| A metric major fuck ton. If you truly want to be present and have an active role in your child's life, growth, development et al it's going to force your priorities to shuffle around. If your "startup" is still a priority (but not above your child) you aren't going to be in the office from sun up to sun down. Period. You'll have to make up those hours later (when the child is sleeping) however, in months 0-24, that's really tough as most children (at least not mine) didn't sleep well during that phase. During those years, and for me it spanned 5 calendar years given multiple children, working late at night was a luxury, not an option I could plan on. I however, disclosed that when taking a CTO position at a company that just wrapped up a ~$20 dollar round. It was transparent to them and set the right expectations. I do acknowledge that a company in that stage albeit not out of the woods, is not in the same position in the seed, Series-A phase. If you look in my comment history I gave a "day in the life of" for my schedule on how I manage running a startup and keeping my family, health, self priority #1, #2, and #3. It's buried in there somewhere. |
[Citation needed]
I don't have have reliable scientific evidence either way, but my speculation is that the vast majority of differences in outcomes between kids can be attributed to: genetics, nutrition, parental wealth, and education (in that order). I've found no reason to believe that "hav[ing] an active role in your child's life" (versus hiring good nannies and teachers to do the same), has much long-term impact on kids. Sometimes, when I'm cynical, I think it's a kind of moralistic conventional wisdom that's mostly perpetuated as a way to keep women "in their place."