Comment by markus_zhang
5 days ago
Reaching 40+ and having a full set of family, I think there is one more subtle resources that people don’t talk about until it’s too late (for me it’s now) —— not your time, your energy, your attention, but your mental strength to use the above resources.
Right now, I’m not really out of time or energy or attention, but I just don’t feel the interest to pursuit any intellectual hobbies that I used to pursuit. Occasionally I went back to them but quickly dropped after maybe a day. I used to work on hobbies every day, but nowadays? Maybe once per month.
Anyway, my advice is to NOT get a kid or even married if you have some strong intellectual interests. Family and kids are going to replace them as a new life style. It is not a worse one, neither a better one, just a different one. But you might never ever in this life get to drill deep into what you loved because you are going to lose the love — but not entirely, so you still regret.
> Anyway, my advice is to NOT get a kid or even married if you have some strong intellectual interests
I wholly disagree. All but a small number of the happy, successful people I know in highly challenging or intellectual positions have families and children in later life.
I do know several people who avoided dating altogether in pursuit of some other goal and, honestly, it hasn’t turned out the way any of them expected. One had a small startup exit but is now trying to play catchup on life with a lot of regrets, basically.
I think this advice is similar to the advice to young people to drop out of college so they can start companies or follow some passion: You don’t hear about the vast majority of students who drop out and regret it, you only imagine the Bill Gates of the world who drop out and achieve their dreams. For most people, the advice doesn’t get them closer to success or happiness like they imagine.
I’d like to reiterate this one. Also, having a kid will reduce your “free” time; however, it will also force you to work more focussed.
This entirely depends on how present you want to be in your kids lives, especially early lives. If you want to be there frequently you need to get the time from some where.
If you're fine with them going off to daycare or having your partner raise them solo, then you don't need to sacrifice any of your time really.
Are these people you know rich and able to use money to deal with the hard problems of raising children?
If I had money for cleaning services, landscaping, laundry, day car, large suv etc it would be easier
Important to note he didn't mention success once despite you doing so twice. Rather he said children are a detriment if you have "strong intellectual interests". He also didn't make a value statement of being happiness/unhappiness or talk about "pursuing some larger goal". He said it's a different - not worse -lifestyle that isn't the most conducive to said hobbies/interests. Which anyone with a child would immediately resonate and agree with.
Being in highly challenging intellectual positions is not the same as actually producing highly valuable output. Are they effective in their positions after having kids? Do they have stay-at-home partners?
Also wholly disagree. I don't have a kid, but I am married, and nothing has helped me more. Best thing that ever happened to me.
Getting a partner and splitting many responsibilities with them at the "cost" of spending time with them is probably a net gain of free time. Kids are nothing like that.
At least, if you want to be present in your kids lives. If you want to have kids and just see them develop around you and attend a soccer game or recital every now and then, kids aren't a big time sink either.
Just another data point — anecdata, n=1.
I'm an academic in the humanities with kids, currently in my late 30s. While having children certainly reduces the time and mental bandwidth available for purely intellectual pursuits, I’ve found it forces me to focus more sharply on what truly matters—both in life and in research.
Paradoxically, I feel more intellectually alive now than before. The recent advances in AI are transformative, and they’ve opened up unprecedented possibilities even for resource-constrained researchers like myself. This moment in time feels uniquely energizing and urgent, especially for the humanities.
Of course, having kids is a major responsibility, and in academia—where short-term contracts and financial insecurity are common—it can be daunting. I feel incredibly privileged to be able to do both: raise a family and engage deeply with my field. But this is very personal terrain, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.
I think this might just be age. I have kids but I’m in my mid 20s and still feel very intellectually driven.
Most of the 40+ intellectually driven people I know have family and kids.
Honestly, having kids seems to focus people and help them drive toward efficiency and priorities.
I think some people just slow down more than others when they age.
Alternatively, their priorities might simply be revealed by their preferences and energy allocation. Like the people who want to be very physically fit, but when it’s time to work out they can’t find the motivation.
