[unstyledcontent]

I'm burned out because I have to raise two young children, work a full time job in a demanding career, and then in the hour or two a day of time that isn't accounted for in those two tasks, I need to maintain a household and try to care for myself. I feel a strong sense of purpose caring for my family, but don't have enough time to meet life's demands. Maybe other people relate more to this post because they more money and no kids.

[Aurornis]

> Maybe other people relate more to this post because they more money and no kids.

I have kids, but I don’t think having kids or even a lack of money is necessary to experience the type of burnout you’re describing.

While everyone and every situation is different, my personal experience is that having kids led to less burnout for me over time. I expected the opposite after reading comments online, but it turns out that for me the time spent caring for the kids was energizing and purpose-providing. The job no longer felt like some isolated drudgery without purpose because it played a clear role in my family’s well being. I also learned how to manage time and prioritize better after having kids.

But I will never gatekeep burnout or try to differentiate burnout based on having kids or money. I can even think of someone who was clearly experiencing burnout despite having neither kids nor a job and while not having to worry about money. Burnout isn’t a simple function of life circumstances, personal circumstances and mental well being play a large role. In some cases, certain personality types can seemingly become burned out under any circumstances. It’s a heavily personal reaction.

[GMoromisato]

I feel the same way about kids. For me, I think, it changed my perspective. Lots of things at work that would have bothered or frustrated me no longer do so. Having kids is a great way to develop a Zen attitude about some things.

Though, to be fair, you gain a whole new set of much scarier things to worry about.

[tmp2375]

It could be just getting older. I don't have any kids, but I care less about work now. It's just a job. Life is out there.

[GMoromisato]

This! It's much healthier this way.

[mkoubaa]

If you don't have a zen attitude around a three year old you're going to have a bad time

[thanedar]

Zen about kids and warrior about work!

And work = highest purpose!

[GMoromisato]

LOL! Totally!

[zerofor_conduct]

Anyone can develop a Zen attitude by committing to Zen meditation, or other forms of meditation. It may sound trite, but depression can come from managing the past, anxiety from managing the future. But the past is gone, the future is just a fantasy, what is real is what is happening now. The more time spent in the present, the less anxiety and depression. This is one of the benefits of meditation.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

I don't have kids but I'm learning to be more zen at work. I think its a learnable thing. I can see how kids would accelerate that though

[GMoromisato]

Agreed! Being more Zen is awesome and you don't need kids for that.

[sdeframond]

> the time spent caring for the kids was energizing and purpose-providing.

Depends. At 3am it's not.

[nnutter]

That's a pretty short period in the grand scheme of things. Before you know it they'll be driving and just a year or two from leaving the nest and you'll wish you could have had more time with them.

[thatfrenchguy]

Yup, but when you’re sleep deprived the months feel like years, and if unlucky and you got a bad sleeper the years can feel like decades

[sdeframond]

Sometimes the years feel like ... decades. Some bad sleepers are bad sleepers for a longer time than others.

[Aurornis]

There’s a lot more to having kids than the relatively short window when they’re very young and waking up a lot in the middle of the night.

Before having kids I read so much about this difficult period and thought it was going to be the defining feature of having kids.

Then you go through it and one month you realize they’re sleeping through the night. Then you have an entire lifetime.

So yeah, it’s not fun. But it’s also such a tiny segment of parenthood that the emphasis on it feels pretty excessive.

[thanedar]

This. Focusing on your highest potential is energizing and the rest is what we call burnout. Having kids is what caused me to think so hard about these questions, both for myself and them. I have to justify every minute I'm not with them, and now my life fully represents my values.

