[akud]

In my experience, people tend to seriously underestimate the amount of work a baby takes, and the strain it adds to relationships, work life, and emotional health. I certainly did.

I think it's reasonable for investors to wonder if a person's commitment won't change when they have a baby. I would advise the authors that they really can't forsee what their priorities will be like when the baby comes. It sounds trite, but a baby changes your whole life. It will add an incredible amount of stress that will probably make you reevaluate your priorities.

If I were an investor, I would hold off until they had the baby, and it was at least a few months old. Then both the founders could really know how committed they still were to the company.

[edit: grammar]

[ergothus]

Purely for the purposes of clarity:

Is that you'd hold any founder expecting a baby to the same standard, male or female? (though it is normally easier to recognize a pregnant woman than someone with a pregnant partner)

Or do you see the load you describe falling primarily upon women?

[akud]

Any founder, male or female. I'm male, and having a baby has been a whole lot more strain then I expected. Granted, I try to take an active role in caring for the baby, so that's different than your typical male CEO maybe.

[GauntletWizard]

I think it's a lot easier to tell that a female founder is about to have a baby. Most VCs would probably balk if they heard from a founder "My wife is eight months pregnant", but men have the option of not bringing that up, while it would be a challenge for a pregnant woman to hide it.

[ergothus]

Completely true, and I alluded to that in my question.

I was simply trying to understand if the above poster was saying "I consider any founder about to have a child as more risky" or if the above poster was saying "I consider any WOMAN about to have a child as more risky". In the latter case it doesn't matter how easy/hard it is to determine if someone has a pregnant partner.

As that poster has indicated it's the former, this difficulty of detection does become an issue: One that I have no good solution to. As it happens, I fully believe in the difficulty of raising young children, for any gender, so I think it's a legit concern, but it raises an automatic advantage to men over women even when they're otherwise in the same situation.

[home_boi]

Females have to face the physical/mental side effects of pregnancy in addition to the complications of child care. Females become the primary care taker at higher rates than males. Primary care takers are less productive and less devoted.

This isn't just a coincidence. Females have the choice of having a child while males do not. Males only have the choice to give a female the choice of having a child with the male. Naturally, the person who makes the choice of having a child most likely values children more, which leads to a higher chance of becoming the primary care taker. There are also benefits that are exclusive to female primary care takers.

If a female and a male have the same profile and they both are expecting children, the male will have a higher expected value because of the physical/emotional complications of a pregnancy and a lower chance of being the primary care taker.

People are investing real money here. It is what it is.

[dang]

This comment is heading dangerously down a generic ideological tangent, which usually means yet another tedious flamewar. I'm tempted to detach it and mark it off-topic, but will hold off.

In general on HN, it's better to keep one's comments anchored in something specific about the original story than to go off into provocative generalization. There's nearly always an ideological agenda behind the latter, and those are of interest to no one except holders of the same agenda and its opposite.

[salgernon]

Then change "it". "It" is a problem, and "it" is wrong.

By your logic, before any investment is made a complete health scan of all founders should be completed, including a mental health assay.

If a founder gets cancer, should they be fired? They're going to have to take time off to get it removed, followed by months if not years of time lost to chemotherapy.

If you replace tumor with baby, and chemotherapy with pediatric appointments, is there any difference?

Anecdote: When I was 13, my father, CEO of a subsidiary of a large Japanese conglomerate, was treated for and cleared of prostate cancer. It runs in my family and killed his father and grandfather. When he returned to work about 4 weeks later, he was fired as the larger corporation had decided that it was too risky to have someone that could get sick be a C level employee. It is what it is?

[LoSboccacc]

It is a false comparison because having a baby is a choice and largely avoidable.

Maybe it'd be more comparable to a chain smoker who smoked since ten and it's in his fifties.

Getting fired for health related issues is also another false comparison. Here we're talking getting a private investment. Difference is that the first case is already covered by law (and those also cover hiring, as difficult to prove discrimination can be)

[ergothus]

You seem to be reacting defensively to a post that explicitly stated I was asking purely for clarity.

Now, given EITHER ANSWER, there are discussions that can be had, but I didn't raise them.

[facepalm]

Would you say it is unnatural to assume that a mother is more likely to be preoccupied with her baby than the father? If the plan is for the father to take over, why not mention it while fundraising?

Even so, there is physical strain that is likely to take a toll on the mother, which might cost a few productive months. Breastfeeding might also be an issue, waking the mother several times per night.

[ergothus]

You've raised questions as if I had made an argument in the opposite. Instead, I asked purely for clarity.

It's always a challenge to resolve the "separate but equal" concepts that arise from a mix of different biologies and desire for egalitarian society. I asked for the clarity because I wanted any such discussions to be directed at the right audiences, in the right context.

Apparently I failed at that, since you felt I was taking a strong position.

[st3v3r]

Because it's nobody's business what the home life plans are.

[facepalm]

What makes you entitled to receiving somebodies money, though? If they feel they want to know about your home life, and you don't want to tell, why should they be obliged to give you money? It's fine if you want to keep it private, but other people have the right to spend their money as they wish, too.

[st3v3r]

Nobody said anything about being entitled to someone else's money. So put that straw man away.

[facepalm]

The article is about raising money.

[st3v3r]

Given a lot of the stupid stuff investors have backed, with lots of money, I can't really take their arguments seriously.