For me it is pretty clear that there was work-before-I-started-raising-a-young-family and work after.
To be clear, it wasn't over-night. After all, it took me quite a bit of time to adjust to my new role in life as "father". But once it started to embrace me (or, you know, vice-versa) the importance of work and its rewards diminished significantly.
In short, I was soon content to put in the work that got the job done, but I had few aspirations of climbing any kind of career ladder. "Dad" was my new and dominant identity. The paycheck was how I could take the girls on vacations, get them bicycles, fix up the house we lived in, etc.
I think this is what is missing from most people (especially here, where its more likely to be dream driven?).
Once you have a kid (and properly well adjusted), your life is no longer yours. You can't go on a sabbatical as a father. Your child's future will appear to be the most important thing to you and everything becomes secondary.
I think this is probably what life is for the majority of people. Work is just something they do to sustain the life of their family. They don't have the time (nor interest, nor care) to keep up with C++ conference, the latest JavaScript libraries, etc etc.
This is one of the reason why I think that "dead jobs" is not necessarily a bad thing. It points to a much larger question of "why are we even doing this in the first place?"
>This is one of the reason why I think that "dead jobs" is not necessarily a bad thing. It points to a much larger question of "why are we even doing this in the first place?"
That's a wonderfully succinct way of putting it. We've lost sight of what the economy is for, or maybe we've never had it nailed.
Dead jobs can be fine. I've done brain dead system administration for 3 days a week with a 4 day weekend. My bills were paid. I have a more stressful higher paying job now but it wasn't worth it; the new car is nice but on the whole I would've been better off driving a beater and having the time and energy to live life on my own terms. I think that's why I'm doing it in the first place.
My experience is there is this dynamic you are describing, and then there's the period when your kids enter late adolescence or get ready to go off to college, and suddenly it's time to invent yourself again.
It can be very difficult to adjust to the process for when your kids are no longer tied to you at the hip for physical and emotional support on the day to day cycle and it's more on the macro ... financial... level.
Yeah, the empty nest is a trying time when you've identified primarily as "father" for over two decades.
At the same time, "reinventing myself" was to retire at exactly that moment. I was lucky of course to be able to do that — by cashing-out the expensive California home and then "down size" back to the midwest where I grew up.
I am considering substitute teaching in the area in order to maintain an income — a more modest one, this being Nebraska.
To be clear, it wasn't over-night. After all, it took me quite a bit of time to adjust to my new role in life as "father". But once it started to embrace me (or, you know, vice-versa) the importance of work and its rewards diminished significantly.
In short, I was soon content to put in the work that got the job done, but I had few aspirations of climbing any kind of career ladder. "Dad" was my new and dominant identity. The paycheck was how I could take the girls on vacations, get them bicycles, fix up the house we lived in, etc.