After wake up routine, school run, a full day of work, the few hours the kids are up after work and the bed time routine? That 2 hours a night I'm half-dead exhausted.
I agree with the drift of this but would not describe myself as being exhausted for those 2 hours. More like just unwilling to anything not personally regenerative.
The point is, you have limited mental and physical energy. Shifting your schedule around just means you have less energy to devote to whatever you end your day with (which, in the case of kids, is not a good idea).
Tried this. My children are young. If I go downstairs, they will hear and think it's time to get up. How am I to demand they go back to bed when their role model isn't?
To me, it feels odd when people with children comment that they don't have the same amount of time. It was a choice: children or have more free time. People with kids often seem upset by the results of their choices.
It would be like me complaining that I'll end up dying alone. Well, duh, self -- you chose to not have kids so you could experience other things.
Yea, that's not always how it works. There are a lot of things that factor in to what happens with kids, including the age of a person when the kid happens. It's also not something you can go back on, or just ditch.
And people with kids deserve to comment that they don't have that time because if everyone used the 20 something single white male with no kids, no responsibilities, and minimal routine for anything but work, sleep, and a free 8 hours a day, human society would collapse in to a even bigger cesspool of poverty.
Having children is necessary, and important, for our society. It should be fully supported. Not the subject of derision by people with your attitude.
It is fully supported – with tax breaks, and taxpayer-funded education, and paid maternity leave, all of which childless people subsidise but don't benefit from.
Tax breaks are minimal. Everyone should have a right to an excellent publicly funded education system (and they generally do, not just the childless), and paid maternity leave is absolutely necessary.
And you're clearly unaware of how much of a gross oversimplification it being a "choice" is.
I don't think that is what is meant. The comment isn't about financial support. It's about poor, disparaging attitude to people who choose to have kids. As though it's a fault.
Nobody complained of little time because of kids. But that assumption was made. It's insulting to suggest I somehow regret having kids due to little time when those kids have become my reason for being. The suggestion I regret my kids for want of hobby time is on one of the biggest insults anyone could make.
That's not to say I believe the comment was malicious or even intended to insult. It's very difficult to understand the huge upheaval in priorities that take over by instinct when you have children unless you've made the decision yourself. For some, it's understandbly too big a sacrifice and that's ok! It is, as you say, a choice.
As an aside, I don't think it's right to boil everything down to financial terms and incentives. If I thought that way, I wouldn't have had one child let alone three. They cost a lot of bloody money.
It's absolutely about financial support as well as everything else. If everyone thought about it in a purely financial way, you'd be forced to have children.
I would argue that having children stems from an innate, selfish desire of people's genetics to propagate themselves, and has nothing to do with benefitting society. Is it even clear that children benefit society? Is it an overall good thing to continue to propagate our society?
My attitude is not derisive towards parents. I had parents myself, and I respect their choices. My objection is that parents seem to want to have their cake and eat it too, and then don't acknowledge the significant societal subsidies already in place.
If you had kids, it will be harder to start a side business. That was a trade off the parent chose to make. I choose to have more free time and opportunity.
There is hardly anything significant about the current subsidies in place, especially with respect to the other subsidies that exist already. Tech is one of the biggest recipients of subsidies as it is.
The article states that "every individual has approximately 8 hours [per day] to allocate to 'me time'" which is clearly not the case for many. It seems reasonable to point this out in discussion.
The article also includes "relationships" in "me time", and mentions that you can't do more than about three things seriously. Kids are one such project that people commit to, and not even necessarily because they are martyrs who benevolently aim to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. It's a choice. It's something that people want to do, and something that requires many years of commitment.
I think it's entirely appropriate to view having kids as a long-term hobby for the purposes of this discussion.
You dont commit to a hobby and you have no responsibility towards it. You ditch it at will or postpone it. The hobby wont be harmed and you wont go to jail for seriously harming the hobby. You wont cause lifelong issues to hobby if you neglect it. You wont cause trouble to your partner if you dont care sufficiently about hobby. However, whenever you dont do something with kids, you are directly cause less time to your partner.
It does not matter at all whether the kid was choice or not at the beginning.
You also can't easily stop working on your side business if you have paying customers that rely on your product for their livelihoods. Dropping your responsibility on a volunteer charity organization board isn't something you can just ditch in a heartbeat without hurting other people. Both of those would clearly count as "me time" in the context of this article.
Chose to have a relationship for 5 or 10 years, your partner moved in and built their life around you? You won't go to jail for deciding that you'd like to allocate the third slot differently now, but it won't generally come without causing a considerable amount of harm. Also counts as "me time" here.
Sure, kids are a long-term commitment, and the consequences are more drastic if you suck at it. That's not the point though - the point is that how you plan out (or fail to plan, or had your partner plan) your non-work time makes a major impact on what you can get done during that time. Had kids, out of choice or for lack of birth control? Say goodbye to the third slot, maybe more, don't get it back for maybe 20 years or so. You had a choice at some point.
Counting sound business and charity with strong commitments as hobby me time where you rest is ridiculous too. Both are work for any practical planning relax vs strength purpose.
They are not hobby time nor me time by any reasonable definition. Charity can be me time, if you can stop when you feel like it is not refreshing you anymore.
The talk about choice in the past is weasel expression. It makes it easy to sound as if people had choice right now, today, when they clearly are not having that choice (at least if you want to stay at least a bit ethical which I admit is a choice too).
It is more about what some people want to believe about world then about what world is.
Whether choice or not, if the debt exists now and you are broke, well you really can't XYZ due to being broke. In terms of evaluating situation as is now, the facts of situation matter and not whether you are guilty or not.
Also "accountability" here serves only to allow rest of us to use feel good euphemisms, pretend that situations is more fine then it is and make it so people in those situations don't talk openly about issues they are encountering. If people can't "XYZ due to debt they are accountable for", then they can't XYZ. Them having some guilt there does not render statement untrue.
I'm not complaining. I love my children and wouldn't change it for the world. The parent comment stated I've got so many hours I could be using to be productive. I was stating why that isn't the case.
When they're older, I'll have more time. Whilst they're young, I'm enjoying being a present father.
