I struggle with this—if you have kids, sometimes staying the course feels like the "responsible" thing to do. But plenty of people get laid off out of the blue, and plenty of people pursue their dream and have a thriving second career.

There is probably no right answer, but I guess the question is: "what decision can you live with?"

That’s tricky though, because the decision you can live with becomes the decision your partner and children also have to live with - and they get much less choice in the matter.

True but if you make a decision that makes you a bitter adult then they have to live with that as well - as a role model for your kids no less. No easy answers unfortunately.

It should enter into the equation for sure. Is the kid better off with a revolving door of abusive "boyfriends" and mother who works three jobs or one bitter dad? Not a pretty picture.

Fulfilment doesn’t feed your children or put a roof over their heads. The expectation is that men provide. The wife and kids would prefer a bitter provider over a happy “deadbeat”.

I don’t disagree, but I think part of it is whether the wife and/or kids are able to spend enough time with their husband/father.

I actually think most kids would prefer a happy in-their-life, less successful, dad, over a bitter, never-in-their-life, career professional.

Agree - there are other forms of capital and support which are more important to children, spouses, other family members, and friends than money. It seems like many people have already proven that having more money than you need doesn't actually make a difference if your life is broken in other ways.

Yes, but just as they’d prefer playing video games over reading books. Might have been absent from their life at times, but I’m sure they’ll appreciate the properties and stocks I’ll leave behind for them.

What makes you so sure? Did you discuss this with your kids, if they’re old enough, or with your friends’ older kids?

As someone with a friend who grew up under a dad like you… no they won’t. They’ll talk a whole lot of shit to someone like me about what an emotionally unavailable parent you were. Sure, they’ll acknowledge the privileged circumstances they grew up in and be grateful that they at least have that going for them, but not a single shred of that gratitude will extend to you or the decisions you made.

Then again, everyone’s different, and maybe your kids will react differently. Just don’t be surprised if you get a shitty relationship with your kids later on.

This is a bit of a meme recently: “I am not a workaholic, I’m creating generational wealth!”

I can’t say for sure from here, but beware of this idea floating around in the zeitgeist.

And your kid will blow that generational wealth because that’s life and wealth rarely lasts more than 3 generations

Generational wealth isn't capital though some fools mistake it for such.

> The expectation is that men provide.

The 60s want their gender roles back.

In my experience, if a man fails at being a provider, he usually fully commits to the failure too. At least this was the case with my family. A healthy in between narcissistic Walter White provider and fully leaving your old life behind would seem healthier.

There is absolutely a happy medium here, is there not? e:g mid-level dev that could have been a senior but would rather work from home, do the school run, be around for kids, gets enough code cranked out for employer to be happy but is a decent , present, Dad too? Kids get less material standard of living than some of their peers, but still good compared to most of the world and most of history.

Actually it’s not. The expectation is that men do their half and also provide emotional support. The problem is that many omen don’t do either of those and few so both well. Instead many men try to compensate with wealth and fail.

You're right, but just to point out the obvious - you can decide (to some extent) not to be bitter, even if you aren't fulfilled at your job.

Many people, in fact most people, and certainly most people throughout history, have worked not because it was the thing they wanted to do to be most fulfilled. They worked because they had to provide for their family.

The choice isn't binary - it's not "do something you love and not be bitter" vs "work to provide and be bitter". You can also choose "work to provide, understand the tradeoff you're making, and accept it". You can still have a plenty fulfilling life outside of your job - many people do.

This is me, I couldn't care less about massive multinational corporation employing me, it could go bankrupt tomorrow for all I care. But there are those annoying bills, mortgages, vacations, hobbies or just saving for retirement. Remove salary and I will stop working for my employer immediately. I am also not breaking my back to have stellar career, paycheck is enough. I did it for 20 years for various employers, can handle doing it for another 20 till (hopefully earlish) retirement.

But am I depressed? Not at all, because all the free time I get (which often included rather long lunch breaks spent ie running or weightlifting) I try to fill with family and my passions (which are not yet fully compatible things so its often either-or). Its mindset (doing work is OK, it doesn't have to be super exciting) and those passions. But it took me half a decade to discover them, most are adrenaline/extreme sports. TBH I don't know that many middle aged people with real fulfilling passions, that may be the source of problems.

