Female Founder Secrets: Fertility
femfosec.com
femfosec.com
Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that creates a genuine barrier for women.
Startups have it worst, and everday I count the number of years I have to work in the high stress places I want or do a startup if I want to have two kids before 35. No one talks about planning around fertility. When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien. As if wanting to be pregnant and not working at the same time as being sleep deprived and wanting to spend time with my own baby when they are at their youngest is some strange outlandish fantasy.
All careers are built this way. PhD to tenure, startups, generally high stress professions. I wish the world wasn't so male centric, that feminists actually cared about finding structural solutions instead of forcing women to become copies of men to achieve gender parity. But they care more about power than actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different needs and desires, that those needs and desires are equally valuable and not inferior to desires men have, that the two genders have different strengths and capabilities and it is equally important to reward both. And maybe not wanting to outsource your baby to a nanny during their most vulnerable years is not a heretical thought.
I wish we had more focus in allowing people to transition back from taking a few years off to raise young kids, and it wasn't automatically assumed that you would be a worse founder or professor or software engineer just because you have 2-4 years you didn't commercially work. Hell, I want to take that time to contribute to open source, something I don't get to do much usually and I'm looking forward to it because I am willing to face the consequences. But I wish more women could be less scared of their career prospects for choosing to have children.
It requires education to explain the right things and show good examples. It requires soft skills to be patient and persuasive. It requires people skills to counter out bad influencers. It requires time, dedication and patience.
It's not the same job as doing taxes or writing code. But being a manager or a consultant in a software company is also different from classical hands-on jobs, and nobody has a problem with that.
But our society has taken a weird turn. Instead of recognizing the importance of this job, respecting stay-at-home parents and encouraging as many families as possible to invest in the future by taking the best care of their kids, we have effectively destroyed it. And thanks to supply/demand, it's now expected for both spouses to work if you want a regular lifestyle with regular jobs. So unless you are considerably richer than your neighbors, your chances are very weak.
Here's a contrary (and possibly even more unpopular) thought: some say spending inordinate amounts of time on child rearing is "doing it wrong". Some groups (orthodox jewish, for example) will argue that many parents helicopter too much to compensate for a lack of educational focus due to not having a well-established ethics framework to guide them.
Part of that narrative is obviously to promote certain religious frameworks, but it has a grain of truth: religious communities will generally agree among themselves on what's "right" and "wrong", and collectively impart that as part of social life, through religious stories and metaphors, etc painting the "ruleset" in broad brushstrokes, and then relying on things like natural consequences for granular learning, such that one specific individual does not need to micromanage every single aspect of their children's behaviors.
Older european descent folks might find an interesting correlation between being able to stay out as kids and family religious history. Obviously, it doesn't need to be based on religion. Japan is an interesting example where it's fairly common for both parents to work while relying on a strong collaborative social fabric nurtured from early school years.
“Trigger warning”
This is my experience from my wife, our friends, and my community & family. But it might provide some insight.
90% of women I speak to would love not to work and would like to raise kids (most men too). It’s more about the wage gap. Most of the people I speak with believe (and I agree) believe the lack of wage growth (since 1970-ish) was created by offshoring jobs and illegal immigration that drive down wages to the point both members of the household have to work. Further exasperating the issue is the prison times and the push for “independence”, which leaves many single women.
Everyone my wife and I grew up with had both (or one) parent working - none seemed happy. The happiest and smartest people I know have / are stay at home moms.
I don’t accept the “we” here. Who did what exactly to “destroy” it?
And thanks to supply/demand, it's now expected for both spouses to work if you want a regular lifestyle with regular jobs. So unless you are considerably richer than your neighbors, your chances are very weak.
I don’t understand what you are saying here. At the bottom end, sure it makes sense, but not when you are talking to a bunch of people in the tech industry.
If you have a household income of $200k/year you can live a “regular” $200k/year household lifestyle in a $200k/year house in a $200k/year neighborhood. That’s true whether that $200k/year comes from one earner or two. In fact, if it comes from one earner you are a little better off tax-wise (because of the social security cap.)
It’s true that you can’t live a $400k/year lifestyle if your household is only making $200k/year, but so what?
I also want to say that it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. That can be a trap and be especially bad if a divorce or other split up happens, not to mention when your a bored empty nester.
It's good to be have some skilled profession to come back to. Kids are time consuming from the start, but they start spending less and less time with you as they get older.
Of course it hasn't been a breeze and we've both atrophied in some personal areas of skill due to this specialization. I tend to talk to people like each future action is a step in a project to be completed, then relieve myself of the details of any task I don't play a direct role in. Sometimes useful, sometimes not. She gets a list of things done in the time it takes for me to make a plan of action but is overwhelmed more when considering the large and/or complex tasks and the time management involved, though is otherwise equally proficient. There's some synergy in there that we're still figuring out.
This puts you in an awkward position - it is really hard to get a half-time job, or at least a good half-time job - even if you can find one, you have almost certainly killed long-term career prospects because employers generally prefer full-term employees. And there is no point screwing up both of your careers by both going slightly part-time, so you easily end up in a rather awkward situation of either outsourcing a lot of parenting work that isn't ideally outsourced, or one of you giving up their career.
It is usually the person earning less who makes that sacrifice, so even a fairly small income disparity turns into a huge one.
Who says it's not a part time job for two people?
Who says our ability to cooperate in groups, the key to our success in practically every area, would skip this one?
I would have been happy to be a househusband because she's about 50 times the programmer I am, but she doesn't love business and I do. We ended up doing great, but we had to start out assuming that a 2-career life would simply be too much stress in the high tech world. Great thing is it forced me to make creative choices, but one thing that got us both hoodwinked was this notion that a woman is as fertile at 35 as she is at 21. Um... no. So we had two severely handicapped kids. It would have been nice if the popular press had been a little more honest about the biology--but of course I should have educated myself better.
You are not alone with this sentiment.
Some years ago, in my 20s/early 30s-something friend groups, any time the topic of declining female fertility with age came up, it was basically attacked as fake news and a conspiracy by older, conservative family members to get them to breed.
Moreover, sex education in school was 110% about all the wonderful ways you can avoid getting pregnant.
As I reflect back on it, no one calmly, but firmly gave the message that female fertility (in particular) is neither a given nor to be taken for granted, and that sooner than you expect it drops to zero. Beyond that point, it can only be extended by extremely expensive, painful medical procedures, and even then there is no guarantee.
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Edit: Another thing that comes to mind is that women have it really tough, in a lot of ways, and this one feels the most relevant.
I think for women, people close to you and people who you don't even know seem to take particular interest in the choices you make with your body: How you dress, how you do your makeup, who you sleep with, who you date, what you do for work, etc etc etc. Infinitely more so than with men. I think with all that going on, for young women, discussions of female fertility just feel like yet another way people are sticking their noses in her business while telling her whats best and sapping her autonomy. And I think that's why to lots of friends groups with lots of 20-something women this all feels like fake news and sinister.
(Preamble: not trying to argue anything about parent comment's experience, just wanted to find data about this.)
Some data on the rate of Down syndrome per 10,000 births vs. maternal age appears on p10 of this paper [1]. The rate is a stable 6-7 per 10,000 for the mothers in their 20s, about 50% higher for mothers age 30-35, and then jumps to 25-30 per 10,000 for mothers age 35-40 (4x the 20s rate), and something like 100 per 10,000 for mothers age 40+ (>10x the 20s rate).
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636004/pdf/nih...
Honestly, it should be a thing for guys to freeze sperm when we’re young due to the ease of it. Unfortunately for women it’s not so easy.
And this happens way more than people lead on and for the exact BS reasons you call out. As someone who dated in SF not for the hookup but to try and find a life partner who wanted to prioritize and raise a family, it was bleak. We almost seem intent on reinforcing “career is king”, not tearing it down.
I would guess that in cities with high skew (in either direction) this creates a disincentive to staying together for one person in the relationship.
I'd also guess the NIMBYs and extreme housing cost also incentivize delaying things.
If there was a lot of housing supply the financial risk of having kids would be way lower.
Contrast that to NYC where most of the folks I know who started families there still work in the city, though some did move a little further out into the suburbs.
To start a family you need somewhere to live. When housing costs are insane you need crazy money to afford it, so everything becomes about money.
It's all around just awful to pit human biology against corporate norms.
And the parent commenter you responded to above really hit the nail on the head with the things women's rights activists have prioritized. Because activists are primarily based out of universities and urban centers, they are really pre-occupied with the wants/needs of 20 something women, and could give two shits about things outside of landing that sweet job at Google.
