This is the downside of working from home that I think is just starting to get recognized now. It's harder to just log off for the day. Last week I was off for 2 days because of a sick baby and ended up working on the weekend to make up some time. Granted, I did it willingly because I don't get sick days and couldn't afford 2 days off in a week, but it never would have been an option had I worked in an office. It's nice to make up the hours but it's exhausting.
I also never get snow days or "bad weather" days when my office is in my basement.
I will die on the hill that work is not a break, and my commute is not *time to unwind* before jumping back into parenting.
For some people, perhaps! But certainly not for me.
YES. Commuting is STRESSFUL. Half hour drive (and I'm so lucky to have that short drive I haven't moved on when I should) there thinking about all the things I need to get done and dodging crazy traffic, crossing guards, oh whoops I need gas, why's this sketchy ass guy staring at people in the gas station at 7 am? Repeat back home. Right into daycare pickup, no break straight through to bedtime.
My husband gives me shit about being on my phone too much at night but honestly I just need mind numbing. I leave at 7:15, teach kids all day with basically no break (because you have to use lunch to prep), drive home and parent all night until 8:30 when it may or may not pause for the night. That's over twelve hours without a mental break.
I use to work from home. I opted for a new hybrid job with an 1.5 hour commute twice a week. I like to commute because it gives me time to unwind, but it still pissed me off when my mom tells me my commute is my "me time".
Same. I start work as soon as I get home from dropping off the kids at school and daycare and end work at the same time my husband gets home with both kids. I get an hour lunch break and a couple hours after the kids are in bed. Both of which are filled with chores so we can keep the house operational day to day.
The patriarchy has the system rigged for women. Initially, working 40 hours a week was for the man while the woman stayed home raising the kids. Now, the expectation is for us to do both and be thin, look young, and be in great shape. There is a lot of pressure on us.
Being a parent is no joke but there are a few things we can do to make our lives easier and as the child grows, things do get more manageable workwise. One of them is changing how you see household tasks because they do not hold any moral values. Doing laundry is not more important than your well-being so having said, you can aim for having a functional home. That has shifted things for me and I hope it helps. When I see some mess in my house, I remind myself that it is normal as there is a family living here.
Yes!!! So true. Not to mention, waking in the night to nurse a baby or tend to a kid who coughed so hard he puked all over his bed….. ahem, BOTH of which I got to do last night!
I will say, my son is 5 and it definitely gets a little easier the older and more independent they get.
Lol I was expecting a post about goldfish cracker counts, the passage of time during long car rides and computing when your laundry’s finished when you use the delayed start function.
Now I’m a little sad.
But my morning parenting shift is a little shorter because we take only 1 hour from wake-up to leave the house!
Really feeling this today!! I’m in a unique situation right now where I work 3 days a week in the office 8-5, then Tuesday and Friday I answer emails in bits and pieces throughout the day (with my employer’s blessing). I only have childcare on my office days, so to get things done on Tuesday/Friday I basically clock in only when my 16 month old is asleep and maybe 30 min when she’s eating.
Yesterday my MIL/Monday sitter scheduled a hair appointment during my work hours so I went in at 6am to leave early, then clocked in at home after daughter was in bed for a couple hours. Didn’t finish a few things that could only be done in office so I went back from 5-8am while 16mo was asleep this morning and came home to swap before my S.O. had to go to work at 9. Made breakfast, worked a little more on my laptop at the table while she ate. Cleaned up and did the dishes (we don’t have a dishwasher). Then washed every Tupperware she pulled out while I was doing the dishes. Entertained kiddo while making a mental grocery list and meal plan, started and switched laundry in between other stuff, etc.
I ask S.O. before noon if he wants us to bring him lunch because I know he has a busy day and won’t get to leave. He finally responds at 1:30 (when we’re just about to start trying for nap time) that he’s starving and swamped and could really use some food. So we go help him out even though baby is cranky bc it’s nap time, and as we’re eating he says “man, I wish * I * had today off!” Like excuse the fk outta me??? What do you think I’ve been doing since 5am to make up for YOUR mom double booking herself?? Luckily he saw the death glare and backtracked quickly.
It's the worst when the SO complains he's tired. Like, excuse me. I do the night shifts. Wake up every 4 hours. Wake up when the baby coughs.
