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I don't really get where people with kids found these 6.5 hrs / wk to spend on friendships, or even the quoted current averages of 4 hrs / wk. On a workday, th

I don't really get where people with kids found these 6.5 hrs / wk to spend on friendships, or even the quoted current averages of 4 hrs / wk. On a workday, there isn't much time. I roll out of bed at 6:30, get the kids up and fed breakfast and out the door. I finally get actually working at 8:30-9:30, depending on if I exercise or not. Stop work in the 5:30-6 range, switch into making dinner, getting kids to eat dinner, policing screen time and homework. Then bedtimes and such, following up on the zillion school emails, PTA newsletters, scheduling. If I have 45 min of downtime, typically in the 10-11pm range, if I'm lucky. On weekends, there's all the deferred housework, like cleaning and laundry. Kids have swim and sports. Visits to grandparents, from grandparents. Every now and then we have someone over for a games afternoon, or someone is visiting from out of town, but I really doubt that adds up to 4 hr / wk.

Ozzie_osman 1y ago
I do think 6.5 hours is much easier if only one spouse works. My wife and I both work demanding jobs, but during times when one of us has been in-between jobs or off work, things look very different.
nikhizzle 1y ago
I have a rough idea of my friend’s schedules, and I call them when I’m driving the kids around, or we text. Staying in constant contact with a few very close friends about my mental health has floated me through my mid-40s. A tip I got from a friend in his 60s was that even when you lose friends, life is great because you constantly have the opportunity to find new ones. I am in a new close friends renaissance in my 40s, just be vulnerable and don’t take rejection personally.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  I'd definitely be better off if I didn't take rejection personally But it's hard for me to draw the line between being vulnerable and say, oversharing or dumping
frankdenbow 1y ago
Off topic but have you seen the app Orgo? Meant for parents juggling kids sports schedules.
mikemcquaid 1y ago
I have 2 young kids, run a widely used open source project and a startup, eat dinner with my kids 6/7 nights a week and do this. Here’s some ways how: My best friend comes over once a weekend and we watch the TV that my wife doesn’t want to. I participate in a sport (powerlifting) where I’ve made friends and there’s room to socialise while exercising. I chose to move back to my home town and also go to college there. I go to metal gigs with friends when the kids are asleep. I’m happily married, my wife is training for a marathon and sees friends too. We pay for a cleaner. Don’t know that this is 6.5 hours in person with friends every week but I’d say it’s at least a couple of hours each. It’s doable, it just might require not doing some stuff you already do and enjoy. There’s a bunch of stuff I did pre-kids that I don’t any more and would like to find time for again one day.
- api 1y ago
  If you moved from a high cost of living city back to your home town, how much did that have to do with it? In HCOL cities the crazy rent or mortgage costs keep everyone running and cut into discretionary funds for assistance.
  - 9rx 1y ago
    The more interesting question is: If people in HCOL areas are so poor that they can't even afford to make time to bask in friendships with the people the city has to offer, why are they still there?
    - lazide 1y ago
      Stuck. Trying to move feels like an impossibly difficult situation.
      - aianus 1y ago
        Isn’t it the opposite? Moving from HCOL to LCOL can be somewhat easy as the home equity or savings you built up in HCOL goes a longer way in the destination. Surely easier than moving from LCOL to HCOL?
api 1y ago
There were more kids around, which meant there were more kids for your kids to play with instead of hanging on you and more parents in the same boat to form a support network. It’s one of the problems with birth rate collapse. The fewer people have kids, the harder it is in very hard to measure ways.
- astura 1y ago
  This doesn't make sense, the population has only increased. Quick Google tells me 40 years ago, in 1985, there was 62.6 million children in the US. In 2025 there are 74.7 million. That is more children in 2025 than 1985. Parents not allowing their children to play independently isn't due to lack of other children, it's a choice.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    I suspect the number of children born to the kind of parents who's kids six figure white collar professionals want their kids in contact with has gone down.
  - lossolo 1y ago
    1985 62m kids / 235m total = 0.26 2025 74m kids / 343m total = 0.21 So there is ~20% less kids than in 1985
Lyngbakr 1y ago
This is almost identical to my experience. And during that brief sliver of time that I do get to myself, I simply don't have the mental energy to engage with others. Instead, I usually decompress by working out or reading or something else solitary, because for me socialising requires effort.
- api 1y ago
  I am the same and I’m an introvert. That’s kind of the definition of an introvert: socializing is effortful. Still, it’s healthy. Working out is also effortful but healthy.
mfer 1y ago
Imagine the time we would have if.... Instead of doom scrolling on social media we called a friend. Instead of binge watching another meh show, we had friends over to play cards or a board game. Instead of over scheduling kids with constant activities, parents had a regular night out with friends while kids spent quality time at home with the other parent. The time is there. It was in the past. We just have a finite amount of time and use it differently.
- the_snooze 1y ago
  Imagine the time when kids could actually do things on their own and learn resilience, independence, and community alongside their friends. Instead, their parents now need to drive them everywhere alone because communities got rid of school buses, sidewalks, and speed bumps to help make cars go faster. We've done the real-life version of gamers min-maxing the fun out of a game. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/09/school-drop-off-cars-chaos/679869/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/09/school-dr...
  - guythedudebro 1y ago
    You are so right. Just imagine having a physical community that wasn't completely gutted for the sake of transporting cars through non-communal spaces to other non-communal spaces. In America, we can hardly even imagine this, and if you try, you will experience something close to a mob backlash.
- wonderwonder 1y ago
  All of this assumes people have friends to start with. This becomes much harder for those without friends which I think is what the article was about. Not disagreeing with you though, untold hours have been wasted on social media.
kenjackson 1y ago
Almost all my in-person friends nowadays are parents of kids who my kids associate with. Mostly through sports. You get to kill two birds - support your kids and associate with adults. A few you’ll make good bonds with.