The effect on our society is insane. It's basically incredibly common now to encounter a stereotype:
The couple in their 40s with twins, often born premature, a consequence of IVF technology leading to incredibly high rates of multiple births.
My brother and I are identical twins, born before IVF was remotely affordable. Twins used to be rare. Now they are everywhere, and fit a certain demographic. It's absolutely twisted and toxic that workplace norms and cutthroat competition in said workplace have been allowed to remain static, and demanded that humans delay reproduction.
What a testament to how absolutely corrupt the feminist movement is that it looked at the Don Draper character in Mad Men, and concluded that their mission should be to create female Don Drapers, instead of challenging and upending whether ANYONE would want to be Don Draper.
Edit: Dang and other commenters correctly pointed out that I violated some HN norms in here and also my wording was poor and undermined my point. I'm leaving the above unedited for others to learn from my stupidity, and will clarify here:
I have zero problem with people having kids later in life. I only have a problem with people being FORCED to have kids later in life when they otherwise wouldn't have, due to inflexible and arbitrary corporate norms which were established for male only workplaces. (That forced decision was what I viewed as toxic) I'm a full advocate of women's rights as well, and my frustrations with feminism expressed above were intended to express my view that it didn't go far enough, and "settled", leaving women in a perpetually unfair position compared to men.
The pushback from the men in power was enormous, and the eventual compromise was, "Ok, we'll grudgingly let you work in our companies, as long as you accept worse treatment, lower wages -- and most importantly, always pretend to be little men."
This isn't the fault of "the feminists." This is a bum deal that was the best women of the 80's could get, and then they tried to make it work.
There are some kernels of insight there, but this is not a remotely accurate characterization of any of the women's rights activists I have ever met, and it largely comes across to me as paternalistic victim-blaming.
20-something feminist activists have limited power and influence, and are not responsible for toxic workplace culture in industries dominated by middle-aged men.
If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fertility is more important than your career then have kids without making a fuss about it. Especially if you know that for some ecologically unreasonable reason you want numerous kids then start early.
Also I’ve seen so many female acquaintances wanting to keep up their old life ambitions and eventually just never go back there because child rearing became more important than anything (and sometimes their sole motivation left in life). How can you be so sure you won’t fall for this ? Especially if you aspire at staying at home for a few years, it seems a higher predisposition to stay in that state forever than when you long for your office job.
Because some manage to do it both and it seems right that they be rewarded for it.
With kids you just have to focus on a few priorities with the time you have left and if it really is software then one will find the motivation to cultivate it and to make it work. Heck we have the perfect job for it you can remote you can freelance you can contribute ... But talking about aspirations not pursued without a kid to be developed while child rearing when you will have even less time sounds like a fantasy to me.
The problem with this viewpoint is that, at scale, having kids isn't just an individual "life choice." It's a basic requirement for a sustainable human society. People have to have 2.1 kids on average in order for society to keep existing. We're well below that in almost the entire developed world. That means the most liberal societies in the world, where women can choose to pursue careers and business, are also not sustainable and can't continue to exist without importing people from societies with traditional gender roles. In other words, they currently exist only due to a sort of arbitrage and aren't viable in the steady state the way they're structured now.
If you think liberal societies are a good thing, then we really need to figure out a way to allow women to have careers and also children. It's not "having it all." It's about pursuing two pillars of life that for most people are both necessary: work, and family. We should be thinking about it in the same way as we design buildings to have sufficient bathrooms for everyone--as a biological fact of life that we must accommodate.
I think what you're missing is the fact raising a child is something that all human beings are biologically engineered to find overwhelmingly fulfilling, yet office environments are not designed with employee fulfillment (or even basic wellbeing) in mind.
Once you become a parent, over time your viewpoint shifts from seeing the baby as an obstacle that gets in the way of other things, to everything else getting in the way of your time with bubs.
I suspect the reason that many of your friends aren't going back to the office is that raising a child is simply more satisfying.
> When I mention it to someone that I want to take time off for a couple years to have children in silicon valley, they look at me as if I'm an alien.
Is this really that common? As an anecdote, a few years ago, my kid's preschool teacher announced she was quitting half way through the school year due to health reasons. When I privately asked if everything was ok, it turned out to be that she wanted to have kids of her own. I was relieved and totally supportive of her decision: everyone ought to have the chance of choosing the life and family they want to have.
I can see how a certain "why would you want kids" attitude might come out from some young folks, but I think it's not so much that they're judging you personally, but more that they are expressing their own preference for not wanting kids at that stage in their life.
As for gap years, I know someone who got into software development relatively "late" in life (coming from the culinary industry and doing occasional freelance web stuff). My mom took some very long gaps and still had no problems working afterwards. The idea that one has to toil without gap years or else be banned from the industry forever is a myth. As you said, I think the mantra "if there's a will, there's a way" is very true.
I also see the shift in priorities over the years being very common, and I don't think there's anything inherently bad about changing one's mind about whether kids are more important or even the reverse (deciding that career work is more fulfilling than being a housewife/husband after all).
You can't do everything at once. It's a simple fact of life. Be a stay at home mom, sure. Be a mom with some daycare. Later on, allow your child to go to school. Make some choices! That's what growing older is about: pruning the tree of possibility so some branches can grow strong.
I am far, far more career-oriented now that I have a kid than before I did. Now I have someone who depends on me financially, who I want to provide for, who I want to be a good role model for. Having a kid flipped a switch in me that is leading me to much more ambitious work. Before the kid, I figured the world was just going to broil slowly and that it didn't particularly matter what I did. Now I have a drive to make a difference for her future life and ensure she'd be taken care of were something to happen to me. And for everyone who's gonna assail me for letting my child spend 23.8% of her waking hours not in my direct presence... well, you do you.
> With kids you just have to focus on a few priorities with the time you have left This focus has been beneficial for me.
My wife and I have twins a little less than 2 years old, we are both ~35, but we live in rural-ish NH not SV. She has taken the last 2+ years off for the pregnancy and to function as primary caregiver while I continue to work. While I don't feel a need to work (perhaps a "need to project" would be closer) I do feel a need to provide for my kids while being with them as much as possible. As such I have chosen a low-stress, 9-5 SWE role optimizing for family time over career advancement. At least for the foreseeable future.
From what we can tell she seems to be the only woman from her MBA class that has taken so much time off from career to have children. I don't want to speak for my wife but my impression is that she feels torn by desires to have a high-power career and to spend all the time with the kids (though pandemic parenting in NE with no third spaces available means that some days it would be an easy choice). Maybe that is society having an outsize impact on her internal valuation of family rearing, but I am not sure.
The point I am making is that kind of gender bifurcation doesn't fit the mold that I (a cis-gendered, white man) fit so I find it less plausible that a less-represented person would match it either as my "group" [more accurate term requested] has largely set the social norms.
I acknowledge I could be an outlier.
I don’t understand this conclusion at all. You just described a fairly standard situation, and then said trying to apply historical understandings of gender don’t work... and yet they fit perfectly within the story you provided.
To me the issue has always been allowing other to define success for you.
If you find success is being a high powered executive who spends 90hrs a week working, then do that, and don’t let someone else tell you that having kids is the only metric of success.
If your definition of success is raising children who are normal humans and can function in society and make it a better place, then do that; and don’t let anyone tell you that success can only be found in working and being valued at ever higher dollar amounts.
Your definition of success is exactly that: YOURS not anyone else’s and you shouldn’t take anyone else’s definition and try to apply it to yourself.
I think most of society’s current problems stem from everyone using some amorphous societal understanding of success that no one has defined, but thinks everyone else knows. You be your best as you understand that to be. That’s the only path to happiness. Trying to conform to some gender philosopher’s definition is a rabbit hole that leads no where good.
The reason we appear to have the 1950s responsibility split is my wife sold her business (not HN-levels of success, hence me keeping my job) concurrent with discovering she was pregnant. She didn't have the next thing lined up so she has decided to enjoy being a full-time mother. When she finds the right fit there is a good chance that I will jump to being a full-time parent to support her career aspirations from the domestic side. Presently I do 5 hours of childcare on a normal workday (0600-0900[alone], 1700-1900[with wife]). I would far prefer to do 10 (the entirety of their waking hours).
> To me the issue has always been allowing other to define success for you.
I still find it embarrassingly easy to fall subject to "keeping up with the Jonses" thinking. I hope that ends as some point as I don't want to pass that on to my kids the way it was to me. It sounds like you have gotten over this hurdle so I would definitely like to hear how you did it.
If you are mean predictive from the perspective of big data, e.g. differences in search term rates of those that identify as men vs those that identify as women (in as much as search terms represent the modern capture of an individual's needs), maybe. I can believe without presented evidence that there is positive predictive power there and that it is currently being used/exploited.