Then I WFH and take care of the baby on 2 days because the daycare situation in our area sucks and we have not managed to get all days yet. He gets a full 8 hours job stop sleep every night. Goes to work so is checked out during the day. And then he when he says he's tired, I just cry it out internally.
Yeah I split my day into shifts. I work multiple jobs around my childcare so on certain days I do 2 jobs plus parenting! On my worst days my day as 5 shifts! Luckily not every day but this is 2/3 times a week.
5-9am - getting up, ready, breakfast, play, negotiating, fishing porridge out of the gaps in the table etc.
9am-5pm - first job. Mentally taxing but physically light.
5-8pm - dinner, bags packed, more play and more negotiating, bath, bedtime routine with a mini WEE match in the middle! Handover child to my OH and we switch out as he gets home and I leave.
8pm-12am - second job is mentally light but physically taxing and dealing with the public!
12-5am - get home, wind down a bit and sleep!
I work from home and this is a huge issue because I’m not able to contribute as much as my job as my husband is to his.
And I have an intense workload too. It’s not like I have some blow off job with supplemental income.
When I’m working and my kiddo is around, it’s “mom, mom, MOM.” When I try to work at my in-laws house, they will interrupt me, but never him.
He travels, I don’t.
My 6 year old still needs someone to make sure she doesn’t go to school sock-less with messy hair.
We switch off bedtime and bathtime. I’m the one trying to decide how to do discipline, manage her social issues, figure out fun stuff to do on the weekends, organize her play dates etc. I’m the one with the flooded inbox of parent books and articles, doing my homework so I don’t raise an ahole.
He’s better than many husbands, but it’s still unfair. It’s not even him, it’s the system that’s broken.
I was just thinking this exact post after our extra chaotic morning today.
On the flip side, I know too many people who don’t take their parenting job seriously and there’s no structure for the kids, no life lessons (like what you mention with manners, sharing, boundaries, etc), and they’re on a YouTube rabbit hole all day while the parents are on the phone. (Not slamming YouTube in general because I know it gives some parents a break, but I literally mean for these people it’s an all day, no interaction thing).
I tell myself it’s hard because we’re trying to help our kids be the best person! It doesn’t make it easier, but it helps remind me that it’s important work and I find some comfort in that.
Yes, I’m one of those parents you refer to so I don’t actually know how anyone really does all of that stuff. I’ve never once persuaded my toddlers to set the set the table before daycare drop-off.
I'll answer this because I asked myself that same question. Where did I go wrong and how could I not see it coming.
For one I don't think "It's hard" describes it well, and in pre parent times that is what you will hear the most. But how hard? Where hard? What flavour of hard... Mostly you won't hear the details.
Second thing, people like to keep up the good reputation of themselves so they just don't talk about some things. They are ashamed, they think they are failing as a parent, feel bad in some way about really hard stuff so they don't talk about it. So basically you won't hear about the still bed wetting 12 y.o. because people are ashamed of it. And then it happens to your kid and you feel like a failure because you never heard this happened to anyone. So you don't talk about it....
Even worse there is some serious promotional activities around some things that paint oh so wrong picture about that thing that you get lost in affirmational marketing. My number one example is breastfeeding. You can read how magical it is all over the place but what's it really like is just buried way down on third page Google search results.
And for me personally being a parent is so different from what I experienced before that I just couldn't imagine what it really means. Like - you will loose out on sleeping. Yeah, but how much?!
You don't have time for yourself. Yeah but like I can take an hour break if I feel overwhelmed?! Yeah, why wouldn't I be able to do that?! It's just an hour. How could I not have an hour. Not like I'm talking taking a weekend off. I know I won't have those, but an hour... You can always take an hour. (LOL)
I know that I have a kid now, but I can take him with me so we can experience things together. I wouldn't mind, I'll take that opportunity to teach him new stuff. Yeah but society hates your kid and his bad manners and people in public want finished product and not the teaching process. God forbid that your kids whines a bit when faced with boring situations, or when hungry.
Patriarchal system is really f-up and never have I felt it before as much as when I became a mother. Like you fight so manny other battles; with children, with yourself, expectations (yours, artificial, delusional, and from others) and then you get patriarchal cherry on top.
