Is this level of routine and social life normal with young children?

[TheFunnyRedPlayer]

I don’t know if our life is fairly normal and just the phase we’re in or is it ridiculously dull?
My DP and I are both mid thirties, have good jobs with decent time off and have two young children (4 and 2). My DP is from a different part of the UK and we moved a long way to live where I grew up (better jobs and housing here). We moved 5 years ago and my DP has made friends at work and does have work nights out with them a few times a year and the rare meet up outside of work. He has no other past times where he goes out of the house to socialize. He exercises at home most days, I have suggested many times that he join an actual gym or a local club etc but he just won’t. He meets his main friends from his home place once or twice a year.
I have more friends and family locally (I am in lots of WhatsApp group chats, school friends, university pals, work, other mums etc) but might only meet with people once a month (outside of my hobby which is twice a week - I do meet friends at this). Before moving here as a couple we were out with friends for dinner and drinks every week. The move coincided with us getting married and having our children. Is this what happens when people have kids? Obviously we can’t both leave the house in the evenings to meet people or do something fun together unless we get a babysitter. So most evenings during the week we watch tv after the DC are asleep at around 7.30pm. Most weekends we try to bring the DC on some kind of excursion or to the older DC hobby. Is our lack of social life/adventure because everyone is at the same stage? Exhausted/logistics of DC activities and bedtimes/financial constraints due to paying childcare and mortgages etc? My DP really doesn’t seem as bothered by our mundane routine as I do. I feel like my retired parents have a far more exciting life than we have. I guess I am looking for reassurance that this is fairly normal at this stage of having young children at home? Or is it? We live near a quiet town now, whereas before we moved we lived in a busy city which probably also made a difference. Is this genuinely a phase? Does it get better? What are other parents of young children relationships/routines/social lives like?

Sounds normal to me.

Completely normal. There’s no alternative at this stage. Parenting is a full on commitment and can be relentless but the rewards come out over time.
Be grateful you have friends and hobbies!

Absolutely normal.

Sounds normal to me too. I've got 3 small children. My husband plays sport (golf and cricket) which gives him some socialising out of the house but other than that he doesn't go out for drinks with friends more than once or twice a year probably. We have joint friends we occasionally see together for dinner. My own hobby means I am out of the house several times a week but there isn't a huge social aspect to it. Other than that I will meet up with local mum friends perhaps once a month in the evening (if I'm lucky and diaries align!). I may socialise with another mum and our children during the day on my non working days every now and then. I think we are fairly normal. We do have friends who are a lot more social and will entertain friends/see friends several times a weekend but we aren't like that. Tbh my DH isn't massively sociable. He sees his home friends once or twice a year. Same for me too sadly.

Honestly you have far more than I did when my kids were that age!

It can be hard when one person has more social life than the other but please don’t give up yours because you feel bad that you have more than your partner. It’s up to him to facilitate his social life and as your kids get older you’ll be able to do more together.

It's normal and this will likely be the pattern until they are mid to late teens. I think the standout unusual thing is that OP has a hobby that takes her out of the house twice a week. Most I know didn't manage that with DC under 5.

My children and 1 and 2 and your life is exciting compared to mine 😅 seriously though, to me yes this is perfectly normal and I think really good going to be able to be out the house two evenings a week, it would be too much for me. But then again I’ve become a massive homebody after years of partying and I like life the way it is now

I guess I imagined that there would be more kids parties at peoples houses or get togethers where my DP could make friends here but this isn’t the case and he’s not helping himself and doesn’t seem bothered. Most children’s birthday parties are at a local soft play and the dads don’t tend to go. I have hosted two kids parties at home and moms and dads came but there hasn’t been anything reciprocated in a few months. I think I just find this all unbearably boring. My parents also can’t comprehend that we don’t have many different hobbies each, which makes me feel like we are doing life wrong somehow although this is mainly coming from my dad and he is a bit out of touch.

I tend to go out with a friend about once a month. In addition I will meet a friend for lunch or coffee or walk perhaps once per 1-2 weeks. We don’t really do dinners out with other couples. The reason is that for me time and energy to go out is now precious and I want to spend that time catching up with my closest friends, or alternatively having a date night with DH. I find couple dinners tend to be small talk and I’m never that close with everyone involved, so don’t prioritize those at this time. I socialize with school mums a bit, but this is actually getting a bit less as the kids grow. I now have a couple mums who I tend to have a coffee with if our kids have a playdate.

I would say that’s pretty normal but that doesn’t mean you can’t make changes.
Our situation sounds quite similar. We don’t do much during the week apart from work and try to exercise but we do try and see people at the weekend - walk/dinner/park.
We’ve recently started going to junior park run (with friends), everyone’s really friendly and we go for coffee after most weeks.
I’d like to do more for myself - find something I can commit to/meet new people but its really hard.

