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Parents don’t own being busy or stretched for time. Regardless of what commitments you have you can be busy or not and you are in control of that - yes even par

Parents don’t own being busy or stretched for time. Regardless of what commitments you have you can be busy or not and you are in control of that - yes even parents are in control of how busy they are.

jerf 8y ago
There is a qualitative change in when you are busy for the vast majority, though. Most people don't have a job where at any minute you have to drop everything and perform some task. This being HN, a very above-average number of the people who do have a job of that nature are around here, of course, but I'd expect it's still a majority of people of baby-having age around here who are not routinely getting paged at 2am by their job.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  As someone who was an infrastructure engineer/sysadmin/it manager for over 16 years (ie various roles that required an on call component), my move to security at the same time as having kids couldn’t have come at a better time. Being on call 24/7 is not conducive to being available for parenting responsibilities of young children.
ambivalents 8y ago
As a non-parent I do get this sentiment--certainly there can be many important things beyond children that call our time--however as someone who has dated someone with a kid and seen the kind of time and energy a child demands, OP's statement is spot on. It's more of a paradigm shift in the way you think about time -- you're suddenly not just responsible for yourself and your accompanying todos, but a whole nother human life, and their accompanying todos (which are manifold greater because they're dependent on you for even the simplest of needs).
strictnein 8y ago
> Parents don’t own being busy or stretched for time. Didn't say that. I was saying something to my past self who thought I was busy at the time which was the point of all this. And, no, you're not in full control of how busy you are when you're a parent. You have kids? Because no parent I know would ever say that.
verylittlemeat 8y ago
Being a parent doesn't mean you're an unequivocal martyr to humanity (such is the caricature) but there are unique demands to being a parent re:time.

jerf 8y ago

There is a qualitative change in when you are busy for the vast majority, though. Most people don't have a job where at any minute you have to drop everything and perform some task. This being HN, a very above-average number of the people who do have a job of that nature are around here, of course, but I'd expect it's still a majority of people of baby-having age around here who are not routinely getting paged at 2am by their job.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
As someone who was an infrastructure engineer/sysadmin/it manager for over 16 years (ie various roles that required an on call component), my move to security at the same time as having kids couldn’t have come at a better time. Being on call 24/7 is not conducive to being available for parenting responsibilities of young children.

ambivalents 8y ago

As a non-parent I do get this sentiment--certainly there can be many important things beyond children that call our time--however as someone who has dated someone with a kid and seen the kind of time and energy a child demands, OP's statement is spot on. It's more of a paradigm shift in the way you think about time -- you're suddenly not just responsible for yourself and your accompanying todos, but a whole nother human life, and their accompanying todos (which are manifold greater because they're dependent on you for even the simplest of needs).

strictnein 8y ago

> Parents don’t own being busy or stretched for time. Didn't say that. I was saying something to my past self who thought I was busy at the time which was the point of all this. And, no, you're not in full control of how busy you are when you're a parent. You have kids? Because no parent I know would ever say that.

verylittlemeat 8y ago

Being a parent doesn't mean you're an unequivocal martyr to humanity (such is the caricature) but there are unique demands to being a parent re:time.