I think that sentence is unfair. If you have a job and small children, it's easy to be so exhausted after putting them to bed that there is no energy left to think about anything important.

It's true of course that children are the handiest excuse around. But it's also true that once you start down the job-and-family highway it can be exceedingly difficult to get onto an exit. The implication here -- that if you're not pursuing some major third thing, it's because you're lazier or care less than people who (under considerably different circumstances) are pursuing that thing, is glib.

While there are ways out of this dilemma, they require more than re-sorting your todo list and cutting back on the online poker. Failing that, the default rule seems to be "Job, family, school, startup, pick two".

Agreed. And what's more, marriage and raising a child both take a lot of time. I often don't even open my laptop at home because I just don't have the time.

Personally, I realized that (a) I can't live with the idea of working at a big corp until I retire and (b) if I wish to remain married and connect with my kids (you only have 10 years!) I don't have the time to do this on the side. Given those two truths I decided to lock in our expenses (i.e. making more money doesn't help my goal if we just spend it) and switch to consulting. As a consultant I make enough that I can periodically take 6 months off to give my start up ideas another go. If the business gets some traction then maybe I can stay off longer than 6 months. And as a consultant I don't have to "quit" when it's "working sabbatical" time.

I'm with you for (a) and (b). The other thing I've found working as a consultant (well, an "off-site contractor" anyway) is that the freedom from "office hours" means I can structure my working day around time with my young kids (i.e. three meals with them and then working on into the evening) and still get lots of work done.

Of course this could just be due to my current project being particularly favourable, hence my interest in start-up ideas to try once it ends...

Personally, I figure that if I stay at $BIGCORP I will have far less time to connect with my kids--over the long term--than if I work for myself. I might have to front-load the time a bit as I get set up but this is not a given, given the small hourly commitments possible.

But the "free" healthcare makes it a tough decision.

Working as a permi this is certainly the case, but if you can get your living costs down and work on a more ad hoc basis (i.e. contracting or consulting) then you can take big blocks of time off to use as you see fit.

Personally I wouldn't want to work in the US right now. The worker protections are practically non-existent (advantageous if you own a company but if you work for one, not so much).

Health care has always been problematic in the US but I suspect by your comment you mean that you don't like that you have to have it now. Not having insurance would be an insane level of risk to put on your family (especially when coupled with the risk of a start up). One of the bigger mistakes the US did with health care IMO was letting companies pay it for the employees. That creates a terrible lock in incentive and removes health care from the person's budget so when you do wish to try something else (e.g. a start up) you're not prepared for the sudden jump in expenses.

Another pitfall is to do a start-up while having kids and a family and to let the start-up take precedence while ignoring the needs of your family.

It's pretty common.

I don't think the quote calls anyone lazy. All he's doing is pointing out the contradiction between saying "I would do X but I don't have the time", and engaging in time-filling activities. It's fine if your other responsibilities (family, etc) don't leave you able to take on something else. Nobody is criticizing you for putting your family ahead of your startup - you'd be insane not to. But the first step in overcoming an obstacle is honestly identifying what that obstacle is.