4 ms·

60% had atleast one child when they were founding their first company, but that doesnt tell if they were still happily married after a few stressfull years of r

by kayoone 14y ago

60% had atleast one child when they were founding their first company, but that doesnt tell if they were still happily married after a few stressfull years of running their companies.

meaty 14y ago
I've run two companies, have 3 children and have been happily married for 15 years. It wholly depends who you and your spouse are and how much time you put aside for your family. Your family are more important than any business venture - that's the key to success. Also don't base any relationship on financial benefits - many a time we've had literally nothing to this point we had to eat on 12GBP a week for a couple of months and put every bill off and that's not been a problem because we're good company for each other without any tangible items to amuse us.
- kayoone 14y ago
  That is superb and i didnt want to imply that its not possible with my comment! There are a lot of factors in play and it can all work out very well! That being said, i started my first real company when i was 6 years into a strong relationship. 2 years later the relationship is gone and the company failed to catch on. I dont regret it and am still motivated to start new things, if anything this only made me stronger but it was very tough going through it!
adrianhoward 14y ago
The flip side of that is how many non-married founders crash and burn because they didn't have a supportive, safe place to go to outside the company. I'm not married - but my partner and I have been together for more than 17 years now. I don't think I'd have started our first company without her support and pushing. I definitely wouldn't have started my second after our first one crashed and burned! Stress happens in all relationships. For me anyway the stress of starting two businesses, and having one fail horribly, doesn't get into the top three most stressful events of the last 17 years. It barely makes the top five ;-)
- entropy_ 14y ago
  This is off topic, but I'm just curious. If you've been together for 17 years now, why are you not married? This is not a criticism/flame/whatever, just curious.
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    This is off topic, but I'm just curious. If you've been together for 17 years now, why are you not married? Many reasons ;-) * We're both atheists - so we don't think any god(s) are going to be annoyed * We live in the UK so, at this point, living together without being married isn't frowned upon socially - not by anybody we care about anyway. There's also the slightly weird thing that at this point people just assume we are married unless the topic is brought up specifically. * Neither of us are particular fans of getting up in front of large groups of people so the whole "wedding day" concept isn't much of an attraction. Quite the opposite if anything. * No kids (by choice) so don't need to factor in that as an issue. * The whole needing state/peer approval for a relationship seems slightly weird to both of us. Our commitment is personal and private and doesn't need any external validation thank-you-very-much. * Personally we see staying together without marriage as a more positive statement about the state of our relationship. We're together because we want to be together - not because a divorce is too much effort. The only hassles have been around stuff related to medical care for relatives and each other (a few idiots are a little too strict about the definitions of family and need paperwork), along with a mild tax hit since we don't get the married couples allowance. At some point soonish we'll have to sort out some of the legal stuff around investments/wills, etc. - but most of that's already been dealt with with. If the UK's Civil Partnership arrangement was available to straight couples we might have gone for that - just to make the legal stuff simpler, but is isn't so we didn't. TL;DR - Why should we? ;-)
    - snowwrestler 14y ago
      If we set aside religious and cultural reasons, there are often good legal and financial reasons to get married. I'm not familiar with UK law, but in the U.S. the main advantage is that the legal system is predisposed to offer spouses a whole raft of rights and powers that, absent marriage, need to be individually constructed via some complex legal maneuvering. You don't need to tell anyone you're married. Just schedule time at city hall and grab a couple of bystanders (or close friends) as witnesses.
tehayj 14y ago
When it comes to positive psychology married people with kids feel less satisfied with life, but other factors that also contribute to happiness such as meaning and purpose are increased in this group of people and make up for that.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  When it comes to positive psychology married people with kids feel less satisfied with life [citation needed]
  - tehayj 14y ago
    This is one http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/In-Defense-of-Parenthood.pdf http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/I... The other one is cited in this book (I read it there first) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1857883292/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1857883292&linkCode=as2&tag=itmxdif-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1857883292/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... Here is a not so scientific national poll about this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135843/Children-lives-meaning-says-happiness-poll.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135843/Children-liv...
    - adrianhoward 14y ago
      Interesting - thank you. Especially the three studies in the first paper. The discussion on moderators on the first study is interesting since it shows that it's not a universal truth - but significantly moderated by age, marital status and sex. For example: "Finally, age significantly moderated the link between parenthood and life satisfaction. Simple effects analyses revealed that young parents (ages 17-25) were less satisfied with their lives than their childless counterparts (b = -0.39, p < .001); mid-range age parents (ages 26-62) were more satisfied than their childless peers (b = 0.42, p < .001); and older parents (ages 63 and older) did not differ from older non-parents (b = 0.16, p = .29)." The discussion on recall bias is interesting to - nice to see that mentioned. US only population too. Would be interested to see how that goes across cultures.