- wonderwonder 1y ago
  Its all fun and games until the kids have a falling out. Then its clear it was very much a friendship of convenience. I always saw them as such but it was a little upsetting for my wife.
  - kenjackson 1y ago
    In some cases. But my wife still meets at least monthly with a group of the moms from our first travel team when the kids were in 3rd grade - almost a decade since they were teammates. There was probably some trauma bonding that occurred.
gavinray 1y ago
Was having kids worth this in your opinion -- genuine question?
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Not OP, but have kids, and no, I would not do it again if I could do it over for similar reasons they enumerate. Plants are the new pets, pets are the new kids, and human kids are exotic pets for the wealthy or crazy (or a combination of those traits).
  - swat535 1y ago
    > human kids are exotic pets for the wealthy or crazy I'm having a hard time parsing that statement. Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets? Both interpretations strike me as pretty dystopian.
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      > Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets? A little of both. Kids are a luxury good in the current macro. The cost to raise a child from 0-18 in the US in 2023 dollars is ~$330k (Brookings, USDA). This does not include daycare (~$1k/month if you can find a slot) nor college. No sick leave nor paternal leave mandate, no job security, and so on. 2.5M children experience homelessness each year in the US. 14M are food insecure. Look at wage data, correlate against housing and other non discretionary expenses, back out to affordability. > Both interpretations strike me as pretty dystopian. Welcome to the shit show. “To know is to suffer.” —- Nietzsche
      - zeroonetwothree 1y ago
        The sources I found do include daycare in the cost to raise a child, indeed child care is around 50% of that number.
rax0m 1y ago
Where did you find the time to read HN and write this comment? It's about prioritization. (My priorities are pretty much the same as yours)
bethekidyouwant 1y ago
At 10 PM I walk to the local and have three pints. The woman is not working and socializes during the day with other moms.
- oddthink 1y ago
  I mean, I could walk down to a bar at 10pm, if I wanted to. I live in a city. But if I'm getting up at 6:30, I don't think I want a pint let alone three that late. Plus, I'd still have two kids up, asking me to extend the wifi because they're not done with English yet or to help scan a page for math. I'm not going to just leave that to my partner. Even the more traditional pint-after-work would leave me coming home tipsy at 7pm, having slacked off on all of dinner prep and child-wrangling. If I made a habit of that, it would get me my ass handed to me, and rightfully so. I do wonder if the whole "pub-culture" thing was entirely predicated on the unpaid and unacknowledged work of women. And how much of that extended to other traditional extracurriculars like bowling leagues and clubs and such.
  - codr7 1y ago
    When did staying at home and taking care of house/children become such a terrible punishment?
    - chasd00 1y ago
      True, if your family is such a burden maybe you should focus on making better choices. Probably better off turning the kids over to the state vs forcing them to through 18 whole years and a childhood suffering your resentment.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      Stay home and have a pint with the boys! Literally. It’s sad. There’s more to life than Friends (the show).
    - SamBam 1y ago
      I'm confused by how your question relates to the one above it. It sounds like you're saying the person above should feel free to go to the pub frequently because the mom should feel happy taking care of the house and kids without them?
deleted 1y ago
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trgn 1y ago
same. tag teaming has helped. our weekends are essentially split.
sathackr 1y ago
It used to be possible in most areas to raise a family and kids on a single middle-class income. So that left one person free to handle domestic tasks instead of them being split between two people in the spare time they have after the kids are all in bed. It still may be possible now but that will require reducing your standard of living to what was common then. Think no stone counter-tops. Not driving a 0-3 year old car with $10,000 just in electronics. Having linoleum floors instead of high-end tile. Eating Hamburger Helper, spaghetti, not ordering door dash 5x a week. Resisting the constant stream of social media, influencers, advertisements that are telling you everyone else lives better than you and making you feel bad about it, which causes you to spend money on things you don't need but raise the aesthetic of your life and make you feel like you're living better. I'd bet that if someone was happy to live in the standard of living that was 20-30 years ago, it could still be done on a single middle class income which would allow for the leisure time required to spend 6.5hrs+ with friends [citation needed]
- bombcar 1y ago
  No stone countertops? Linoleum? Sounds like absolute hell! Positivity inhumane. Next you’ll tell me that they don’t even have cable AND Netflix or gasp go to the library.
  - sathackr 1y ago
    Prisoners have better accommodations!
- jackvalentine 1y ago
  What city, and what do you consider a “middle class income”?
- swiftcoder 1y ago
  Or learn how to cook and lay your own tile? One doesn't have to live in an ad campaign for the 70s just to save a few bucks
  - sathackr 1y ago
only-one1701 1y ago
The whole point is that working for 8:30 to 6 is the problem.
- boredemployee 1y ago
  and its usually not enough lately... I see myself working all the time or thinking about jobs to be done.
s1artibartfast 1y ago
A lot of people integrate both friends and kids into their lives, instead of wearing different hats and splitting time. Dinner with friends on a weekday or Friday. Playdates are a good excuse to spend 8 hours hanging out with with another parent. Drag the kids along to BBQs and campouts.
Aurornis 1y ago
