What nobody says about startup moms
&gt; I remember chatting with a woman at a work event one night and asking if she needed to go home soon because of her kids. She replied, “No, I see my kids on weekends.” I couldn’t help but cringe thinking about what it would be like to only see my son on weekends. It seemed horrible!<p>If you work 9-5 (really 8-5 most places) this is basically true anyway. Most of the time you get with them on weekdays may have some quality just for <i>existing</i>, but is really pretty poor. Rush around in the morning, send them off to wherever, get back home at 5:30 or later just in time to throw together or eat dinner (depending on whether your spouse stays home), then bed-time routine, or they run off and do their own thing for an hour or two (friends, bike riding because god knows they don&#x27;t get enough time outside at school for e.g. basic eye health, homework, whatever) while you try to get the house in something resembling order for the next day, <i>then</i> bedtime routine.<p>Any way you slice it, weekday time-with-kids for someone with a normal job is pretty crap. If you&#x27;re a super-parent you might be able to make some of it a little better or more valuable. Finding <i>maybe</i> an hour a couple nights a week is doable, especially if you shift all your clean-up into your &quot;alone time&quot; and basically live kids, cleaning, and work all your waking weekday hours (ugh, no).<p>If you&#x27;re in the founder set and see loss of weekday time as a huge sacrifice, then I&#x27;d guess you&#x27;re paying someone to handle a bunch of the bullshit in your life. At least regular cleaners and maybe you don&#x27;t do much of your own cooking, and possibly you have one of those kid-chauffeur services. Ordinary working people don&#x27;t spend a ton of quality time with their kids during the week. Again, seeing them at all may have some value, but you&#x27;re not gonna hang out undistracted by other life-junk for any serious length of time.<p>Weekends? That&#x27;s where the good times are. Morning and evening weekday hours are just too eaten up with trying to get by. About the best you get is a smooth routine that&#x27;s at least not a <i>negative</i> experience for all concerned.