On the other hand, very few jobs these days in the West are about survival anymore. It's true to some extent that you need to pay for your mortgage but at the same time the amount of bullshit jobs is staggering. People work for work for organizations that provide the service of allowing others to like photos of your holidays. Very few people are employed in farming these days as opposed to the entertainment industry. I'm not saying that working in the gaming industry is without value but compared to historical data it looks like it's very hard to die of a famine these days.

Yes, happened to me. My ex had a mid life crisis and decided she didn't want to be a mother or wife anymore. She wanted to enjoy life and be free.

Great for her, terrible for everyone else in the family. After that experience, I take these kind of articles with a heavy dose of salt.

They translate loosely into "Be selfish, think only about yourself, live your own life" no matter the consequences.

Thank you. I turned 40 this weekend, and have spent the last few months if not years wondering who the hell I am, and thinking about all the cool projects, startups, languages and learnings I'd love to explore.

However, I also have a 3-year old I'm taking care of who drains me of all my excess time and energy. I can't do any of this stuff. I'm exhausted at the end of the day, and with my 1-2 hours at the end of night after my kid goes to bed, I'm certainly not writing the Great American Novel.

Maybe when he's older I'll have time for a midlife crisis.

"mid-life" is such a varied but also changing term.

Many many moons ago said mid life crisis was when the kids were starting to get older, 16-ish or older even. Mid life crisis meant you suddenly had more time on your hands than you remembered what to do with.

Now mid life crisis is a couple of years into having kids more often than not it seems. That seems like a way different situation. On the one side you have kids that want to do their thing anyway and on the other you have a totally dependent on you and the family toddler.

You're combining empty nest syndrome with midlife crisis. They are two distinct phenomena.

> Maybe when he's older I'll have time for a midlife crisis.

If you're like me, yes. When I was 40, my daughter was 3, and I didn't have much time for worrying. Now both my kids are tweens and my direct day-to-day responsibilities as a parent have declined so much that I have plenty of time for a proper midlife crisis. It sucks more than I ever imagined, though I'm working through it and feeling a little better about the future.

I'm in your shoes, more or less, and what I panic about is the fact that now that the hands-on time with the tween is so much more optional, I could be missing out on invisible parenting opportunities by not being proactively involved. Example, kid is happy to spend all day drawing or reading or playing BS roblox games with friends. Should I have put more of a limit on this and insisted on a couple of hours a day of other activities like crafts, music instruments, or just hanging out/hooking up playdates? It's a lot easier to be lazy at this age since the kid is not actively trying to do something dangerous like play with scissors or fall into a pool.

51 with a 2 year old son (my one and only kid, who was technically impossible, hence why he is "late", but then here we are...). He's awesome, but I'm in the same place (2nd paragraph). And, even worse since I'm 51. I have to practically physically claw back any time I need for myself. It's exhausting. I'm hoping to make enough money again by next year where my partner can quit her job and my son can enter a special program (that unfortunately has 51 weekdays off, which was too many for 2 full-time parents), and the division of labor will be different.

That's how I was around 40 (though my children were 6 and 3 at the time). I'm definitely going through a midlife crisis. One thing I've learned about myself in this period (it started last year) is that there is nothing worth losing your own mental health over. If you aren't mentally healthy and stable, those you care about the most are going to suffer all the more for it. Sometimes you have to pick the least of multiple bad options, and often "powering through" is not that.

Yes, you will have more time later. Now is the time to invest as much attention as you can into your child. It is the investment you can make now that will pay off massively later on.

Recommended reading: Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate https://www.amazon.com/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-Matter/dp/0375...

You’ll get your time back as he gets older, for sure.

Nice metaphor. I like the paper = financial, social constraint and metal as "down to the metal" physical limitations. Kinda clunky though, needs a few rounds of workshopping!

Midlife crisis needs to be split into “the ones that need to keep working until 70 probably doing the same crap to keep feeling alive” and “not”.

And sometimes the ones from “not” get there without ever knowing what _needing to work_ means.

My wife and I at (46 and 48) went all out 2 years after our younger son graduated and two years after Covid.