Sounds about right to me. When DD was little I'd (I'm Dad) tend to go out either with friends or on a Friday after work with colleagues, probably about twice a month. DP would do about the same, so one of us would be out every Friday pretty much. DP and I would maybe get out for a date night once a fortnight or so as well. We were lucky in that both sets of parents and SIL actively wanted to babysit some evenings as well as doing childcare a couple of days a week when DP worked.

Weekends we'd either try and do something as a family or one of us would take DD out for the day and give the other one some peace.

We had DD in our mid 20s, so it was a good few years before any of our friends had kids, so we never really had that cross over with them, we'd get invited to BBQs etc, but DD would get bored relatively quickly because there were no other kids at them.

Yes, sounds totally normal. It sounds like your dh doesn’t have high needs for social interaction. I’m very happy to see friends a few times a year. I do have hobbies and I do have lots of things going on that involve talking to people and traditionally have had a very people heavy career, so outside of all that, honestly, I don’t want more people! I see friends every few months. Dh maybe every 4-6 weeks will meet a friend or go visit friends for the weekend.

Gone are the pre-children days of going out 4-5 nights a week. I wouldn’t want to do that now even if I had the time. I’d rather go to bed. 😂 Our dc are older btw, 8 & 13. Life does shift as they get older. I have more time for myself now. We don’t get evenings to ourselves ever, because dc are up til 10pm, no adult time left after that, but I do have a good bit of freedom. My eldest does sports til 9pm several nights a week, so Dh or I could go for a run while she’s at training for several hours and pick her up on the way back. Or I do lots of hiking and I can go do that for 4 hours on a weekend because kids mostly look after themselves and Dh can mow the lawn. So more free time, but I don’t want to spend it seeing friends!

Agree with everyone else - and, indeed what you pointed out yourself in your OP - that, when you have small dc then obviously your social life is curtailed as you can only either go out without one another or on those evenings you can get a babysitter.

Getting a sitter obviously adds enormously to the cost of the evening, and the need to, adds considerably to the hassle / stress of arranging something - particularly if other people you are going out with also need to arrange babysitters. Then add into the mix the fact you can't have a lie-in the morning after, and you are both likely to be exhausted with sleepness nights, and "going out" seems less and less worth it unless it is for something really special.

I definitely missed the spontaneity of just being able to pick up keys and money and leave the house as you can pre-kids.

However I do think it is important that all adults have something they 'do' that is not work and is somewhere where they aren't just 'X + Y's Mum / Dad'.
It seems that you do (you say you do your hobby 2x a week) and your dh doesn't.
Whether that is just that he genuinely has no need for that time, or if he is finding it difficult to join things in a new place, only he will know. there are lots of people who don't do or join anything outside of going to work and being with their partner / family. I would find that incredibly stifling, but there are millions of people who live like that. It is just different personalities and different life experiences I guess.

Yes normal. We only went out separately, and frankly were often too knackered to do so.

I do think there is a lot of rhetoric about how easy it is to make friends when you have children. I think, for some people that they do make friends with the parents of other children who are the same age as theirs. But, for most people it really doesn't turn into the sort of people that they socialise with as families in the sort of way you seem to be thinking.

And for an awful lot of people they discover that simply having a child of the same age isn't enough of something in common to build a friendship at all.

When your children get to teens you will have more energy, potentially more money and more time. That's when the social life starts ramping up again IME.

I think this is a normal with young kids.
Mine are the same age and honestly I couldn’t commit to a hobby 2 nights a week. There just seems to always be so much to do in the evening, tidying up, catching up on chores before bed, it’s hard to have the energy to commit and then miss out on winding down for bed properly. Particularly when you know you’re always going to have an early morning!
If you moved to be with your family can they not do a few more babysitting nights so you and your DH can socialise with your friends and their partners once a month or so?

It sounds normal. You have two very small children. They need routine and security, nor parties and nightlife. So unless you have a helpful family nearby, you stay at home.

I am a single mum and that stage carried on until ds was 10 and I could leave him alone for an hour, to run the local park run and chat to a few people.

My children are grown up. I played lots of sports before they were born and had constant matches etc. Also out every weekend at parties or concerts. Then the children came and except for a small amount of exercise l was at home most nights. I did meet friends with babies some weekends and visited family. Gradually l began to move out again with coffee get together, walks etc. Now my children are grown l am constantly on the go with golf, gym, coffee, holidays, weekends away with friends..its busy. So it's just for a season and be glad your dh isn't out all the time leaving you with everything as you see here with some. Think the park run is a good idea and invite friends with children around on Saturday afternoons for some social time.

This wasn’t normal for me.
We did switch how we socialised though, and instead of going out it was all house parties/dinners. So most weekends we would have friends over (or us to them) who brought their own kids. Kids played, parents chatted, either afternoon bbqs for all or dinner parties if the kids were younger and we’d put all the kids to bed first. Everyone happy.

Way way above our level of social lives and I'm sure so many other parents

Normal for us.

having small children and working is bloody knackering. Once they got a bit older we did go out more.

we usually saw family and friends at the weekend though - if you live away from family and haven’t made friends in the new place then you won’t get invites etc.