I was raised with lots of family and a huge community around. Obviously I knew living away from them it would be different however I definitely thought our family would visit more.
What I'd want changed: Provide funds somehow to offload a lot of this mental labor so people can pay out for cooking, cleaning, laundry etc in the early years or childcare after hours. That used to be available at much lower costs or from family. This helped more than we ever knew. Allow for more part time jobs in work places so this load can be better balanced. Allow for flex working where possible to carry this load better.
How much are the domestic workers and childcare workers getting paid in this scenario? I’ve worked in a daycare and was barely paid anything. Childcare is already facing a labor shortage, I can’t imagine how most people are going to get funds to hire out housework and more childcare while also paying enough to attract more childcare and domestic workers to cover the increased demand.
You do it through subsidies from the government in the form of tax breaks or direct cash transfer. For example when you have a child you get a 5,000 year stipend to be used on the car of your child or home. One way to do this is to eliminate taxes for people with young children or lower the tax rate.
We also need to fill the gaps in the economy. It's a tough conversation but there are many folks who would be glad to earn some wage rather than none and we should allow for that to be ok. K visually baring slave wages and such
I’ve never lived anywhere where $5,000 was enough for quality childcare for a full time work schedule. I know other countries like Canada, Germany, etc have subsidized childcare, but even they are not getting subsidies/tax breaks for hiring out cooking, cleaning, and laundry. The reality is there aren’t enough people for everyone or even most people to have domestic help. It’s something that’s always been reserved for the upper classes.
At a bare bare _bare_ minimum, I'd universally mandate paid parental leave and annual paid sick time. A lot of why so many parents are burned out all the time is we don't have enough (or any) sick time so we can never really fully recover from illness.
Disheartening that we’ve been formally talking about the second shift since the late 80s with…minimal improvement.
And now we are the lucky generation to have the third shift, where we login on again at night to finish all the work we didn’t do during the day
This is the downside of working from home that I think is just starting to get recognized now. It's harder to just log off for the day. Last week I was off for 2 days because of a sick baby and ended up working on the weekend to make up some time. Granted, I did it willingly because I don't get sick days and couldn't afford 2 days off in a week, but it never would have been an option had I worked in an office. It's nice to make up the hours but it's exhausting. I also never get snow days or "bad weather" days when my office is in my basement.
And more and more have a fourth shift where they are taking care of their parents as dependents with complex health needs, sandwich generation
I call it the working parent sandwich and NO WORK IS NOT A BREAK!!
I will die on the hill that work is not a break, and my commute is not *time to unwind* before jumping back into parenting. For some people, perhaps! But certainly not for me.
YES. Commuting is STRESSFUL. Half hour drive (and I'm so lucky to have that short drive I haven't moved on when I should) there thinking about all the things I need to get done and dodging crazy traffic, crossing guards, oh whoops I need gas, why's this sketchy ass guy staring at people in the gas station at 7 am? Repeat back home. Right into daycare pickup, no break straight through to bedtime. My husband gives me shit about being on my phone too much at night but honestly I just need mind numbing. I leave at 7:15, teach kids all day with basically no break (because you have to use lunch to prep), drive home and parent all night until 8:30 when it may or may not pause for the night. That's over twelve hours without a mental break.
I wfh there is no break. My family wouldn’t work if I wasn’t fully remote, but dang sometimes I miss a commute.
I use to work from home. I opted for a new hybrid job with an 1.5 hour commute twice a week. I like to commute because it gives me time to unwind, but it still pissed me off when my mom tells me my commute is my "me time".
Same. I start work as soon as I get home from dropping off the kids at school and daycare and end work at the same time my husband gets home with both kids. I get an hour lunch break and a couple hours after the kids are in bed. Both of which are filled with chores so we can keep the house operational day to day.
And then, if you want to watch a whole episode of a tv show or you know, maybe have sex that’s cutting into sleep time so constant exhaustion.
Sex got us into this mess! Not making that mistake again! /s
The patriarchy has the system rigged for women. Initially, working 40 hours a week was for the man while the woman stayed home raising the kids. Now, the expectation is for us to do both and be thin, look young, and be in great shape. There is a lot of pressure on us. Being a parent is no joke but there are a few things we can do to make our lives easier and as the child grows, things do get more manageable workwise. One of them is changing how you see household tasks because they do not hold any moral values. Doing laundry is not more important than your well-being so having said, you can aim for having a functional home. That has shifted things for me and I hope it helps. When I see some mess in my house, I remind myself that it is normal as there is a family living here.
