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[quote=Anonymous]I have one kid (now age 4) with no plans to have more. My take is that especially when your kid is a baby or toddler, you may actually be less busy, but will also simply have less bandwidth for the stuff you used to do and care about before. We went out to eat less, took fewer vacations, went to way fewer movies, etc. And we still did a lot of those things, especially in the first year when the baby wasn't that movie and slept more. But still less than before, because we were tired and also wanted our baby to stick to sleeping schedule and also our priorities just changed.

But the "less bandwidth" part is that basically my brain is never that far from thinking about my kid. I won't say I'm thinking about her all the time -- I have a job and other interests and think about all kinds of things. But the truth is she can never be that far from my thinking because there are just so many logistics associated with having a young child and I have to stay on top of them. There is always something -- she's growing out of her clothes, or I have to register her for school, or she's not eating enough fiber, or there's some specific life skill we haven't taught her yet even though she should have it by now. Like there is always, always something.

She's just in preschool now so I can't really speak to what it's like to have an elementary kid, but my sense from friends with older kids is that some of this gets better (they get more independent and you also just stop fussing over stuff like their precise vegetable intake because of sanity) and some of it gets more intense (school stuff ramps WAY up, you have to worry about social stuff, hello puberty and social media).

So my main takeaway is that you will not actually be more busy but you will feel much more busy because your brain will be full of the details of caring for a small and helpless human for at least the next two decades. I used to follow sports really closely and now I.... don't.*

*I've noticed men don't have this problem. Happy Mother's Day![/quote]

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