How many hours per week do you get to spend doing stuff with your kids? Including eating, chores, baths, TV, shopping, etc. Do you feel like it's objectively enough (even if you wish it were more)?”
I am the main caretaker of my kids and a "stay at home" mom. I feel I spend too much time with them now and could actually use a few hours a day away from them.
I spend about 12 hours during the work week (3-hours Mon - Thur. I work 4/10's), and every waking hour Friday through Sunday (around 42 hours). I feel that it's a good balance - especially after calculating it all in order to answer this question. What I would like is a little more "me" time, but it's hard to justify when it would eat into the time with my little guy. Great question!
I probably spend 2.5 hours in the morning and 1.5 hours at night with my youngest kids (my teenagers are far more mobile!). That doesn't include weekends, when most of my time is spent with them. So... 20 hours a work week, plus 28 more on the weekends? Wow, that sounds better than I thought... Now, if only I could define it all as leisure! :)
Let's see, probably 30-ish hours per week for me. When it was more like 35, it was probably enough, but now it seems a bit of a push. I need to do some adjusting.
If you count all that, 35 hours, give or take. Sometimes I wish it were more, but really, what I truly wish for is more unstructured time, time at the park, time discussing our day, not "feed the cat, pick up the playroom" time.
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