Kids and Time | Hacker News Reader

Kids and Time

jefftk.com

53 pointsluu48 comments

I see a lot of new parents struggling to fit time in for code in those early days. The odd Ruby tweet mixed in with spit-up talk.

It took me a good 3 1/2 years to finally get into the right routine, both physically and mentally. Our kid's great (another one on the way in Sept) but we really struggled with a consistent bed time routine that was healthy for all sides for a long time.

We're in a good place now but I imagine, just like us, many parents fail to realize that every child has different needs and sometimes, you've gotta ride it out quite differently.

As an aside, the pandemic sure has helped us get into a more rigid routine. We have the odd late night for our kid but otherwise, the house is clean (as can be) and kid's in bed by 8pm. A silver lining in all this mess.

For what it's worth, two kids is not 2x the work. More like 4x. You will need to step up your game :).

> two kids is not 2x the work. More like 4x

Different families seem to have pretty different experiences here. In my case having two kids has felt like maybe 1.5x the work, decreasing as they get older. At this point (4y and 6y), I think one child would likely be more work than two, because they spend so much time playing with each other.

Probably depends a lot on what kids you happen to have, how they get along, your parenting style, and what resources you have.

> Probably depends a lot on what kids you happen to have

I agree. If my son had been born first, I'd think I was the greatest parent in the history of parenting. But my daughter came along first, and taught me otherwise.

I have one kid and two cats. Two cats is less work than one cat.

We had twins for our second round, so we hopped straight from one to three. Infant twins are about the most exhausting thing I have ever experienced. But now that they're bigger (4, 2, and 2) they're pretty easy to deal with.

I can see how having two might be a lot of work since you could feasibly try to maintain the same level of hands-on as with one. With three, that level of commitment is just impossible, so you learn to strategically ignore your kids and let them figure things out for themselves.

It's pretty great though. Couldn't imagine a world without them at this point.

My twins didn’t get easier till 4 or 5. 2-3 was actually even harder than infancy.

I maintain that there is a vast conspiracy amongst parents not to tell new parents about the threes. Sure, we will chuckle about the terrible twos, but there is this implication that it will get better after that. Ha! The threes are just like the terrible twos, except now they have intent. If we told people what the threes were like, they might never have kids :).

I'm only kinda kidding...

In my experience 2 was the cutest age, 3 wasn't as bad as I'd been led to believe, but 4 was pretty rough.

Yeah it definitely varies by kid. My daughter was a sweetheart when she was 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc, but a terror at 2.5, 3.5, 4.5. Something about those half-year points, I don't know. My son, on the other hand, who is now 7, has been the easiest kid ever. Though that seems to be evolving a bit as he starts feeling a bit more independent, he's still overall a breeze compared to my daughter. I love her dearly, the precocious little girl she is, but she gives me gray hairs.

It seems a bit strange that the half-year points would matter... I wonder if it has to do with the season? For example, does your daughter like going outside and it's easier for you to go outside at the .0 than at the .5 because of the weather where you are?

I've got 5 kids between 1 and 7 years old (twin girls in the middle) and we've been pleasantly surprised with how easy they've been at each age (compared to what we'd prepared mentally for). We're "worst-case" preparers though.

Definitely depends significantly in the nature of the children, but also a significant part on the parents too.

The main thing I've learned from parenting and being around other parents is that each kid is different in their own way.

Kids have a lot of nature built up in them.

Enjoy the next 3 months, as your rigid routine will descend into chaos once #2 shows up :)

Hah. Not expecting any less :)

I think this is why it's no coincidence that people often become people managers around the same time they have kids. Not only are you consistently managing people at home and work, it tends to be a more steady 9 to 5 job with less late night passionate coding or such required.

Or that could just be my experience.

For what it's worth, that hasn't been my experience. I've been working ~9-5:30 as a programmer for my whole career (2008-present) with essentially no late night coding. I think that's been very typical at the places I've worked (defense contractor, mature startup, Google, startup, Google).

I do think the fraction of managers with kids is higher, but I suspect this is just explained by managers generally being older?

Perhaps just different personality types. I have never worked well technically productive in an office. I view that as planning, reviewing, conversational time. I just love working on things at night. My brain feels optimized at that time. But kids stopped allowing me that window, which wasn't necessarily 9pm-2am or something. More like 3pm-midnight.

For me it's some combination of the darkness and less "other stuff happening". Otherwise I just want to go outside and otherwise get distracted by the hustle and bustle of humanity.

I’m the same way. It’s like I am more awake after 3pm and ready to finally start working. I do drink caffeine, which helps

Yup, me too. I can count the number of times I had to work late on two hands. I live in Europe, though.