[bdbdbdb]

I'm like this but four kids. The kids are my life, but in another way the two hours when they're in bed are my life. I try and get household shit done in tiny increments throughout the day - cleaning the kitchen in the morning before I start work, doing laundry at lunch, cleaning away dinner stuff while they brush teeth, so that I squeeze a little more self time in the evenings. In those hours, I have side projects I work on. And I do WAY too many. People would look at my life and say I need to focus on one thing to finish it, but I've learned (for me at least) that happiness comes from having lots of options when you have that free time. I forgive myself for not making major progress on things, not being productive outside of work, and I try to just enjoy my time whether it's writing fiction, building board games, hobby coding, messing with unity, reading, building models, casual gaming etc. lately I've been doing needle felting because I picked up a cheap Halloween decoration of a needle felt cute vampire. Halloween is long over but I'm not beating myself up about it. All my hobbies follow a pattern of things that I can pick up where I left off with minimum fuss. I don't do anything that takes an age to set up or has a minimum time commitment.

I would say hang in there, and once in a while give yourself permission to prioritise the "care for myself" over the "maintain a household".

Do things in little increments and don't torture yourself about not being full of energy all the time

[thanedar]

Love the idea that your kids are your life and the two hours when they're in bed is also your life! I'm very much in that same place too.

Many of my posts and most of my book were written in either the first two hours after they go to school or the first two hours after they sleep.

I got a rare Sunday afternoon off, which is why we got this post now!

Totally agree that work only to pay for a household is a tough life. I'm trying to connect more people with work that can give more meaning now and maybe more money long-term. People chasing their highest potential tend to create greater projects!

[JKCalhoun]

When kids were added to the family, it actually improved my life. I actually had motivation then for making money—and making time.

Now, empty nested, I can see that I was both rudderless and identity-less before the kids. I'm wandering now (and retired) trying to find a replacement identity.

I'm still a father of course (and husband) but with less input and less to do. In fact I feel inclined to step back and let the girls have their lives now. So I road-trip, come up with projects to keep me busy, try to be an "educator".

[CrossVR]

People underestimate how quickly you burn out when you're completely on your own. It's the people around you that give you purpose and motivation.

[StilesCrisis]

Sadly, having more money doesn’t buy time. At least, not until you have enough money that you can hire assistants, but that’s pretty extreme.

[Aurornis]

I know a lot of people who DoorDash, have groceries delivered, have a house cleaner, and call a contractor for every small thing that needs to be done. They’re buying time.

It’s never quite as much time as expected, though. Each is a marginal addition of free time that brings its own complications (like my friend who did an alarming amount of DoorDash and is now investing a lot of time into dropping weight and managing cholesterol and blood sugar)

[lnsru]

I am hardware developer and certified electrician as a hobby. I have regularly clients that are buying time while I do really simple things on the property. It’s really cringe to be asked to vacuum their dirt for couple hours. I am paid premium while the clients watch Netflix and later whine about running out of money. I tried politely ask to do rudimentary things by themselves, but it never worked out. I grew in poverty and have hard time understanding this.

My parents buy groceries delivery what is really useful and time saving on other hand. House cleaner is difficult topic, they do seldom a good job even when offered more money. Typical example: there is dirt under edges of carpet after vacuuming.

[Aurornis]

> I am paid premium while the clients watch Netflix and later whine about running out of money.

This really bothered me when I was in social situations with college students who would alternate between bragging about how much they spent on DoorDash and complaining about how they’re always struggling with money.

It was only a handful of people out of a larger group of mostly rational students, but it drove me crazy.

[officehero]

This is a core reason for my own burnout - why should I work for a culture that seemingly promotes lazy/hypocritical behavior? Reminds me of "Idiocracy" or "burn after reading" the "league of morons"

[DrPimienta]

Hello, I am a little confused about your post. Why are they having you vacuum things if you are an electrician?

[lnsru]

I am asked to do that. You’ll never say “no” to a client when you are paid hourly.

[nxm]

Separately, what is a certified electrician - are you licensed in your state?

[lnsru]

Yes. Not only that, but I can work with electricity meters and put seals. It’s in Germany and very complicated and best unemployment insurance I could find.

