The article also includes "relationships" in "me time", and mentions that you can't do more than about three things seriously. Kids are one such project that people commit to, and not even necessarily because they are martyrs who benevolently aim to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. It's a choice. It's something that people want to do, and something that requires many years of commitment.
I think it's entirely appropriate to view having kids as a long-term hobby for the purposes of this discussion.
You dont commit to a hobby and you have no responsibility towards it. You ditch it at will or postpone it. The hobby wont be harmed and you wont go to jail for seriously harming the hobby. You wont cause lifelong issues to hobby if you neglect it. You wont cause trouble to your partner if you dont care sufficiently about hobby. However, whenever you dont do something with kids, you are directly cause less time to your partner.
It does not matter at all whether the kid was choice or not at the beginning.
You also can't easily stop working on your side business if you have paying customers that rely on your product for their livelihoods. Dropping your responsibility on a volunteer charity organization board isn't something you can just ditch in a heartbeat without hurting other people. Both of those would clearly count as "me time" in the context of this article.
Chose to have a relationship for 5 or 10 years, your partner moved in and built their life around you? You won't go to jail for deciding that you'd like to allocate the third slot differently now, but it won't generally come without causing a considerable amount of harm. Also counts as "me time" here.
Sure, kids are a long-term commitment, and the consequences are more drastic if you suck at it. That's not the point though - the point is that how you plan out (or fail to plan, or had your partner plan) your non-work time makes a major impact on what you can get done during that time. Had kids, out of choice or for lack of birth control? Say goodbye to the third slot, maybe more, don't get it back for maybe 20 years or so. You had a choice at some point.
Counting sound business and charity with strong commitments as hobby me time where you rest is ridiculous too. Both are work for any practical planning relax vs strength purpose.
They are not hobby time nor me time by any reasonable definition. Charity can be me time, if you can stop when you feel like it is not refreshing you anymore.
The talk about choice in the past is weasel expression. It makes it easy to sound as if people had choice right now, today, when they clearly are not having that choice (at least if you want to stay at least a bit ethical which I admit is a choice too).
It is more about what some people want to believe about world then about what world is.
Whether choice or not, if the debt exists now and you are broke, well you really can't XYZ due to being broke. In terms of evaluating situation as is now, the facts of situation matter and not whether you are guilty or not.
Also "accountability" here serves only to allow rest of us to use feel good euphemisms, pretend that situations is more fine then it is and make it so people in those situations don't talk openly about issues they are encountering. If people can't "XYZ due to debt they are accountable for", then they can't XYZ. Them having some guilt there does not render statement untrue.
I think it's entirely appropriate to view having kids as a long-term hobby for the purposes of this discussion.