[jswinghammer]

Totally agree with all these points. Ever since my first daughter was born I made a similar decision but I still work less hours than you do. I end up working around 40 hours a week and have never felt compelled to work any more. I will work after the kids go to bed particularly when my wife goes to bed and I don't feel like reading for whatever reason.

My first obligation on this Earth is to my family and part of that means not being gone all the time at work. I do that for the kids but also for my wife. Raising kids is hard work and she needs my help particularly at the end of the day. This changes a little when the kids are older and are less physically demanding I guess but when you have small kids you really need to take your wife's feelings into account when deciding how much to work. She really needs to feel respected and honored in the decision and part of that comes from making sure she is in total agreement with the final decision.

Also if you're any good at programming companies are so desperate to hire you that they will accept pretty much whatever schedule within reason you want. You might not be the absolute favorite employee of management but if you're good people will respect you and your contribution.

[BlazingFrog]

> My first obligation on this Earth is to my family

No disrespect but to what was your first obligation before you had a wife and kids?

I'm always tempted to interpret this kind of statement one of two ways: either your life before your family was so miserably empty that it gave you a purpose (nothing wrong with that) or you're borderline schizophrenic that you can fool yourself (or worse, truly believe) that your personality suddenly morphed and you're now a different individual who will be just as content with a lifestyle radically different from what he ever had, obligations as well as satisfactions that cannot be possibly imagined until you actually cross that line and have kids.

I personally have a hard time believing people can change that much...

[mbreese]

> No disrespect but to what was your first obligation before you had a wife and kids

Obviously something else... ?

Life has a way of changing whether you want it to or not. So, maybe whatever was #1 got bumped down to #2. That doesn't mean that their life was meaning-less and empty before having a family. Nor does it mean that their lives really had to change all that much with a family.

I don't understand the false dichotomy here.

[Tyrannosaurs]

This is exactly it.

You don't prioritise your life around things that aren't relevant to you - to have your number 1 priority as kids when you don't have kids clearly makes no sense.

It's like suggesting that someone who gets a new hobby had an empty life before that hobby. Nope, they just filled it with different things. When something they wanted to do more came along, everything else got shuffled about a bit.

[jroseattle]

> I personally have a hard time believing people can change that much...

On the day my kids were born, I felt my priorities and what was important actually change. Things that I had emphasized as important before they were born became entirely unimportant. Literally, felt it.

But here's the thing: call it schizophrenia or miserable emptiness or whatever label you'd like to assign, I don't care. I care about my kids more than things I did before I was a father, and the third-person observation that tries to impart some logic that doesn't include my perspective is, well, wrong. No fooling was involved, no tricking myself into believing anything. It just happened.

[pointyhat]

From observing other people (I consider myself to be the least important person on the planet): It is usually the self that matters the most until you become part of a family. At that point:

Some people mature into people who put their family first.

A lot more people mature into people who put their family last.

The latter never achieve inner happiness.