[bayarearefugee]

Glad you brought up your friend in the 2nd bit there as it seems to have become relatively common for some people to make food delivery services a very regular part of their lifestyle without really paying attention to the staggering amount of saturated fat they are ingesting even from the majority of "healthy" options available on these services (nevermind the even worse fast food options)

Of course this has always been a thing with prepared restaurant food (just listen to various comments Anthony Bourdain made over the years about restaurants and butter use) but I'm somewhat convinced the friction removal of having these foods delivered at nearly any time of the day is going to cause an uptick in middle age heart disease in a group of people who are going overboard in trading money for time without thinking of the long term consequences.

[SoftTalker]

Saturated fat is not the demon we've been lead to believe for the past 30-40 years. Sugar is. And there's a lot of sugar in prepared food too.

[malfist]

I think you'll find scientific consensus isn't on your side here. The American Heart Association certainly doesn't agree with your assessment

[SoftTalker]

The American Heart Association has a huge investment in a narrative they've been pushing for 40 years.

[Aurornis]

Excess sugar and excess saturated fat are both bad.

There’s been a big social media push to turn saturated fat into a good thing, but everything I actually read in the research still points to excess saturated fat being a bad idea.

[skeeter2020]

It's not about buying time though, it's about what you do with the bought time. I see a lot of people using these expensive services and then wasting the extra time - or worse, filling time while they wait for the completion.

[selcuka]

Time is time. If one values doing nothing more than doing house chores, then they are buying time by paying a cleaner.

It is about spending your time doing what you want (including doing nothing if that's your thing), and outsource the things that you don't want to do.

[jen20]

I was with you until...

> and call a contractor for every small thing that needs to be done. They’re buying time.

I _really_ wish I could find a contractor that didn't suck up more time than they save every single time!

[macNchz]

Hiring a housekeeper to come every couple of weeks has pretty much directly bought me time, at a pretty reasonable price. I like living in a neat and tidy home, but never cared much for scrubbing grout or polishing the stovetop in my free hours. I’m delighted every time she comes, and I never wake up Saturday thinking I’ll have to vacuum under the couch cushions.

[eastbound]

That’s the best improvement to my life ever. I migrated from a normal-person rental to a million-dollars house, but to me the true luxury is, having someone to set the house back to impeccable state. I should have done that in my 42sqm flat.

[Xenoamorphous]

Enough money to not work and care for your children is the correct answer.

But sadly the people I know who made enough money to be able to retire young are workaholics that will hire people to raise their kids. Because their workaholism is what made them rich in the first place. See Elon for an extreme example, I doubt he can even name all his biological children.

[dullcrisp]

X0–X127, easy.

[nekitamo]

Ah so their names are just ARM64 registers. Now I get it.

[Freak_NL]

Who needs assistants? I'll make do with enough money to draw a monthly stipend covering my expenses and leisure from for life. You know, like a salary, but without wasting my time on pointless tasks that give me no satisfaction.

[lithocarpus]

I mean, it does for people like me who decide to work less as they don't need to earn as much.

[shrubby]

I decided to breathe for a while after a startup was out of runway and minimized my consumption while figuring out what to do once grew up.

It was a revelation to find out how little one needs materially to feel happy.

But a basic income or something is mandatory IMO as it's the only thing that can remove us from the rat race and free us from the zillionaires. Oh, sorry. We need to get rid of the zillionaires first, the last thing they want is normal people who aren't hungry and desperate for pennies.

[amarant]

I have more money and no kids, I still relate to your comment.

I burned out basically because I'm stupid and decided to work a demanding full time job while also remodeling my house by myself. Like all renovation jobs, it ended up being bigger than planned (I actually expected it to grow from us discovering something that had to be done during the renovation, I just never expected the thing we found to be as large as it was: we had to redo the whole foundation of our 1840 house, and because a machine wouldn't fit through the doors, we ended up digging out around 16m3 of hard packed dirt by hand and carrying it out of the house, also by hand)

What was supposed to be a kitchen upgrade turned into roughly half our house looking like something out of tomb raider for a year. 8 hours of intellectually demanding office work followed by 8 hours of grueling digging in "the mine" as came to nickname the ground floor really did a number on both me and my wife.

