Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheAlchemist | Hacker News Reader

I believe parents should definitely aim for both.

If you have kids and you prioritize your career to the point you never see your kids, and you will have huge and legitimate regrets later in life. Especially if you don't achieve Jobs / Musk level of financial success. That's pretty common knowledge.

But the opposite is also true. As parents, we're always examples for our kids, for better or worse. Do we want our kids to see us abandon our dreams 'because of them' or do we want them to see their parents showing them how to go after their dreams, because that's what life is about ?

View on HN

The middle way, perhaps? What "dreams" are more important than having a strong connection with your kids? Not only are the regrets that will come later in life huge and legitimate, they would also be irreversible. But, assuming you're in relatively good health midlife, you can always attempt to build the 5 startups that will almost definitely fail. Just my opinion of course.

That's what I'm saying, maybe not with right words then.

Strong connections with kids are the most important thing, but it cannot be the only one. It wouldn't end great neither for both parties.

Ah, I may have misunderstood your comment. I thought you were leaning more towards the "dream" part. But so my comment also meant to say that the definition of ambition and success changed after becoming a parent. I know I won't be curing cancer in my lifetime and so what thing is really important that I have to sacrifice time with my children for? To me, being the founder of the next failed facebook for cats is just not it.

Note that I am not talking about earning a living and thus necessarily sacrificing time doing that and showing your kids that sometimes you have to work hard to survive in a decent way. I am talking about the parents who outsource their children to childcare to work to pay off the loan on their third car and newest iphone and tell you that they have no choice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com