check your mind at the door

[anglicana]

a dialogue:

- Priorities change when you have kids.
- So I don't want to have kids, if it means you have to check your mind at the door.

What does it mean?

 

[Dimcl]

It means that when have children, you leave all your intellectual capacities at the door before you enter. Just a sarcastic way of saying that people with kids don't have any other life than the children. That babies and diapers and feeding and clothing them and fighting about money and discipline, etc. causes one to lose contact with intellectual, adult, sophisticated matters.

 

[Kelly B]

"Check your brain/mind at the door" comes from "to check your coat," when you leave your coat in a room with an attendant at a restaurant or theater, because you won't need it until you leave.

If you check your brain at the door, you won't be needing it, or you won't be thinking much, for a while.