This past Father’s Day, June 21, 2026, I had a choice to make. I could play pickleball from 9am to 12noon at an indoor club called Flyte, a 30-minute drive north. Or I could take my kids 30 minutes south to the Bay Club Redwood Shores for swimming and tennis and pickleball lessons.
For over a year now, I’ve taken them every Sunday for five to six hours while we’re in town. It’s become a tradition. I’m not exactly having max fun out there, because I’m the one giving the lessons, not playing. And anybody who has tried to teach their young child a difficult skill knows how much patience it takes. However, it’s still rewarding to teach them and watch them slowly improve.
So Father’s Day presented a classic fork in the road.
On one hand, you can view Father’s Day as a day to take a break from childcare so dad can do his own thing. On the other hand, you can view it as a day to spend even more time with the kids, since they’re the most important people in the world.
The Choice Was Clear
In the end, I told the pickleball tournament organizer up north that I couldn’t make it. I felt too guilty leaving the kids behind. When I do play, we usually go from 7am – 9am at a park close by. So I loaded them up around 10:45am and didn’t get back home until 7:15pm.
We played pickleball for an hour, swam for almost one and a half hours, hit the hot tub and water park for another hour, read books, ate lunch, visited the Tesla dealer, drove RC cars for an hour, then had dinner.
It was the best Father’s Day I could have asked for. The only thing that would have made it better is if my wife had joined. But she got to work on our new book, Your Children Will Be OK, and got some down time, since she spends every single evening doing homework with the kids.
An almost perfect day. And then Monday happened.
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The Next Day Juxtaposition Was Jolting
Monday brought back that familiar feeling of dad guilt. But this time, I didn’t do anything about it.
We had signed the kids up for a week of summer school. I dropped my wife off at the preschool where she substitute teaches, then I took the kids to their school at 8:43am.
When we arrived, the organizer told us the kids could wait outside in the cold or head to the classroom. We chose the classroom. When we got there, the room was nearly empty. Just a couple of teachers and nobody else.
It felt weird. A little depressing, honestly.
Was I really about to leave my kids with two summer camp counselors I’d never met, the day after spending eight straight hours with them? My daughter was sad. My son was aloof and started drawing by himself while he waited for other kids to show up.
I had the entire week free to take care of them. We even got season tickets to Six Flags and Great America. As someone who spent 18 months homeschool during the pandemic, I have no problem taking care of them every day. Yet here I was, dropping them off.
But I couldn’t pull them out now. We’d already paid, and we’d already made the drive. So after hanging around for an extra 10 minutes, I gave them big hugs and left.
On the way out, I started reminding myself of the benefits of camp. Socializing with new kids. Learning new things. Building a little independence. All ways to try and lesson my guilt. Then I got in the car and drove home.
And now here I am, at 10:21am, sitting on my sofa watching Argentina vs. Austria after taking out the trash and charging my RC car batteries. Can you believe Messi missed the penalty kick?!
Be Productive To Overcome The Guilt Of Not Caring For Your Kids
Because of the guilt, I’m writing this post instead of shutting the laptop and fully enjoying the World Cup. I decided that if I was going to let someone else watch my kids when I could, I’d better be productive enough to make that decision worth it.
And that’s when it hit me.
When I dropped the kids off, my guilt was at its peak. But by the time I’d taken out the trash and tidied the house, the guilt dropped about 30%. By the time I finish this post, edit it, and schedule it for publication, the guilt will be down roughly 70%.
The key to not feeling terrible about letting someone else care for your kids is to make sure the opportunity cost doesn’t go to waste. The more productive you are while they’re out of your care, the less guilty you feel.
Let me take this to the extreme. If I spent this week researching one investment decision that made us $1 million over the next year, I’d probably feel zero guilt about a week of summer camp. The trade was clearly worth it.
But if I spent eight hours a day watching soccer, writing nothing, and letting the house turn into a pigsty, I’d feel awful. There’s a strange irony here. The people most capable of wasting enormous amounts of time are often the ones who feel the least guilty about it. The rest of us can barely waste an afternoon without our conscience tapping us on the shoulder.
So that’s the framework. Earn the time away by doing something with it. Simple enough.
But the guilt math looks different depending on what kind of parent you are. So let me break it down for the two groups who wrote to me the most after I shared this idea.
