Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

Examples of nonobvious consequences of parenthood include:

- Parents of pre-teens tend to be constantly late for everything. That's not because of lack of organization, but because the kid will randomly soil their clothes or do something else that needs to be taken care of immediately.

- Parents are also constantly interrupted. Especially with the first kid, it seems everything is a life-threatening emergency, so the moment it even looks at you funny, you'll start calling your spouse at work to consult or coordinate a doctor's appointment. Some workplaces accommodate that (mostly those staffed by other parents), some don't. It becomes a question you start asking about on the interviews.

- Say your company offers to send you to a conference or a training seminar. You'd probably jump at the occasion (yay, free education and zero responsibility, all on paid company time!), but you might be wondering why your coworkers all refuse to go, and don't even show any excitement about it. It's probably not because they're lazy, or just dispassionate 9-5 workers. It's likely because they're parents, and you can't just go to a conference as a parent. It's a huge logistical challenge.

- Parents like big cars because of storage space. Going up and down the stairs with stuff gets tiring really fast, so you end up e.g. storing trolley and surplus diapers in the car. If you didn't want a car before, you'll start to want one now. This goes against the general trend of environmentally-conscious living.

- If you aren't addicted to coffee yet you will be after having a child. You'll also learn that polyphasic sleep is a real thing (if it wasn't, nobody would survive the first months of parenthood).

- You'll start talking about shit with other people. And I mean literal shit.

- You'll bankrupt yourself if you try to buy everything new for the kid; you'll likely and out of a sudden become super frugal and very aware of all local clothes/items exchange/giveaway groups.

- A babysitter isn't a luxury, it's mental healthcare in the city.

I could go on and on, but it's late and my kid will wake up in about 5 hours. I'll be drinking an extra coffee tomorrow.

I began doing remote work about 8 years ago while homeless. It was a good solution for my circumstances and it was a good solution for my health issues that were the actual root cause of my financial problems and homelessness.

Doing remote work has helped me protect my health and grow gradually healthier when that's not supposed to be possible. So I can't help but wonder how many people with serious health issues could be healthier if they lived more or less under quarantine.

I also homeschooled my special-needs sons for years. One if them has the same medical condition I have. They also have other issues.

As a homeschooling mom, I was a remote volunteer worker for an education related organization. They helped me get to a related conference on the other side of the continent where I was a very low level presenter.

I feel strongly that people with "quirks" -- health issues, ADHD, etc -- are the ones at the most risk of homelessness because they just can't make a "normal" life work and we do a generally poor job of telling people that there are lots of other ways to live and work, you just have to find the ones that work for you.

I've spent some years trying to develop websites and the like to help homeless people and people at risk of homelessness to find ways to make their lives work. I think remote work and other "irregular" work options are key to that.

I've never gotten much traction and the past decade has cured me of childhood brainwashing where I was always at the top of my class and the world around me kept saying I mattered and all. At this point, I'm quite convinced that I shall always be perpetually ignored.

I think I can make my own life work, so I sort of don't care anymore. But it seems like a missed opportunity because I already know so very much about germ control, working remotely, etc.

I'm not sure what my point is. I'm not sure I have a point or that there is any point to trying to talk to with people about this. Recent years have painted me as some kind of clown that no one should take seriously.

I think a lot of these decisions are going to de facto be made by the usual suspects for whom "normal" life works well, which is how and why they got into power. And I think that fact will help insure that people conclude that this doesn't really work and it needs to be temporary and it's imperative we return to "normal" as soon as possible.

But working from home was the historic norm. Family farms and craftspeople with a shop in one part of the building and their home in the same building and even retail establishments with the owners living upstairs was the norm for much of human history. Separating our living and working spaces is relatively recent. It's the weird and new thing.

My father was old enough to be my grandfather and I grew up with a garden in the backyard and a father who hunted and am mother who sewed a lot of my clothes. It was, in some ways, like a throwback to a prior century.

So those "old ways" are kind of living memory for me. And I never know how to effectively talk to people and say "No, seriously, it doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to accept these kinds of problems as the price for having a paycheck or something."

I hope we embrace a philosophy that gives people more options, not fewer. I hope we can find the opportunities and the upside in this situation.

But most people don't really want that. People don't like change. They hate hearing that something like this has a silver lining. So I'm not very optimistic that we will.