Research has shown that the hardest year of the career of a number of men is the year following the birth of their first child.  The instinct to protect and provide has kicked in,  Most agree that, in retrospace it wasn’t necessary.

“For the first year or so all that babies need are diapers, onesies and a lot of love” – observed one of my colleagues, correctly.  Not a lot of extra money.

But it’s not more money for the first year but for life, for funding the college etc, one might think.  True, as children grow up, spending increases.  But so does the income of the parent.  This is through natural progression – people have higher incomes as they age.

OK, maybe it wasn’t necessary, but what’s the harm?  The harm is that we dads tend to be less present for the ‘lots of love’ that the babies need, And it’s not just the baby – your partner needs you around in an unprecedented way, helping and loving them.

The other harm is to your work life itself.  Under pressure, new dads make made moves at their work that they might regret.  People who run businesses might make poor business decisions that they’ll come to regret later.