It is worth calling out that is reductive with the hope that it will trigger a shift in language used to be more inclusive.
I wholeheartedly support the idea that, as a society, we ought to value childcare/child-rearing and (perhaps monetarily) support those who perform this service. But I don't believe corporations ought to be the ones making a space for that.
Something of a chicken and egg problem there.
If you want companies to stop talking about gender, you need to get the NYT to stop writing articles about how a gender ratio any lower than 50:50 in any role at a company is proof positive that the company is evil and must be destroyed.
This would require that culture, broadly, stop believing women need to have a formal job. Such cultures exist, but I feel there would be a certain amount of resistance in moving the West to such a model.
No it doesn't, the gender imbalance in one industry can cancel out over all industries.
If not that, the only other answer is the parents. Are you as parents willing to give your kids a better childhood at the price of throwing away 10% of your career, with no (monetary) compensation? I suspect, very few. (More will do so with only one parent giving up the years.)
"You can have it all" is a lie. You can't both have a wonderful career, a great marriage, and give your kids all they need from their parents. You can't. What we really need is for people to stop believing that "having it all" is possible, and therefore expecting that someone owes it to them. Instead, people need to prioritize and choose what they want out of the tradeoffs that reality imposes.
1) See having children as a right and benefit to society, then society should shoulder at least some of the "burden" of it. By providing child care, (paid) maternity and paternity leave etc. Many countries already do this.
2) See having children as a privilege and a choice made by individuals knowing there will be sacrifices in time, finances, career etc. In this case, the individual (or couple) deals with the consequences. In some cases, incentives can align such that companies provide paid leave, but at least right now it's not the norm.
Looking at countries that provide paid leave vs those that don't, the ones that do seems to have a healthier society.
In Sweden doing so is quite normal and an employer is not allowed to object in any way, as long as you give a few months' notice.
For each of my children my wife and I took two months together at birth, then she stayed at home for another ten months while I worked. After that I spent six months on parental leave while she went back to work.
This means our children have each had a year and a half of at least one of us being home with them before they started at daycare. It's been a magical time and I feel blessed to have had that opportunity. Months where every day was built entirely around just playing and learning together.
Of course, you might note that my wife was home for about twice as long as I was. This was definitely a financial decision and shows there's still plenty of room for improvement.
What is happening is destroying both men and women in their roles: sure, men can have their great enjoyment at the male and performance centric workplace, but providing for a family is also part of being a man, and it's being ignored. Sexual life of most men is in a strong decline.
Sadly man hating and women hating increased together (according to Google trends), and more and more relationships are just transactional.
What's even more interesting, upvalue work that is traditionally female, and you may see more men drawn to it, staying home, teaching etc.
Instead, those can be thankless jobs from a money standpoint, and only folks who sell their souls into a male centric hellhole of work environments (PhD life is silly, medical residencies are nuts etc) are rewarded and women are told to lean in.
Effectively they do get paid. In a marriage, mothers own half their husband's income. Outside a marriage, mothers get child support.
The fact it's not taxed as "pay" is a bonus for mothers, not a downside!
It's weird how the myth persists that mothers "not getting paid" a taxable wage is some kind of negative.
I don't think we should push women into these job, but I don't think we should push men into those jobs either.
> it's crazy that a women doesn't get paid for raising kids
Actually, my kid's day-care provider does exactly this! In a few years, he'll have teachers doing the same.
Valuing work is complicated. Personally, I'd be happy to be a stay-at-home parent if finances made that easy, even if seemed a little thankless. It's not like I feel that the webshit I build all day long is really valuable.
If someone feels undervalued as a stay-at-home parent, it's probably because they feel stuck in that job, either because of lack of education, lack of available child care, or otherwise lack of jobs.
Are you suggesting that the father should pay the mother a salary for raising the kids? (Or same thing with the sexes reversed if it's the father raising the kid)
Isn't that just a more formal arrangement of a stay-at-home mother/father? The main difference would be: more financial independence to the stay-at-home party, which is good in my book, but I'm not sure if that's what you're suggesting.
Because she already collects a massive amount of utility associated with raising her own children. The economics of paying people to raise their own children doesn't make sense; the externality allocations are completely wrong. I'm sure you can imagine some of the perverse incentives that come into play.
A woman benefits from raising her own kids (with an associated opportunity cost in employment availability), and the father also benefits from her raising the kids (without the same opportunity cost), so the rational economic strategy is for the father to defray some of the opportunity costs to the mother. This arrangement has existed for at least thousands of years and is called "marriage".
Why would women get paid to raise their own kids? You suggest it's because when done well, it has incredible value to society. What is that value to society? It's having functional, productive members. Women already reap the benefits of that by sharing society with other peoples' well raised children.
What I mean to say is that it's a web of mutual benefit. The gap is actually in all the people who don't have children, who are essentially free riders in this scheme, but that is offset by the fact that they pay taxes for things like schools, which they don't themselves consume, and lack of tax breaks that parents receive.
But we seem to want to be paid. It's interesting that socializing the payments seems to strike people as more freeing than just social obligation.
This seems like the kind of thinking that eventually requires payments to give up the thrill of killing each other.
Human beings have limited fertility. It sucks, but it's part of life.
Professional life is designed around the idea that you are a male with a female partner who will bear and raise your children while you are attaining your professional credentials and leaving them to their own devices. That is no longer a valid design because we now want female professionals and male involvement in child rearing. Therefore, the system must be changed.
But if you say that every PhD program, medical school, start up, etc. should be designed so that it's NBD to take a year off for having a kid, you're crazy, how would that even work, anyway, have you heard about egg freezing??
Is there any scenario in life were someone with 2-4 more years of experience (maybe 50% more at that point in time) isn't more valued for their greater experience? What is the difference between a junior and senior engineers salary for instance? A 4 year break is possibly worse in that regard.
Now, is person C who has 4 years of software development experience, no gap, more skilled and capable at software development than person A who has 2 years of software experience and then a 2 year gap or person B who has 2 years and no gap? Absolutely, and I'd expect C to be quite rationally valued more highly in the software development market. Person C has twice as much directly relevant experience at a time in career where the curve is still rising quickly.
Thinking that parenting is not "experience", or that it has no commercial relevance is (in my opinion) a mistake.
Many roles, I suspect a candidate with 4 years of SWE and 4 years of parenting could be a more valuable team member than a candidate with 8 years of just SWE. Parenting does not universally develop emotional maturity and wider perspectives, but I believe there's a correlation.
Disclaimer: Of course, individual differences swamp any other factor, so always take each person as they come.
First, since household income is a combination of the mother and father's incomes, women still have the same household income and spending power as men. The remaining complaint is worse work fulfillment for women. I don't think people are entitled to work fulfillment. It's a minor issue in my eyes. There are advantages and drawbacks to this issue. While mothers have a more difficult time with work fulfillment and climbing the corporate ladder, mothers also have an easier time avoiding the corporate environment and work pressure. Women who don't find fulfillment at work can more easily not work than the equivalent men.
Second, ignoring gender and seeing this from a gender-neutral parent perspective, many of these upper middle class parents are lamenting the tradeoff between living an upper middle class lifestyle and being parents. I don't think there is a problem when upper middle class parents have to downgrade their living standards when becoming parents. I don't think people are entitled to an upper middle class lifestyle.
I am deeply convinced that I would be as productive at 32 hours a week as I am at 40, ±5%. And the +5% in particular interests me, because it would say a lot about how we are mishandling creative roles. 32 hours a week not only opens up more diversity in hiring, it also shifts the balance in co-parenting. Yes, I can take Billie to his eye appointment/drop him off at school/buy groceries for dinner on the way home.
Men are "toeing the partying line?" I must have missed that memo.
I don't know about you but I'm pretty certain I'd be a worse SWE after 4 years break. Worse than I was before the break and much worse than I'd have been if I didn't take the break (and not just because I would have become better with practice but also because being a good SWE means keeping up with new stuff happening all the time). I personally see it as dropping a level on the company engineering ladder, it's not the end of the world but it's definitely a regression, regardless of the reason for the break.
Even the concept of two genders is under attack, let alone whether they have categorical behavior patterns.
I truly hope you are able to find a partner and employer who supports you in your life decisions.
> "actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different needs and desires".
I can't see any other meaning besides equality of outcomes split across employees by fertility lines regardless of inputs. I think this is unfair. What do you tell someone who did not take X amount of time off when their outcome is equated with someone who did?
Increasing paternity leave for all people doesn't help compensate those who do not have children or don't have this issue. Likewise for subsidizing fertility treatments.
