this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Ah, the luxury of not being a parent.
Implying that parents don't have any free time? I mean, my time isn't "my own", but my wife and I sure as hell have free time.
Personally, I would go insane without free time -- likely literally. I would be an anxiety-ridden mess with a hair trigger. If my chores won't allow any free time, the chores don't get finished. They'll still be there tomorrow.
Edit: We have two kids, 6 and 8 years old.
I guess there are scenarios where I have free time, but it's less than 30 minutes daily. In some evenings I can fight the exhaustion of a full day of child care after putting them to sleep to stay awake and get some free time, taking into account of being very tired when they wake me up quite early.
It probably gets better when the kids are older, mine are little.
Two humans are just too few to take care after two kids. Originally humans were not isolated to 4 person families like they are today. The whole tribe was looking after all the kids, sharing different duties and having a collective schedule, similar to Kindergarden today, but the whole day.
After that a few generations lived together in one house, still having less impact on the actual parents. Then we got our 2 parents + kids family model where in the beginning one parent was doing childcare full time.
Arriving in todays society, where both parents need to work and do the child care on the side by themselves after parental leaves from work are over. This is from the age of 1 where I live, but e.g. in the U.S. it's right away.
Obviously this most parent hostile setup in the society of today, adding also some financial disadvantages, is a big reason this societies demographic issues.
What else can be done besides talking to other parents to change it? There should be motivation to change it, at least for the next generation.
I guess you could live in a community with multiple parents, sharing duties and creating more free time for individuals and couples.
It's interesting that parents prefer to maintain their own space.
You're forgetting about when they were 0 and 2
No, I'm really not.
My first had major medical issues (for her first 3-4 years) that necessitated close supervision after a 3-month stay in the NICU. She had PT, OT, speech therapy, and feeding therapy every week, appointments with cardiology and pulmonology, gastroenterology, regular post-operation and post-NICU visits, and the normal doctor appointments.
She took a lot of work, and severely limited our options for going out, due to a feeding schedule (while trying to limit projectile vomiting -- and I do mean vomiting, hard and loudly, not just "spitting up" -- to 2 times a day, when possible) that allowed practically nothing. Still, we managed to have downtime, where we could just relax and unwind. It's how we stayed sane.
Given the circumstances, a second child really changed very little, in terms of work required. We still found time for ourselves.
Admittedly, it would have been impossible (or extremely cost-ineffective) for me to have a job at that point, but my daughter was a full-time job and then some. I realize that this probably negates everything I've said to most in this thread, but still.