Ask HN: How Did You Think About Having Children?

What are the right questions?

Would it be "especially helpful to hear from people" who were going to learn to Scuba dive...and then didn't? How could they help you learn to navigate - what they didn't actually learn?

You're not going to get quality advice from people with comments like this. It's clear you don't like the trade off, so it would leave the reader to guess that you don't have any?

So - what are you looking for? Agreement?

By looking into one's heart, and deciding what one really wants out of life.

Financial constraints are one thing. But one really shouldn't sacrifice truly important life goals (like having children; or even moving to the same city to be with one's partner) for the sake of this industry's (really quite shallow and ego-aggrandizing) "meritocratic" standards. Or even weigh them on the same scale.

To put it another way: By all means, don't give up your creative and intellectual goals -- and don't foolishly neglect your baseline financial goals, either. But really, just screw this idea of "achieving a senior title", or "becoming an industry leader", or any of that stuff.

I mean, these things OK if they come as the result and after-effect of creative and productive work. But the moment one starts to think "Wait, should I have kids with this wonderful person like I've always been dreaming of, or... should I keep plugging away in the hopes being... recognized and chattered about in major media outlets" -- I'd suggest that that's not only where one starts to lose perspective on what's really important in life; one also starts to lose perspective on what it really means to be genuinely creative and successful (by personal, or any other standards) in the first place.

Which after all comes down to: throwing caution to the wind, and putting all your energies into what you think is important and meaningful - and not what other people think is important. (And certainly not what journalists in the business media think is important).

Should a really ambitious person seriously consider not having children at all?

I would put it this way: decide what your ambitions really are, and act accordingly.

If having kinds happens to fall into the space of "ambitions" for you - that's great. If not, that's fine also.

But the "should I have kids or follow my ambitions?" line of analysis seems like a mental trap.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14777851

If you build a business empire, your children are the ones who manage it and continue running it. If you make mistakes while building a business, you have someone to explain it to who can learn from them and do much better.

Plus there is the very biological requirement of passing on your genes. I don't believe anyone can truly be dead as long as their genes go on.

Perhaps the most productive and ambitious person in this world is Elon Musk, and he has 6 kids.

Some people just don't want them. They are hard to raise and there is always the risk of heart breaking pain even if everything is great. Are you one of the ones that don't want them? Take a hard look and decide.

If you are one of the ones that want them and look at the future and feel bad that you never had any then START.

If you do have them then make sure you're a loving parent. Having parents that love you is worth anything and everything.

Another perspective is when should you start a 20+ year endeavor? There is no a priori optimal time so long as you are baseline ready for the financial and emotional responsibility.

If you have kids, you don't have that choice anymore. You can adjust your needs, your expectations to the presence of kids... but it's a different story, isn't it?

For me, it's all about freedom. YMMV

The value isn't quantified in economic terms, because you can't quantify love.

It might help me hit some achievement milestone if I had no kids, perhaps, but that would feel shallow. Maybe I'd have built something that made a nice bullet point on a director's resume, but no one will be singing songs of my heroic deeds in the halls of Valhalla.

For me, kids are great because I have lots of love and affection to share. I've never had such unreserved un-self-conscious love as I get from my children. When I walk in the door after a long day, I get a rock star greeting--three little people cheering my name. I'm never lonely anymore. I have lots of great memories. I get tons of cuddles. I get to pass on things I've learned. Providing a good upbringing feels meaningful.

Staying competitive on an hours basis is hard, but would not be hard if my spouse was a stay-at-home mom, which would be feasible. Staying competitive on a knowledge-basis is not hard.

Children are generally competitive disadvantages for all adults with careers, not just for those in tech.

But competitive advantages are not why people have children.

The people who "rush into" having children have gotten to a point where they feel like they can, and so they do. They're employed because they need money in order to have a family. They don't have a family because it's a nice hobby to add meaning to their work-oriented lifestyle.

I have had no problem with professional development, and I think it's because I've worked at places with reasonable work hours. It might have not gone so well if I had been working at a place that expected 10 hour days (or longer) or lots of weekend work. Instead, it's been 8 hours a day on weekdays for the most part, with the occasional bit of work outside that area.

I've become a tech lead and moved into a senior role with no problems. My company is pretty family friendly and they value my abilities and experience even if I insist on making time to spend with my children.

I lost a lot of time to spend on fun activities, but once the children become older, it's also a lot of fun to do activities with them. I got my kids the Robot Turtles board game to teach them programming, and they've had a lot of fun with that.

So yes, having kids will significantly reduce the amount of time to spend on all those things you used to do, but it doesn't have to mean stagnation. I've still been able to make progress, although I certainly haven't had time for entrepreneurship.

So you have to decide whether the reward (children and interacting with them every day) will be worth the effects it will have on your life. For some people, it's very much worth it. For other people, it's not.

Life doesn't have to be go go go until you die or retire. You can slow down and enjoy it without becoming a dinosaur. In our field, demand is high, so we don't have to spend every waking moment trying to get ahead.