I also have young kids but I pull off more than 4hrs per week with friends. These conversations are difficult online because people who fall into routines without friend or personal time often refuse to believe that anything else is possible. Even in this comment thread there are accusations that other people are lying about spending time with friends because they just can’t believe it’s possible. The common thread I see in discussions is the claim that every day is filled from start to finish with every activity. Now realistically we know you’re not exercising every single day, not doing laundry all weekend start to finish, and not reading a zillion PTA newsletters every night because those are just examples. Yet those lists are always given as reasons why people can never have free time even though they aren’t always happening. It’s much harder for single parents, obviously, but for a household with two parents it shouldn’t be hard for one parent to go out with friends after the kids are down one night each week and/or for a couple hours on the weekend. This alone would get to 4hrs/week or beyond. I’m not exaggerating when I say every set of parent friends I know does some variation of this. Friend groups will sync up their nights away to get together. Second, playing with kids is an easy opportunity to meet up with parent friends. We take the kids to a local park with local parents a couple days a week in the afternoon briefly before dinner. Really easy way to catch up while the friends are playing. Third, once the kids are old enough to not require extreme supervision at dinner time we like to have friends over for dinner. Obviously this isn’t a fancy 3-course meal with wine afterward, but we don’t care. Friends like to stop by for a quick dinner. Fourth, if you’re cramming your schedule so full of kids activities and cleaning tasks to keep the house constantly clean that you have zero wiggle room for finding a couple hours with friends each week, that’s a choice. Saying this makes a lot of people angry, but the truth is you have to prioritize and compromise. Some times we decide we don’t have time for another activity commitment. Other times we decide the house can stay messy for an extra day to catch an opportunity to meet up with someone. Most of the time we trade off parent to parent. Like I said, it’s different if you’re a single parent. However every parent friend I know does some variation of this and we spend time with each other. If finding a measly 4 hours per week feels completely impossible, I would suggest stepping back and looking at priorities and how your splitting time between parents. I should also mention that paying attention to things like screen time and distractions is important. I’ve had a few friends who were exasperated at how impossible it felt to do anything, until they checked their screen time tracker and realized that 3-4+ hours of every day was disappearing into their phone. For others this could be TV or computer Internet browsing. Some of this is always okay, but you have to realize it’s a choice you’re making about where the time goes.
jedberg 1y ago
There are two key things to making this work: Money and locality. Money: You pay people to do things that take up time. We have a house cleaner. That's a few hours right there. When the kids were little, we had a nanny. But the nanny didn't just watch the kids. She also washed and folded the laundry, tidied the house daily, and sometimes cooked dinner. In fact, now that they are in school, I'm thinking of hiring a home helper to do those things because those chores get neglected right now (although the kids can almost do it now instead). Locality: Visit people who live nearby. Most of my friends that I see regularly are either my wife's brothers and their families, since they all live locally, or the parents of our kids friends, who all live nearby since we go to the local school, or the neighbors who we like. We have family dinner a few times a week, either at someone's house or out to eat (see point one about money), and especially on weekends and summer break, we hang out a lot with the neighbors. I don't however see my college friends or work buddies much anymore. That is what I had to give up when I had kids. We have some group chats and will occasionally get together, but that requires arranging babysitting, or one of us going on a trip with those friends (see the point about money again). But both my wife and I try to do that at least once a year (go on a friends trip).
- aprilthird2021 1y ago
  Locality is increasingly unaffordable for people as it's far more common for people who rent to move often (to avoid paying high rent increases) and people who own to be forced into living in a small sunset of places where they can actually afford a home (often far away from their communities or friends)
  - jedberg 1y ago
    In my case, the locality came after buying the house. We made friends with other people who live nearby.
emmelaich 1y ago
Combine it with kids stuff. Chat to fellow parents at PTA and sports. I have a circle of friends consisting mostly of fellow school parents and sports players still going 10 years after kids left school. We get together for beers and poker and some coffee mornings.
MarcelOlsz 1y ago
You do it like you do in Europe. Your friends pop by and sit around while you're doing what you're doing, chatting here and there, helping out occasionally too. If you're thinking about "outings" then yes, those are cooked with your schedule.
rr808 1y ago
The most successful people at work I see have a stay at home partner that looks after the kids, or no kids, or kids left for college. Its pretty impossible to have a demanding job and family life and your own life.
bentt 1y ago
One technique that I think needs to come back into fashion, which was familiar to us Gen Xers, is to drag your kids along when socializing for you. Instead of prioritizing their play dates and sitting in the corner on our phones, we should be bringing the kids to our friend's house and they can wander around and be bored while we sit and talk as friends. The problem we have as a parenting culture is that we're not comfortable ignoring our kids. We need to teach kids that ignoring them is not the same as not caring for them. In fact, they need to feel the sensation of not being the most important thing for once. It's better to get some attention from a happy parent than all of the attention of a sad parent.
- dwayne_dibley 1y ago
  That’s true, I regularly remember going to pubs, friends houses and sporting events that I was far to young to be at, but was just there because my parents where doing a thing.
- dottjt 1y ago
  I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. I generally hated being dragged to the friends houses of my parents. It was just needlessly boring. On the contrary, it sometimes was okay if that friend had children. I think the issue in the modern day however, is that less people are having children, so there simply isn't the opportunity. For example, I'm the only person in my friend group who has children.
  - hollerith 1y ago
    Interesting. Did you also hate it when your parents hosted a party for adults in your home?
    - em-bee 1y ago
      that's different. in my home i can disappear into my room and keep myself busy there. when at another place i have to behave, i can't go run around and explore (unless they have a garden and kids are allowed to go outside) as a parent i would not drag my kids to a place unless there are other kids or i know there is something interesting for them. but right on topic, the solution is to not live alone with your kids. we are in a multifamily compound where other families have children too, and there is no problem for some of the adults to go out while others stay back and make sure the kids are safe. (they are not providing entertainment but someone is always around should something happen). this of course is only possible because i did connect to the neighbors. or rather, they connected to us. i always wanted to live in a place like that, but finding this one was pure serendipity. we weren't actually looking. it just happened that the neighbors turned out that way.