This is something I've heard a lot of talented young women say at the beginning of their careers. With all due respect... give it a few years.
Sexism plays out in really subtle ways, often unconsciously. After a while though you start to notice patterns: who is hired and promoted, who is mentored and fast-tracked, which people are given high-profile projects and which aren't, who is noticed by leadership and who isn't.
You'll also become more aware of aggregate effects. I.e., "because boss at company X mentored me, I was able to get a senior position at company Y, which paved the way to my current job at fast-growing company Z."
That said, as an individual woman in the industry, devoting much energy to thinking about sexism is a losing game. In fact I think it's better to pretend it doesn't exist and focus on what you can control: the quality of your work, your skills, relationships with coworkers, and so on.
I was breast-feeding while a professor and needed to pump at work. The nearest lactation space was in a different building, which was somewhat inconvenient, and I had a sometimes-shared office during the day so that wasn't perfect. But it worked out -- mostly because a bunch of, uh, I guess feminists had advocated for lactation spaces to be officially made available across campus (they did a great job, taking a very data-driven approach wrt geography and student/staff density). Before those spaces were available, I know a woman who pumped in a dirty janitorial closet. One day the janitor walked in on her accidentally and everyone was quite embarrassed. But there were no other places available; even the bathrooms didn't have electrical outlets close enough to space to sit to pump.
Heartily agree that destigmatizing gaps and breaks would be great, and there are lots of people working to do that. Maybe it's different where you live compared to where I live. I guess I live in a low-cost-of-living part of the Midwest where we aren't so high-stress about everything. Don't know what it would take to change SV.
For me, I sure as heck outsourced my baby to a nanny 15 hours a week after she was 3 months old. Do you know how nice it is to shower alone and have conversations with adults? Also, it was wonderful for my kid to get some love from someone else; I don't why she should be restricted to only two adult contacts for 16 months of her life. I was very lucky that I was able to teach evening classes and my husband took FMLA one day a week for the first year, so that we both had time to devote to the careers we love as well as the kid we love. I fully support the stay at home moms I know, and I am also thrilled that I did not do that, thanks.
But my message to you is don't be scared of your career prospects w/children. Seriously, don't worry about it. F*&^ anyone who says having kids will derail your career. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Maybe a TBI you sustain during a competitive road biking event or your weekend at Tahoe will derail your career instead. And the higher-paid you are before you have kids, the easier it will be to advance afterward. Life is long. Babyhood and toddlerhood is short. You'll be fine.
I'm not sure what kind of lifestyle would lead to a kid with only two adult contacts - most stay at home parents I've known are involved in multiple social groups aimed at parents and kids, even decades ago my mother took us to playgroups and swapped babysitting time with others to get that time alone.
I think we can make the world better, it's within our reach if only a few courageous executives would take that initial hit in immediate productivity in the interest of long term sustainability.
HN is to technical discussions what ____ is to social discussions.
Please fill in the blank.
Serious question, and thanks to any serious respondents!
No need to thank me.
Yes! I wish we could talk about this more openly and honestly. As you note, we still structure workplaces around the needs of married men with stay-at-home spouses, and insofar as women can succeed within that framework, it comes at a real cost to their families. There is a huge gap between how many children women want, and how many they are having: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility...
> As a result, the gap between the number of children that women say they want to have (2.7) and the number of children they will probably actually have (1.8) has risen to the highest level in 40 years. (From 1972 to 2016, men have expressed almost exactly the same ideal fertility rates as women: In a given year, they average just 0.04 children below what women say is ideal.)
It does't make any sense to me to structure career paths to necessarily put the major pressure points during the same time period when biology dictates people will be having kids. Kids really don't require intensive parenting for all that long. Our oldest is already very manageable at 8. I'll only be 45 when our youngest hits that age. At that point, I'll have at least another two decades before retirement, but parenting obligations will go down a lot. I'll be twiddling my thumbs waiting for grandkids, I guess. But I would have preferred to back load the career stuff a bit so the major milestones weren't happening while I was trying to parent toddlers.
Corporate policies such as paying for egg freezing are a really unfortunate example of the male-centric nature of workplaces. I'm sure it's well-intentioned, but in effect the message is that women must shift their biological timeline to accommodate the workplace.
Not only that, but egg freezing is not magic. More often than not, IVF using frozen eggs does not work: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expensive-lottery...
> The data that does exist is not overwhelmingly positive. According to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 21 percent of cycles among patients using their own frozen eggs ultimately ended in live births. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which uses a slightly different metric than the CDC, showed odds that top out around 11 percent, depending on age.
> actual equality where we acknowledge that women have different needs and desires
I find your view sexist and disturbing. 99% men would love to take couple of years off with kids as well. But face even more obstacles!
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
If taking a break to focus on parenting was more acceptable, anyone (man/woman/nonbinary) who wanted to do this would benefit.
Many careers are built around this idea that you spend 5-10 years, with no breaks, in your late 20s and 30s working on something. What if taking a substantial chunk of time off was more common (for anyone)?
Exactly this. Generous maternity leave and at least 0.25x paternity leave. I am not a woman, so I can't possibly begin to imagine how tough pregnancy is on a body. I also really doubt that anyone is really focused on work in the months immediately following birth.
You can't buy baby food and bond with it with a pink ribbon or with the fact that your company's board of directors is 50% female.
Lack of parental leaves is just young parents subsidizing unsavory capitalistic practices and outright greed.
One thing that would help is having a Universal Basic Income, with Universal Healthcare. This would allow people to work on startups at their own pace, instead of desperately needing to become successful in a relatively short time-frame in order to create some stability.
For example, in most top universities, they give roughly the same leave to new fathers as new mothers. New mothers use this time to care for their baby, but many new fathers use this time as an extended sabbatical/research leave. Their wives take care of the baby for the most part, and they work on their next book.
Then when it comes time for tenure review, the men who did this have accomplished more than they would have if they hadn't had kids (and more than some faculty who are mothers, who spent their leave with their baby).
So when everyone gets the same treatment, that doesn't necessarily reduce or eliminate disparities — and in some cases it can exacerbate them.
Obviously freezing your eggs is something that you can do as individual without society's input, and my preferred solution is a cultural overhaul...
But economic productivity is only useful insofar as it leads to better lives for people, economic activity that increases well-being by one unit is pointless if it requires us to spend more than one unit of well-being (by say, freezing our eggs and not becoming grandparents until we're 80) to achieve it.
The problem is that society has been moving in basically the exact opposite direction for quite a while now. Anyone married under 25 is seen as weird and rushing into something, and anyone with a child at that age is assumed to have gotten themselves there by accident.
As a newish parent (nearly two years), the only real costs I see are for childcare. Yes clothing and food costs something, but it's not that much (and plenty of people will give you old clothes if you ask). We share a bedroom, and it's not a problem. This can be solved by having the right support structures in place by the state. I live in an EU country, but my country doesn't do very well with this.
Although my SO does not work (they were studying before our child was born), we do not have family living nearby that can help with childcare, which seems to be how most people cope here. Ideally the state would provide free childcare to all families, regardless of whether parents are working or not. It should be at a high enough standard, that state childcare is the norm (like schools), not the exception.
I'll completely agree with your point about finding the right person, which is absolutely true.
But honestly a lot of stable couples are less precarious than they think. Especially people in the tech industry. You're making more than 100k/year on your own, you're set. But from a bunch of conversations, they imagine sending their kids to a $200k/year college or read the worst possible stats about how much raising a kid costs, without understanding people make parenting work with so much less to no detriment of their kids. If anything, I'd argue being rich makes you more likely to mess up your kids but I should move on.
Instead, I think people should consider whether they want to raise a baby when they have a fraction of the energy they had when they were in their 20s. They should consider whether they want to raise a toddler when just stepping out of their car weird tweaks their ankle, making it hard to walk for a couple days. Or whether they want to stress about their kids while they have to start taking blood pressure meds for the simple reason of "it's genetics and you're 50, this is just how your body works now."
Obviously, if you can't pay your water bill, maybe don't have kids. But even then, if you're smart and kind, you could probably pull it off and the world would be better for it.
I couldn’t possibly imagine having kids earlier. Even now, it still seems like a pipe dream. And I have no interest in Ivy League schools or private elementary, etc.
We need to figure out a way to reconcile having children starting in the late teens and ending in the mid-20s (which is by far the safest, cheapest, and easiest time to do it) with the modern economy (which prioritizes slavishly focusing on school/work until your fertility has mostly dried up and you're at massively increased risk of passing on genetic abnormalities).
One strategy could be to have child-rearing skip a generation, with grandparents (in their 30s/40s) doing most of the work while the parents (in their teens/20s) go to school and start their career.