She crashed out first, which left me with no choice but to keep pushing long past what I felt I could handle. Saw a doctor who diagnosed me with burnout and told me to rest for 6 months,I instead held out for another ~6 months until my wife was back on her legs before allowing myself to rest.

The 6 months of sick leave the doctor prescribed wasn't nearly enough.

But hey, my kitchen is fucking gorgeous, so there's that, at least!

[enraged_camel]

I don’t know the circumstances but this sounds very wrong. The moment you find a problem with the foundation, you call professionals. DIY has its value but your story is well beyond DIY.

[amarant]

Heh, so I oversimplified that part of the story in my original post, for the sake of brevity.

You're right, one shouldn't DIY the foundation of ones house, unless you really know what you're doing(and honestly, not even then: it's too much work!)

I'm not sure it was clear in my original comment, but the 1840 I wrote in there is the original construction year of the house. The technique my foundation was built with hasn't been used for a little over a century: Not a lot of construction firms around with experience in it! And it's not easy to replace a foundation, because, well, it's under the house! Luckily repairing turned out to be possible(simplifying again, sorry!), and not particularly difficult in technical terms. It just wasn't easy either, but in physical terms.

I did have a professional "building conservationist"(rough translation) over for consultation. Basically he looked over what was, I told him my plan, and then he told me what to do instead. (I actually wasn't far off - I had spent a lot of time reading up on it before he came - he just added a few (possibly vital) details I hadn't thought of)

The conservationist did have a construction firm and offered their services, but we had budgeted for a kitchen upgrade, and while we had some margins in the original plan, with the extra work we got surprised with, we were strained to afford the materials. Just the ground insulation material cost almost as much as the new IKEA kitchen furniture!

The good thing in all this is that the new construction should, in theory, according to the conservationist who actually does know these things, probably last a couple of centuries!

[throwaway173738]

Not everyone has the means to call in a “professional” and pay the fully loaded price without trying to trim some fat. It sounds to me like they were taking the fat out of the foundation job by mining out a space for the repair. What he’s describing is probably between the mid five figures and the low six figures to get a professional to do. I don’t know many people who could come up with the down payment for a construction loan on that.

I also took on a remodel under similar conditions and I think that the decision they undertook was likely very reasonable at the time. The outcome, in retrospect, would be obvious as well. But sometimes you have to grit your teeth and finish something.

[qweiopqweiop]

Why didn't you just pay someone to take over out of interest?

[amarant]

3 factors. Biggest one the aforementioned stupidity. I'm also very stubborn, so that didn't help either.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the planned changes, combined with the unplanned ones (which were like 90% of the work), put the project well outside our budget unless we did it ourselves.

[esseph]

"just stop being poor!"

[amarant]

Tbf, I did start the comment with "I have more money and no kids". I don't fault anyone for discarding poverty after that point on!

But yeah, in the end even my budget was stretched to it's limits! Not that I was in any way poor, pulling around 3x the average salary in my area. Shit just got crazy expensive. Had I known the condition the house was in when I bought it, I would've lowered my offer by around 25%. But it was impossible to inspect the foundation without first breaking up the floor, and I don't blame the seller for not wanting to do that. I don't think they knew the condition either tbf. Based on the bottled message I found, nobody had looked under those floorboards since shortly after Kennedy's assassination!

[KellyCriterion]

Look, I have kids - and no money.

[nnutter]

It's so simple it's hard to really appreciate. Accepting what is and acknowledging that all you can do is your best and other mindful practices can really help. Easier said than done. I'd highly recommend the Healthy Minds app as a nice, no cost place to start learning. It grew out of a University of Wisconsin program and, as far as I know, is funded by donations and grants.

