Few enlightened, modern couples believe that the responsibility to care for a baby falls primarily on the woman. That's because men and women have babies together.
Women carry babies for a 9-month term, during which time they are - in most cases - 100% able to work and 'contribute'. Labor takes ~36 hours; it can take just a few hours for scheduled c-sections. After labor, the baby comes home to Mom AND Dad.
For the average couple, there's a window of about 2 days in which the woman is out of commission. (Yes, that's simplifying things.)
A woman is only out of commission if her partner is not able or willing to help her with the responsibilities of being a parent. That's the only scenario in which she'd have to choose to be a mom before being a 'career woman'. So simply help your wives/girlfriends with the baby duties, and no choice will be required. :)
I have three-year old and a six-week old son. I'm the father. Given that my wife and I do try to split duties as it makes sense ("Ain't mama happy, ain't nobody happy"), I have to say that right now, I couldn't do the traditional startup 14-hours-a-day thing either.
And ye gods, would I ever not care to combine the traditional startup stress and a colicky baby.
Baby care and startups really don't go together very well, and it's not really a gender thing at all. In fact, the reason I'm on HN right this second, rather than working on my pet Haskell HTML normalization library (or, in other words, "quality time I could be working on a startup"), is that I am literally typing this paragraph one-handed as I have a bottle in the other. Even when he's snoozing while I've got him, I am virtually incapable of Zone when my brain knows that at any minute, a piercing scream that I must drop everything to service may emerge. There may be some set of people who can work through that without short-changing the kids, no sarcasm intended (not all kids take the same level of care, either, this one has been much needier than his older brother), but I can't say it's unfair to consider a baby to be a negative indicator for a near-term startup effort, regardless of the gender of who is having the baby.
(I mean, do you even want to get startup-married to someone who would short-change a baby for your startup? There's commitment, then there's just plain bad priority decision making. Babies, pets, and startups: If you're not willing to commit to what it takes, it's better just to not.)
For the average couple, there's a window of about 2 days in which the woman is out of commission. (Yes, that's simplifying things.)
I vehemently disagree. Actually, I think it is an utter load of crap.
I've had the good fortune of seeing many of women in my friends and family have children. To an individual, these are unbelievably talented women: savvy, smart, driven, and focussed. Ivy League and MIT degrees all around: undergrad and graduate.
The reality that I've seen is that a pregnancy and childbirth slows them down -- temporarily -- both physically and mentally. It can be difficult to keep focussed when you're spending your first trimester getting sick every day.
A lot of them talk about "pregnancy brain" somewhere during their third trimester. Keep in mind that these are women that slice and dice differential equations and have been quoted by the Supreme Court.
Afterwards, the constant interruption of a newborn every 2-3 hours is debilitating for both parents. I know this because of how I watched my own productivity and focus redouble when my youngest started sleeping through the night. That can take a while. If you're a wuss, like me, over a year.
I'm not saying you can't juggle having babies or children while starting a company -- I've done it, twice -- but pretending that there is no impact is ludicrous.
Unfortunately there is a mountain of evidence that suggests that breast feeding is extremely important for optimizing your baby's chances in life. It's even been quantified, I think, to about 7 IQ points.
So - sorry, once labor is over the mother's role can not just end and in many ways it increases dramatically as she will for many weeks be getting extremely broken sleep (up several times during the night to feed for 30 mins at a time each at least).
Having said that, I hate it when anybody tells anyone else they can't do something. As a startup you're going up against huge odds in the first place and doing something nearly impossible almost by definition. If you're the kind of person who just gives up when someone tells you something is a bad idea then you probably ARE the wrong person to do a startup, but it's got nothing to do with babies.
I used to sleep while breastfeeding at night -- plunk the baby on the bed, stick a nipple in their mouth and doze. When baby grabs at the other one, switch sides.
During the day, I coded while breastfeeding, or read, or whatever. Hmm... I wonder if that's why my little guy is such a geek? :P
Regarding 30 min feeding - been there, ended up going to a breast feeding clinic and were told that 90% of the meal baby gets in the first 5 minutes, and that is how long a typical feeding should last. We did the switch, which took exactly two feeding cycles and could've not been happier after that.
Even with an ultra-modern division of labor, 50% of raising a baby is a lot of work. I wouldn't recommend overlapping that phase of your life with founding a startup.
I've always offered to take on equal care of our kids. I just have failed at that whole lactating thing.
So in all seriousness, there are biological factors at play, and our parenting choices DO impact our availability. You certainly can make different parenting choices than we do, but every parent I know puts kids before work.
What we did was putting some breast milk into the freezer so I could feed our child when the mother was away. I had a special cup for that. It's always good to have some frozen breast milk reserves not only for feeding but also for bathing or disinfection.
I don't think reasonable people believe that women who have babies can't remain focused on their careers. However, let's not pretend -- there's a lot of caring going on, and somebody, whether it's mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, aunt, uncle, or nanny is doing it. Particularly at a startup where as an employee part of my compensation is options, making me effectively an investor (viz foregone income), I don't care if hypothetically my boss might not be distracted; I want to know if she or he in particular will be focusing less on her baby and more on the company. And no pretending sleepless nights don't impact work performance.
As an employee, I'd be very reluctant to work for a young startup where a founder wanted to have a baby before the organization grew quite a bit.
edit: it's not just a partner helping; it's being damn near a single parent. One of the founders of my company did just have a second child and let's not kid: his wife, even with the nanny, is practically a single mother.
Women carry babies for a 9-month term, during which time they are - in most cases - 100% able to work and 'contribute'. Labor takes ~36 hours; it can take just a few hours for scheduled c-sections. After labor, the baby comes home to Mom AND Dad.
For the average couple, there's a window of about 2 days in which the woman is out of commission. (Yes, that's simplifying things.)
A woman is only out of commission if her partner is not able or willing to help her with the responsibilities of being a parent. That's the only scenario in which she'd have to choose to be a mom before being a 'career woman'. So simply help your wives/girlfriends with the baby duties, and no choice will be required. :)