Am I on a more extreme end of the spectrum? Absolutely, and I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone; but I’m happy with the choice I made.
Lord Winston, who is professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, warned that it was "a very unsuccessful technology" and said: "The number of eggs that actually result in a pregnancy after freezing is about 1%." He later clarified he was referring to live births.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51463488#:~:text=Lord%20Wins....
“It’s not like I would discourage egg freezing. Women should be doing it because it’s the best option they have, but it is not an insurance policy,” says Christos Coutifaris, past president of the ASRM and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania. “Insurance policies usually guarantee a payoff. In this case, there is no guarantee.” https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/14/133377/mothers-j...
20-30% of eggs extracted will fertilize and grow to day 5 blastocysts (aka embryos). The rest will die before reaching day 5.
If the eggs were preserved before the women turned 35, each blastocyst has a roughly 70% chance of being chromosomally normal (which means it is a "good, viable embryo"). For women above 35 years old, the percentage of viable blastocysts goes down (e.g. for a 40 year old, ~40% of blastocysts are viable). This is why is it is important to preserve eggs early.
Each chromosomally normal day 5 blastocyst has about a 50% chance to result in a live birth after it is transferred.
So... if you are 35 years old and start with say 12 frozen eggs, you are maybe going to end up with 2-3 viable day 5 embryos, which are likely to turn into 1.5 children.
Note that this presumes everything is in working order with the woman's reproductive system. Egg quality issues or other issues can make the probabilities for each step decrease.
The article you're linking even says that Winston is using the wrong number, and spends most of its time explaining why he's wrong;
> Lord Winston's 1% figure was referring to the proportion of all frozen eggs thawed for use in fertility treatment which result in a pregnancy and subsequent live birth.
You have plenty of eggs; it's not particularly relevant if a single egg has a 1% chance of resulting in a live birth. The extraction process will gather something like 10 eggs (plus or minus a lot) and then later you fertilize lots of those eggs and select the best candidates for implantation. Selectively quoting the single-egg success rate provides an inaccurate picture of the actual success rates of the overall process (one that's quite obscure and therefore susceptible to people misunderstanding when articles publish misleading advice like this).
Furthermore, research shows that the primary factor determining live birth rate is the age of the eggs. As you get above 37/38 the live-birth rate starts to decrease dramatically. If you freeze your eggs at 35 then implant at age 40 then you don't see the same increase in failure rate as if you just did IVF at age 40.
IF you want to postpone having kids until your 40s, but you know you really want to have kids at that age, then freezing your eggs is a good strategy for those that can afford it.
I'm all for giving women more choices/options around child-bearing; it's already difficult enough for women to balance career and children in modern society.
> Insurance policies usually guarantee a payoff. In this case, there is no guarantee.
If you're looking to buy an insurance policy that guarantees you will get pregnant, I'm sorry to say no such thing exists. All you can do is improve your probabilities. Freezing your eggs does this.
> Women should be doing it because it’s the best option they have
Again your quote is actually arguing for freezing eggs being a good option. What would you say "sound advice" is for women that want to defer having children until their 40s, if it's not freezing their eggs?
Isn't 10 minus "a lot", close to or equal to 0? Or is there something I'm missing with this phrasing?
https://www.arcfertility.com/how-is-ivf-done-step-by-step/#:....
There's no reason to believe that after all the factors arrayed against IVF children (poor starting egg quality, genetic and cellular damage from ice crystals, mitochondrial damage potential, implantation problems, etc) that the null hypothesis would be "they will be exactly the same".
I wouldn't trade the childhood I had with them for the world. By the time I came around, they were able to provide a wise, warm, stable and loving home in a way that even the best-intentioned younger folks wouldn't have known how to do. That I played fewer games of toss the ball or the like in exchange doesn't matter a whit. FWIW.
Definitely don't beat yourself up for not being younger; kids will always have more free time and energy than their parents (I had all my kids before 27) and the important thing is to help them find outlets for that energy that they really enjoy.
Children birthed to older parents are unlikely to have grandparents.
Society so heavily stigmatizes teen pregnancy that she still thinks of herself as kind of a screwup, but minus all the self-doubt, it seems like about as well as a life could possibly go.
I think if I had known how young late 30s and 40s actually is it may have resonated. Like, I still do all of the hobbies and activities I did in my 20s and am arguably in the best shape of my life, pandemic bod not withstanding. I think I truly felt my youth was fleeting and I wanted to be able to "enjoy it".
The reality is I squandered it in some ways and I feel a bit of sadness that my children will have a dad in his 60s by the time they are out of the house. Should have given that youthful energy to them with something to spare as adults. In reality I probably won't have much left when they become adults.
Such is life!
EDIT: Someone down thread makes another point that applied to us. By the time we were "ready", we found we had "unexplained infertility". Science helped us out but it wasn't fun, it was stressful, and pushed our parenthood even later than planned.
Only downside seems to be that I'm a solid 5-7 years older than my equivalently experienced colleagues.
Edit: my heart goes out to anyone suffering through IVF.
Edit 2: we got lucky, she gave birth at 38. Anyone else going through this I'd recommend a book called it starts with the egg.
PS I keep saying "she" because it wouldnt be true to say "we". I didn't suffer my body getting fucked up with hormones.
This has the potential to massively harm our society in the long term.
We need to ascribe virtue to having children. We need to ascribe an extremely high amount of virtue to being a good parent.
People with less education have more children, on average, than people with more education.
Couple that with the fact that depression is most prevalent among childless women in their 40s, it’s like we’re fighting nature to create a perfect 3rd wave utopia. Of course women should follow their heart and we should build a society that allows them to do so on equal terms, but we should not discourage homemaking and stigmatize people who want to raise children.
And then there’s the practical side of things for which I’ve not been able to come to a good solution: In order to have a society of power career couples, someone has to raise their kids. As a couple that means you have to find someone who makes at most the same as you make, but probably less, to be your nanny (otherwise it would make more sense financially to just do it yourself). I don't see how that’s a sustainable narrative unless we are holding out for technology to fill that need.
Me? I would be a stay at home dad in a heartbeat. I love cooking and homemaking and being there for children. But practically in my relationship that doesn't make sense so I’m obligated to work my days away in order to provide for my family. I think there’s this idea that all men love career life because it pays the bills. In reality it’s far from a pipe dream existence.
Point is life is about making sacrifices in order to find happiness. If you sacrifice your youth and fertility for a shot at big riches, ultimately thats your choice. I just wish as a society we were more honest about reality and weren’t so dismissive of people who choose to raise children. That is where I see the path start to turn destructive.
Why ask these questions only as they relate to women and motherhood? Why haven't men being presented a false promise that value and purpose is derived from work? Being a father without a snazzy career is equally (if not more so) frowned upon by plenty of people these days. I don't think that stigma is healthy, either. Why do men have to emulate other men to be "valuable"? Why do men have to avoid emulating women to be "valuable"?
> Couple that with the fact that depression is most prevalent among childless women in their 40s
I don't know your source for this but you should at least consider the possibility that women, particularly women with financial resources (childless women in their 40s, for example), are significantly more likely to seek mental health treatment compared to similarly situated men. Correlation is not causation and more women being treated for depression does not necessarily mean more women are depressed.
I used to think that, but then I found out that many people aren't trying to emulate men, they are trying to do a more encompassing thing, juggling an unprecedented number of roles and responsibilities surpassing what has been human in nature.
So, basically, even worse than emulating men.
My observation is that a lot of this is based on an assumption that men want to be in corporate careers. As in, pursuing a corporate/intellectual blue collar or white collar career is not an optional checkbox of pride for men that want to exchange time for food and shelter and have a female partner. I think if this was acknowledged for how it is interdependent in the state of the world it would help even out representation and many other strifes, as opposed to gendering the problems and invalidating problems based on priority.
> Why do women have to emulate men to be valuable?
Growing up in a "traditional" family, the first thing that struck me when I went to work at a big investment bank was how the women did everything they could to be like men - all the way down to dress. I remember thinking, this is called equality? That what men traditionally did is clearly so much better, so women now need to become men, and we should celebrate the achievement that they are now free to do so?
I mean, yes, obviously if they want to, the fact that they can is a good thing. But the fact that they almost need to, is not.
(https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-h...)
I don't disagree homemaking should be less stigmatized, but the real problem is American startup culture that expects this kind of around-the-clock all-in hustle mentality. The vast majority of businesses are actually just small firms with a few people that make a decent living. That's the lifestyle that should be celebrated and desirable. There's no reason running a business can't be compatible with having a family, we just need to re-define what it looks like to run a company. The focus should be on sustainability and balance, not growth at any cost.
