which policy-makers
Prospective parents, I was thinking. I wouldn't undo my situation, but I wish I'd known about the extent of the free time thing.
Really? The common trope about babies is "screaming, time-sucking, poop and vomit whirligigs." I guess I went into it eyes open and have never fully understood the people who are taken unawares by the demands of little ones. Turn on the TV and there's a new parent gobsmacked by this screaming wriggling thing, then turn the channel and see some poor sarariman forced to choose between family and career.
I knew about diapers and crying, and those don't bother me. I can take a vomit blast to my shoulder like a champ. But the complete lack of escape was a surprise for me. The feeling while holding my first son the night he was born was occasionally, "Ahhh, he has tiny replicas of his father's feet!" But it was much more, "I am down to one arm at best. And I can't get up and my laptop is over there. How am I going to write code?" Of course I won't be immobilized by my children forever, and I will no doubt very much miss this time, when they want me to never stop holding them.