I don't want this to come across as overly harsh. But a helpful rule of thumb to understand what life is like after having kids, is: there is no free time. None! It's like being in the military, where you wake up at 6am, shower until 6:30am, do calisthenics until 9:30am... and so on, with every single hour occupied, until bedtime, promptly at 9:00pm.
If you tell a person like that 'just watch a movie during your free time,' they'll look at you blankly and say, 'I don't have free time, not on my schedule.'
Why are things so different? Because not only do you have another person(s) making messes who do like 0% of the cleanup, they require much more care than adults. So free time trends to 0%. There's no 'weekend' in the sense of no work (there's always housework), in a sense there's no 'after work.' There's only work, as far as the eye can see.
So for example, with commuting, I don't have enough time to do housecleaning, so the house stays in a permanent state of ugly messiness. Without it, I can apply that time to cleaning, so it becomes only moderately, to slightly, messy. There's no big block of free time - nowhere - where I can do stuff to bring back the time that's lost by commuting.
I love my kids of course, but taking care of small kids can be very exhausting.
From my read, he's saying "no commute is good because you can do a few chores during the week and not have as many to do on the weekends".
You're saying "no commute is good because you can apply that time to cleaning and the house is cleaner; but also kids are exhausting".
?
He is saying:
> Commuting is the big time saver, but you can also do chores you'd relegate to the weekend or after work while WFH
I am saying:
> If my commute time is removed, some amount of necessary chores cannot get done. I can't do chores in any time other than the commute time. There is no real 'weekend' or 'after work' time, when I can do them 'later'.
All time is accounted for, and removing time necessarily knocks some items (like 'morning/midday rooms cleaning') off the list permanently.
What I mean is:
There is an hour of my morning and night, 2 hours a day, which I am calling 'commute time.'
I can commute during 'commute time'.
Or I can WFH and stay at home during 'commute time'.
If I don't commute, I can do chores during that time.
If I do commute, those chores are never done, and are permanently knocked off the to-do list. The house is just that much messier as a result.
I can clean during the weekend, but I would have cleaned during the weekend anyway.
During the week, the house looks trashed, because there isn't enough time for chores as it is; the time that is available will instead go to even higher-priority chores, like washing dishes and clothes.
Basically if 'commute time' goes towards trekking to the office and back, it comes out of the chore time budget, meaning a really, really messy house during the week.
I will just point out, in closing: 2 hours a day is a really big amount of time to subtract out of the time budget. It can't be recovered.
Even if I don't play games and don't do anything 'fun' - I don't, incidentally - there's no compensating for that loss.
People are getting confused because your reply is structured like you disagree with him, because your comment is written like a rebuttal and your tone is derisive.
However, in your original reply, you're not disagreeing with the above commenter. You're agreeing with them, and ALSO, you take issue with another small thing they mentioned, the comment about how this person would do the cleaning on the weekend.
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To your original point I say this- lots of parents have free time. My mother had hobbies in her free time. My aunt has hobbies has hobbies in her free time. I'm sorry you don't, but the fact that you don't does not mean much about young people that do.
When I'm in the office, I often take breaks - 20-30 mins. Sometimes a longer walk during lunch time. I'm simply doing the same here but instead of being on my phone I'm maybe doing a quick vacuum sweep, trip to the bodega for some hand soap, or dropping off my laundry somewhere.
I do have friends that work for companies that expect them to be "online" all the time so this may not work for them.
I think that working from home will stay and that some kind of work discipline will be a skill people are just required to have. You know, like being able to communicate professionally and to keep promises.