I work, and then whenever I have any other time, I’m with my daughter, and then I go to sleep. I think you basically have to abandon the dreams of having any other adult activities in your life. You have to go to sleep whenever your child goes to sleep. That’s basically how we’re doing it.

Fey’s remark is a wry, deliberately blunt snapshot of early parenthood—especially for a working parent—where time collapses into a cycle of labor, childcare, and sleep. The humor comes from treating “adult activities” and personal ambitions as unrealistic luxuries, underscoring how thoroughly a child’s schedule can dictate an adult’s life. Beneath the joke is a pragmatic coping strategy: surrendering the expectation of a pre-child social life and prioritizing rest whenever it’s available. The quote resonates because it reframes exhaustion and curtailed freedom not as personal failure but as a structural reality of caregiving, made bearable through honesty and comedy.