While there are differences in general approaches males and females take in raising children I don't think there is any research indicating females are necessarily better than males, or the contrary. The reductio ad absurdum of it is that males tend to be more challenging and females tend to be nurturing, but those distinctions are highly variable.
1) The success of movements for gender equality actually make the excesses of those movements hard to critique.
2) Treating a problem as a choice. The problem is having a home that is relatively clean with 3 healthy and enjoyable meals a day for 2 adults and children. Having one adult focus on income earning while another focuses on household management is a solution many families find works for them. There are others. 2 career focused adults with a nanny is an option if those careers have enough earning power. Some immigrant families here in Canada will have the entire extended family live in a single (large) residence. The grandparents do childcare and household maintenance while all the adults work.
Most media seem to treat family arrangement as people dictating their political philosophy onto those less powerful when in reality the vast majority are managing trade-offs in time, finances, lifestyle, and career.
3) The increasing tendency to optimize society for the upper end of the wealth distribution. When a woman becomes a fortune 500 CEO, supreme court judge, or in any other way reaches the upper echelon of society this is treated as a victory for women as a identity class, even though such victories have no material benefit to the 99% of women who lead normal lives near the median.
Ideally, society optimizes for the median while allowing outliers to path to success. But that requires a level of nuance and flexibility that doesn't seem to have much place in public life.
Why do we assume that those behaviors are inherently a man's?
Women that have a drive to become business leaders do so for personal reasons and not to emulate anyone (except perhaps personal heroes who could happen to be women).
You later speak about a wish to become a stay-at-home father. Is this emulating women or is it a wish based on activities that are not inherently gendered such as cooking and taking care of children?
I'm in a similar situation where I'd love to be a parent full-time and be essentially free to live my life. But I could never do that even if my wife wanted to work and let me stay at home. With one person's salary, you can't really sustain a house unless you drastically drop your living standards. It's not really a choice.
We have allowed companies to lower the value of work, drastically forcing every being in a household to work as soon as possible. Society has bought into this making any choice that is not work/career feel like a wrong choice.
Regardless of sex, the problem is the work culture itself.
FTFY.
As you state further in, it's not women's exclusive job to be child-rearing nor is it not 'work' to maintain and run a house.
It's the US (and especially California) that drains everything possible from young families.
There's a lot of sneering and judgment by women, toward women who choose to be a stay at home mom and not have a career.
It's not just about 'snazzy careers'. It's about self-realization. When given the choice in countries with tons of generous child welfare policies like in much of Europe, women still defer pregnancy and prefer to get an education or a job, and I don't blame them because honestly most people grow tired of being a stay-at-home parent very quickly. It's just a menial, not really inspiring, and not very social job.
I know a lot of guys who said the same thing you said, that they'd love to stay at home. All who did now work again full-time, some even admitted directly to me how much they hated it after only a few months and how much they missed work.
I think this attempt to romanticize stay-at-home parenting is basically cultural nostalgia. It's also interesting that you frame it as a women's job as others have pointed out, because the only reason women had to do it in the past is because they didn't get much of a say in the matter.
So your idea makes sense, but not in today's economy.
I would offer one amendment: in the US at least, disagreement on this theme is probably one of the major dividing lines between liberals and progressives (and their fellow travelers). Liberals (like Elizabeth Warren, who has labeled herself a progressive but is generally liberal in her policy positions) prioritize free child care and other policies that would make outsourcing childcare less financially onerous, freeing people to work more; progressives and their fellow travelers (like Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang) prioritize paid family leave, UBI, and other policies that would minimize the need to outsource childcare in the first place by allowing people to work less.
The reason for this unhappiness is then portrayed as the inability of the women to not have a career. it is often, the other way around.
Bomb some more countries. Make some more refugees. Problem solved.
In England, when the aspiring middle classes started finding it impossible to afford servants (which was a problem, because that was a key mark of their status), they started taking in kids from workhouses to serve them, and made it out to be some kind of charity. When that ran out they started up guest worker programs. A notable one took poor Jewish women fleeing a certain German government. Win-win, right?
Incidentally this is orthogonal to if men raise the kids or women.
You can’t equate the two. The stigma is not entirely irrational. Raising kids is the default thing humans do, graduating at the top of your law school and becoming a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore is not.
Nor should we stigmatize those that do not have a career and do not have children. Because that's a thing too. So it rather seems that the stigma depends on having a career than having kids. Having kids is just a common reason for why many women might not have the time to have a career but not the only one.
I completely agree.
I don't think it's a men vs women issue.
Our current society is structured in such a way that work is necessary to survive & thrive - it is usually not possible to take a lengthy break from work without financial & career consequences.
Whether you are taking that break for childcare or (to pick a typical men's stereotype) drinking beer & having BBQ's with your friends every day doesn't make a difference.
I think this is a poor framing for the rest of your comment, which is essentially a feminist critique of patriarchy and capitalism, and how patriarchy/capitalism is a harmful structure to men as well. Progressives are totally on board with this.
If the US had a viable left it would be different; but we don’t. Other countries have solved these problems to some degree. We need to stop acting like taking care of people and funding social programs is the next step to Stalinism (but again, think of who is saying this and how it threatens their power).
I think that many women do actually have the desire to be mothers in their hearts, and that they repress this desire in the current social context because having children is no longer something that confers high status upon you.
Changing that would fix the birth rate. As a man, I do actually feel empowered and somehow more complete and grounded by virtue of having a family; but I know that before I had kids, I didn't really look at dads that way. Changing that perception, returning the family to a position of honor rather than just portraying it as a drag that stops you from doing all the great fun stuff out there in the world, would do wonders on that front.
Sometimes it feels like a concerted effort has taken place to knock the family off of the pedestal.
I know, this puts your ambitious career on hold for a while and start ups require huge ambition. Still, start up opportunities will not be hyper critically different in the future than they are now. In the future you may not be able to have children.
This is so completely clear based upon my commute to work. Closer to the downtown where I live there are all kinds of clinics for young mothers in mostly poorer areas. Where I work is the wealthiest county, per capita, in Texas and there are fertility clinics lining the street. That difference is striking. People who put their careers first tend to have more trouble having children and are willing to pay massive sums of money to fix biology.
Maybe younger parents who are also clawing their way up the career ladder will be able to take advantage of this situation to offload some parenting to their own parents, and then pay it forward when their own kids have children later on? Might be the only practical way to have kids in your 20s these days.
This is not accurate for people with kids. A startup is an all encompassing job that pays very little in the short term and has a small chance at ever paying out a large amount. The opportunity cost of a real job is enormous.
No, the only real answer is that you are in no way required to reproduce. There are more than enough humans. Humanity is basically a plague.
edit: I won't be further commenting on the topic because the same people asking everyone "when are you going to have kids like me?" are just going to downvote. Yes, I rather see an end to humankind because that ends suffering. Less suffering in a universe is better than a universe that experienced more. Yes, nobody cares about the ones that wish they never had been born because of whatever reason that was inflicted upon them.
That is not even to mention actual biological problems that make men functionally infertile. So while its technically possible for men to have children until they are dead, realistically a large number are loosing their fertility as well. I know couples in their 30's/early 40's where it turned out to be the male causing the problems.
There was a reason my parents could devote their energies towards whatever they were doing outside of raising me without having to go to extremes of waiting till their 40s etc - my grandma/aunts were with us. I was basically taken care of by a different loving person every few hours whenever my mother was busy. Granted my parents didn't have to deal with the stress of startups/corporate grinds but I'm sure they had their own share of stresses of a different kind (e.g. none of the technological comforts/tools we take for granted today). But atleast they got to deal with those stresses without just having each other for support. Sure, there were conflicts but then those are everywhere anyway. Unfortunately with people growing up in nuclear families, they do not have the background/emotional tools/training to deal with such conflicts creating a self-perpetuating cycle.
Having a supportive community in an educational environment would be a win/win/win for all.
As is mentioned elsewhere, it is not as fun raising kids when you are older and slower.
It’s great being able to experience youth with the new youth.
People with kids will self report higher levels of meaning and focus in their work, so a village/dorm like environment in a university might be an ideal place to take advantage of such a situation.
This is a much better option than waiting until it almost is to late.
(I’m not talking out of my ass: I’m currently a stay at home dad so my wife can focus on her career. Soon our second kid is a year and will start kindergarten, and I’ll start working 75%).
The reality, though, is that most women want someone ambitious (in the very limited, traditional sense of ambition), and aspiring to be a stay at home dad is considered at best neutral and more often a negative or dealbreaker when it comes to forming relationships.