wonderwonder 1y ago
I have zero IRL friends, not even acquaintances. I stopped having friends once I had kids. So its been at least a decade. At the point now where my oldest is 13 and the youngest is 11 that I could probably have the time for them if I wanted but I haven't had any for so long that the desire is just gone. The effort required just doesn't seem like its worth it. I work remotely as well so I can actually go days without speaking to an adult aside from my wife. I don't even work on a team so literally not a word to anyone. My wife had a good friend via our oldest being best friends with her oldest. We would do family get togethers and I would hang out with the husband but I had zero desire to hang out with him 1:1 despite both wives pushing for it. Our kids stopped being friends and we stopped being friends with the family. Honestly it was a relief. Having to pretend to be interested in what they were saying was exhausting. I get up at 7am to get kids ready for school and start work at 9. Work until 4ish and then go get the kids. Everyone is home by 4:30 or so but then we have sports 4 nights a week until about 7. Then dinner. Wife is not remote so generally gets home around 6pm. Weekends is sports on Saturdays. We have Sundays to ourselves right now which is great. I'm writing this in the 2 hour break between kids sports games. I took the youngest to football, came home, the wife took him to a birthday party and now I have to take the oldest to his game in an hour. I hit the gym for an hour or so 4x a week sometime between 7 and 9 during the week depending on if I am having dinner with the family (sometimes I'll go during work). Then I go again on Sunday. Gym is pretty much the only me time I have and I will not miss it. Gotten to the point where I struggle to think of people I meet as real. I feign interest until we can part ways. I don't even know people's names at work. They are all offshore as well so our hours don't really overlap. Can't even pretend to be interested in my siblings anymore. I have to see my wife's dad once a week and its a struggle. I dread him passing away as I am going to have to try and pretend to be upset. He is a great guy, I have nothing against him, just no connection. It just is what it is, I love my wife and kids but just have zero attachment or empathy for anyone else.
zeroonetwothree 1y ago
Are you a single parent? If so then yeah you have it hard, no doubt there. But if not shouldn't your spouse be doing some of this? Why are you getting the kids ready and making dinner and doing all the homework/school stuff and working full time? Why not have grandparents watch the kids when they visit (or you drop them off)? Why do you need to be there at all? Great time to go meet a friend for lunch. Or grandparents can take the kids to sports. Or you make friends with other parents at those sports activities so you can interact while the kids are there.
Braxton1980 1y ago
>policing screen time I had a TV in my room since I was 8 (1988) and my parents didn't police anything. Maybe this is a newer concern due to a greater understanding of tech dangers
standardUser 1y ago
Invite your childless friends to come visit you. I'm childless but all of my oldest friends have kids and all of those kids know me. It's probably easier for them to travel and if they stay a few nights you'll have time for both family time and adult time. Plus, I think it's great for kids to interact with adults who are trusted but aren't an authority figure.
fma 1y ago
Many of my friends are similar age and they have kids. Our kids play together.
globular-toast 1y ago
It's simple: they didn't work as much. Typically one parent would go out and work while the other took care of the home. When the first parent got back the house would be clean and dinner would be ready. Work was over. The work parent tended to socialise in the evening and the home parent during the day. The home parent was essentially self-employed, working directly for themselves and the family. A real "hustler" lifestyle. Nowadays we've got everyone working full time for someone else leaving only evenings and weekends to work for ourselves. Or you spend a huge chunk of that salary on childcare, cleaners and dog walkers. We're addicted to work. This is all feeding wealth directly to the owning class. People used to own a lot more themselves. They used to own clothes that could be repaired; furniture that could be polished, restored and lasted for generations; machines that could be serviced etc. Now nobody has time for any of that stuff. What you "own" is just worthless commodities like IKEA or Zara. Things that used to be assets are just another expense now. The problem is there's no real way out for individuals. House prices are driven up by couples who both work. Tax systems benefits such couples too. So you're doubly screwed if you want to opt out of building billionaire wealth and instead work for yourself like they used to. Then you've got factors like settlements being built around cars, so now you need two cars, another huge expense (not an asset) or the stay at home parent is basically trapped at home all day. So now you're triply screwed. What we really need AI for is a way out of these ridiculous local optima we get ourselves into. We desperately need to solve inequality. Unfortunately we also like to feel like we're in control, so any AI has its work cut out: guide humanity to happiness but trick them into thinking it was their idea. I have no idea why an AI would bother to do this for a species that themselves chooses not to do this for other animals and even each other, though.
- dripdry45 1y ago
  Do. Less. all the dogs and furniture and hobbies and subscriptions and running around. Grasping, grasping, grasping... my partner and I are people of simple means. We garbage pick or get off Facebook marketplace most of our stuff for super cheap (nice OLD stuff... Which I repair!) but have a fairly nice home that we’ve bought. She saved a lot just working for the post office in there pay: She didn’t go anywhere, and enjoys things like house cleaning and doing the dishes and reading. It’s the same as the Buddhist monks I spent time with. I give this example and people flat out rage at me, saying how awful a life that is. But my partner is one of the kindest, happiest people and adores simple things (she's also really fit and stellar in bed, so that helps...) She has found ways to legitimately enjoy the small moments and being present in life, not chasing a bunch of shiny flashy things all around the world. I’ve learned a lot from her. In short: we don’t need AI, we need to just do less and learn to get back to simplicity. THAT would afford time to socialize.
aprilthird2021 1y ago
People didn't used to work this much. Now that both spouses in a household typically work the kind of schedule you mentioned along with increasingly longer commutes due to housing unaffordability, we spend more time at work cumulatively than generations before us did.
PunchTornado 1y ago
you are in the "intensive parenting" box as stated in the article

