My spouse and I have recently been talking more about starting a family. There’s a good chance we’ll stop preventing soon though we won’t exactly be “trying” either.
I currently work as a software engineer at a fully-remote startup. Its a pretty small company without an official paternity leave policy, but I emailed HR and they indicated they had given other people 2 weeks of PTO for paternity leave. My question is; if you were in my position, would you consider looking elsewhere for companies that have more paternity leave? I’m not sure what amount is normal or good, but a previous search yielded dads talking about months of paternity leave being too short, which got me worried. Then again, since I am remote, maybe I am more worried about this than I need to be? My wife has chronic fatigue so I expect she will need plenty of help from me especially with a newborn.
I have worked for this company for about a year and feel neutral about staying. It is somewhat chaotic like any startup, but it also seems to have the best chance of success out of any of the startups that I have worked at. I could maybe find better pay elsewhere, but I am not interested in chasing money alone. Another concern I had was if I started looking and got a new job I wondered if there might be some delay before I was even eligible for parental leave, but again I have no idea if this is a realistic concern.
I’m pretty sure the real answer to the title is no amount of time is “enough”, but hopefully you all can help me form realistic expectations. I’m excited and terrified at the idea of having kids and I also tend to agonize over decisions and over-preparation, so any and all advice is welcome. Thank you!
haven’t had a kid, but 2 weeks with a wife who has chronic fatigue seems really short. honestly the start up life doesn’t strike me as great for having a kid, but idk what your job situation is. can you peace out for a day or two every week without things going off the rails? if so, you might be fine. but usually, start ups are pretty lean, and rely pretty consistently on the presence of each person on the team (or at least, this is what i’ve heard, i haven’t done a start up, either)
how much do you have to help your wife? have you asked her thoughts on the situation? does she work?
you’d might want to do some research on child development to help form some timelines. e.g. when does the baby start crawling around / how long are they breastfed? learning stuff like this should help you roughly forecast how much supervision you’ll need to give (it’s probably not linear, fwiw)
last thing to consider is, what if your wife or baby comes out of this requiring more care than average? what benefits does your work provide in those situations? not everything goes as planned, and i’d be a little worried about that given your wife already has one chronic condition. pregnancy is not exactly easy on a body
regardless, i hope you can figure things out and everything works out well for you and your family!
Chronic fatigue AND THEN had a baby? Holy shit what a champ. That’s a hard road to walk
to clarify, i’m talking about the hypothetical situation where OP’s wife, who has chronic fatigue, also has a baby. i’m sure there are people out there with chronic fatigue who have had babies, of course, and they are champs, but uh, i believe that would be a future situation for OP :)