This is true even of (or perhaps especially of) career-focused women, despite the fact that their male counterparts are more than happy to date and marry less-ambitious women with the intention of a division of labor conducive to family rearing.
Other than breast-feeding, Dads can do everything that's required and pumping works out great for everyone.
IVF and egg freezing, while useful tools, don't really magically change this formula in any meaningful way.
IVF, egg and embryo freezing, and related technologies are modern miracles that allow people to live better lives by increasing their fertility options.
It’s selfish, unfair, and morally wrong. When did the smart way of doing things in alignment with nature, become old, antiquated, and dumb?
I find the ignorant snobbishness of our modern world to be insane.
Male founders also face hardships in rearing children when working demanding jobs, but less so than women, partly because of the luck of the genetic draw, and partly because as a culture we are more lenient and have less expectations of fathers. The good parent will have problems no matter their gender (but harder for women obviously, who carry the child to term), but men can get away with being more absent and less involved without as much judgement.
What if instead of taking at face value that people in these positions should have resources allocated to make it easier to raise children, we instead focus on their choices. They made a choice to go into a high risk venture for the possible payout of money and/or more control over their future. Worded in a more harsh way, what's being asked is "Why aren't more resources and attention focused on me while I attempt to play the lotto and become a millionaire, or work my high paying job?" Perhaps the answer to this should instead of providing additional support to women and men in child rearing in an industry that pays famously well and is getting less and less tethered to locale by the day, we instead decide to stigmatize fathers that focus more on their career than their children?
That's not to say I think we shouldn't as a society focus on making child rearing easier, especially for those without as many resources, but I'm not sure focusing on those that have chosen to make the trade-off already to pursue a demanding and risky career for the chance at a large payout is what we should be doing. If they benefit somewhat from societal changes, that's great, but I'm not really going to shed a tear over founders complaining how hard it is with a pregnancy or rearing a small child to raising funding for the next round, whether they be male or female. They've made very specific life choices to put themselves into that position, and I don't think it's out of bounds to say maybe taking the hard and risky path doesn't always pay off.
Note: This is probably way more harsh than I intend it to be, and it's not exactly a correct representation of my feelings on this, but I think it is a perspective worth considering. That is, to a small degree I'm playing devil's advocate here.
Such as: being a founder comes with a lot of work, but also some power. To the degree that bringing children to work is mostly a problem of co-workers rolling their eyes, could a confident founder make them stop doing that?
Since that would probably still be somewhat stressful, could a pair of founder-parents pull it off? And/or could on-site childcare make it work? For a VC-backed startup, the costs wouldn't seem to be prohibitive?
(I maybe naive here, considering some of the tales I've heard of how women are still seen/treated in the industry)
Just like we have affirmative action for races today, can't we have affirmative action for moms who are returning back to their careers after a decade out, with specialized courses to help them catch up, etc.
This way, more women will feel incentivized to have babies and rear them without any guilt. Healthier children are a future healthier world.
Work isn't everything, and it is gradually and painful realization as you grew older.
People who trade their happiness for money will lose their happiness and (statistically) their money as well.
That said the advice to freeze your eggs (ie work now, live later) rubs me the wrong way. I wish we could live in a society where people would not have to work themselves to death and were able to... you know... enjoy life
I feel like the work ethic I see throughout the industry is extremely toxic to society, and leads to some of this. In China for example there's a so-called "996" work schedule (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) which is basically expected of everyone in tech, unfortunately, and it seems Silicon Valley is heading that direction as well with all the off-hour meetings, weekend work, and on-call requirements. Many SV companies also demand 72 hours or more of work per week, in my adecnotal observations.
What I'm often observing is:
(a) such toxic work ethic is largely set by male founders who don't care about other important things than work e.g. family plans
(b) others in the industry are forced to compete with those ridiculous standards, including females, those with disabilities, those already with family, those taking care of a family member, etc.
(c) this results in those groups being consequently disrespected by investors because they can't match up to the workaholic male founders who don't care about anything but work. I've heard several investors talk negatively about females behind their back because "they might want to have kids".
(d) this results in more workaholic male CEOs rising to the top
(e) the cycle repeats
Are my observations and inferences correct, or am I off? Open question here.
While I do agree, this is where I draw a distinction between "job" and "career." A job is something you do to make money. A career is an end in itself. Balancing a career and parenthood is incredibly hard because they're both large time commitments. Despite what the 90's told women (though this applies equally to men), you can't have it all, and you have to decide what's important to you.
Where I live it is common for both parents to take long stretches of leave to be with their children for the first few years of their lives, and later it is common to take special childcare days off if your child is sick, has school events, etc etc. I _think_ the government pays for most or all of this time, so I am thinking there is a way for startup founders to claim it too, but I'm not 100% sure how that works.
I don't know all the ways that it affected each person professionally, but as someone on the team working closely with quite a few of these people I never got the sense that it hindered their position at the company. I've had a TD go on 6-month paternity leave for kid 1, then go back on another 6-month leave less than a year later for #2. He went on leave leading a project and came back leading another project.
Another anecdotal example: when I was joining my first project at the place, our lead producer had just left for maternity leave. Another producer was hired to temporarily fill her role. When the original producer came back, there was no question of her position: of course she was coming back to the team she'd been leading. The replacement producer was simply moved to work on another project.
I often hear in online discourse that it can be disruptive to the project when this type of thing happens, but personally I just never experienced it like that (from the perspective of the teammate who has experienced many people at the company going on parental leave, not from the actual parent perspective). I think when taking these amounts of parental leave is the norm and not the exception, we find that it isn't really as hard or scary as many companies seem to think it is. It also has the benefit of fostering a culture where no one person is absolutely pivotal to the project (or has to work themselves to death lest their project falls apart since everything depends on them...) They _will_ go on leave to spend time with their child, and you as a team/company/management have no option but to be prepared for that.
Compared to almost everyone else who ever lived, if you live in a Western Democracy (and increasingly for many in some non-Western countries), that time is now.
People from past centuries, and people from many poor nations around the world, would be baffled that people living with the opportunities we have available to us complaining about not being able to "enjoy life".
Things certainly aren't perfect, but seize the opportunities already being afforded to you for enjoyment.
That seems to be based on a lot of assumptions. I consider working a fulfilling job to be living. Whereas raising children seems to be the fulfilling... life role.. to you? I don't view them as separate delineated things.
I think freezing eggs should become cheaper, more viable, and covered by insurance, and there are a couple ways to improve the process.
A lot of times I find dating 28-33 year old women to be predictably annoying because many stigmatize options like freezing eggs while still rushing to check the boxes on various rites of passage, as if freezing eggs is a form of defeat. Whereas older women have just gotten over it, already done it, or something else. And younger women haven't gotten around to "wondering where this is going". My experience, corroborated by some other men. I wonder if that contributes to Leo's age limit. I don't have experience dating men, so I wouldn't know if they do something similar at certain age ranges.
Seeing this, the new monk spoke with the other monks in the monastery. "This is terrible! The elder should not have to do such a lowly chore. He is a great man and has already helped me to realize many things. I believe we should help give him time to do more relaxing in his old age. Let's take his cleaning supplies and hide them so that he won't have to clean the bathrooms every day." The other monks agreed, and they hid his supplies.
The elder said nothing about the new state of affairs, but instead began fasting. He did not eat for 2 days, then 3, then 5. Concerned, the monks asked him "Why do you not eat?"
The elder replied: "No work, no food."
I met a few women who used their parenting time to found a company.
It only makes sense to plan, and have some sort of strategy. For those who feel it's their best option to freeze eggs, do it sooner rather than later. For young women who have more options, consider that if you both want to have a family, and want to have a business, one of the two things has a time sensitive deadline. You can choose to pursue a career, and go about it the way this lady suggests, or you can have a family first, and pursue your career for the rest of your life. Whatever you decide to do, consider your options, and formulate some sort of strategy. If you just put off considering what you want, and how you'll attain, you'll wake up one day realizing it's too late.
Childcare requires a lot of stamina: waking up at night, multitasking all the time. It is not something you want to start doing in your 40s until your late 50s.
You do not to have a huge age gap between you and your kid and be a parent that is tired all the time.
I doubt that until you pretend to have living conditions on par with these in Pakistan.
I bet people simply are ambitious, and have way higher expectations regarding living standards, hence this feeling of struggling in pursuing the expected standards.
> you need to fix things up from the material conditions
Birth rates:
Pakistan: 3.51
India: 2.22
US: 1.73
Denmark: 1.73
Seems like living conditions doesn't matter that much, or the correlation is negative.
> If you want a society where people are practically free to start a family
Do I? Why would I want a world where people are practically free to start a family? I think people who would like to start a family should prove that they a responsible and can manage at least their own life, not to mention the life of an infant.
