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- Hacker News
- Sorry if this offends anyone but why must we choose between having a great career and being a great parent. Why is it a zero-sum game? Want to be great at something neglect your children to do so. Want to be a great parent, fine you have a mediocre career. From the article you are ambitious about building things. Well guess what children are, the ultimate piece of clay from which you get a front row seat to mold.
If you are trying to compete with people who are kidless and constantly comparing your output to them, then yes, you are going to feel you are falling behind. But you need to stop and ask yourself, “what am I doing all this work for”? What is your goal? For me, having children changed my perspective on life. I am lucky to make enough money to live a good first world lifestyle and the rest is enjoying the moments life brings. I still have the motivation I had 20 years ago but that motivation has shifted from “building things for the wealthy” to building peace and happiness for myself and my family.
I no longer work a ton of hours, but my day is still full of conversations, walks, work-outs, bike rides ect… These things when done with family and friends bring me level of accomplishment that no product launch ever did. Also, I openly avoid the hustle-grind culture that seems to run rampant these days.
You seem to be on the correct path, just don’t fall into that trap that says you must be grinding 60+ hours a week in-order to be successful or happy. It will find you if you let it.
by ron_woods - I have a good friend who has a special needs kid and we've discussed his struggles at length - suffice it to say that it takes an order of magnitude more time and attention than what's described here.
The thing is, you of course don't get tipped off that you've been selected for that particular curse (and yes, I'd say it's a curse. It's not some inspiring after-school special thing, it's unfair as f*k to all involved).
The point of this is, I suppose, it's okay to choose not to have kids if you don't feel like gambling, because it turns out, you are. And I say this as someone who is very in favor of having kids and who worries about the looming population collapse in all developed countries.
by xp84 - I felt successful before I had kids. Satisfying, upward-moving career; happy marriage; lots of travel; volunteering in multiple organizations. I liked all these things, succeeded in them, people liked me, etc.
As a dad, I feel like a total loser. All of the aforementioned are diminished or put entirely on hold (travel, most volunteering). I'm medicore at everything, except parenting, in which I am successful at keeping my kids alive and safe and healthy, but not in satisfying their desires. In that I am totally inadequate.
I expected that I would have to put "my" life largely on hold when we had kids and instead of the satisfaction I got from the pre-kid things, would enjoy the satisfaction of raising happy children. To have neither is demoralizing and I'm constantly looking for the critical thing that will improve the child-raising experience. And no, waiting it out for the kids to grow up is not the answer!
by psim1 - The author seems self-aware and I think there's a lot of good observations in this post.
At the same time, I think ambition needs to be paired with humility and acceptance of you can't have it all.
There's no perfect life. You can't optimize everything such that you achieve a hypothesized balance between all the things that are competing for your time and energy. In the final analysis, most people, if given the chance to reflect before they die, would choose more time with the people they care about than more time working, even if, in the moment, they felt they were doing a good job balancing the two.
by ElProlactin - YC reject so I bootstrapped and was thankfully able to hit profitability before my first kid showed up. I’ve now got two. I also have dreams bigger than ever.
In fact, writing this while sitting on the couch with the kids watching Muppet Treasure Island while my kids are wearing pirate hats and waving foam swords.
I’m still extremely productive and prolific. Probably less compared with before. But before, I had friends and TV shows subtracting from my time.
Today, my life priorities are kids, work and sleep.
There is no Netflix. There are no hobbies. No downtime. No friends unless I happen to like my kids friends parents.
I’m up at 5:30/6 and get 90 mins of focused work in. Skip breakfast. Then workout and walk/bike with the kids. Then ready for work at 10 - and thankfully my office is two blocks away. Skip lunch. Home at 5/5:30. Dinner with kids and play. Work from 8-10. Every single day.
I love my kids, work and learning is fun, and I value sleep. Everything else is a nice to have.
The way I see it, when I’m 100 years old I won’t regret drag on my ambitions because I had kids. In fact I’ll probably think the ambitions were nice but kind of pointless in the end anyway. I will see the kids as important and meaningful, and will write a life story where I was the best dad I could be and still hustled like hell.
by katzgrau - "Behind every great man there's a great woman." I thought I was killing it at work and as a dad when I was answering emails about complex bugs while hiking with my first kid riding in a backpack. But then I quit working to be a full-time dad for kid #2 and found out how much work my partner had been doing that I didn't know about. I suddenly understood why so many of the men at my former workplace had been divorced. So be ambitious, but check in with your partner and make sure they are on the same page.by qooiii2
- The older I get the more I realize ambition and "being ambitious" is a completely misplaced way to orient your life.
The chance of validation from others is not a good reason for making one choice or another and a life made of choices of that kind will eventually leave you spiritually bankrupt.
Make decisions based on what you're passionate about, based on what will bring and keep meaningful relationships into your life, based on what will leave you with habits that take you outside, into the sun, moving your body and eating healthy, and, sure, that will afford you the ability to pay for those things.
Focus on the process, not the outcome.
Making decisions based on what will make you more "successful" will make you a slave to others approval. And those others will use you up and waste your life to achieve their own objectives.
Also, if you pick the right partner, having kids does all the good things in life at once. It is the most efficient way to get yourself into the good life possible.
- The passionate hunger to do something significant and meaningful with my life was a major reason I took care never to have any children. Having grown up in a large family within a religious subculture full of other large families, the amount of time and attention children consume was crystal clear from a young age, and I knew that I was going to need every scrap of energy I could spare for the work I wanted to do.
Years later, after I had to accept the failure of my ambitions, there was an opportunity to become the dad of a kid who needed one. So here I am being a dad after all, and it's been a good experience. Difficult, of course, and often frustrating, but worthwhile; I have no regrets - neither about this choice, nor the one I made when I was young.
by marssaxman