What nobody says about startup moms

> 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.

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.).

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/

> 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.

Kids' affect 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.

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...

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.

A kid is a startup. Running multiple startups is paralles is inefficient. What else is new?