by kayoone 14y ago

60% had atleast one child when they were founding their first company, but that doesnt tell if they were still happily married after a few stressfull years of running their companies.

meaty 14y ago

I've run two companies, have 3 children and have been happily married for 15 years. It wholly depends who you and your spouse are and how much time you put aside for your family. Your family are more important than any business venture - that's the key to success. Also don't base any relationship on financial benefits - many a time we've had literally nothing to this point we had to eat on 12GBP a week for a couple of months and put every bill off and that's not been a problem because we're good company for each other without any tangible items to amuse us.

kayoone 14y ago
That is superb and i didnt want to imply that its not possible with my comment! There are a lot of factors in play and it can all work out very well! That being said, i started my first real company when i was 6 years into a strong relationship. 2 years later the relationship is gone and the company failed to catch on. I dont regret it and am still motivated to start new things, if anything this only made me stronger but it was very tough going through it!

adrianhoward 14y ago

The flip side of that is how many non-married founders crash and burn because they didn't have a supportive, safe place to go to outside the company. I'm not married - but my partner and I have been together for more than 17 years now. I don't think I'd have started our first company without her support and pushing. I definitely wouldn't have started my second after our first one crashed and burned! Stress happens in all relationships. For me anyway the stress of starting two businesses, and having one fail horribly, doesn't get into the top three most stressful events of the last 17 years. It barely makes the top five ;-)

entropy_ 14y ago
This is off topic, but I'm just curious. If you've been together for 17 years now, why are you not married? This is not a criticism/flame/whatever, just curious.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  This is off topic, but I'm just curious. If you've been together for 17 years now, why are you not married? Many reasons ;-) * We're both atheists - so we don't think any god(s) are going to be annoyed * We live in the UK so, at this point, living together without being married isn't frowned upon socially - not by anybody we care about anyway. There's also the slightly weird thing that at this point people just assume we are married unless the topic is brought up specifically. * Neither of us are particular fans of getting up in front of large groups of people so the whole "wedding day" concept isn't much of an attraction. Quite the opposite if anything. * No kids (by choice) so don't need to factor in that as an issue. * The whole needing state/peer approval for a relationship seems slightly weird to both of us. Our commitment is personal and private and doesn't need any external validation thank-you-very-much. * Personally we see staying together without marriage as a more positive statement about the state of our relationship. We're together because we want to be together - not because a divorce is too much effort. The only hassles have been around stuff related to medical care for relatives and each other (a few idiots are a little too strict about the definitions of family and need paperwork), along with a mild tax hit since we don't get the married couples allowance. At some point soonish we'll have to sort out some of the legal stuff around investments/wills, etc. - but most of that's already been dealt with with. If the UK's Civil Partnership arrangement was available to straight couples we might have gone for that - just to make the legal stuff simpler, but is isn't so we didn't. TL;DR - Why should we? ;-)
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    If we set aside religious and cultural reasons, there are often good legal and financial reasons to get married. I'm not familiar with UK law, but in the U.S. the main advantage is that the legal system is predisposed to offer spouses a whole raft of rights and powers that, absent marriage, need to be individually constructed via some complex legal maneuvering. You don't need to tell anyone you're married. Just schedule time at city hall and grab a couple of bystanders (or close friends) as witnesses.

tehayj 14y ago

When it comes to positive psychology married people with kids feel less satisfied with life, but other factors that also contribute to happiness such as meaning and purpose are increased in this group of people and make up for that.

adrianhoward 14y ago
When it comes to positive psychology married people with kids feel less satisfied with life [citation needed]
- tehayj 14y ago
  This is one http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/In-Defense-of-Parenthood.pdf http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/I... The other one is cited in this book (I read it there first) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1857883292/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1857883292&linkCode=as2&tag=itmxdif-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1857883292/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... Here is a not so scientific national poll about this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135843/Children-lives-meaning-says-happiness-poll.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135843/Children-liv...
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    Interesting - thank you. Especially the three studies in the first paper. The discussion on moderators on the first study is interesting since it shows that it's not a universal truth - but significantly moderated by age, marital status and sex. For example: "Finally, age significantly moderated the link between parenthood and life satisfaction. Simple effects analyses revealed that young parents (ages 17-25) were less satisfied with their lives than their childless counterparts (b = -0.39, p < .001); mid-range age parents (ages 26-62) were more satisfied than their childless peers (b = 0.42, p < .001); and older parents (ages 63 and older) did not differ from older non-parents (b = 0.16, p = .29)." The discussion on recall bias is interesting to - nice to see that mentioned. US only population too. Would be interested to see how that goes across cultures.