The first time I read Tim Urban's article The Tail End, I was close to tears by the end. Go read it if you haven't - his way of thinking and articulating heavy subject matter in a simple, accessible way makes it worth the read. The gist of this particular article is that by the time you reach your 30s, you've likely spent 95+% of all the time you'll ever spend with your parents. I had to run the numbers for myself.
Age 3.5 = 21.85% (daughter's current age)
Age 5.5 = 34.33% (son's current age)
Age 12 = 74.91%
Age 18 = 96.64%
Since becoming a parent I've heard the cliche "the days are long but the years are short" a number of times, and now here it was laid out like a mathematical proof.
The new world of social distancing and self-isolation changes the numbers. My wife and I are working from home and splitting the our day into 5 hour shifts of childcare and uninterrupted work. Now our prior estimate for any weekday of 4 hours a day (1.5 in the morning and 2.5 in the evening) increases by an extra 5 hours per weekday to 9 hours per weekday. This may not seem like much. Or it might seem like way too much if you also have kids, but let's recalculate the next few weeks. An extra 5 hours per weekday 5 days a week is 100 hours per month, or 0.24% of my total estimated lifetime hours with my kids. A quarter of a percent per month! The number can seem like so little and also so much. I won't be able to ask for any extra hours at the end, so I'm going to do my best to cherish these extra ones and treat them like the gift they are.