> If someone is in their 30s, married, but hasn't hit their really time-intensive stretch goals (be it entrepreneurship, financial independence, becoming an industry leader, achieving a senior title, and so on), how should (s)he approach the decision?

Do you really think you'll accomplish your major goals by some point in your 30s? I sure hope I don't - I hope to keep setting and accomplishing (and failing to accomplish) career goals until I retire, if I ever do. And I don't mean necessarily an up-and-to-the-right trajectory, but at least keeping things challenging and fulfilling throughout. I know this isn't what you intended, but it makes it sound like the goal is to get to a certain career "plateau", if you will, and then have kids and rest on those laurels.

I also think it's healthy and a good thing to have your kids see you challenge yourself in your career, to succeed, and yes, to struggle. When they're young, they won't notice, but when they're older, what are you going to say? "Well, son, I worked really hard before you were born so that now I don't have to and we can play catch!" - not a great role model for that child, IMHO.

Even within my local community (far from SV), if I think of some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs, quite a few of them are parents of many children (5 or 6, even!) and had those children long before their businesses became the success they are today.

I don't know if children are as big of a "disadvantage" as we might think. Sure, there are practical limitations, but personally, I found that becoming a parent forced me to become much more focused, prioritized, and productive with the time that I did have available. While the children are young, I certainly cannot be as productive (in total) as I was before, but I have no doubt that once they are older, in school, my productivity will blow away my pre-parental accomplishments due to the increase in efficiency.

As far as risk-taking - this is obviously just an N of 1, but I quit my FT job weeks after our first child was born to go consulting/freelance after a 10-year career as a 9-5er. It's been 3+ years and they've been the most successful and happy I've had. Business is good and I'm also looking into more entrepreneurial opportunities - something I did nothing of when I was single or married without children.

Conversely, people without kids will fall into two camps: the young who will say they are being pragmatic but probably aren't sure they won't regret this in the future... And the old people who either discovered late in life they wanted kids or not. The latter is the more interesting perspective but I don't think you'll get that many answers from old people without kids here.

I'm sterile, I will have no biological descendents. yet I have an increasing number of children and grandchildren. On the day I got married, I became a father to three boys, 6,5 and 3. Within 2 years, I became father to a 13 year girl. As time has gone on, three of them got married, so I increased to 4 sons and 3 daughters. In recent years, that has changed to 5 sons and 4 daughters, and 5 grandchildren.

It is all a perspective of what is important. Financially, life has had its ups and downs. There have been many health problems along the way, extended family conflicts, etc, etc, etc.

Would I change any of it. yes, in all the areas that I could have done better by my wife and children. But otherwise no. As my wife, children and grandchildren have made life incredibly exciting. Even with an autistic grandson and the problems that autism brings, I wouldn't give that up for anything. Not even to have him not have autism.

Life brings many challenges and we grow through them. Work is a minor part of life not the major event.

But the funny thing is that knowing God (Father, Son and Spirit) personally is the very thing that has rounded out, completed and made my entire life with my family worth every problem, trouble, difficulty, disease, cancer, accident, death and misery that has happened.

I have hope for now and the future, irrespective of what may be happening in the world right now.

So I'll go back to my question - what are your priorities in life?

Sure, I mostly feel like an ungrateful wretch. And yes, now that he's an old man, I do treat him very poorly and wish he were dead, mainly because it'd save my feelings of guilt with how I treat him.

I wonder if he resents having me. I will never ask him. I fear his reponse, that he'll deny it.

If you're willing to have a kid, I'm one of the ugly corner cases.

I don't have any kids. I'm beyond the age where they're on my radar. Perhaps a relationship with someone a fair bit younger would change that, but I doubt it.

Good luck.

We've both found ways to nurture our careers while we raised a family. There was one 5 month period where our infant daughter would fall asleep around 8:30 PM, so my wife would head to bed also and I'd open the laptop. Between 12:30-1:00 AM, like clockwork, my daughter would wake up needing a dry diaper and a bottle. I'd close my laptop, care for my daughter, and head off to sleep. She'd wake up again before 6, but my wife would get up with her and I'd sleep in until 7:30.

Lots of detail, but you find new rhythms and ways to get things done.

Being a parent is the single most challenging and rewarding thing I've ever done. Nothing else comes close. If you're asking a ton of questions, you're not ready.

Having a kid forces you to think about what you're leaving behind on the planet. The realization that there's a little one who is going to look up to you for every little thing makes you really question and think about your own point of view, your own ways of doing things.

I felt like I became a leader when I had my son. It changes you in a way that nothing else quite can. It opens your heart. Check out The beginning of life on netflix. It's quite an eye opening piece.

I would almost posit that if you are going to be successful, then you can certainly be successful regardless of having a kid or not.

I also don't think any material success is quite so valuable as the experience of having a child. I know millionaires that decided to never have kids, and I wouldn't say they regret it, because that may be harsh, but they certainly would reconsider their choices.

I think world view defines a lot of it as well. I subscribe to my own esoteric beliefs. I believe in karma. There is an intangible joy, happiness, and luck that kids bring. They've certainly blessed my life. :)