Do you have any time for yourself? -> One kid is not that bad from a free time perspective, but when you have two there's maybe five hours a week for each parent and it ends up being zero sum with two (or more) on one childcare.
Where are all the tech dads? -> Age peers in tech don't seem to have kids despite being the small slice of people arguably able to comfortably afford it. Mostly seem to bank up cash and have kids in mid to late 30s and slow lane themselves.
I wrote a bit about my experience being a founder and a dad where I started my company in the same month as my wife and I found out she was pregnant with our first child. Link here: https://rogerkirkness.com/founder-and-father
Being a younger dad relative to my kids age, it has been very isolating and challenging to find anyone who shares my lifestyle, my responsibilities, who can really understand the stage of life I am in. They are usually either very pre-kid and enjoy life independently, without much awareness or desire thereof to the responsibility of parenthood, or, they are on the opposite end and fully settled down and have forgotten what a city looks like after dark.
Good luck.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38880225
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_assessment
(n=1, experiences will vary)
For me, it is about saying No to many things unfortunately. I cannot take the regular vacations that people like to take. I would rather spend 2 hours taking my family to a dinner together than trying to plan a 4 day vacation which is tough to get done. I don't have lot of time for friends anymore plus most of my "true" friends were from high school/college and it is tough to stay in touch with many that live far apart. You don't really make true friends at work or neighborhood (usually).
I just focus on what I really like to do and be selfish if needed as long as I am not ignoring my family and my work. Everything else suffers and takes a back seat. You can only do so much with 24 hours in a day.
You were halfway done then decided to have another. Oh my. Never for me.
Not much has changed really. I talk to my partner and mates for mental health support.
Re. time to yo self, I still have the same hours in the day, I chose to spend that time w my family by walking into this life. It's still my time. I just love spending it all with my family. Kids are great and my misso is my best friend. It's epic.
Need an hour to myself? Well lucky I get up before the rest of the household does. Great time for some stretching and drum and bass.
My misso makes me play CS2 with my long running homies if I haven't for a week or two. She knows it's how I keep in touch with most of my close mates.
One thing I have realized is. Tech and dad are a shitty combo. IT is high stress, zero job security work. Case in point. All the industry certs aren't nationalized approved certs/licenses, most are company or product based. Which if the industry moves on your up shit creek. Builders or plumbers or sparky license on the other hand...always relevant, doesn't change according to which company is flavor of the month.
Easy af to go work alone as builder or normal trade. Whilst you can do this in IT (currently what I do) it's hyper stressful and you have less job security than being a statistic for a big firm.
This basically compounds on the stressor of being a parent. I've found IT is completely sh*t when looking at employee mental health.
They treat the concept of your mental health like crap so it gets swept under the rug. Never had a heart to heart convo about some mental health problem from any peer in IT. Have had plenty of yarns w old tradies and bosses in labouring about it tho and gotten plenty of tips along the way.
I'm regretting not being an electrician. Really hate the constant change in tech. Even 5 years ago it seemed like it wasn't so fast.
Basically if your business is in setup, config and management of some tech product or SaaS. Rip your job. You won't exist in 5 years.
So our support network is take-out lunch and dinner mostly. Not kidding. We've been forced to focus on our health and just make it work.
It's not bad! I love my kids and my wife. My family brings me great joy and it's fulfilled a huge part of my loneliness and isolation that came from losing both parents. But it's also hard. I was running a solo founded startup that got VC funded, hired people, covid happened, we had kid #1 and then somehow had to survive it all. What made it hard was not having anyone to talk to. Ultimately a lot of life priorities had to change, the startup shutdown, and I had to figure out how to rebuild my identity outside of tech, but things are much better, we had kid #2, I'm having a blast being a dad, despite how tough it is. Yet I know with a little support, or even someone to just tell me, it's going to be OK, things would have been much easier. Sorry about your mum, I know it's hard.
Later, some day care took care of the gaps. However, I never had a support system other than the Swiss couple across the street.
I find few support groups for men and dads. A while back, I discovered Chuck Fink, who started a men’s support group in Asheville, but he has focused on story telling since then.
https://www.chuckfinkstoryteller.com/
Such groups, should they still exist, are not macho beer-swilling arm-wrestling opps. Now that I’m senior, I’d like to see more support for seniors, who are not so much overwhelmed as ignored. I did make this a bit worse by moving to the boondocks. Beautiful as all get-out but far from family and most friends, both new and old. I’m not going to judge others, because I am highly independent, and probably more responsible for the isolation as anyone else (other than the choice of location, which had something to do with limited money after splitting up.)
I had a lot of “kids” ( postdocs, actually ) while doing computer support at university, and many are quite successful and well known, but I’m proudest of my own child.
It was very hard keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances in the bay area.
Family, though distant, is still the best resource, even if just emotional. For a while, I was involved with, and briefly president of, a fly-fishing club. I found that hobbies were a great way to connect with others who were often completely different, and that was rewarding. Besides the fishing interest, I connected with others via photography. A service buddy and I were such avid photographers that we passively got a guy from PA to switch from shooting deer with a rifle to shooting them with a camera. Less so, via music, since I am not a very good pianist, and never have a showpiece ready to share. I’ll work on that, and think about moving to a nearby city. The two nearest ones have universities.
I am fairly near Yosemite, and have a senior and veteran free pass, but it’s still a hour drive, a long day carrying heavy cameras and a long drive back. I’d actually be arguably better off at a greater distance, carpooling.
My Mom used to visit from the east coast once a year, until Dad’s health worsened. We explored much of CA, and I later did more of that with wife and child. But let’s face it, all dads are busy with home and kids, and meeting other dads, having joint family fishing/photo trips require outreach.
As I noted, I live in a beautiful location with 140 degree views on either side of the ridge, trails through manzanita trees, and neat rock walls on the other side, and friends from 50 miles away don’t visit. I can’t move mountains but I can try harder to reach out. Despite my work experience getting along with many others, I am still mostly an introvert (who else is listening to the opera this morning?) but I do make the 50 mile trip to visit my old friend Trader Joe about once a week.
There’s a fine line between nagging and reaching out. People are often slow to respond. I guess one has to nag. Too bad. That’s life.