8 ms·

His family might disagree.

• axod 17y ago
  Yeah its one thing to deprive yourself of things, but when you start depriving your offspring of things, that's tough. Having a family changes all the goalposts.
  • newsio 17y ago
    So, it is preferable to deprive kids of attention/love/help with school (OP says he barely sees his children) as opposed to depriving kids of "things"?
    • axod 17y ago
      There's obviously a balance. Kids need ideally both.
      • azanar 17y ago
        Do you think they need as much of the "things" as parents seem to feel obligated to provide for them now? There is no need for this false dichotomy of "things" or "complete lack of things". As I've commented on here before, I and a lot of the people I know seem to have gone through childhoods where the parents believed this trade-off was really binary. I got it less than many people, but I still would have liked to see my parents, and their parents as well, not suffer through existence so much because of "needs" they thought we had. The only reason they thought we had those needs is because all the other parents in the neighborhood reinforced that children have those needs by catering to their own children thusly. It almost seems like the same force that drives parents to obsess about the safety of their children. They don't want to seem like the parent who cares the least. The problem is that the goalposts you allude to in a higher-level comment are defined by this mechanism. I agree that goals will change -- any life change will result in resetting of goals --, but I think we absolutely suck as a collective on evaluating where those goals ought to reset to, and just let blind oneupmanship against other families guide us to local maxima.
        • eslifka 17y ago
          Your comments ring very true to me. My father decided he'd rather stay in a relatively low chemical engineering job rather than push up the corporate latter into a black tie management position. As a result my friends all had much nicer toys and bigger houses, but they rarely saw their parents. On top of that my friend's parents never seemed happy, ever. Whereas my father has always been one of the happiest people I know. Throughout my highschool years he'd tell me stories almost nightly of something interesting he'd done that day. Now that I'm older and nearing the end of my own degree I have no doubt I'll keep the same perspective: stick with doing what you love no matter how much you make off of it. - I should clarify that we didn't live anywhere near poverty. My father wasn't putting us in a bad situation to keep the job he loved. We were just significantly lower than the people around us, and as a result he didn't have many friends among his peers (by that I mean parents in our suburb) because they looked down on him. So that situation may not have any real bearing on this discussion since he didn't seem to be facing a hard decision: give up the respect of a bunch of career pushing suits or hate his life and his job, hmmm.
  • indiejade 17y ago
    Disagree. Comfort breeds complacency. Complacency breeds discontent. My family was completely nomadic growing up. While it was kind of a constant uncertain adventure, I see, as an adult, how it made me a better and stronger person. Look at people with a small zone of comfort, people who are so incredibly attached to their physical manifestations of "success" and they are some of the most unhappy people ever. Living the nomadic existence more or less teaches people to value their relationships with people over things or those things that 9-5 drudgery provides. Besides, children are resilient. I would never trade the memory of the time with my parents & family -- moving, camping, learning and adapting all over the freaking place -- for memories of what most adults would call a "stable" childhood.
    • iamwil 17y ago
      I've seen different people react differently to having moved around a lot as a kid. Some react the way you do. Others like nothing better to just plot down and settle in some roots when they're adults.
  • Sukotto 17y ago
    Your duty to your offspring is to 1) raise them to be contributing members of society 2) be capable to care for themselves 3) be capable to care for their own offspring. You have no duty to provide "stuff" and failing to give them stuff is not deprivation.
• Tichy 17y ago
  Even as a family you can be frugal. You need more than if you were alone, but still. If you can't buy your kids lots of fancy things, maybe you can teach them to be entrepreneurial early on. If you can't buy them expensive education, maybe they can try to win grants. Besides, if you are struggling now, you probably can not buy them good education anyway.
  • alecco 17y ago
    Try that with kids bombarded from TV and peers to be mindless consumers. It's close to impossible.
    • Tichy 17y ago
      Don't own a TV.
      • alecco 17y ago
        I don't, but I don't have kids. Do you?
        • jimbokun 17y ago
          I have kids, own a TV, but don't get anything more than the basic network channels. Specifically, no Disney, no Nickleodeon, Cartoon Network, etc. When visiting friends and family who do have those channels, I'm constantly reminded this is a good thing. (Ironically, I think channels like Cartoon Network I would recommend more for adults, both for the creativity of some of the shows and for the nostalgia of the old stuff. But I don't think the irony of many of these cartoons translates for many children, who are still naive enough to take them at face value.)
