I think a lot of it is the type of things you do while spending time with kids.

I watch my friends raise young children, and to be blunt it largely looks miserable to me. You effectively are babysitting children activities 24x7. Basically running a tiny daycare.

The families and adults seem to simply exist as caretakers for their child's lives.

I ascribe to "the kid is just now part of your general life" for 90% of your adult activities. Could be working in the shop, outdoor chores, cleaning the house, fixing the car, shopping, whatever. The point is the kid primarily exists in your life and does whatever it is you are doing, not the other way around.

Yeah, some things are impossible to do with a kid of course. But not nearly as many as currently believed for most children. If properly socialized, kids can exist non-disruptively in plenty of situations. And the danger to them in a lot of spots is wildly exaggerated. I brought my 5 year old into warehouses and lumberyards with a bit of instruction and teaching them to pay attention. They pretty quickly adapt.

If I have another kid I'd plan on not modifying my life a whole lot. The kid will simply come with to most things and liberal use of babysitting and such will happen. I have friends who are terrified to even leave their toddlers with babysitters these days for a few hours - it's absurd.

Kids imo do best in a balanced life where the get to learn by watching and doing. Not catering to their every whim and desire and shielding them from every possible danger.

There are certainly some age ranges (infant through ~3 or 4 years old or so) that are much more difficult, but after that parents seem to prefer life on hard mode these days for some reason. Paranoia and peer pressure from my standpoint drives most of it.

My older (25 now!) son would have been a miserable experience for me if every single day was a "rainy weekend" style thing where we're stuck inside playing children's games and the like with near constant 24x7 attention and direct interaction at his level. I'd have gone insane. Having him "around" most of the time while I did things with an hour or two of direct "kid time" engagement was totally sustainable, and he seems to have gotten a lot of enrichment from most of it. Note that wasn't staring at screens though - it was physically and actively doing stuff. And part of learning as a parent and a child of a parent is the parent making mistakes. Shit happens, just correct for it moving forward. So long as no major injuries occur life moves on and typically everyone is better off for it.

American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were