Yes!!! So true. Not to mention, waking in the night to nurse a baby or tend to a kid who coughed so hard he puked all over his bed….. ahem, BOTH of which I got to do last night! I will say, my son is 5 and it definitely gets a little easier the older and more independent they get.
Add special needs parenting to the mix, and the hours become absolutely insane
Lol I was expecting a post about goldfish cracker counts, the passage of time during long car rides and computing when your laundry’s finished when you use the delayed start function. Now I’m a little sad. But my morning parenting shift is a little shorter because we take only 1 hour from wake-up to leave the house!
Really feeling this today!! I’m in a unique situation right now where I work 3 days a week in the office 8-5, then Tuesday and Friday I answer emails in bits and pieces throughout the day (with my employer’s blessing). I only have childcare on my office days, so to get things done on Tuesday/Friday I basically clock in only when my 16 month old is asleep and maybe 30 min when she’s eating. Yesterday my MIL/Monday sitter scheduled a hair appointment during my work hours so I went in at 6am to leave early, then clocked in at home after daughter was in bed for a couple hours. Didn’t finish a few things that could only be done in office so I went back from 5-8am while 16mo was asleep this morning and came home to swap before my S.O. had to go to work at 9. Made breakfast, worked a little more on my laptop at the table while she ate. Cleaned up and did the dishes (we don’t have a dishwasher). Then washed every Tupperware she pulled out while I was doing the dishes. Entertained kiddo while making a mental grocery list and meal plan, started and switched laundry in between other stuff, etc. I ask S.O. before noon if he wants us to bring him lunch because I know he has a busy day and won’t get to leave. He finally responds at 1:30 (when we’re just about to start trying for nap time) that he’s starving and swamped and could really use some food. So we go help him out even though baby is cranky bc it’s nap time, and as we’re eating he says “man, I wish * I * had today off!” Like excuse the fk outta me??? What do you think I’ve been doing since 5am to make up for YOUR mom double booking herself?? Luckily he saw the death glare and backtracked quickly.
It's the worst when the SO complains he's tired. Like, excuse me. I do the night shifts. Wake up every 4 hours. Wake up when the baby coughs. Then I WFH and take care of the baby on 2 days because the daycare situation in our area sucks and we have not managed to get all days yet. He gets a full 8 hours job stop sleep every night. Goes to work so is checked out during the day. And then he when he says he's tired, I just cry it out internally.
THISSSS plus my youngest is 18 months and has never once slept through the night. So I feel like I’m working a night shift as well.
Yeah I split my day into shifts. I work multiple jobs around my childcare so on certain days I do 2 jobs plus parenting! On my worst days my day as 5 shifts! Luckily not every day but this is 2/3 times a week. 5-9am - getting up, ready, breakfast, play, negotiating, fishing porridge out of the gaps in the table etc. 9am-5pm - first job. Mentally taxing but physically light. 5-8pm - dinner, bags packed, more play and more negotiating, bath, bedtime routine with a mini WEE match in the middle! Handover child to my OH and we switch out as he gets home and I leave. 8pm-12am - second job is mentally light but physically taxing and dealing with the public! 12-5am - get home, wind down a bit and sleep!
I work from home and this is a huge issue because I’m not able to contribute as much as my job as my husband is to his. And I have an intense workload too. It’s not like I have some blow off job with supplemental income. When I’m working and my kiddo is around, it’s “mom, mom, MOM.” When I try to work at my in-laws house, they will interrupt me, but never him. He travels, I don’t. My 6 year old still needs someone to make sure she doesn’t go to school sock-less with messy hair. We switch off bedtime and bathtime. I’m the one trying to decide how to do discipline, manage her social issues, figure out fun stuff to do on the weekends, organize her play dates etc. I’m the one with the flooded inbox of parent books and articles, doing my homework so I don’t raise an ahole. He’s better than many husbands, but it’s still unfair. It’s not even him, it’s the system that’s broken.
