Part of it is that I wind up with the bulk of the parenting because my wife's life is more demanding than mine. Part of it is that I am no longer able to avoid commutes with the strategy of picking odd hours.
But the sum is that everything is much harder for me now than it used to be. However I love my kids and would not trade them in for the world.
your comment about commutes times resonates w/ me. while i agree w/ the OP, once my oldest hit kindergarten things got a lot tougher.
back when i was working at startups, i found it easy feed/bathe/read to/tuck in my kids every, still did dishes/laundry/etc, and relax for an hour or two w/ my wife each night. i usually coded til around 4/5am each night, and slept til 9.30-10am. i got solid uninterrupted sleep and woke up w/o an alarm clock, it felt great. by the time i went to work (around 10.30), traffic was gone, and my commute was 15m tops. on days i worked at home, i'd wake up, have a coffee, soak up a little sun, and start coding w/in 20-30min of waking. i had two hyper productive sprints each day, first being an hour or so after i woke up, and the second being around 1am after everyone else was asleep. if i got fewer than 5hrs sleep the night before, i'd take ~20-30min nap after putting the kids to sleep. everything rocked.
then my kids started school. although i was working more normal hours at an enterprisey dev job again, but now had to be up at 7-7.30 to get them ready, and walk kid[a] or drive kid[b] to school. on mornings i drive, i spend ~55-65min in the car and wouldn't get to work until i'd already been up 2-3hrs. my window of morning productivity is killed. moreover, since i'm up 2-3hrs earlier, i'm tired earlier and usually just say f-it to working at night. i'm in bed for a longer length of time each day, but feel far less rested. i spend at least an extra hour each day in the car. while i don't need to work as many hours as i did in my startup life, i find myself behind more often b/c i struggle to find productive blocks each day. it's also worlds harder to find time to do things like dishes/laundry/cleaning, whereas i always could squirrel 5-10min here and there when i didn't have to worry about getting my kids somewhere on time. damn you elementary school, damn you.
my 2 cents. either way, kids rock. hardest times are the best times.
Part of it is that I wind up with the bulk of the parenting because my wife's life is more demanding than mine. Part of it is that I am no longer able to avoid commutes with the strategy of picking odd hours.
But the sum is that everything is much harder for me now than it used to be. However I love my kids and would not trade them in for the world.