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.
It's more a mental fatigue. I can't say I'm physically exhausted.
But, would it be possible to immediately go to bed at the end of the day and then get up two hours early?
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.
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.
It's also still your choice to have kids.
And you're clearly unaware of how much of a gross oversimplification it being a "choice" is.
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.
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.
I think it's entirely appropriate to view having kids as a long-term hobby for the purposes of this discussion.
It does not matter at all whether the kid was choice or not at the beginning.
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.
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.
In terms of accountability, things we choose to undertake and are then responsible for, it absolutely matters whether or not things were a choice.
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.
When they're older, I'll have more time. Whilst they're young, I'm enjoying being a present father.