John Middleton

We’ve been sold the damaging narrative that family comes after “success”. • “Get your career set up” • “Build wealth and stability first” • “Kids later once life is figured out" But this means putting marriage and children off until some undefined future date. There’s never a perfect time - you'll probably never feel "ready". And your peak earning years overlap with your peak parenting years. If you delay it all in the name of readiness that can lead to some damaging outcomes: • Reach 'success' with no one to witness it • Miss the years where energy and presence matter most • Hit major milestones alone and realize no one really cares but you My wife @LailaRossi and I weren’t “ready” when we started. We just decided, and then learned how to carry the weight along the way. That made all the difference. Starting a family doesn’t derail your ambitions. It just clarifies what actually deserves it. LISTEN TO ME I never planned on becoming the “marriage and kids” guy on X. I would frankly rather talk about building stuff, investing, whatever. But I'm watching society feed young people a damaging narrative: "Kids are too expensive. Marriage is outdated. Put career first, family later." I've watched too many people get tricked into waiting. They chase the career, delay the family, then wake up at 40 wishing they'd had kids when they could, or that they’d had more. But by then, biology's made the decision for them. My ONLY regret is not having our three kids earlier, and I wish we had a fourth. Laila and I owned a company and had no money and we started falling into this same trap of "we should wait till it's safe". But thankfully we woke up in time and did not get stuck in this trap. Family first. You WILL figure out the rest.