Speaking of fitness, 40s is when lifestyle and health choices start to catch up to people. The cumulative impact of diet, sleep, exercise, and choices like alcohol consumption start to appear in the 40s or even 30s. There was a stark split among my friends in the 30s where those of us who stayed fit and had even moderately healthy diet, sleep, and lifestyle diverged from those who ate whatever they wanted, didn’t exercise, or even frequently drank alcohol. Claiming a lack of energy due to age (or blaming family, career, kids, etc) was the first major divergence.
I feel the same way, but there were definitely a period when my son was younger when the two felt in conflict, and my drive is absolutely different now.
I felt an urgency when I was younger that isn't there any more (while ironically being acutely aware I have less time).
I don't know if that is age, or that I feel more content with family life and so feel less need to chase other things, but it's a distinct difference.
Yeah could be age but more likely both -- can't imagine such a dramatic change in just 2-3 years.
That’s fair, everything is multifactorial in a complex system!
I'm 37 and still very intellectually driven (no children). I do think in general you're correct, though, because it's harder to find people like this as I age.
32 and no kids. Always wondering if I’m messing my future up but the idea of having kids is not interesting to me.
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> I’m not really out of time or energy or attention
Similar…
I think it is because you intuitively learn that you need to have some buffer of energy for crises.
I get that some families are lucky but these are the ages that health problems and losses starts to show up. Even more for your parents. Every year it is something…
> Anyway, my advice is to NOT get a kid or even married if you have some strong intellectual interests. Family and kids are going to replace them as a new life style.
I'm single and without kids, but I still have to say... although I appreciate your honest thoughts, I think the quoted bit is an unfortunate message to be in the top-voted comment on HN, because of how it will be tallied by impressionable young minds.
As we all know, tech industry has a huge problem with ageism and other hiring discrimination that's outright illegal in the US, but pretty openly practiced and promoted.
If you were a founder who thus far had little life experience beyond college, and you were deciding who to hire, some of what you'd read on HN would have you assuming you needed to hire only other people recently out of college, and without family.
Which would probably be a mistake, but HN will only tell you about the few times that randomly worked out, rather than all the times it was an avoidable disaster.
> but I just don’t feel the interest to pursuit any intellectual hobbies that I used to pursuit
> Interest
maybe you outgrew them. maybe don't try to pursue something you're not Interested in. let interest be the north star that guides your attention.
that "conflict" you feel between what you Are interested in, and what you Think you should be interested in, is not healthy.
It could be the case. Thanks for the kind words! I found it difficult to tell what I really want.
you're welcome!
>I found it difficult to tell what I really want.
i assume it's almost universally true.
it might be the case that you're already doing what you really want.
and what you think you should do, those thoughts that create the conflict, are most of the time internalized expectations.
only recently i realized that all my adult life i've done pretty much only what was good for me. avoided some major traps of conformity. but constantly felt that anxious pressure from internalized expectations.
now i'm learning to trust my Self - that preconscious source of "wisdom" that i was previously not even aware of.
I have had this thought too, but not sure I would phrase it the same way. For context I'm an older father who had kids mid-40's and had a lot of time to try life the other way, and a lot of time to observe friends life paths beforehand.
The reality is that family, and especially kids, are just better and more rewarding than anything else. That's the part I think gets lost in the narrative. Needless to say there have to be exceptions to that, and maybe you or someone reading this is one of them.
But in general, that's the reality. I was kind of surprised by it, even though everyone had told me variations on this story for decades. I think it's a little bit impossible to understand just how wonderful it is to spend time with your own children, and help and watch them grow, until you start doing it.
I always thought I had no interest in kids. Turns out I just don't like other people's kids much. Still don't really, it's not like I'm going to go play with other kids for fun, or be a school teacher or coach or something. But that's not the same thing at all. If you don't have kids the reality is there's nothing in your life you can extrapolate from to actually understand what it feels like.
In addition to that, as you get older you realize that most intellectual interests and passions aren't going to ultimately be meaningful to anyone.
That's fine, it's not what they're for. But every year it gets a little more impossible to delude yourself into thinking that somehow you're going to transcend the relatively mundane reality you're actually in. Your train set, or collectible collection, or whatever it is, isn't going to have enduring value, to anyone. Again, that's fine.
