But, that isn’t what it sounds like you wrote above. Your priorities appear to be running your kids around to sports things, cooking dinner, monitoring homework and apparently going to bed when the kids do? That is very much different from people who have children but choose to make time to be something other than parents, at least once in a while. That is what is unhealthy. Parents could not be that into any given friend, but to never do anything without the children is an indication of an unbalanced life.
What’s an early start? I’m up at 7AM now, my wife’s typically up at 6:30. When I was a kid, I remember that my wakeup time was around then (I know stone cold that it was 6:45 in high school, and that was noticeably earlier than it was in middle/elementary), unless it’s different now?
That doesn’t actually sound that bad. I’m already trading off spending 5-7 with the kidlet while my wife cooks dinner and tidies up, or vice versa. We are, admittedly, only planning on one for now, or at the very least a wide separation between siblings.
I’m also prone to organizing my life around convenience, so for example I currently deliberately live two blocks from the local elementary school–no half-hour bus rides for my kid to endure like I did as a kid. Plus, there’s all weekend. I mean, my typical weekend day right now involves doing about 1-3 hours of whatever needs done (laundry, lawn work, cleaning, shopping, cooking, etc.), and the rest of the time solid between 7AM and 8PM is kid time. I honestly do not understand where other people’s time goes, even allowing for a three hour football game or piano recital every week.
I’m basing a lot of my feelings on this on what my parents did, granted. My dad worked 60-90 hour weeks with his small business, did more than his share of the housework (mom is semi-disabled in that she can’t lift anything over 20lbs due to a herniated disc), mom worked 40-50 hour weeks running cashier at the same business. They had for most of my life a three-acre yard and a immaculately clean and decorated 3400sq ft house. Mom cooked dinner 6 nights a week, minimum. And yet, I never felt neglected or prevented from doing anything I wanted to do, and I was a multi-instrument band camp and theatre and choir kid–and my brother was a multi-sport athlete, so we couldn’t even carpool with each other. =P And they both still found time to do bowling league (in dad’s case) or run the church choir and perform in community choir (mom’s case) without me, my brother, or each other.
Given that, and my own current experience, I can fairly say I don’t have a concept for how you can argue “lack of time”. I don’t doubt you, I just have no experiences that put it into any context.
That’s fine, but that’s not what the majority of parents say. The majority of parents say things like “I can’t unless you invite the kids” or “I don’t have time now that I have kids”–heck, that’s basically what you said right before this statement. A little honesty would actually go a long way, in this case, because then our OP wouldn’t be frustrated. “I prefer to spend time with my family, that’s why I married them and not you, doofus.”
I’m curious, though–did you spend a lot of time hanging out with friends apart from your spouse before the kids came along? If you were a homebody all this time, then no one should be bitching–but I get the impression from the OP that these are people whose social lives cut off like a switch when the kids came along, which strikes me as curious at the least, and it’s THAT situation (going from lots of social to no social ever) that is prompting a lot of the responses about how potentially unhealthy it is.
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Parents could not be that into any given friend, but to never do anything without the children is an indication of an unbalanced life.
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Maybe, maybe not. Some people use their children as an excuse to isolate themselves because they have underlying issues - I think those people would find a different excuse if they didn’t have children.
Most people I know who only rarely get out on their own are just at a point in their lives where it’s not a priority and isn’t important enough to make time for. Most of my friends are like this. We’re in our 30s and have elementary-aged and younger kids. We generally socialize a lot with each others families. We’re involved in the school, the community and our kids’ activities as organizers. We go out on occasion if it’s for something special - anniversary, birthday, etc. For the great majority of the time, though, it’s the family unit doing stuff with other families. Plenty of laughter, political debate, and shootin’ the shit. We go hiking, take beach trips together, get together for game nights, and sit around and drink wine while the kids run around the backyard playing “spies”. As the kids get older, our lives will enter a different phase and we’ll probably be able to get together more as couples without the kids or do more things on our own that interest us. It’s just a phase of life some people are in.
The only thing unhealthy about it would be if you’re unhappy with that sort of lifestyle or if you’re obsessing about being perfectly “balanced” all the time and can’t enjoy your life as it is.
7:00. I can’t function on a steady habit of 4.5-5 hours sleep a night. I think most people need more sleep than that.
Well, that’s what they are saying, in a nice way. “I don’t have time” in almost all cases, uttered by anyone, means, “What you’re asking me to do is not as important as other stuff I want to do.” I’m a firm believer that if someone really wants to do something, they will find a way to do it. That’s what I meant by saying that I could juggle and cram and rearrange - going out with my friends by myself simply isn’t important enough to me to do that.
I did. I was quite social and I still am (see my post above this one). I’m just at a different stage in my life right now and I socialize with other people who are in that stage. Many of the people we hang out with now have moved from being get drunk down at the bar on Friday night people (when we were single and childless) to go camping with the kiddies people.
I think you should make sure that you get that different phase, otherwise what are you going to do when the kids leave home?
Hang out with all my friends whose kids have also left home. Take some classes. Make new friends. It’s really not that hard or scary. I really think it’s a very modern idea that you must, at all times in your life, maintain “balance” (which is largely defined by women’s magazines and media). Life has ebbs and flows.
None of that seemed to include your husband?