Healthy Minds https://hminnovations.org/meditation-app

[isodev]

> because I have to raise two young children

It’s a missed opportunity for posts like the link to also mention and reinforce the importance of family planning. Many go into setting up a family because of peer pressure without assessing that it’s a very long term commitment. I’m sure you’re doing the best you can, of course. Maybe raising awareness that having kids is no longer an imperative for humans living in the 21st century could be something we do more of.

[lm28469]

If you wait until everything is planned, ready and accounted for you'll never have kids.

[SoftTalker]

Even if you reach that point, you're likely now at the age where fertility problems become a real issue.

If you want to have kids do it when you're in your early 20s.

[wat10000]

This sort of "hurry up or it'll be too late" attitude is a great way to figure out that you don't want to have kids after it's too late to make that choice.

[isodev]

This is factually false :) and if you’re really worried, there are many options available to you to preserve what you will need or consider adoption - there are so many humans being born without a family after all.

[lovich]

I agree with you on a factual basis, but you understand that a large amount of people have a deep emotional instinct to not be ok with those options, right?

[isodev]

Indeed, that’s what I mean by raising awareness. It takes time to change such deeply rooted beliefs. I think if humans are to prosper and resolve planet-wide challenges like global warming, we need to be better at managing resources and we need to work together as a species, not separate counties fending for themselves.

[toxik]

Most people I know realize they should have had kids sooner once they have them. Adoption is also not that easy, there are plenty of cases where adoption causes kidnapping.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

How does adoption cause kidnapping?

[dheera]

> you'll never have kids

Which is also OK. It's financially smart to realize you don't have the resources and not have kids.

If {some subset of the government, rich people, people who control the economy} want more people to have kids, which is something I keep hearing from that class of people: They need to collectively figure out how to put more money into the pockets of people. Higher salaries, drastic tax cuts, cheaper housing, more people will be financially ready and more kids will happen as a result. Also, work hours need to be standardized at 4 hours/day per person OR costs of living need to be designed that 1 parental income is enough.

[toxik]

I think those people realize this, but it's a bit like global warming. They like their lifestyles.

[em-bee]

i agree with most of your points, especially the reduction of work hours, but cost is not the issue that keeps people from having kids. it's actually the reverse. the more money people have, the less likely they have kids.

the problem is lifestyle and career demands.

[dheera]

I think it's also because high middle class earners are financially smart (don't buy things if they don't have the money), AND health-smart (realize their body's needs, including sleep) so they choose logically not to have kids, because they do not have the resources for it, and will not sacrifice their own well-being just to have kids.

The upper class is financially smart, AND has the resources (20+ years of child rearing costs already secured upfront, ability to hire night nannies, ability to take a few years away from work without income, own a home and not at the mercy of rent increases), so they have kids.

The lower class is often not financially smart, is not health smart, and systematically poisoned to sacrifice themselves and buy things they cannot afford. They are given insufficient resources and told that they should have kids, so they do.

[em-bee]

The lower class is often not financially smart, is not health smart, and systematically poisoned to buy things they cannot afford, including kids, so they have kids.

i don't believe that is true.

raising kids is not that expensive. what is expensive is the high expectations for what you should spend on your kids with that middle class and high earners have. like sending kids to college.

[lm28469]

> Which is also OK. It's financially smart to realize you don't have the resources and not have kids.

It's sad to see people so deep in the consumerist rat race that giving life is seen as a cell in their life's financial excel sheet.

Weirdly enough people who actually don't have money are the one having the most kids. And people who lived pretty much from 300k years ago until the ~1950s had it worse than you yet they had more kids. People making 1m a year have less kids than people working in fucking coal mines 100 years ago.

We don't have less kids because we're poorer than 50 years ago, we have less kids because we drunk way too much capitalist kool aid and put traveling, buying shit, careers, money in front of everything else on our list of priorities: https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-pull-back-from-values...