Perspectives change. Sometimes it makes me sad, and I wish I could have the delusions of youth back, and think that I was so close to the big breakthrough where it would all click.
It's natural to miss all that. But being older is pretty great too.
Thanks. I think whether I feel good or bad about the change, I just have to get used to it. I'm definitely getting used to it, like I'm now perfectly fine playing games every day instead of doing anything productive, while scrolling back 5 years this is going to alert me after 2-3 days of gaming.
> In addition to that, as you get older you realize that most intellectual interests and passions aren't going to ultimately be meaningful to anyone.
I agree with this. But I still feel that I have some intellectual pursuits that I'd like to try out (e.g. going back to school and hopefully get a PHD on something I care about) before going into the venue of vanity. I kinda think it's cool to throw out tons of intellectual shit when my kid and friends are around. Like, talking Astronomy for hours during a camping trip, or picking up a rock and talking about the fossil embedded for hours, which is going to be super cool. David Attenborough has always been my role model as a knowledgeable father who can talk shit for hours without stop. I don't really need a PHD for many of these as most is about being knowledgeable, but you get what I'm saying.
> Perspectives change. Sometimes it makes me sad, and I wish I could have the delusions of youth back, and think that I was so close to the big breakthrough where it would all click.
Yeah. I'm in the sad state right now. Hopefully I'm going to get used to it. I actually don't care too much about big breakthrough because I knew from early on I'm not made of it. I'm more into keep exploring the universe by whatever means until I die. I just don't want to settle down. I told my kid, my wife and my friends that the best way to die is to die on something one feels passionate about. That's why family and kid give me more meh than wow. But it is just me, so I totally get why other people don't get it.
The age of reading about something you love, and not effectively doing it.
Yeah, kinda painful TBH. I try not to read about them anymore. It's just pointless.
I'm in a similar situation of yours (I don't feel any kind of regret though, I just feel this is a phase and it will pass someday). Anyway, I still read (and indeed not much more than that) a lot about my passions, but taking notes and writing down ideas to maybe try in the uncertain future has helped me to feel engaged with my intellectual pursuits. Stay strong my friend.
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I can relate but I feel it’s actually a deficit of energy. Parenting has consumed my energy. It’s not entirely physical or mental draining but just enough constant pressure that it leaves little overhead to really dive deep into a hobby. Both my bandwidth for learning and doing has been depleted. I might have a surge of energy for a couple days but it’s hard to sustain when the choice of pushing forward means stealing from my energy that I could reserve for my family, the family always wins.
I am still interested in a lot of things and try to casually read about them or watch YouTube videos on the topic. But I don’t get hands on as much as I used too. I have the time but I’ll be less present and focused with my kids tomorrow is what I’ve learned. If I dive into something today, I’ll be extra introverted tomorrow as my brain is still spinning on it tomorrow. Yes, I have trouble context switching sometimes. My energy tomorrow will be less if I spend my time today creating versus if I am consuming which tends to be passive even if I am learning and feel like I’m being productive (I’m really not ).
I do think it will return. I’m trying to be present in my kids life at the age they want me present. Before long, they’ll have their own life and hobbies and then they’ll be out of my house. I think each of those will mark steps in my return to my former self. I was selfish with my time before because it didn’t really effect anyone, being selfish with my time now would cause me a great deal of regret and at the end of the day I value family well beyond my own interests and hobbies.
> I might have a surge of energy for a couple days but it’s hard to sustain when the choice of pushing forward means stealing from my energy that I could reserve for my family
This is exactly what I'm feeling. Occasionally I got motivated and wrote some code for my side projects, but my heart would be gone for the next X weeks/months. I don't know why I need so much time to recharge, but that's it.
> I do think it will return. I’m trying to be present in my kids life at the age they want me present. Before long, they’ll have their own life and hobbies and then they’ll be out of my house. I think each of those will mark steps in my return to my former self. I was selfish with my time before because it didn’t really effect anyone, being selfish with my time now would cause me a great deal of regret and at the end of the day I value family well beyond my own interests and hobbies.