TLDR; we downsized from an our house in the burbs and our cars bought a vacation home/investment property in a resort in Florida where we live half the year and we nomad the other half flying across the US.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966

Do you still need to work?

Yep. I work remotely in the cloud consulting department at $BigTech as of mid 2020

Do you have any long term plans? Or do you just want to try it out for a couple of years but eventually get back to a (more) traditional lifestyle? It's fairly common for people to spend winters in Florida and summers in NY or some other place north. What do you think about that?

Current projections is that we should be able to pay off our condo in Florida by the end of 2026. That means it will actually be bringing in income instead of just being cash flow neutral when we aren’t there and we don’t have to be there during the low season - October - early March and May.

Then we can buy a “permanent” home somewhere else. We still haven’t decided where that is. As we travel more we will know. Heck, we might not even retire in the US and keep our place in Orlando.

But since we can keep our living expenses basically level whether we are at home or traveling, there is really no rush.

When you travel and evaluating the area as a potential "permanent" home, what do you pay attention to?

I live in the south, and I sometimes think about eventually buying a property in the north and spending half the time there.

I lived in Atlanta until last year and I still have my house there.

- not too far away from a major airport.

- not too hot in the summer. We don’t care about the winter. We have our winter home

- not too expensive.

- suburbs is okay. But not rural. But we would really like a walkable place. Our condo isn’t in a “walkable” area. But since it is built as a resort hotel, there are three restaurants, a well stocked convenience store, three pools and a gym on site, and a jogging trail.

- a low tax state.

The only city that we have been to that real piqued our interest is Charlotte, NC.

We were there last year for three weeks. But I ended up traveling for work two of those weeks. We are going back next year for three weeks.

We both love Vegas just because there is so much to do and Nevada is state income tax free and the cost of living isn’t high. But it’s hot.

Like I said, there is really no urgency even though I will be 50 next year. We might even end up buying a place in Atlanta again and going back and forth between Atlanta and Orlando.

Exactly - those with kids and/or those who are poor can’t afford a midlife crisis

It reminds me of the kids/no-kids bi-modality of the covid "lock-downs". All the stuff in the news was like "everyone's learning to bake!", while the reality for most people I knew was "everyone is running an office and a daycare simultaneously from their home!".

Normalize transition in your kids lives'. It will serve them so much better in the long run.

I had my own dramatic "mid-life crisis" a few years ago in my early 40's and have two teenage kids (pre-teen at the time).

We didn't hide anything from them, including the overall shape of the career issues, relationship issues, hopes and dreams, how we were handling regrets and commitments, and so on.

Of course we didn't involve them in all the nitty gritty (and what we shared, we do so with respect to their relative ages and levels of experience), but the idea that hiding what it means to be a complete, imperfect and yet aspirationally evolving human being from your kids is a major opportunity lost.

Now my kids know that just being successful doesn't mean you're happy, that everyone goes through changes of heart, that our goals and dreams evolve, and that this is a natural part of life.

I'm a huge fan of parental role modelling through action and reflective practice. Showing them how you go through your own life transitions helps them tremendously in theirs.

I don't think that's what they were talking about. I think they were talking about "if you have kids, you still have to support them financially, and that massively limits your options for experimentation".

Agreed because its not a “midlife crisis” when you’re single, in a trendy area and financially stable, doing something cool.

You’re a rockstar.

> The "not" people can do wilder/riskier things

not going to help anyway. midlife crisis and other related mental problems can never be resolved by outward solutions. you can distract yourself for a while with exciting new hobbies (like getting a motorbike) but it will come back and even harder at that because then you will feel like it's even more hopeless as even this exciting change didn't really solve the underlying issue. but some people also just get used to being unhappy and that's about it for them.

The midlife crisis is a need for novelty, specifically the brain is not stupid, it sees that everything around is either collapsing or freezing in place and it wants to fight that, reverting to the days of college when everything was about building up and dynamism.

I don't think people with kids should weaken their midlife crisis. Kids adapt and maybe they'd prefer a more lively parent to a resigned one?

And compared to divorce, a midlife crisis has a lot more upsides.

Yes but the options are far more limited. Your midlife crisis can't be "I only do solitary mountain trekking now because that's what makes me happiest" when you have children who need you.