For Working Parents: Your Guilt Meter Should Be Lower, But Check The Reading
If you have to work to provide for your family, your guilt meter shouldn’t be running nearly as hot. You don’t have much of a choice. Putting food on the table is the most loving, responsible thing a parent can do. If the kids are in school or camp during work hours anyway, you’re being efficient with your time, not stealing it from them.
So give yourself a break. Seriously.
But here’s the uncomfortable part. I’ve talked to a lot of working parents who still feel guilty, even though they’re doing the responsible thing. And when we dig into why, the answer usually isn’t about the kids at all.
It’s that deep down, they don’t love their jobs. Or they suspect they could downshift, work fewer hours, not get on a plane to a meeting, or negotiate more flexibility if they really pushed for it. But they don’t, because the money is good, the title is nice, and the unknown is scary.
That’s the guilt talking. Not guilt about leaving the kids, but guilt about not being honest with yourself.
If your work genuinely requires the hours and the income genuinely changes your family’s life, then your conscience can rest. You’re trading your time for their security, and that’s a noble trade.
But if you’re working 60 hours a week to afford a lifestyle the kids don’t care about, while telling yourself you have no choice, the guilt will keep nagging. Because part of you knows there’s a choice in there somewhere.
The fix isn’t to negotiate a severance package tomorrow. The fix is to be ruthlessly present when you are home. The quality of your hours can partially make up for the quantity. Kids remember a parent who was fully there for 90 minutes more than a dad who was half there for four.
For Stay-At-Home Parents Who Could Do More, But Don’t
Now for the group nobody wants to talk about. The stay-at-home parent or work-optional parent who has the time and the ability to be with their kids, but routinely hands them off anyway. Not to work. Not for a break they’ve earned. Just because they’d rather play tennis and brunch at the club.
This is where the opportunity cost framework bites the hardest.
If you outsource childcare to nannies, camps, and iPads while you scroll your phone, run errands that could wait, brunch at the club after tennis, or do nothing in particular, the guilt is going to compound. And it should. You had the rarest gift of all, time with your kids while they’re young, and you let it slip through your fingers for nothing.
I say this as someone squarely in this group. I don’t have to drop my kids at camp this week, but I chose to. Then wrote 1,900 words to make the choice feel worth it. So I’m not preaching from a mountaintop. I’m preaching from the same sofa you’re sitting on.
That said, rest matters. You cannot be a present, patient, fun parent if you’re running on fumes. The parent who never gets a break is the one who snaps over spilled juice. Recharging isn’t wasted time. It’s an investment in being better when it counts.
Only you know which one you’re doing. And if you have to think hard about it, you probably already know the answer.
The Real Point
The guilt isn’t really about the kids. They’ll be okay. They’ll have fun at camp, learn from teachers who aren’t you, and survive a Monday without more or dad hovering nearby. That’s the whole thesis of the book I’m writing.
The guilt is about you. It’s a signal about whether you’re using your time in a way that lines up with what you actually value.
So when you feel it, don’t ignore it and don’t drown in it. Use it. Let it push you to be more productive when the kids are away, more present when they’re around, and more honest about the choices you’re actually making.
Conquering the guilt, I spent another 45 minutes watching France vs. Iraq until the rain delay. Except this time there was none, because I wrote another post while I did it. Double the productivity, double the relief.
Which gave me an idea. There are 48 group-stage matches in this World Cup. So I’m making myself a deal: one new post for every match I sit down to watch. If I’m going to plant myself on the couch for the next month, the least I can do is produce something for it. Watching becomes earning.
Tethering something unproductive to something productive is an incredible guilt-erasing solution.
Parents, do you feel guilty when you let someone else take care of your kids, even when you don’t technically have to? If you’re a working parent, is your guilt actually about leaving the kids, or is it about a job you’d downshift from if you were being honest with yourself? And what’s your version of tethering something unproductive to something productive, so you can finally enjoy the couch without the nagging voice in your head?
Protect The People You Feel Guilty Leaving
If you’ve got young kids, the best way to erase one type of guilt entirely is to make sure they’re financially protected if something happens to you. I bought my own term life insurance policy years ago, and the peace of mind was worth every penny.
With Policygenius, you can compare quotes from top insurers in one place and find the right coverage without the usual runaround. Spend a few minutes now so you can spend the rest of your time being present, not worrying. My wife and I got matching 20-year term policies through Policygenius and feel a tremendous amount of relief as a result.
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