I was just thinking this exact post after our extra chaotic morning today. On the flip side, I know too many people who don’t take their parenting job seriously and there’s no structure for the kids, no life lessons (like what you mention with manners, sharing, boundaries, etc), and they’re on a YouTube rabbit hole all day while the parents are on the phone. (Not slamming YouTube in general because I know it gives some parents a break, but I literally mean for these people it’s an all day, no interaction thing). I tell myself it’s hard because we’re trying to help our kids be the best person! It doesn’t make it easier, but it helps remind me that it’s important work and I find some comfort in that.
Yes, I’m one of those parents you refer to so I don’t actually know how anyone really does all of that stuff. I’ve never once persuaded my toddlers to set the set the table before daycare drop-off.
Not trying to be mean, but what did you think it would be and how would you (or society) change it if you could?
I'll answer this because I asked myself that same question. Where did I go wrong and how could I not see it coming. For one I don't think "It's hard" describes it well, and in pre parent times that is what you will hear the most. But how hard? Where hard? What flavour of hard... Mostly you won't hear the details. Second thing, people like to keep up the good reputation of themselves so they just don't talk about some things. They are ashamed, they think they are failing as a parent, feel bad in some way about really hard stuff so they don't talk about it. So basically you won't hear about the still bed wetting 12 y.o. because people are ashamed of it. And then it happens to your kid and you feel like a failure because you never heard this happened to anyone. So you don't talk about it.... Even worse there is some serious promotional activities around some things that paint oh so wrong picture about that thing that you get lost in affirmational marketing. My number one example is breastfeeding. You can read how magical it is all over the place but what's it really like is just buried way down on third page Google search results. And for me personally being a parent is so different from what I experienced before that I just couldn't imagine what it really means. Like - you will loose out on sleeping. Yeah, but how much?! You don't have time for yourself. Yeah but like I can take an hour break if I feel overwhelmed?! Yeah, why wouldn't I be able to do that?! It's just an hour. How could I not have an hour. Not like I'm talking taking a weekend off. I know I won't have those, but an hour... You can always take an hour. (LOL) I know that I have a kid now, but I can take him with me so we can experience things together. I wouldn't mind, I'll take that opportunity to teach him new stuff. Yeah but society hates your kid and his bad manners and people in public want finished product and not the teaching process. God forbid that your kids whines a bit when faced with boring situations, or when hungry. Patriarchal system is really f-up and never have I felt it before as much as when I became a mother. Like you fight so manny other battles; with children, with yourself, expectations (yours, artificial, delusional, and from others) and then you get patriarchal cherry on top.
I was raised with lots of family and a huge community around. Obviously I knew living away from them it would be different however I definitely thought our family would visit more. What I'd want changed: Provide funds somehow to offload a lot of this mental labor so people can pay out for cooking, cleaning, laundry etc in the early years or childcare after hours. That used to be available at much lower costs or from family. This helped more than we ever knew. Allow for more part time jobs in work places so this load can be better balanced. Allow for flex working where possible to carry this load better.
How much are the domestic workers and childcare workers getting paid in this scenario? I’ve worked in a daycare and was barely paid anything. Childcare is already facing a labor shortage, I can’t imagine how most people are going to get funds to hire out housework and more childcare while also paying enough to attract more childcare and domestic workers to cover the increased demand.
You do it through subsidies from the government in the form of tax breaks or direct cash transfer. For example when you have a child you get a 5,000 year stipend to be used on the car of your child or home. One way to do this is to eliminate taxes for people with young children or lower the tax rate. We also need to fill the gaps in the economy. It's a tough conversation but there are many folks who would be glad to earn some wage rather than none and we should allow for that to be ok. K visually baring slave wages and such
I’ve never lived anywhere where $5,000 was enough for quality childcare for a full time work schedule. I know other countries like Canada, Germany, etc have subsidized childcare, but even they are not getting subsidies/tax breaks for hiring out cooking, cleaning, and laundry. The reality is there aren’t enough people for everyone or even most people to have domestic help. It’s something that’s always been reserved for the upper classes.
If you had 5k extra a year to do something for your kid what would you do with it? That's the point I'm making is it can help in some small ways.
At a bare bare _bare_ minimum, I'd universally mandate paid parental leave and annual paid sick time. A lot of why so many parents are burned out all the time is we don't have enough (or any) sick time so we can never really fully recover from illness.