[ycombinete]

Yes, my wife and I live away from family. On the weekends, when there is no nanny, we are at work 100% of the time with him. One's only downtime is when he naps, or when your partner is looking after him.

Once we add a second child to that mix it'll be 100% of each of our time the entire time.

It's pretty extreme.

We both work full time (like most millennial families), so if we couldn't afford a nanny we literally could not have a child.

[chrismorgan]

If I’m reading you correctly, you seem to think that two kids takes twice as much effort as one kid? People broadly agree that cost and effort both grow sublinearly. Especially effort, though it is of course much harder to quantify. But personally I suspect that even four kids (serially) may not cross the twice-as-much-effort threshold. Aging affects the amounts and types of effort required, too. Four kids in parallel (quadruplets) will definitely be more than twice as much effort for quite some time!

[sirwhinesalot]

I'm a father of 2. If not for my mother in law I would have gone insane by now. Way harder than 1. 1 was mainly hard because we had no idea what we were doing. With 1 it is pretty easy for a parent to take over while the other rests. Not so with 2 kids.

Dealing with a rowdy toddler and a puking newborn at the same time is draining in a way that is impossible to describe.

[ignoramous]

> Dealing with a rowdy toddler and a puking newborn at the same time is draining in a way that is impossible to describe.

Rowdy toddler with rowdy twins is when you start feeling the singularity.

[muro]

It gets better quite quickly though.

[koolba]

Effort is definitely sub linear. And costs even more so.

Cooking for four kids clearly has more raw ingredients, but you also have more opportunity to buy them in bulk. The active cook time itself does not increase much either.

Hand me down clothing and books are all shared. The kids also help watch, teach, and entertain each other.

I feel sorry for children that grow up without siblings. But even more so for parents that that choose to not have any at all.

[chrismorgan]

> Cooking for four kids clearly has more raw ingredients, but you also have more opportunity to buy them in bulk.

Ah, now that was a challenge when I moved out of home. In theory I knew I was buying for 1 instead of 10, but it still took me a while to adapt. I had pretty much never seen food go stale or bad before!

[dm270]

Do you have two or more kids? I say it’s different. For people with more kids, a single child seems like a walk in the park. Because in the worst case at least one parent is "free". With two or more kids the default is being fully occupied or if one partner takes all of them for the other to have free time, it’s insanely draining and the other partner feels almost pressure to make the sacrifice worth it.

This of course being said about the situation without any parents around. The step from two to three is worse for car/transportation and hotel room but I think it’s not nearly as hard as from one to two.

What you also have to consider: You’re gonna have bad nights. With one kid only, it’s fine. You can recover. With two, you simple don’t have room for that. The bad nights will eat you up.