Ozzie_osman 1y ago

I do think 6.5 hours is much easier if only one spouse works. My wife and I both work demanding jobs, but during times when one of us has been in-between jobs or off work, things look very different.

nikhizzle 1y ago

I have a rough idea of my friend’s schedules, and I call them when I’m driving the kids around, or we text. Staying in constant contact with a few very close friends about my mental health has floated me through my mid-40s. A tip I got from a friend in his 60s was that even when you lose friends, life is great because you constantly have the opportunity to find new ones. I am in a new close friends renaissance in my 40s, just be vulnerable and don’t take rejection personally.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
I'd definitely be better off if I didn't take rejection personally But it's hard for me to draw the line between being vulnerable and say, oversharing or dumping

frankdenbow 1y ago

Off topic but have you seen the app Orgo? Meant for parents juggling kids sports schedules.

mikemcquaid 1y ago

I have 2 young kids, run a widely used open source project and a startup, eat dinner with my kids 6/7 nights a week and do this. Here’s some ways how: My best friend comes over once a weekend and we watch the TV that my wife doesn’t want to. I participate in a sport (powerlifting) where I’ve made friends and there’s room to socialise while exercising. I chose to move back to my home town and also go to college there. I go to metal gigs with friends when the kids are asleep. I’m happily married, my wife is training for a marathon and sees friends too. We pay for a cleaner. Don’t know that this is 6.5 hours in person with friends every week but I’d say it’s at least a couple of hours each. It’s doable, it just might require not doing some stuff you already do and enjoy. There’s a bunch of stuff I did pre-kids that I don’t any more and would like to find time for again one day.

api 1y ago
If you moved from a high cost of living city back to your home town, how much did that have to do with it? In HCOL cities the crazy rent or mortgage costs keep everyone running and cut into discretionary funds for assistance.
- 9rx 1y ago
  The more interesting question is: If people in HCOL areas are so poor that they can't even afford to make time to bask in friendships with the people the city has to offer, why are they still there?
  - lazide 1y ago
    Stuck. Trying to move feels like an impossibly difficult situation.
    - aianus 1y ago
      Isn’t it the opposite? Moving from HCOL to LCOL can be somewhat easy as the home equity or savings you built up in HCOL goes a longer way in the destination. Surely easier than moving from LCOL to HCOL?

api 1y ago

There were more kids around, which meant there were more kids for your kids to play with instead of hanging on you and more parents in the same boat to form a support network. It’s one of the problems with birth rate collapse. The fewer people have kids, the harder it is in very hard to measure ways.

astura 1y ago
This doesn't make sense, the population has only increased. Quick Google tells me 40 years ago, in 1985, there was 62.6 million children in the US. In 2025 there are 74.7 million. That is more children in 2025 than 1985. Parents not allowing their children to play independently isn't due to lack of other children, it's a choice.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  I suspect the number of children born to the kind of parents who's kids six figure white collar professionals want their kids in contact with has gone down.
- lossolo 1y ago
  1985 62m kids / 235m total = 0.26 2025 74m kids / 343m total = 0.21 So there is ~20% less kids than in 1985

Lyngbakr 1y ago

This is almost identical to my experience. And during that brief sliver of time that I do get to myself, I simply don't have the mental energy to engage with others. Instead, I usually decompress by working out or reading or something else solitary, because for me socialising requires effort.

api 1y ago
I am the same and I’m an introvert. That’s kind of the definition of an introvert: socializing is effortful. Still, it’s healthy. Working out is also effortful but healthy.

mfer 1y ago

Imagine the time we would have if.... Instead of doom scrolling on social media we called a friend. Instead of binge watching another meh show, we had friends over to play cards or a board game. Instead of over scheduling kids with constant activities, parents had a regular night out with friends while kids spent quality time at home with the other parent. The time is there. It was in the past. We just have a finite amount of time and use it differently.

the_snooze 1y ago
Imagine the time when kids could actually do things on their own and learn resilience, independence, and community alongside their friends. Instead, their parents now need to drive them everywhere alone because communities got rid of school buses, sidewalks, and speed bumps to help make cars go faster. We've done the real-life version of gamers min-maxing the fun out of a game. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/09/school-drop-off-cars-chaos/679869/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/09/school-dr...
- guythedudebro 1y ago
  You are so right. Just imagine having a physical community that wasn't completely gutted for the sake of transporting cars through non-communal spaces to other non-communal spaces. In America, we can hardly even imagine this, and if you try, you will experience something close to a mob backlash.
wonderwonder 1y ago
All of this assumes people have friends to start with. This becomes much harder for those without friends which I think is what the article was about. Not disagreeing with you though, untold hours have been wasted on social media.

kenjackson 1y ago

Almost all my in-person friends nowadays are parents of kids who my kids associate with. Mostly through sports. You get to kill two birds - support your kids and associate with adults. A few you’ll make good bonds with.

wonderwonder 1y ago
Its all fun and games until the kids have a falling out. Then its clear it was very much a friendship of convenience. I always saw them as such but it was a little upsetting for my wife.
- kenjackson 1y ago
  In some cases. But my wife still meets at least monthly with a group of the moms from our first travel team when the kids were in 3rd grade - almost a decade since they were teammates. There was probably some trauma bonding that occurred.

gavinray 1y ago

Was having kids worth this in your opinion -- genuine question?