[dheera]

> giving life is seen as a cell in their life's financial excel sheet

It is, though. My own food, water, housing, heating, hobbies and things that make me happy, are all cells on that sheet as well. The numbers add up now. Money for kids would absolutely obliterate all the other cells on that sheet, and the numbers wouldn't add up.

[em-bee]

having kids is no longer an imperative for humans living in the 21st century

on the contrary. global population growth will plateau in a few decades, and negative population growth is already a problem in many countries, like all western countries, south korea, and also china.

[isodev]

Stop looking it country by country. Globally, the trend is that of an increasing population. And fast. Humans are reproducing at unsustainable level.

[macintux]

The number is still rising but the growth rate is plummeting.

https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2016/03/ourworldin...

[isodev]

It’s a trend and it’s slowing down not plummeting. And even if it is, there are already more of us than we know how to sustain.

The problem at hand is not growth rate slowing down, it’s humans divided in tiny pockets of countries burning through what little we have left of natural resources.

People who have kids today, do so knowing that their children will most certainly be displaced by natural disasters.

[em-bee]

there are already more of us than we know how to sustain

what is the evidence for that? if that were true then we would have lot's of people going hungry, but that's simply not the case. poverty is getting reduced world wide. if we could not sustain the current population, we should have lots of people dying from hunger and the population should stop growing. but the reason why population is growing especially in africa is exactly because the growth is still sustainable. if it wasn't, then it could not be growing.

[avadodin]

In 100 years, "us" is going to be Elon Musk's grandchildren, people from Niger, etc. and none of them are going to think like you whether they have to move or not.

[em-bee]

here is a more current graph that predicts the growth rate to become negative in the 2080s:

https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=900&type=Probabilis...

[m463]

Appropriate responsibility. Let the kids assume even the most minor appropriate responsibility. maintain an healthy neutrality.

[socalgal2]

Both of my parents worked full time. Neither of them seemed burnt out. Have plenty of friends where both parents work, neither seem burnt out. I'm always curious what makes it work for some an not others. Some of these couples are not high paid tech workers either. I'm even more amazed that some still find time for hobbies some how.

[qudat]

When you are at the age to notice your parents well being, you are no longer a young kid. Little kids are extremely demanding, both physically and mentally. That’s not to say it gets any easier, but when you aren’t sleeping for 4 months it hits totally different.

[brational]

When you have over extended responsibilities you have to readjust expectations. Some adults never learn how to do that and feel miserable all the time.

[tmcz26]

Can you elaborate more on what you mean by that?

[dvfjsdhgfv]

I feel you. The answer is that you need help. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Also, it's good for kids to be spending time with other good people, too. Continuing in the way you describe is bad for you and you know it so the only thing left now is to figure out how to change it. I hope everything goes well with you.

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressu...

[xivzgrev]

I relate so much to this comment. We love our kids but it's hard to balance various demands.

Often times ourselves get the short end, but others find a way to give each their due including themselves

[agumonkey]

interesting, there's the burnout where you love what you do but there's too much, and then there's the burnout where you cannot love what you do no matter how you spin it. both uphill battle but different scenarios

good luck to you though

[thanedar]

Kids and work definitely increase the degree of difficulty! I'm juggling three young kids while going full-time in politics and publishing my first book this year. What I've found is stretching to launch Positive Politics now is absolutely more work and I could be relaxing instead of writing on a Sunday but this truly gives me more energy. One big unlock was finding a job in politics doing investigative journalism fighting corruption truly lights me up. It's less money and a nonprofit, but this work plus my book truly have me chasing me my highest purpose and Positive Politics grow to be huge on its own too.

[yawnr]

#ad

[zoomdahl]

Btw, if you want a great investigation, check out Michael D. Griffin and his relationship with Elon Musk (and the Golden Dome program). That really blasts existential questions/politics wide open.