Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from

parents just like you all over the world. Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

It's kind of crazy if you think about it, that we hand off the supervision and the teaching

of our kids to other people often for very

little money. Now, this is not a comment on anyone's life choices, especially single parents

or people struggling to make ends meet. This is more of a middle-class indictment. Consider these

dad cliches, the green thumb who won't let anyone mow his lawn because they can't do it right,

the gearhead who always changes his own oil, the Mr. Fixit, who insists that he doesn't need

one of those crook general contractors to remodel his kitchen.

These seemingly self-sufficient parents are the same people who will entrust a 13-year-old neighbor

with the safety of their precious children without a second's thought.

Right now, there's almost

certainly a person reading this who refuses to hire extra part-time help at the office because it would

be too expensive. Meanwhile, they have a full-time nanny picking up their kids from school. People who would

never hire an employee to replace them at work would gladly hire someone to replace them at home.

When you think about it like that, isn't it maddening? Why on earth don't we all instinctively spend our money in a way that

allows us to spend more time with the people we love? Obviously, it's not that simple or easy.

It's important for our kids to spend time with other kids to develop relationships, to learn from other adults. And the reality is we all have to work. We have to make sacrifices. We have to pick and choose the things we can spend money on. That's why child care is a fact of life. It's why raising a kid is always and will always take a village. It's just strange that we're so ready to outsource the care of our children, yet we micromanage

and refuse to delegate totally inessential tasks that would give us more time with them, all while we

tell ourselves that family is the most important thing in the world to us.

Try to take a minute and think about when and where you are falling prey to this contradiction.

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