> You can also have lots of leisure time.

At first glance, this declaration seems ignorant. You plainly lack the details of my parenting years and they are fully required to make that judgment.

In context, it looks like hubris.

But then again you implicitly validated my claims (24/7 adulting due to free range loss); you reassigned the cause of kids adult-free time.

With acceptance of the demands on modern parents' time, your declaration appears to be self-contradictory.

> You could drop me into the life of a poor American, and a month later I wouldn't be one.

This bit seems to confirm my hubris suspicions and I'm a bit divided on which way to respond. I could be less judgy, given my own years of low-wisdom confidence or I could jump right into exampling ignorance that leads to poor assumptions about fortune and poverty.

In the interest of time, I'll roll it all together.

Below is what actual lives look like.

I'll presume you're above average at opportunity farming and pulling rabbits from hats. I'll further assume your desire to excel includes being a high quality parent and spouse.

You are now married and you have children in lower+upper grades. How many children you have is tied to your confidence in providing for them.

Your spouse is a few years into the medical condition that converted her from supportive parent to +3 children in time, +many children in expenses - which are eating thru your single-income-savings faster than you can add to them.

You keep switching employers because they unexpectedly go under (exec scandal), are bought out+resized or are moved overseas. Or you are self-employed and your product/service keeps not landing where it is clearly needed.

Nevertheless you are confident that your will+skill is enough to see you through. You know your efforts will eventually yield result. Those critical uncontrollable factors (~luck) will eventually turn in your favor!

In the mean time your owned home has succumbed to an event (radon/extreme weather/sinkhole/whatever) and isn't habitable so you are forced to take on a 2nd housing expense while the insurance begins an ordeal that will take a decade to resolve.

Once you+wife+kids are relocated, your wife's medical insurance company pulls out of the market, mid-treatment. You are left scrambling to match a new provider to the full suite of options she needs.

This is when you develop Menieres disease. The tinnitus is annoying but the recurring vertigo takes you out of play for a day at a time. It's a permanent addition to your life. Your employer is understanding - at first.

Parenting during vertigo attacks is tough. Doubly so, given that your own parents died before you married. And since your job took you away from your one functional sibling, you don't have a lot of support.

Your kids still need to be transported to their before-school private classes, to their schools, home from schools, to their after school activities and to the other events that are a poor (but best available) substitute for their eradicated free range/time. They need help with homework. They need routine medical visits and not so routine visits for your oldest who has an ongoing condition of their own.

FF to 20y later and your luck hasn't turned yet. At least not nearly enough for you to get a real footing. You are poor. You're over 50 in tech so good luck finding employment even without all the baggage.

Throughout the 20ys you had a daily choice to care for your family at the level they need or invest time in trying to craft opportunities that would fit your medically-adjusted lifestyle.

Over that 20ys, you more+more opted to not neglect your family's needs. You reduced your opportunity-gardening to being opportunity-aware. You saw some but they required an amount of time that was impossible to budget properly. Or at least that became clear after you jumped into them for a while.

> You can also have lots of leisure time. That's a choice. I do.

Life can and does take that choice away. It's a pure spin of the wheel whether your number is the one that comes up.