Say we do have such a policy, what's stopping a hiring manager from not hiring more women who might be say 30 and more likely to have kids soon? There's two parts to this question, one if we have equal leave for both parents, and if we have 2x more leave for women over men. How do policy people think about these types of arguments?
How do policy people think about costs in general for such government policies?
In it, they describe how one of the biggest ways we can minimize the gap is (1) to have generous parental leave policies for both men AND women and (2) for there to be as much of a cultural expectation for men to be caregivers as there is for women so both take advantage of it and equitably share the burdens of parenthood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP8dLUxBfsU
I'm sure the unique nature of start-ups throws further complications into this, but I feel like this is a related issue.
You are falling into the classic nerd trap which is doing an absolute evaluation when you should be making a relative comparison.
The question is not, "Can I raise this adopted child in the optimal way?" The question is, "Will I raise this child at least as good as the other parents they are likely to end up with instead?"
It's not like if you don't adopt them they get whisked away to a magical realm populated full of only perfect parents. Also, your parents weren't perfect but you probably turned out OK.
Yes, you don't get paid as much during those days (~80%), but it allows parents (not just mothers) to stay home for longer periods of time to raise their children. It can ofc cause some disturbances in your career (especially if you're working at a startup), but it allows for a much better work-life balance than parents can get in the states.
Why have you convinced yourself of this? You do realize that the vast majority of families have both parents working. Is it irresponsible for all of us to have done so?
I too struggled with the fear before having children. Fear that it would ruin my personal life, my fun, my recreation; fear that lack of sleep would kill me; fear that I wouldn't be any good at it. All of it unfounded, as the instincts we are all born with kicked in and gave me the strength I needed to adapt.
You can do both. In fact, if your work is already taking over your life to the extent where you can't imagine having the time for children, there's a strong chance your quality of life will improve because the children will force you (and give you an emininently socially acceptable excuse to) step back and change how your time is allocated.
Specifically, as far as adoption is concerned, you're also faced with knowing that you could provide an excellent home for someone who may very well end up in a much worse situation otherwise. The horror stories of people who adopt children just to get a cheque... you personally can make a difference on this front.
All of this wealth flows to us working in tech, more than most of our ancestors ever had... to not use our security to raise good children is at once both a waste of ten thousand years of sacrifice, and also a shirking of our own personal responsibility to society. I know that social contract feels like it's breaking down, but it is only through our actions that we can mend it, and raising good children who still believe in civil society is probably one of the best ways of doing that.
Your chance is not over unless you choose for it to be.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/15/world-population-falling-fer...
We’re at 7.8 billion humans on this planet and rising. I don’t think we have to worry about the birth rate declining. If anything, we should do everything in our power to lower it as much as we can.
I don't understand her reticence on the subject.
It is just an insurance policy for the future. You insure against unexpected events. Why not insure against changing your mind about having 1 (or more) children ?
*Comment : the author should have explored surrogacy. It may have made sense for her given her lifestyle / work demands.
I think you seriously have this backwards. How can biology keep up with societal progress?
As in, if a woman was to freeze some of her eggs in say, her 20's and desire to use them for IVF in her late 30's, is it still safe for her to have a child?
How much more can we extend this? Let’s be creative here.
Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but I’d see this as good time management and life planning which should be celebrated and encouraged.
Most middle class people would be radically more secure and happy with only a few million dollars over our current level of wealth. It sounds like a tall order, but it's a pretty low bar in the world of business. There's a huge range of financial outcomes that would be amazing success for individuals that would be miserable failures for a VC-funded company. Those are the sweet spot, because they change your life without attracting VC-backed competition.
So I see the question as: What is the easiest and most predictable way to reach my wealth target in the next 3-4 years instead of the next 30-40 years? Trading time for money won't get me there. The best answer I've come across is to create a simple idea for subscription physical product or micro-SaaS, validate the customer need, presell, then build/manufacture, and sell the shit out of it. Emphasis on selling not building.
People like to look down on the "lifestyle" business, but this seems like the best option for most people because it can be a vehicle to accumulate a life-changing amount of wealth (millions not billions) without the expectation from VC gatekeepers that you will be sacrificing every other part of your life at the alter of the business. As long as you're not yolked to the expectations of investors, you can scale your effort on the business up or down as your life and ambition dictate.
Now I am older and more senior, I have more responsibilities and the expectations are higher so it is more "difficult" to dedicate more time to my offspring by taking more time off or just not going to late meetings etc.
Of course there is some power that comes with more seniority to simply say no to things outside of the normal office hours or not "taking one for the team" or whatever to do a late night or a weekender.
I guess there is an element of me thinking "If I had just done this 10 years ago it would have been a lot easier now" sort of hindsight type thing going on, but yeah it is difficult to shake the thought that I waited too long. Not just for work but also for normal social life/holidaying etc too - like if you had kids in your early 20s you could have had teenage kids (who can look after themselves) and yet be in your 30s and still be young enough to do fun/crazy things, rather than be 55-60 with teenage kids and then be too old to do a lot of stuff you used to enjoy (e.g. sports, social scene etc) although the flip side is you got to spend those 20s-30s years doing fun stuff anyway .... as you can see I am conflicted :)
tl;dr - if you are young, there is never a time when you are 100% "ready" for kids so just go ahead and do it before it is too late.
Trouble is that this doesn't work too well either, or so I have read.
so have kids in your 20s and build your startup when the kids are old enough. use your life experience and increase your chances of success.
Does this even work, scientifically speaking?
Pregnancy can make it easier to relate to the child before they're born, at least it did for me (as a guy). I have considered adoption, but I do have a fear in the back of my mind that I might struggle to love the child as my own as quickly as I would love a genetic child. Sure this might not be completely rational, but I think a lot of the decisions w.r.t. children are emotional and more value driven rather than rational.
90% of startups fail, they NEVER become successful. Gambling on some theoretical future success is just bad advice.
Also egg freezing and late age pregnancy is VERY expensive and complicated. Author herself had three miscarriages.
I would suggest something else: have children between 18-25, and start self funded company while working at home. By early 30ies, kids will be at school and company should generate some income.
You also make it sound like starting a business from home in your early 20's with kids is somehow more feasible than working a stable job. That doesn't really make sense, especially when you just talked about 90% of startups failing.
Let's not undersell how hard it is to have kids when just starting out in life, when you generally have less resources, which may mean less stable housing. Couch surfing or staying with good friends for a week or two because of financial hardship problems is doable when you're single or a couple, it's much harder to swing with children unless you have very good friends in a more stable place in life than you or family. Requiring there be family means mobility is limited, and limited mobility means limited career choices.
That's not to say it's not a good idea for some people given their circumstances, just that it's not obviously a better or easier path.
I worked very, very hard to build both a financially stable life and have a family "young." I had my first kid at 28, was married at 24, and am the youngest mother I know in my professional social circle.
The only women I know who had kids 18-25 had accidental pregnancies with flings or short-term nonviable relationships, the fathers bailed, and the mother spent many years living with her parents while struggling to have a much more basic career than those discussed on this board. None of them had time, money, social support, or educational resources as single mothers to "start a self funded company while working at home."
Ideally if a woman wants to have kids, she can make a plan to have them with a committed partner at sometime around or just before 30. If she also wants to be a start-up founder, frankly she should look for a non-traditional relationship where her husband takes on most of the childcare after those early baby months, and hopefully he also has a stable but flexible corporate or blue-collar job to give them a bit of financial buffer.
Your comment reminds me of those annoying answers on Stack Overflow that say: why are you trying to do that? you shouldn't do that! you should do what I think you should do instead!
Realizing opportunities are foreclosed to you as you age is always sad, but this one seems really tough.
Before someone possessed by the Zeitgeist clicks that downvote button, I will add that this isn't to say women should be banned from anything. You want a career, that's your business. Also, consider that besides raising children, there is plenty to do around the community that's probably more rewarding than a full blown career (even part time is stuff). However, I am saying that the social and cultural pressure, the NECESSITY, to be a careerist, and this means at the expense of your family which is sort of an afterthought, should be ridiculed and abolished. Girls should not be taught that their self-worth and happiness are to be found in a career. No one should. In this case it's making women miserable. Maybe as people begin to sacrifice some material comforts for the sake of a healthy family life, the market will begin to shift. After all, if you don't have that income rolling in any more and you're not keeping up with the Jones' likes some zombie, then the market will need to respond in turn.
(Also, please, no IVF. IVF is gravely immoral, especially given that you typically have to fertilize multiple eggs which are then are discarded or remain frozen.)