You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.

This proverb contrasts the long horizon of adult labor with the brief, unrepeatable window of childhood. Its point is not that work is unimportant, but that time with children has a unique urgency: developmental stages, needs, and opportunities for closeness pass quickly and cannot be recovered later. The saying functions as a moral reminder about priorities—urging parents and caregivers to resist letting career demands crowd out presence, attention, and shared experience. Implicitly, it also critiques the tendency to postpone family life to an imagined “later,” emphasizing that the costs of delay are borne by children’s fleeting years rather than by one’s work, which can usually be resumed or extended.