There's a well-worn idea that you need to reach a certain financial threshold before having children - as if babies come with a minimum income requirement. But a recent conversation over at Vox is challenging that assumption and pushing it a step further, asking a question that might hit even closer to home: what if the real scarcity isn't money, but time?
The money question has an answer
Writing in her advice column for Vox, journalist Sigal Samuel tackled the question of whether someone can be 'too poor' to have a baby. Her take was clear - we don't actually owe our children a specific level of material wealth. It's a refreshing pushback against the anxiety-inducing checklist culture that surrounds modern parenthood.
But the conversation didn't stop there.
Enter 'time confetti'
Vox editor Katie Courage raised something that will feel instantly recognizable to a lot of parents - time poverty. Not the absence of money, but the absence of unbroken, meaningful stretches of time. The concept of 'time confetti' describes exactly this: days that are technically full of hours but feel shredded into tiny, almost useless fragments. A few minutes here, a half-hour there, none of it long enough to feel restorative or truly present.
For parents, this is the lived reality. Between school pickups, work deadlines, household logistics, and the mental load that never really switches off, time doesn't just feel scarce - it feels like it's been cut into pieces too small to do anything meaningful with.
Why this framing matters
Shifting the conversation from financial readiness to time poverty is actually important, because it opens up a different set of questions. We can debate salary thresholds and savings accounts, but time is trickier. You can't save up extra hours the way you can build an emergency fund. And unlike money, time lost to fragmentation isn't always visible - it's easy to look at a busy calendar and feel like you should be thriving.
The reality is that many parents feel stretched not because they're doing too little, but because modern life is structurally bad at protecting time. Constant connectivity, the gig economy, and the pressure to optimize every moment all chip away at the kind of slow, unhurried time that actually makes life feel good - for parents and kids alike.
Asking whether you have 'enough time' to be a good parent is just as loaded as asking whether you have enough money. And the honest answer to both might be the same: probably yes, but the systems around you aren't making it easy.
