[MattRix]

The kids spend 70 hours sleeping and 40 hours at day care... That's still 58 hours to spend with their parents. That's plenty of time! Nevermind that the kind of unstructured play with other kids at day care is exactly what young kids need anyway.

[HBKXNCUO]

No, it's really not 58 hours to spend with their parents.

If both parents are working, the rest of the non-work hours are going to be consumed by cooking (if there is time for that, or else expensive prepared meals), cleaning, household chores, errands, and everything else people need to do to keep functioning.

>Nevermind that the kind of unstructured play with other kids at day care is exactly what young kids need anyway.

I don't really know what the point in this comment is. Do you think kids outside of daycare don't do unstructured play with other kids?

[MattRix]

Cooking is what, 1 hour a day? And it's something you can often involve your kids in, same with the other household errands (let's say that's another hour). That's 14 hours gone. We still have 34 hours left. So basically 5 hours PER DAY still to spend with your kids. That's still a lot!

[HBKXNCUO]

>Cooking is what, 1 hour a day? And it's something you can often involve your kids in

If you want it to take three times as long, I guess. It's good to do with them sometimes obviously but most people are not going to have time for that on a regular basis.

>That's 14 hours gone. We still have 34 hours left. So basically 5 hours PER DAY still to spend with your kids. That's still a lot!

Assuming the child sleeps 10 hours per day, which is well below what's recommended for 0-3 year olds, and you magically get all household chores done in two hours per day as you suggest, 24 of those 34 hours are going to be on the weekend.

Parents who both work full time are essentially weekend parents, and the weekend is when the parents have to catch up on everything they couldn't take care of during the week.

Also, 34 is less than half of the hours they would have with a stay at home parent.