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Not OP, but have kids, and no, I would not do it again if I could do it over for similar reasons they enumerate. Plants are the new pets, pets are the new kids, and human kids are exotic pets for the wealthy or crazy (or a combination of those traits).
- swat535 1y ago
  > human kids are exotic pets for the wealthy or crazy I'm having a hard time parsing that statement. Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets? Both interpretations strike me as pretty dystopian.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    > Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets? A little of both. Kids are a luxury good in the current macro. The cost to raise a child from 0-18 in the US in 2023 dollars is ~$330k (Brookings, USDA). This does not include daycare (~$1k/month if you can find a slot) nor college. No sick leave nor paternal leave mandate, no job security, and so on. 2.5M children experience homelessness each year in the US. 14M are food insecure. Look at wage data, correlate against housing and other non discretionary expenses, back out to affordability. > Both interpretations strike me as pretty dystopian. Welcome to the shit show. “To know is to suffer.” —- Nietzsche
    - zeroonetwothree 1y ago
      The sources I found do include daycare in the cost to raise a child, indeed child care is around 50% of that number.

rax0m 1y ago

Where did you find the time to read HN and write this comment? It's about prioritization. (My priorities are pretty much the same as yours)

bethekidyouwant 1y ago

At 10 PM I walk to the local and have three pints. The woman is not working and socializes during the day with other moms.

oddthink 1y ago
I mean, I could walk down to a bar at 10pm, if I wanted to. I live in a city. But if I'm getting up at 6:30, I don't think I want a pint let alone three that late. Plus, I'd still have two kids up, asking me to extend the wifi because they're not done with English yet or to help scan a page for math. I'm not going to just leave that to my partner. Even the more traditional pint-after-work would leave me coming home tipsy at 7pm, having slacked off on all of dinner prep and child-wrangling. If I made a habit of that, it would get me my ass handed to me, and rightfully so. I do wonder if the whole "pub-culture" thing was entirely predicated on the unpaid and unacknowledged work of women. And how much of that extended to other traditional extracurriculars like bowling leagues and clubs and such.
- codr7 1y ago
  When did staying at home and taking care of house/children become such a terrible punishment?
  - chasd00 1y ago
    True, if your family is such a burden maybe you should focus on making better choices. Probably better off turning the kids over to the state vs forcing them to through 18 whole years and a childhood suffering your resentment.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    Stay home and have a pint with the boys! Literally. It’s sad. There’s more to life than Friends (the show).
  - SamBam 1y ago
    I'm confused by how your question relates to the one above it. It sounds like you're saying the person above should feel free to go to the pub frequently because the mom should feel happy taking care of the house and kids without them?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

trgn 1y ago

same. tag teaming has helped. our weekends are essentially split.

sathackr 1y ago

It used to be possible in most areas to raise a family and kids on a single middle-class income. So that left one person free to handle domestic tasks instead of them being split between two people in the spare time they have after the kids are all in bed. It still may be possible now but that will require reducing your standard of living to what was common then. Think no stone counter-tops. Not driving a 0-3 year old car with $10,000 just in electronics. Having linoleum floors instead of high-end tile. Eating Hamburger Helper, spaghetti, not ordering door dash 5x a week. Resisting the constant stream of social media, influencers, advertisements that are telling you everyone else lives better than you and making you feel bad about it, which causes you to spend money on things you don't need but raise the aesthetic of your life and make you feel like you're living better. I'd bet that if someone was happy to live in the standard of living that was 20-30 years ago, it could still be done on a single middle class income which would allow for the leisure time required to spend 6.5hrs+ with friends [citation needed]

bombcar 1y ago
No stone countertops? Linoleum? Sounds like absolute hell! Positivity inhumane. Next you’ll tell me that they don’t even have cable AND Netflix or gasp go to the library.
- sathackr 1y ago
  Prisoners have better accommodations!
jackvalentine 1y ago
What city, and what do you consider a “middle class income”?
swiftcoder 1y ago
Or learn how to cook and lay your own tile? One doesn't have to live in an ad campaign for the 70s just to save a few bucks
- sathackr 1y ago

only-one1701 1y ago

The whole point is that working for 8:30 to 6 is the problem.

boredemployee 1y ago
and its usually not enough lately... I see myself working all the time or thinking about jobs to be done.

s1artibartfast 1y ago

A lot of people integrate both friends and kids into their lives, instead of wearing different hats and splitting time. Dinner with friends on a weekday or Friday. Playdates are a good excuse to spend 8 hours hanging out with with another parent. Drag the kids along to BBQs and campouts.