          • alecco 17y ago
            That's cool! How do you deal with peer pressure at school and all that? BTW, like someone else said, I hate to have thousands of episodes of tv trash like Gilligan's Island in my head.
• physcab 17y ago
  Yeah. I haven't hit that point in my life yet, so that aspect was not my first consideration. But even so, there are various levels of poverty. My assumption here is that we're not speaking about the destitute. We are simply trying to keep with the standard of living for a typical family. If you are willing to give up extra luxuries (fancy home, fancy car, cable, etc) then I believe my statement still stands.
• caffeine 17y ago
  Which would deprive his wife and children more? a) Fewer expensive toys, a smaller/no TV, a small house, cheap clothes, and public school? b) A father and husband so busy repressing his pain, so trapped in the anguish of seeing his identity drowned, that he cannot express his true love and strength to them? His family will benefit infinitely more from the joy of his liberation, and his children from the example of a father fully passionate about his life and theirs. Anything less is a disservice - and the money is utterly inconsequential in comparison.
  • geebee 17y ago
    If the choice were between a big house and a modest house, expensive clothes and cheap clothes, private school and public school, I'd probably make some major life changes too. But here's the thing. I already live with two kids in a small 2br house in an unfashionable corner of an expensive city (San Francisco). I already buy my clothes at relatively inexpensive stores, and expensive private schools are already out of the question. My family depends heavily on my income, and while I'm not struggling and wouldn't call myself impoverished under any circumstances, there isn't a lot of room on that ladder to step down. I'm not as accomplished as the OP, but he may be in a similar financial state. Another big difference is that I don't have a difficult boss, and my commute and working hours do allow me a couple hours with my kids in the evening, along with weekends mostly free. So I'm definitely, definitely, definitely not saying he shouldn't feel this way, or suggesting that he's complaining. I'm just saying, I get it, I understand why his situation is a very difficult one.
    • neilk 17y ago
      Hey, awesome if it's working for you, but "an unfashionable corner of SF" is a pretty long way from the bottom of the ladder. If you compare yourself to your peers in SF you'll never feel good about that. Too many kids who got lucky in this town walking around with zillions. What if you moved to one of the more decent parts of the East Bay? Easily cut your rent in half, or if you prefer, you could have twice the space.
  • neilk 17y ago
    I think you're being a little bit dramatic. We're talking about computer professionals. The "pain" we might experience professionally is pretty mild. So we might only have a high paying but not totally self-actualizing job. If that squashes you down so hard you can't express your love to your kids, I'm not sure it's the job that's the problem. And going the entrepreneurial route isn't exactly a way to spend more time with your kids. I agree that escaping the rat race is a good thing overall for the family, I just disagree with the dichotomy you're presenting here.
• nzmsv 17y ago
  This is exactly what most guys out there are conditioned to think. "I must be a provider". It's stupid. Yes, make sure your kids aren't starving. No, they don't need a new videogame every week. Kids aren't as dumb as adults think they are. Treat them with respect, explain things to them, and they will understand. Treat them as dumb consumers, and what do you get?
  • azanar 17y ago
    Kids aren't as dumb as adults think they are. It's more a matter of perceived fragility, both in the physical sense (safety hysteria) and the emotional and psychological sense (provider hysteria). This is constantly reinforced by other people behaving as though their children are fragile, and falling into the hysteria themselves. No one wants to be at the bottom of this pile. It would be the same, in a coarse sense, as being at the bottom of the pile in a high school or in a clique of society wifes. Social ostracism, harassment with and by child protective services, and honest to goodness psychological damage of everyone involves can result from such petty bullshit. That you have to deal with such pettiness is a sign not that you should try to win harder, but that perhaps you should just stop playing the game. In all of this squabbling, it is possible that, in an absolute sense, the child's life could be awesome. They could be comfortable, psychologically stable, and totally happy with life. But it doesn't matter, because all of this social in-fighting is a local phenomena, and being on the bottom in any locality makes you a "bad parent" almost by axiom. BTW, not arguing at you so much as using your thoughts as a basis for my own. :-)
• jimbokun 17y ago
  Maybe, but how will he know if he doesn't ask? Or it might turn out that there is some third option between continuing the current drudgery or pushing everything into the pile on some new venture. Again, there's little to be lost and much to gain from starting the conversation.