Talking about Depression with Your Children with Alex Egeler | Dad of 4 · Startup Dad summary

Key takeaways

Parenthood can transform one's perspective on career and success. It’s important to adapt and redefine what meaningful work means.
Breaking generational mental health patterns requires openness and proactive parenting that prioritizes emotional honesty.
Demonstrating a full range of emotions to children helps them develop empathy and emotional intelligence.
Communication about mental health is vital for families, especially when navigating challenges with children.
Flexibility and understanding are essential in parenting and in creating a workplace culture that supports working parents.

Summary

Letting Go of the Career Script

Alex Egeler shares how his paternity leave became a pivotal moment in his career. Initially, he believed he had crafted the perfect work-life balance, only to realize that the job he thought was ideal lacked meaningful impact. As his family grew, he learned to let go of preconceived notions of success and redefined what it means to find satisfaction in work.

Undoing Generational Pressure

Alex opens up about the mental health challenges faced by men in his family over four generations, including the loss of both his father and grandfather to suicide. He reflects on how these experiences pushed him to challenge societal expectations around work and identity, ultimately redefining his role as a father and husband.

Emotional Honesty in Parenting

In this section, Alex discusses the importance of demonstrating a wide range of emotions to his children. He emphasizes the value of showing not just happiness, but also frustration and sadness, to help his kids build emotional intelligence and resilience.

Supporting a Child with Mental Health Challenges

Alex discusses the approach he and his wife have taken to support their 12-year-old son, who experiences bipolar disorder. They emphasize openness and communication about mental health, discussing their strategies for dealing with difficult emotions and crises.

Coaching Working Parents

As a career coach, Alex helps parents navigate their professional lives while being caregivers. He reveals his strategies for helping clients question old assumptions, set realistic career goals, and advocate for their value in the job market.

Show notes

Alex Egeler is a former engineering executive turned parent career coach. He’s also a father of four boys, a husband, and a stay-at-home dad who helps other working parents navigate meaningful careers that support, not strain their families.

In this episode, Alex opens up about the unpredictable reality of parenting, the generational mental health patterns he’s determined to break, and how becoming a dad transformed how he views success. We discussed:

Letting go of the career script: How Alex’s first paternity leave revealed the emptiness of his “perfect job” and led him to walk away, and how each child helped him rewrite what meaningful work really looks like.
Undoing generational pressure: Why the deaths of Alex’s father and grandfather pushed him to question everything he believed about work, identity, and what it means to be a good dad.
Parenting with emotional honesty: Alex shares how he learned to show all emotions and not just the “good” ones, and how that shift helped his kids build trust, empathy, and resilience.
Supporting a child with bipolar disorder: Why Alex and his wife approach parenting as a tag team, how they talk openly about mental health with their 12-year-old son, and what they’ve learned about showing up differently in crisis vs. calm.
Building flexible careers for parents: How Alex coaches other working parents to question old assumptions, set realistic job goals, and own their value in the job market — especially in roles that support both career and caregiving.

Where to find Alex Egeler