"Once I showed the potential salaries to my wife, we both agreed it would be perfectly reasonable for me to ask for 30 minutes of additional “me time” per day to prepare for my next job,"
What the hell? If he wants 30m to himself each day he needs to clear with his wife?
Don't most people get more than 30m free time each day away from their partner? Just what kind of unhealthy relationship is this dude in?
The article says that he already spend about 1h to 1h30 for lifting (gym). Probably needed to ask to get even more time just to be polite. Always a balance when you live with someone and that you have children.
Yeah 30m of extra 'me' time could easily mean the wife loses half her free time. That breeds a TON of marital problems and issues if you don't clear it. A 1 y/o is basically a time vacuum.
Apparently I'm the only one who enjoyed my time with baby and didn't find it to be work at all. If you aren't equipped to live for and love your child you should wait until you are in a better place to do so. It isn't some airborne illness, and babies aren't all universally a ball and shackle.
You can both enjoy being with your child while also recognizing that it takes up a large amount of time and that there's other things in life that need to be done as well, such as getting a job to pay for that child's upbringing, education, etc.
This is incredibly judgmental, especially in a society that doesn’t enable people to “live for” their children. Kids are easy to love; the logistics of parenting are super challenging. Kudos to anyone who goes down this path and keeps finding their balance, whatever that may look like.
it's 30 min additional time. when you have a small kid someone is always oncall. This phrase does not seem odd at all to me (and is a very good way of separating people that have a kid from people that don't have a kid)
Man the 22 year olds in this thread are hilarious.
Yes. With a one year old, esp during COVID, childcare time is time you can’t leave the house, can’t relax, can’t do anything productive. So yes, you make a schedule - you pick them up from daycare, watch them for an hour while I study, then I’ll come make dinner and do bedtime.
This is blatantly ageist and misses the point completely. The point I was making is that it is absurd to need to ask your partner to schedule you 30 minutes of "me time." If I asked that of my partner I'm confident she would think I lost my mind. Why would one need permission for 30 minutes of time at all. Truly bizarre.
Do you have young kids? No clue if Adam's wife works/is in school/whatever but an additional 30 minutes of focus time is definitely an ask for busy parents of young children.
I'd like to respond to all the replies saying "But they have a one year old":
TLDR: If baby needs $X hours of baby-sitting per day, and mum and dad do baby-sitting together at the same time, they both need $X hours per day to do it. If mum and dad switch roles every 90m-120m, then each parent gets $X/2 free hours per day.
I have a two year old at the moment. Last year he was one. Shortly after he was born (around month 2) my wife and I split the baby-sitting schedule as evenly as possible.
We have very little "together time" with the child (all three of us together) unless we are going out with him. What I insist on is that only a single person is responsible for baby-sitting at any given moment (and the moments are all well-defined).
In practice, this means that if my wife is baby-sitting, I will not be there at all (doing chores, focusing on something else, just relaxing, whatever).
It works the same in reverse: when I am baby-sitting, she is not there at all.
This gives both of us a lot more free time than if we both sit there baby-sitting. There's literally no reason for both parents to wake up when baby needs a 2AM feeding, or when baby needs entertainment (playing peekabo, or whatever), or even when baby is just napping.
My observation of couples with a newborn is that almost always both parents are baby-sitting the child together. In that case, sure, you are going to have a lot less free time. If you split the time equally, both parties get a lot more time.
Personally, due to how our childcare worked, even with a one year old toddler in the house, my wife and I were averaging around four hours of awake me-time per weekday.
If the poster is getting too little free-time each day to find 30m, then redundant baby-sitting is happening.
What the hell? If he wants 30m to himself each day he needs to clear with his wife?
Don't most people get more than 30m free time each day away from their partner? Just what kind of unhealthy relationship is this dude in?