Aurornis 1y ago

I also have young kids but I pull off more than 4hrs per week with friends. These conversations are difficult online because people who fall into routines without friend or personal time often refuse to believe that anything else is possible. Even in this comment thread there are accusations that other people are lying about spending time with friends because they just can’t believe it’s possible. The common thread I see in discussions is the claim that every day is filled from start to finish with every activity. Now realistically we know you’re not exercising every single day, not doing laundry all weekend start to finish, and not reading a zillion PTA newsletters every night because those are just examples. Yet those lists are always given as reasons why people can never have free time even though they aren’t always happening. It’s much harder for single parents, obviously, but for a household with two parents it shouldn’t be hard for one parent to go out with friends after the kids are down one night each week and/or for a couple hours on the weekend. This alone would get to 4hrs/week or beyond. I’m not exaggerating when I say every set of parent friends I know does some variation of this. Friend groups will sync up their nights away to get together. Second, playing with kids is an easy opportunity to meet up with parent friends. We take the kids to a local park with local parents a couple days a week in the afternoon briefly before dinner. Really easy way to catch up while the friends are playing. Third, once the kids are old enough to not require extreme supervision at dinner time we like to have friends over for dinner. Obviously this isn’t a fancy 3-course meal with wine afterward, but we don’t care. Friends like to stop by for a quick dinner. Fourth, if you’re cramming your schedule so full of kids activities and cleaning tasks to keep the house constantly clean that you have zero wiggle room for finding a couple hours with friends each week, that’s a choice. Saying this makes a lot of people angry, but the truth is you have to prioritize and compromise. Some times we decide we don’t have time for another activity commitment. Other times we decide the house can stay messy for an extra day to catch an opportunity to meet up with someone. Most of the time we trade off parent to parent. Like I said, it’s different if you’re a single parent. However every parent friend I know does some variation of this and we spend time with each other. If finding a measly 4 hours per week feels completely impossible, I would suggest stepping back and looking at priorities and how your splitting time between parents. I should also mention that paying attention to things like screen time and distractions is important. I’ve had a few friends who were exasperated at how impossible it felt to do anything, until they checked their screen time tracker and realized that 3-4+ hours of every day was disappearing into their phone. For others this could be TV or computer Internet browsing. Some of this is always okay, but you have to realize it’s a choice you’re making about where the time goes.

jedberg 1y ago

There are two key things to making this work: Money and locality. Money: You pay people to do things that take up time. We have a house cleaner. That's a few hours right there. When the kids were little, we had a nanny. But the nanny didn't just watch the kids. She also washed and folded the laundry, tidied the house daily, and sometimes cooked dinner. In fact, now that they are in school, I'm thinking of hiring a home helper to do those things because those chores get neglected right now (although the kids can almost do it now instead). Locality: Visit people who live nearby. Most of my friends that I see regularly are either my wife's brothers and their families, since they all live locally, or the parents of our kids friends, who all live nearby since we go to the local school, or the neighbors who we like. We have family dinner a few times a week, either at someone's house or out to eat (see point one about money), and especially on weekends and summer break, we hang out a lot with the neighbors. I don't however see my college friends or work buddies much anymore. That is what I had to give up when I had kids. We have some group chats and will occasionally get together, but that requires arranging babysitting, or one of us going on a trip with those friends (see the point about money again). But both my wife and I try to do that at least once a year (go on a friends trip).

aprilthird2021 1y ago
Locality is increasingly unaffordable for people as it's far more common for people who rent to move often (to avoid paying high rent increases) and people who own to be forced into living in a small sunset of places where they can actually afford a home (often far away from their communities or friends)
- jedberg 1y ago
  In my case, the locality came after buying the house. We made friends with other people who live nearby.

emmelaich 1y ago

Combine it with kids stuff. Chat to fellow parents at PTA and sports. I have a circle of friends consisting mostly of fellow school parents and sports players still going 10 years after kids left school. We get together for beers and poker and some coffee mornings.

MarcelOlsz 1y ago

You do it like you do in Europe. Your friends pop by and sit around while you're doing what you're doing, chatting here and there, helping out occasionally too. If you're thinking about "outings" then yes, those are cooked with your schedule.

rr808 1y ago

The most successful people at work I see have a stay at home partner that looks after the kids, or no kids, or kids left for college. Its pretty impossible to have a demanding job and family life and your own life.

bentt 1y ago

One technique that I think needs to come back into fashion, which was familiar to us Gen Xers, is to drag your kids along when socializing for you. Instead of prioritizing their play dates and sitting in the corner on our phones, we should be bringing the kids to our friend's house and they can wander around and be bored while we sit and talk as friends. The problem we have as a parenting culture is that we're not comfortable ignoring our kids. We need to teach kids that ignoring them is not the same as not caring for them. In fact, they need to feel the sensation of not being the most important thing for once. It's better to get some attention from a happy parent than all of the attention of a sad parent.

dwayne_dibley 1y ago
That’s true, I regularly remember going to pubs, friends houses and sporting events that I was far to young to be at, but was just there because my parents where doing a thing.
dottjt 1y ago
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. I generally hated being dragged to the friends houses of my parents. It was just needlessly boring. On the contrary, it sometimes was okay if that friend had children. I think the issue in the modern day however, is that less people are having children, so there simply isn't the opportunity. For example, I'm the only person in my friend group who has children.
- hollerith 1y ago
  Interesting. Did you also hate it when your parents hosted a party for adults in your home?
  - em-bee 1y ago
    that's different. in my home i can disappear into my room and keep myself busy there. when at another place i have to behave, i can't go run around and explore (unless they have a garden and kids are allowed to go outside) as a parent i would not drag my kids to a place unless there are other kids or i know there is something interesting for them. but right on topic, the solution is to not live alone with your kids. we are in a multifamily compound where other families have children too, and there is no problem for some of the adults to go out while others stay back and make sure the kids are safe. (they are not providing entertainment but someone is always around should something happen). this of course is only possible because i did connect to the neighbors. or rather, they connected to us. i always wanted to live in a place like that, but finding this one was pure serendipity. we weren't actually looking. it just happened that the neighbors turned out that way.