I dunno about what women’s magazines define since I don’t read them! 
When you figure it out, could you send an instruction manual to my mom? That’s my other bit–now that I’m well over a decade out of her house, she STILL hasn’t filled that bit of her life that was caretaking me. So her hobbies are now making time for church choir, making time for community choir, and spending 4+ hours in the car every week to come see her granddaughter. Which is actually the biggest single line item in my schedule.
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None of that seemed to include your husband?
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The main concern in this thread seems to be balance as far as maintaining an individual identity and friends of one’s own, so those are the types of things I listed. My husband and I are doing fine, though :). In our marriage, I think our way of doing things has only been beneficial for us (which is why we do it). Not everyone would be happy with our life, but I do find it pretty offensive when people label lifestyles as “unhealthy” or “unbalanced” just because it’s not their cup of tea or because it’s not the current trend of pop psychology.
Sounds like she’s doing what makes her happy. The problem is that it doesn’t make you happy, which is a separate issue.
I don’t think it’s a current trend of pop psychology that some parents have problems when the last of their kids leaves the nest. Like Zeriel’s mother - I cannot imagine being happy going to choir practice twice a week and then driving to Zeriel’s house once a week. (Not that, you know, there is anything wrong with his house… :D) OTOH, I’ve always been rather active so it may be that I’m simply not aware that there are people out there that aren’t all that interested in stimulation.
I think these are two separate issues.
I’ve tried several times to compose a post about the Akron visit. I can’t. I’ll just leave you with this:
If you know your kids won’t be welcome, don’t bring them.
If you think your kids won’t be welcome, don’t bring them.
If you get there and find that your kid is not welcome, act like a parent. Which does not involve giving her the silent treatment yourself. It would be more like, letting her join the conversation once in a while. Since this is her family too, after all.
1 - you have no idea how “stimulating” choir may or may not be for her. My mother-in-law is very involved in her church choir and not only is she working on the actual music a lot (arranging stuff, researching, etc.), but they do a lot of social stuff together, too.
2 - just because you can’t imagine being happy with her lifestyle doesn’t mean she is unhappy.
No, I don’t, I was just going by what Zeriel said.
Yup, covered that in my post.
Honestly, using the term “dump” the kids on them makes it sound like you feel that your kids are more of an inordinate responsiblity than a pleasure. You can hire a babysitter. They get paid to take care of your children, usually because they like children and making a little money. I am having a hard time reconciling the earlier statements that you only want to socialize with your family and are introverted with the idea that you’d be happy to “dump” them with someone if only that option were available.
Exactly–she has no life left outside myself and her activities, and some people in this thread are talking about *less *outside-the-family activities for parents? That scares me. A lot.
As for happiness, I literally don’t know what she’s going to do when I move further away than an hour drive. She nearly cried when my little brother moved a little over two hours away, and she literally calls him every day.
I could be living in a cardboard box and she’d visit, because since I don’t put up with the fawning she’s transferred onto my daughter. 
I do, it’s not. She even tries to delegate the arranging and researching to me, and (ironically, perhaps) complains that everyone in choir is too busy with grandkids to come to practice.
She’s not happy unless she’s in my grill. My grill is not going to be within easy driving distance forever.
Please don’t do that. I know it’s difficult to maintain non-family relationships when you have young children but I ‘went with the flow’ because it was too hard to find time for friends. Now I have no friends, my ‘children’ are adults with lives of their own and I live for work because that’s all there is.
I don’t get this at all. If you’re unhappy, go make some friends! Volunteer, join a club, take a class. What’s stopping you? You’re in Sydney - one of the most vibrant, active cities in the world.
Sure. Maybe we just haven’t figured out the balance yet because I still have all the responsibilities I had before I had kids. Something’s gotta give (and the kids come first).
Why not order pizza? Cause that costs a heck of a lot more and is far less healthy than cooking. 4 is taking a long time now (kidlet #1 is just starting to sound out words and requires constant attention and kidlet #2 is struggling with her math so it is taking quite a while). They do bathe themselves (I usually do dishes or make lunches). #6 takes a while since we are trying to get them to do thing independantly (which, ironically takes longer and more effort from us until they actually can do it independantly).
I think the real thing you are missing is that all the ‘kid stuff’ needs to happen in 2 1/2 hours from the time we get in the door until bedtime (1/2 an hour to go through bedtime routine so they sleep well) since I work full time outside the home.
I didn’t mean to make it sound awful (in fact, teaching my son to read rocks, watching them just play is great), it’s not. But it is busy and sometimes hectic. This does not lend itself well to getting out of the house for ‘me’ time with my friends. (Or for my husband to do so also.)
If we can carve out a lot of time, it could be a day trip to the zoo or some such. If it is just a little time, we will watch a movie or go swimming or play games. Just time spent together.
As with the pizza above, it costs money. Money that we need to save for crazy things like college. The only free babysitting we have is my parents who are awesome but I can’t draw on that well too often. And, if we get a babysitter, I am not going out with the girls, I am going to do something with my husband.
Rarely is more like it. Luckily, my friends understand the score and try to plan something for everyone (or ask far enough in advance that I can book the parents). Also, my friends (even those without kids) enjoy children and like hanging out with mine (with some exceptions that we know about, since these are our friends, we know the score and deal with it accordingly).