking a lot
| about the connection between the collapse of civil society, the
| proliferation of loneliness, and the fact that so many children
| are being raised by transient strangers they have no real ties
| to. It strikes me as a blueprint for a dystopian society.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Because it is a human drive, and for many in the US anyway,
| working a lot is the only way to get a decently comfortable
| life - if it gives you this at all. For a decent amount of
| folks, they just work jobs that keep them from children
| (nursing and retail work, for example). We could change this a
| lot of places with worker protection laws. I don't have
| children, and support more robust support for parents and
| things like maximum work hours and the like to make sure folks
| can raise their children, without the poverty that some folks
| would have when working less.
|
| To complicate it further, birth control isn't made free for
| everyone and in many areas on earth, sex education is poor if
| it exists at all - not to mention that abortion services, if
| they are legal where you are, aren't always available either -
| for those times when birth control fails or other complications
| arise.
|
| I'll also say that most of the "we have too many people on the
| planet" arose from attitudes looking down on others, often from
| countries of origin, racism, and the like. We know how to help
| lower birth rates (widely available contraception and sex
| education) - but we aren't doing this - and we can feed
| everyone now, but we (as humans on average) don't put it as a
| priority - as seen by not shipping surplus to folks that would
| happily eat it.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| This is my point of view as well. I don't understand why you
| would have a child and then proceed to not nurture and teach
| them because you're busy with something else.
| tolbish wrote:
| Some see children as a means to an end, unfortunately.
| vmception wrote:
| The point is so people stop asking why you don't have kids yet
| scientismer wrote:
| That's the most ridiculous reason for having kids I have ever
| heard. If that's your issue, maybe just invent some fake
| children and say you sent them to boarding school or they
| died in a car crash. Or less dramatic, say they live with
| their other parent.
| usrusr wrote:
| Which is basically code for they'd consider you two levels
| higher status is you had.
|
| We really need to get rid of this mindset, unless we are ok
| with the occasional population cull by war (we aren't,
| right?)
| giantg2 wrote:
| "... occasional population cull by war ..."
|
| Or a pandemic.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't see why one would actually have a kid just to avoid
| that question. I don't really see that question come up that
| much.
| khawkins wrote:
| The author makes a lot of good points until the last paragraph:
|
| >We can't expect more women to succeed in the startup world until
| we're able to talk honestly about how much harder startups are
| for those who want to spend a lot of time with their kids...We'll
| never reach our potential as female founders until we acknowledge
| that each woman's attitude towards children is different.
|
| The idea that just "talking honestly" will change the inescapable
| realities of everything discussed before this paragraph nearly
| dismantles the point she's trying to make. She acknowledges that
| "on the whole" women want their time to be consumed more by kids
| than by career success. She acknowledges that even she herself
| has turned down a position that would grant her more success and
| power, but did so for a cause she deemed valuable and does not
| regret it. The logical conclusion of her argument and personal
| life experience is that not all women are the same, but that
| women are more likely to decline more successful positions, not
| because of discrimination or some systemic barrier, but because
| they'd rather focus on their family.
|
| But instead of suggesting that we accept that fewer women are
| going to succeed in the startup world, she's suggesting that
| "honest talk" about how hard it is will magically increase their
| success. How would "honest talk" have changed her totally
| rational and uncompelled decision to decline a CEO position? How
| would recognizing that the potential of some female founders is
| limited by their priorities towards children help other, possibly
| childless, female founders reach their potential?
|
| The last paragraph reads as an apology for what would have been
| the natural conclusion of her argument, but which she dare not
| say because suggesting that we accept anything less that full
| parity of success between men and women in positions of power is
| forbidden. She should have stuck to the idea that people need to
| be treated like individuals with different priorities and not to
| the idea that women need to be treated like a group collective.
| wcarss wrote:
| Read it again, it's phrased as being necessary but not
| necessarily sufficient. You're arguing it's not sufficient --
| and okay, it doesn't have to be.
|
| Without a true and open reckoning of the costs of a path,
| people can't make good decisions about the path. Will a true
| and open reckoning of the costs of a path make the path one
| people choose? No, not on its own. But it's part of it.
| khawkins wrote:
| She's still accepting the premise that more female success,
| as a whole, is something she values. But validating that it
| is okay for women to choose to be less successful in order to
| focus on their family is clearly going to result in less
| female career success.
|
| Deep down I think we all agree that both startups and
| involving yourself in your children's lives take a lot of
| time and effort, and that we should respect an individual's
| free choice to determine what balance works for them. But
| many are struggling with an opposing ideal that necessarily
| cannot coexist. For example, by declining the CEO position,
| she's actively working against the ideal of having an equal
| number of female CEOs to male CEOs.
