Paul Graham's Essay About Kids
Paul Graham illuminates the common highs and lows about having kids
The Teardown
Wednesday:: February 5th, 2020
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Paul Graham’s essays are widely lauded and admonished for their views on building products and businesses. Paul, if you’re unfamiliar, is one of the founders of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley accelerator often considered the premier pit stop forearly companies when they need to tune or fix their business models, refine their product market fit, or expand their network for fundraising efforts.
But I won’t be writing about Y Combinator, or tech, or really anything I ordinarily cover in this newsletter. Instead, this is about kids, covering my own , and also Paul’s recent essay aptly titled Having Kids.
He started the essay with a view many know well:
Before I had kids, I was afraid of having kids. Up to that point I felt about kids the way the young Augustine felt about living virtuously. I'd have been sad to think I'd never have children. But did I want them now? No.
This frame of mind felt eerily familiar. I wasn’t diametrically opposed to kids before becoming a parent, but I wasn’t convinced I was a suitable parent candidate. What if I passed down some emotional or mental instability, or lack of brilliance? I was reluctant to answer those and other questions. Ultimately, I decided that I might hate what I’d think or feel if never provided with the chance to derive those answers and experience everything else that happens.
Paul helped answer some of those questions using his own experience (emphasis mine):
What I didn't notice, because they tend to be much quieter, were all the great moments parents had with kids. People don't talk about these much — the magic is hard to put into words, and all other parents know about them anyway — but one of the great things about having kids is that there are so many times when you feel there is nowhere else you'd rather be, and nothing else you'd rather be doing. You don't have to be doing anything special. You could just be going somewhere together, or putting them to bed, or pushing them on the swings at the park. But you wouldn't trade these moments for anything. One doesn't tend to associate kids with peace, but that's what you feel. You don't need to look any further than where you are right now.
I’ll provide an example near and dear to my routine: the most relaxing activity I engage in every day is feeding my daughter in the morning morning and rubbing her still-mostly-bald head, even though she squirts out of my arms quickly these days and sprints away to point at random objects around the apartment and describe them in Walking Dead zombie-babble.
Before my tiny human existed, mornings looked very different. I would wake up at 5:30 am and head to the gym, making it to work by 8 am. My mornings were productive and motivated. Other days I would instead pour a cup of coffee and dive into a personal research project such as coding, or writing, or reading about something related to my career that didn’t feel like work.
That latter point covers activities that consumed the plentiful free time I possessed at that point in time. These days, I barely sympathize with anyone who tells me they are “so busy” or have “no time” to accomplish certain tasks or goals. Before I was a parent, I used this phrase plenty, but with beer googles on my thinking whenever I referenced my own circumstances. Free time was precious because it allowed me to work through something I wanted to understand without interrupting the flow of workday or valuable time with my wife.
One comment on Y Combinator’s Hacker News thread resonated strongly with me. An anonymous dad struggling with his lack of free time wrote:
Just looking for some dads who can relate and maybe give some wisdom on the subject of having young kids and losing your ability to work on something interesting--which to be fair I never did before having kids because I was unmotivated, having not had that burst of energy yet…
The early days of parenthood were tough for lots of reasons. I didn’t really know what I was doing, I wasn’t sleeping enough, and like many parents, I was worried that I wouldn’t know how to resolve a problem if something went wrong. However, the most problematic reaction stemmed from the loss of free time. The impulse to pick up my computer to continue with my own agenda was upended by the stark reality of a family that needed me to be proactive and helpful. The loss of free time persists as a struggle, but I’ve learned that parent and family time is actually the best time.
The first response to the last quote laid out a simple way of thinking about time:
It gets better - My kids range from 14 to 9. The 14 year old is hanging out with friends and making jewelry. The 12 year old is sitting in my bedroom, reading. The 9 year old is playing games. I'm coding on personal projects, and my wife is in the basement making blankets. We have an entire day of just all doing whatever we want. Weekdays are busier with school and work, but you the point is that you do get your time back, once the kids are old enough to have some independence and interests of their own.
I'd recommend just enjoying being a parent while they are young. They need you at this age. Play with them, read to them, and all that. Write down ideas you'd like to pursue in a couple years when your free time returns. And you can be confident that it will return.
Like some of you, and some soon to be, I’m excited to be the best parent possible. The nooks and crannies of time are filled with furious note-taking when I don’t need those moments to relax. Hopefully, when everyone is a little more independent, I’ll do something awesome with all of those notes.