Agree on both accounts. To the first point, I had a lot of friends and hobbies before having a kid and it feels that I'm slowly losing control of my time to the point where most of it is gone and I only have like 2 hours to myself. 4 if I want to be sleep deprived the next day.
Two hours of free time to yourself is horrible. The fact that it's expected doesn't change that it's a horrible answer.
We need to reduce the amount of time we spend at work. Ironically, the best way to do that is to spend your early years working 24/7 to try to get wealthy enough that you can spend 4 hours a day doing meaningful work.
... And have the elder siblings help take care of the younger, but I don't know if that's acceptable at all nowadays in the West or if that's one way to get the CPS involved.
It's way less aplicable because people move so much. Nowadays, not many people live around (say within 1 km distance) their extended family, whereas in pre-modern times it was the absolute norm. What's more, grandparents often lived in the same house and children were raised by multiple adults and not just their parents. The burden on parents was way lower.
I went to a pretty intense university to study computer science with a baby. I had zero free time. It was 100% class, study, kids, and barely any sleep - for FOUR years!
All the people I know who do great things? Zero free time. They work like animals to fulfill dreams and responsibilities.
The people I know who do great things? Seriously, they have free time. They have kids and don't feel bad about spending time with them.
Maybe college isn't the best example for what the real world is like.
Sadly, for the absolute majority even a partial "early retirement" is unachievable regardless of how much or how hard they work
Now that I've become an empty nester I have more time to myself than I probably ever had in my entire life! And I have great kids who've turned into awesome people that I can visit and enjoy doing things with.
I would argue you reap what you sow. Put the time and work in now and enjoy the fruits later in life. Don't worry about silly things such as "free time."
I doubt most parents get two hours of free time though.
There's no point in being mindlessly productive at all times.
Saying as someone whose been there
But you actually said "2 hours is plenty to get stuff done if you don't goof off". Now you're changing it to "2 hours a day gives you plenty of time to goof off."
2 hours a day is 14 hours a week. What I'm saying is that goofing off for 2-4 hours a week still gives you 10-12 hours a week to get a lot done.
But if you need to goof off for an hour per day (as many do feel they need to), then there are likely underlying reasons - problems in your life causing distraction, procrastination, etc. If you can address those reasons, you'll get more time to do fun work.
The book The Now Habit addresses similar themes.
2 hours also seems like a lot more than it is, in part because people severely underestimate how much "free" time they had before.
For example, they think they are working from 9-5, but really, most people do lots of little things during that time - browse reddit, whatever.
That time also now can get eaten by kid stuff - scheduling, signups, etc, especially if you have 2+ kids.
It's also rare that it's a single block of 2 hours.
So between two people, one is occupied with a kids almost all the time.
> Newborns can’t even move from where they are!
You're right, I was implicitly assuming that you wouldn't leave the baby to just cry because that just sounds cruel to me.
Quite a big caveat here. I’d never let my 1 week or 1 month baby cry at night (or during the day) and in any case, he started sleeping well without any sleep training.
tl;dr: it shouldn’t be time consuming.