| haolez wrote:
| There is a very cool startup in Brazil creating a startup
| accelerator meant only for moms. Check it out if this interests
| you: https://www.b2mamy.com.br/
| alex_young wrote:
| 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 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.
|
| It's time the US adopted such protections and embraced them
| culturally.
|
| [0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-
| resources/workin...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Here's the thing - you shouldn't have to choose between a
| career and having children.
|
| I actually disagree, and that's the reason I loved this article
| so much: it acknowledges that, at the upper end, you _do_ have
| to choose.
|
| Of course, everyone should be able to have a career and also
| have children, and I agree that there are a lot of things
| society can do to make this an easier tradeoff. However, should
| everyone be able to be the CEO of a high growth startup (if
| that's your chosen career), and _also_ have kids? Perhaps some
| people can manage that, but without a good support system in
| place (which usually means a stay-at-home spouse or at least
| enough for a nanny) one or the other usually suffers.
|
| Fundamentally, life is about choices. Time is finite, so you
| can either spend some specific hour going over sales
| projections, or you can spend it with your kids - you can't do
| both. Even if the government had better leave policies, it's
| not like they can _enforce_ you to take it. If you want to be
| the CEO of a startup, and you choose to spend your hour taking
| care of your kids, there is a good chance some other CEO is
| reviewing their sales projections. This is just the reality of
| living in a competitive economy.
| mcguire wrote:
| Well, if you are the CEO of a high growth start up, you
| really can do what the wealthy have always done: go with the
| nanny.
|
| Here's a question for you: how many innovations (or whatever
| else you expect to benefit society from a high-growth startup
| or whatever) are we missing because people cannot do both?
|
| The weird thing about competitive environments is that above
| some level, winners and losers seem to be chosen based on
| everything _except_ the competitive skill.
| alex_young wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure we disagree on the point I was
| attempting to make.
|
| I didn't say that one should never be allowed to choose
| between being the CEO or having children at the same time,
| but I do think it's a societal failure if the choice is
| between having a career at all and having children,
| especially if that's a gendered ultimatum.
|
| I may actually disagree with you on the CEO point in another
| way however -
|
| Who knows, but I suspect some CEOs manage to spend time with
| their kids and run a successful company. As you say there are
| tradeoffs in life, and some people choose to have a family
| and others choose to take up fly fishing or something. It
| doesn't seem like this necessarily precludes anyone from
| starting a successful company. Some may even find that
| parenting gives them the insight they need to be successful
| in business.
| djoldman wrote:
| I upvoted this comment.
|
| 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.
| stefan_ wrote:
| It's not just time off, it's just straight up _working time_.
| Somehow we went from half the eligible work force (women)
| dropping out before 30 to _everyone_ being expected to work
| full time until 65, with no reduction in full time whatsoever.
|
| Even now with many people working bullshit jobs going part time
| is career death.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > Here's the thing - you shouldn't have to choose between a
| career and having children.
|
| Having children _is_ a career. Of course you have to choose
| which career to take.
| nazgulnarsil wrote:
| 'tradeoffs shouldn't exist'
| mcguire wrote:
| Artificially created trade-offs are harmful.
| mcguire wrote:
| Two essentially unrelated comments about what you said:
|
| In the US, the incentives which put women at a disadvantage in
| the workplace date from before there were many women in the
| workplace. Weirdly, we have doubled-down on them after women
| entered the workforce in large numbers, particularly in the
| tech industry. This probably means something.
|
| Secondly, the site you link to says, " _Both parents are
| entitled to at least 4 months leave each._ " Which is my issue
| with parental leave: I see it as a red herring. I mean, what
| happens in the other, roughly, 17 years and 8 months? (Yes, I
| know the EU is better in that regard, too, but focusing at all
| on parental leave rather than general work-life balance seems a
| little silly.)
| [deleted]
| lstodd wrote:
| A kid is a startup. Running multiple startups is paralles is
| inefficient. What else is new?
| jefftk wrote:
| Are you also intending this as an argument for only children?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >A kid is a startup. Running multiple startups is paralles is
| inefficient.
|
| I guess, because if you have two startups of about 6+ years of
| age you can't just tell them to go to their room and play and
| leave you alone. hmm, maybe a kid isn't a startup after all.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Honestly if you've been running a startup for 6 years and it
| falls apart if you aren't directly involved, you haven't
| built a very stable company. Much like if your six year old
| can't cope alone in their room without you for a time, you've
| likely not raised a very stable child. If either requires
| constant attention, you haven't put the right systems and
| controls in place.
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