wonderwonder 1y ago

I have zero IRL friends, not even acquaintances. I stopped having friends once I had kids. So its been at least a decade. At the point now where my oldest is 13 and the youngest is 11 that I could probably have the time for them if I wanted but I haven't had any for so long that the desire is just gone. The effort required just doesn't seem like its worth it. I work remotely as well so I can actually go days without speaking to an adult aside from my wife. I don't even work on a team so literally not a word to anyone. My wife had a good friend via our oldest being best friends with her oldest. We would do family get togethers and I would hang out with the husband but I had zero desire to hang out with him 1:1 despite both wives pushing for it. Our kids stopped being friends and we stopped being friends with the family. Honestly it was a relief. Having to pretend to be interested in what they were saying was exhausting. I get up at 7am to get kids ready for school and start work at 9. Work until 4ish and then go get the kids. Everyone is home by 4:30 or so but then we have sports 4 nights a week until about 7. Then dinner. Wife is not remote so generally gets home around 6pm. Weekends is sports on Saturdays. We have Sundays to ourselves right now which is great. I'm writing this in the 2 hour break between kids sports games. I took the youngest to football, came home, the wife took him to a birthday party and now I have to take the oldest to his game in an hour. I hit the gym for an hour or so 4x a week sometime between 7 and 9 during the week depending on if I am having dinner with the family (sometimes I'll go during work). Then I go again on Sunday. Gym is pretty much the only me time I have and I will not miss it. Gotten to the point where I struggle to think of people I meet as real. I feign interest until we can part ways. I don't even know people's names at work. They are all offshore as well so our hours don't really overlap. Can't even pretend to be interested in my siblings anymore. I have to see my wife's dad once a week and its a struggle. I dread him passing away as I am going to have to try and pretend to be upset. He is a great guy, I have nothing against him, just no connection. It just is what it is, I love my wife and kids but just have zero attachment or empathy for anyone else.

zeroonetwothree 1y ago

Are you a single parent? If so then yeah you have it hard, no doubt there. But if not shouldn't your spouse be doing some of this? Why are you getting the kids ready and making dinner and doing all the homework/school stuff and working full time? Why not have grandparents watch the kids when they visit (or you drop them off)? Why do you need to be there at all? Great time to go meet a friend for lunch. Or grandparents can take the kids to sports. Or you make friends with other parents at those sports activities so you can interact while the kids are there.

Braxton1980 1y ago

>policing screen time I had a TV in my room since I was 8 (1988) and my parents didn't police anything. Maybe this is a newer concern due to a greater understanding of tech dangers

standardUser 1y ago

Invite your childless friends to come visit you. I'm childless but all of my oldest friends have kids and all of those kids know me. It's probably easier for them to travel and if they stay a few nights you'll have time for both family time and adult time. Plus, I think it's great for kids to interact with adults who are trusted but aren't an authority figure.

fma 1y ago

Many of my friends are similar age and they have kids. Our kids play together.

globular-toast 1y ago

It's simple: they didn't work as much. Typically one parent would go out and work while the other took care of the home. When the first parent got back the house would be clean and dinner would be ready. Work was over. The work parent tended to socialise in the evening and the home parent during the day. The home parent was essentially self-employed, working directly for themselves and the family. A real "hustler" lifestyle. Nowadays we've got everyone working full time for someone else leaving only evenings and weekends to work for ourselves. Or you spend a huge chunk of that salary on childcare, cleaners and dog walkers. We're addicted to work. This is all feeding wealth directly to the owning class. People used to own a lot more themselves. They used to own clothes that could be repaired; furniture that could be polished, restored and lasted for generations; machines that could be serviced etc. Now nobody has time for any of that stuff. What you "own" is just worthless commodities like IKEA or Zara. Things that used to be assets are just another expense now. The problem is there's no real way out for individuals. House prices are driven up by couples who both work. Tax systems benefits such couples too. So you're doubly screwed if you want to opt out of building billionaire wealth and instead work for yourself like they used to. Then you've got factors like settlements being built around cars, so now you need two cars, another huge expense (not an asset) or the stay at home parent is basically trapped at home all day. So now you're triply screwed. What we really need AI for is a way out of these ridiculous local optima we get ourselves into. We desperately need to solve inequality. Unfortunately we also like to feel like we're in control, so any AI has its work cut out: guide humanity to happiness but trick them into thinking it was their idea. I have no idea why an AI would bother to do this for a species that themselves chooses not to do this for other animals and even each other, though.

dripdry45 1y ago
Do. Less. all the dogs and furniture and hobbies and subscriptions and running around. Grasping, grasping, grasping... my partner and I are people of simple means. We garbage pick or get off Facebook marketplace most of our stuff for super cheap (nice OLD stuff... Which I repair!) but have a fairly nice home that we’ve bought. She saved a lot just working for the post office in there pay: She didn’t go anywhere, and enjoys things like house cleaning and doing the dishes and reading. It’s the same as the Buddhist monks I spent time with. I give this example and people flat out rage at me, saying how awful a life that is. But my partner is one of the kindest, happiest people and adores simple things (she's also really fit and stellar in bed, so that helps...) She has found ways to legitimately enjoy the small moments and being present in life, not chasing a bunch of shiny flashy things all around the world. I’ve learned a lot from her. In short: we don’t need AI, we need to just do less and learn to get back to simplicity. THAT would afford time to socialize.

aprilthird2021 1y ago

People didn't used to work this much. Now that both spouses in a household typically work the kind of schedule you mentioned along with increasingly longer commutes due to housing unaffordability, we spend more time at work cumulatively than generations before us did.

PunchTornado 1y ago

you are in the "intensive parenting" box as stated in the article