Reclaiming Time as Personal Sovereignty

Sor Juana's time in the convent, despite institutional constraints, granted her the unstructured intellectual time that married women with children could never access. Her hours were her own in ways few women of her era experienced. When parents lose active parenting roles, they recover vast quantities of time—a resource as precious as money or health. Yet many parents struggle to legitimize this time as theirs. Society suggests they should immediately fill it with productivity, volunteering, or care for aging parents. This concept reframes recovered time as an expression of personal sovereignty—the fundamental right to determine one's own hours. Parents can experiment with unstructured time, pursue interests that produce nothing, rest without guilt, and follow curiosity. Sor Juana used her recovered time for intellectual work, but the principle applies broadly: time not demanded by others is time available for becoming. This framework helps parents resist the internalized pressure to justify leisure, reject the notion that their time belongs to anyone but themselves, and recognize that how they spend their hours is an essential expression of their identity and freedom.