I agree with you. I definitely don't want to regret about not being present, thus the struggle. But as you and others said, hopefully this is going to change. Good luck!
Terrible advice. Let me guess, you live in a big city, or in an anti-social suburb, or something along the lines.
My family's tight-knit small city is great for raising families and almost everybody has some interesting hobby. Even mothers of toddlers. Sure, they don't have six figure salaries, but their cost of living is low and quality of life is high. YMMV, not all small cities. Also, they are reluctant to let strangers into the fold. You need to earn their respect.
What city? Looking for a better place to raise my (new) family
I am not American but the pattern is the same according to friends there.
DO NOT GO THERE AS A REMOTE WORKER. They will hate you because those people are destroying small communities by raising rentals and real estate prices, while keeping most of their money invested somewhere else. You have no idea how much they hate those people.
Find a community with similar background to you or your wife. Harsh weather might be a good thing. Go visit and find out how to fit in. By default they don't like people from outside the community. What you think makes you the same as them is likely not what they think (e.g. "hey I'm White and the same brand of protestant as you"). You'd be surprised many of these small towns are more welcoming to rural Catholic Mexicans than "fellow Whites". When SHTF, like a bad storm or a flood, those rural Mexicans will risk their lives helping the community. Most "fellow Whites" visitors will just pick up and leave to the big city.
Now that I think of it, maybe go to a disaster-stricken town and help rebuild. That could be a ticket in.
Eh it’s fine to have different ideas.
Level up and hire help. You can do it I believe in you!!!
Thanks! The more I think about it, the more I feel it's my own issue and family simply makes me more vulnerable.
"Never felt being successful in life" -> "Want to achieve something" -> "Naturally turns to hobbies" -> "Family and kid takes focus and time away" -> "Get frustrated"
I think that's the loop I'm in.
It's age. I'm alone and I have the same problem.
Just so that the discussion does not become overly biased in one direction, I'd like to share that I'm over 40 and still feel highly motivated to pursue intellectual interests, and take on hobby projects. The hours I can put in is definitely far less than I could when I was single and young but the motivation is still there and I still manage to complete a few hobby projects (software ones and otherwise) each year.
That's a pretty good thing. I'm glad you can still do it. Nowadays I'm very reluctant to jump into any new hobby that needs thinking and focus (e.g. STEM topics). I know I won't be able to stick to it, so it's better to just drop it instead of trying it out and disappointing myself later. I'm so scared to try out because I really hate failing myself again.
I know it might sound ridiculous but I never succeeded in any hobbies. Family and kid take away time from me so I feel even less likely to be successful in any hobbies. But why do I stick "Hobby" and "Success" together? I think that's because I have never been successful (by my own definition, whatever it is) in real life.
But how to explain the change just in a few years?
Maybe because aging is non-linear.
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Hormones?
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I found just the opposite.
Single life consumes an enormous energy. Home life with toddlers feels so much more focused, calm, and amenable to deep work
I think this could be a big factor that is behind the whole accomplishments at a young age thing.
Yeah, I think it is a thing. Just a hunch though, but how many great scientists still pump out great results after having kids? They usually marry late in life too.
I get that Kevin Smith's films are for a very specific audience that's now in their 40's, but this scene from the Jay and Silent Bob reboot really hammers your point home hard for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytiZ7zw5vqQ
My takeaway is a little different. I'd still love to have the opportunity to pursue those things, but there's not a chance I'd ever trade what I have for that (I realise you weren't suggesting you would). tldr; I feel at peace with the road not travelled.
Thanks, it's a good clip and TBH I completely agree with what he says. It is just that the complete agree does not turn into complete change of my mindset. I guess it's because being the stage is less fun than I thought. My mindset is -- OK I'm going to be the stage, so I'm going to learn a lot of stuffs that I wanted to learn, so then teach them to my son. But apparently 5-year old boy has little in common with a 40+ years old grown up, regarding hobbies and interests, so the mindset doesn't actually work.
I definitely don't want to ever trade my kid away, but sometimes I just wonder the what-ifs.