Tech dads, where are you, what's your support network?

Who do you talk to about stuff? -> Most age peers don't have kids yet, so I rebuild relationships with people I went to high school with that do have kids.

Do you have any time for yourself? -> One kid is not that bad from a free time perspective, but when you have two there's maybe five hours a week for each parent and it ends up being zero sum with two (or more) on one childcare.

Where are all the tech dads? -> Age peers in tech don't seem to have kids despite being the small slice of people arguably able to comfortably afford it. Mostly seem to bank up cash and have kids in mid to late 30s and slow lane themselves.

I wrote a bit about my experience being a founder and a dad where I started my company in the same month as my wife and I found out she was pregnant with our first child. Link here: https://rogerkirkness.com/founder-and-father

Very little time for myself. No support network [1]. Hustled and through luck got lucky to have enough wealth to build support with childcare providers (a nanny). I outsource and automate anything that isn’t a core competency. Wouldn’t do it again knowing what I know now, powering through until my kids are adults. I unknowingly exceeded my risk appetite [2] [3].

Good luck.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38880225

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_assessment

(n=1, experiences will vary)

I guess I qualify as a "Tech Dad". I run a tech business and father of 3 (11 years,10 years, 18 months). The most critical support network is your wife. Period. Full stop. If you have anything less than 100% support (mental and physical) from your wife and vice versa, you will be in trouble. I am lucky that I have that from my wife and only after that, I still have tons of difficulties to juggle b/w working on the business, figuring out time to spend with the family and do some side projects as well (which I am always cooking)

For me, it is about saying No to many things unfortunately. I cannot take the regular vacations that people like to take. I would rather spend 2 hours taking my family to a dinner together than trying to plan a 4 day vacation which is tough to get done. I don't have lot of time for friends anymore plus most of my "true" friends were from high school/college and it is tough to stay in touch with many that live far apart. You don't really make true friends at work or neighborhood (usually).

I just focus on what I really like to do and be selfish if needed as long as I am not ignoring my family and my work. Everything else suffers and takes a back seat. You can only do so much with 24 hours in a day.

Eh I walked into being full time dad of 3 kids from two different biological dads 4.5yrs ago.

Not much has changed really. I talk to my partner and mates for mental health support.

Re. time to yo self, I still have the same hours in the day, I chose to spend that time w my family by walking into this life. It's still my time. I just love spending it all with my family. Kids are great and my misso is my best friend. It's epic.

Need an hour to myself? Well lucky I get up before the rest of the household does. Great time for some stretching and drum and bass.

My misso makes me play CS2 with my long running homies if I haven't for a week or two. She knows it's how I keep in touch with most of my close mates.

One thing I have realized is. Tech and dad are a shitty combo. IT is high stress, zero job security work. Case in point. All the industry certs aren't nationalized approved certs/licenses, most are company or product based. Which if the industry moves on your up shit creek. Builders or plumbers or sparky license on the other hand...always relevant, doesn't change according to which company is flavor of the month.

Easy af to go work alone as builder or normal trade. Whilst you can do this in IT (currently what I do) it's hyper stressful and you have less job security than being a statistic for a big firm.

This basically compounds on the stressor of being a parent. I've found IT is completely sh*t when looking at employee mental health.

They treat the concept of your mental health like crap so it gets swept under the rug. Never had a heart to heart convo about some mental health problem from any peer in IT. Have had plenty of yarns w old tradies and bosses in labouring about it tho and gotten plenty of tips along the way.

My wife and I have had minimal support from anyone, but luckily we do have family nearby to help us out in a bind, if one of them is sick on a weekday. Our problem is that we had kids late, and our parents are a bit creaky to help. Siblings are all too busy or far away.

So our support network is take-out lunch and dinner mostly. Not kidding. We've been forced to focus on our health and just make it work.

I'm sorry that your experience is bad. I have two teens. While it has not all been perfect I have been able to do start-ups, make new friends, revive old friendships, and get some excellent personal support that way. And indeed that whole adventure is continuing. My mum died before our older one was born, and my dad lived/lives some distance away, but we did get lots of support from my SO's family, plus friends made in nursery and school, and so on. Indeed we still have strong ties to our kids' primary school.

No support really. Maybe a couple friends to bitch to. Not much time to myself that isn’t spent on chores and stuff considering my wife works my off hours.

r/daddit is active and regularly sees posts sharing and seeking points of views. It likely won’t substitute for time support from family/friends, but still a community you can talk to - different things.

What do you mean by tech dads? Dads who work in tech?

Are you me?!

I did my tech in organizations that had regular working hours, so for a lot of the time, I alternated shifts with my R.N. wife. I got to bond with the youngster, which was a great experience.

Later, some day care took care of the gaps. However, I never had a support system other than the Swiss couple across the street.

I find few support groups for men and dads. A while back, I discovered Chuck Fink, who started a men’s support group in Asheville, but he has focused on story telling since then.

https://www.chuckfinkstoryteller.com/

Such groups, should they still exist, are not macho beer-swilling arm-wrestling opps. Now that I’m senior, I’d like to see more support for seniors, who are not so much overwhelmed as ignored. I did make this a bit worse by moving to the boondocks. Beautiful as all get-out but far from family and most friends, both new and old. I’m not going to judge others, because I am highly independent, and probably more responsible for the isolation as anyone else (other than the choice of location, which had something to do with limited money after splitting up.)

I had a lot of “kids” ( postdocs, actually ) while doing computer support at university, and many are quite successful and well known, but I’m proudest of my own child.

It was very hard keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances in the bay area.

Family, though distant, is still the best resource, even if just emotional. For a while, I was involved with, and briefly president of, a fly-fishing club. I found that hobbies were a great way to connect with others who were often completely different, and that was rewarding. Besides the fishing interest, I connected with others via photography. A service buddy and I were such avid photographers that we passively got a guy from PA to switch from shooting deer with a rifle to shooting them with a camera. Less so, via music, since I am not a very good pianist, and never have a showpiece ready to share. I’ll work on that, and think about moving to a nearby city. The two nearest ones have universities.

I am fairly near Yosemite, and have a senior and veteran free pass, but it’s still a hour drive, a long day carrying heavy cameras and a long drive back. I’d actually be arguably better off at a greater distance, carpooling.

My Mom used to visit from the east coast once a year, until Dad’s health worsened. We explored much of CA, and I later did more of that with wife and child. But let’s face it, all dads are busy with home and kids, and meeting other dads, having joint family fishing/photo trips require outreach.

As I noted, I live in a beautiful location with 140 degree views on either side of the ridge, trails through manzanita trees, and neat rock walls on the other side, and friends from 50 miles away don’t visit. I can’t move mountains but I can try harder to reach out. Despite my work experience getting along with many others, I am still mostly an introvert (who else is listening to the opera this morning?) but I do make the 50 mile trip to visit my old friend Trader Joe about once a week.

There’s a fine line between nagging and reaching out. People are often slow to respond. I guess one has to nag. Too bad. That’s life.