Posted by nichochar 3 days ago
* Your amount of "lost" time with kids is often less than you think. On one side, you very likely socialized more, traveled more, were less disciplined about what you worked on, etc. On another side, some things that you are going to do anyway (dishes, maybe calling your parents, groceries), you can often do with kids, and so this time isn't really "lost"
* If you are fortunate enough to have some means, you might consider not outsourcing parenting, but outsourcing "life admin" work. Specifically things like laundry, dishes, buying groceries, picking up around the house, etc. I recently got someone to come to our house 3x / week for 3 hours and it's a game changer for me and my wife (who also works). (I know my point above says you can do some of this with kids, and that's kind of true, but not always, and it still lets you do other things with your time)
* Assuming you have a partner, and the premise here is you still want to be a very active parent, then I recommend being very deliberate about almost never parenting together. As in, one of you take all the kids, and the other can do what they want for 1-4 hours at a time.
Lastly, while I'm a pretty active dad myself, I reject the premise put forth here that your job is to maximize the time spent with your kids, as if this is the main metric by which parenting success should be judged. Just no. Actively no. Kids having time alone and with their own friends outside of the eye or ear of their parents is a really important part of growing up. Kids having time with various caregivers who are not their parents (be that grandparents, aunts, uncles, friend's parents, camp counselors, babysitters) is also good and healthy.
The struggle is real though. There's no easy answer. Hope these thoughts help!
Kinda disagree. My Kids 3 mind, so apples:oranges. But something I keep reminding my wife about, whenever she feels like shes failed, is that childhood outcomes are strongly correlated to parental involvement and interest at this age. 2 active, interested parents is a huge advantage over 1, and 1 is a huge advantage over 0. Just the time we both spend with him, engaged in conversation or reading books, has already paid massive dividends, and we can see that he just soaks it all up like a sponge. Wont be that way forever, he will eventually find better interaction with peers. But right now its a massive force multiplier, and we only get one shot at it.
* Sometimes I'm in flow state, and so breaking at 17:00 breaks that.
* 17:00 is rush hour, so if so leave then, my commute goes from 60m to 90m. So I leave at 16:00, and catch up later. But now I'm context switching more.
* If it's 14:30 and I know I'm leaving at 16:00, then I'm hesitant to work on something that might need more focus/debugging.
All these are workable, and many parents are testament to that, but at least for me, it's all contributing to less productivity.
Easier said than done, I mean, what I am doing here?
I think this was mostly a matter of temperament; he liked to work and he didn't really care much about the operation he was funding, which is unfortunately why he has no contact with most of his adult children today.
All that to say, I didn't mind that he worked a lot, but it was pretty damaging that he almost never spoke to me other than for urgent logistical or disciplinary reasons. Just, you know, don't do that.
I still believe that having passionate and driven parents is good for kids.