A new mother will spend about 40,000 hours with her child over the first 18 years. This averages out to six hours a day. Dad gets to spend about 30.000 hours. It’s certainly useful to enjoy kids if you’re thinking about becoming a parent. You’ll spend a lot of time with them. But you’ll also have plenty of time to get used to it, if you haven’t already.

Having kids changes your life. You suddenly became responsible for this seemingly helpless creature (that somehow still seems to make sure to be properly fed and held and kept clean…ish). The emotional swings between love and frustration and pride and guilt and punch-drunk tiredness. And the sudden shortage of spare time.

Having kids changes your life not only figuratively, but also in how you spend your days. Precisely how varies throughout the world. For example, Swedish parents get 480 paid parental days per child. It is not uncommon for mom to stay home for a year and dad for another six, eight, ten months. Or to set aside parental days to have long summer vacations.

Here, however, we will stay in the US. We’ll look at how life changes for American parents through the lens of the American Time Use Survey.

The changes you bring home together with the new life are immediate. They are without a doubt the greatest for the mother. Our survey gives data only by age in years of the youngest child living in the household, so to get an idea about the difference a child makes we have to look at the first year all at once.