I almost never have to work late. But historically I've found myself doing it anyway, either due to poor personal time management, or being really excited about solving a problem, or just because I didn't feel like my brain was working properly during the morning. I've worked pretty hard to adjust my schedule to something I consider more stable and sustainable, but I know I'm not alone in functioning this way.

I'm sure having kids is a powerful incentive to adjust more rapidly and more completely.

Yes I agree. I think it is just a statistical coincidence

I think it’s the opposite. Managers have more rigid schedules and less flexibility with remote work. If I want to be home at 2pm it’s much easier as an eng than a manager. Maybe depends on your employer though

In companies I worked in, the people who did late night coding were minority and they also tended to be people who come in very late in the morning. The kids force you to come to work sooner, so that you can pick them up at reasonable time.

But unless there was systematic crunch, programmers tended to come and leave regularly. Systematic crunch also lead to big turnover, most people did not stayed in that situation.

Management had less freedom due to meetings and calls with customers being at more random times.

I've actually went the other way, soon after my first kid was born, I had to stop being a manager pulling late nights, mulling over company issues during off-hours, and having work issues get to me.

I found it less stressful and better on my mental health to go back to becoming a programmer, although I have also made a bigger effort to leave work at work.

I went the other way! No more babysitting adults and spending all day and night married to work, more time for the kids.

I have never heard that before and plenty of my colleagues, developers, have family.

I also know plenty of managers without family.

We have twins in elementary/primary school--anything I say is couched on that reality. We found that having them sleep through the night, go to the bathroom in middle of night by themselves, and wake up themselves, freed some energy. They also are in bed asleep before 8:30, which frees some time.

The primary issue for us in terms of "free time" is the quality of the free time. It happens when our circadian rhythms are in the downhill stage. And it happens in shorter chunks than the "ideal" chunk for creative and flow-driven work.

The pandemic & having them at home has exacerbated these issues.

PS: If you have young twins or are about to have them, it is true that feeling normal happens when they are 5, and not before. This is much later than if you are having one kid at a time, on average.

> it is true that feeling normal happens when they are 5, and not before.

As the father of a 4 year old and twin 2 year olds, curious what you mean by this.

Feeling normal in what way?

Would love to answer-- can you tell me more about your curiosity?

With a 3 and 1 year old me and my wife are or on cusp of earlier bedtimes - will be a magic moment as our free time will shoot back up - we have told ourselves we will not just use it to talk about the kids or watch netflix ...lets see!

cf Barber, "Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years"

Part of her thesis is that weaving and textiles have been stereotypical occupations for the distaff gender because they can be done in a single location and are interruptible, making them very suitable for child-rearing.

Fascinating (and plausible) thesis. Thanks for the book recommendation!

Speaking as an (amateur) archeologist, weaving and textiles are traditionally female jobs in most societies because it requires fine work by small, dexterous hands. I'd say a connection to child-rearing is reaching beyond the obvious.

As the thickness of a persons fingers depends a lot on how much hard labor one has done with them (compare Alex honnold’s hands with Donald trump’s) I think you have cause and effect mostly reversed.

Perhaps GPs use of of the term "occupation" skewed this but I dont think we're talking about weaving and textile _Jobs_ here, but rather traditional craftwork eg embroidery, patchwork, quilting, knitting, smocking etc.

Women have always run the household and as GP mentioned these activities can be picked up and put down as time allows. With very small children especially, this time is often vary rare to find..!

You however don't know much about weaving, textiles and handiwork in general. While they require dexterity, they dont require small hands. And traditionally male handiwork quite often requires dexterity too.

The fine motor skills in boys develop few months later on average, but they grow up skilled just fine.

As a stay at home dad, I’d say that Barber’s thesis sounds very plausible to me.

Men can't have small dexterous soft hands?

In the same way that some women can be stronger than average men, but female soldiers are very rare historically.

That is why males cant play in orchestras ... male hands being bigger and stronger does not imply them having less dexterity

Only in the same way that women can't have beards.

And the same way men can't be pianists. Oh, wait...

I’d say that suggesting Barber is “reaching beyond the obvious.” is a wonderful example of Dunning-Kruger. It is breathtaking that you’re willing to write off the work of a brilliant expert.

“Professor emerita of archaeology and linguistics at Occidental College”

I'd like to see his partner's figures too!

We've done time-tracking a few times as a couple to figure out whether we're splitting things fairly:

* 2011: https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division (no kids yet)

* 2015: https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division-ii (18m)

* 2017: https://www.jefftk.com/p/december-2017-time-tracking (3y and 1y)

I think the increase in time has likely affected both of us similarly, but we haven't timed another week.

> Overall I'm enjoying having more time for projects, though I do miss some things about very little kids.

I might have an idea to solve that one!

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