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How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

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Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#21

Post by tptacek »

dboreham wrote: post #6

Long time ago but I found you can write quite a bit of code with a baby balanced on your lap late at night.

I did my first startup when I was ~22 years old and still roughly on my teenage-year "sleep till noon, up till 4" schedule, which actually worked somewhat well (I want to be careful with what I say here because I was in a bunch of ways a total fuckup of a husband at the time) --- when the boy woke up, I was awake to take care of him. It did not cost me any productivity (in fact, it probably snapped me out of a bunch of unproductive A.D.D. spells.)

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#22

Post by tptacek »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #20

The reality is that raising a baby requires full time attention of one person and really even more than what one person can give. Our social and economic systems have not evolved to recognize this reality and support it properly. Even with one person full time, you do need help to catch up on chores or to just take a break or to keep yourself in a good mental state. Otherwise, you aren’t going to be able to give what…

No it doesn't. That wasn't a norm historically and it's not a reality for probably most working families.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#24

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

tptacek wrote: post #22
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #20

The reality is that raising a baby requires full time attention of one person and really even more than what one person can give. Our social and economic systems have not evolved to recognize this reality and support it properly. Even with one person full time, you do need help to catch up on chores or to just take a break or to keep yourself in a good mental state. Otherwise, you aren’t going to be able to give what…

No it doesn't. That wasn't a norm historically and it's not a reality for probably most working families.

> That wasn't a norm historically and it's not a reality for probably most working families.

The norm historically is that people lived in homes with extended family like grandparents. There were always multiple people taking care of young children. I get that you want to defend your own parenting experience, but I think you are ignoring what you left on the table.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#25

Post by quietbritishjim »

tptacek wrote: post #10
tobinfricke wrote: post #3

I'm sure that some people are able to make it work, but in general the answer is: you don't. Taking care of a baby is a full time job in and of itself, associated with frequent interruptions and sleep deprivation.

People do it all the time. We did it. In our industry, in two-tech-worker families, there's a norm of staggered parental leave. Contrary to a lot of popular opinion, taking care of an infants or toddler isn't a full time job. In fact, even if you're especially attentive, there are long, long stretches of downtime.

By the phrase "full time job", most people here seem to mean you can't do anything else substantial on a particular day that you're the main carer for a baby. Not that this necessarily takes up many years (as, indeed, not all full time jobs do). Unless I misunderstood, it seems you comment doesn't substantially disagree with the one you're replying to; it just quibbles pointlessly over definitions.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#26

Post by hug »

tptacek wrote: post #18
ipaddr wrote: post #16

You take parental leave or your wife/husband does. How do you go into work and manage a baby at home. You don't.

This is an article about working from home.

The point that people are trying to make is that if you are busy taking care of a baby at home you are not working, or at least not working at the same level of capacity or in the same fashion as as you would if you were not looking after a baby... And if you're not working when you're at home, you're not working from home. You're just home. Most countries in the world would call that parental leave.

Is it possible that we can change workplace expectations to remove synchronous communication & work in such a way that these things aren't roadblocks? Probably, and I would argue that we should.

Is that the current way of the world at the vast majority of employers? Not even nearly.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#27

Post by tptacek »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. That wasn't a norm historically and it's not a reality for probably most working families.

> That wasn't a norm historically and it's not a reality for probably most working families. The norm historically is that people lived in homes with extended family like grandparents. There were always multiple people taking care of young children. I get that you want to defend your own parenting experience, but I think you are ignoring what you left on the table.

I don't think that's been true in the United States for a very long time. In fact, multigenerational households are at a high now, from a low over 50 years ago.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#28

Post by tptacek »

hug wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an article about working from home.

The point that people are trying to make is that if you are busy taking care of a baby at home you are not working, or at least not working at the same level of capacity or in the same fashion as as you would if you were not looking after a baby... And if you're not working when you're at home, you're not working from home. You're just home. Most countries in the world would call that parental leave. Is it possible t…

I am responding to a comment pointing out the untenability of going to a workplace while also taking care of a kid, which is specifically not what the article is about.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#29

Post by advantager »

tptacek wrote: post #10
tobinfricke wrote: post #3

I'm sure that some people are able to make it work, but in general the answer is: you don't. Taking care of a baby is a full time job in and of itself, associated with frequent interruptions and sleep deprivation.

People do it all the time. We did it. In our industry, in two-tech-worker families, there's a norm of staggered parental leave. Contrary to a lot of popular opinion, taking care of an infants or toddler isn't a full time job. In fact, even if you're especially attentive, there are long, long stretches of downtime.

Maybe not your infant, but this is certainly not any sort of universal truth. Possibly you could argue that physically attending to the infant themselves is not a full time job, but all of the associated tasks in maintaining any sort of functional environment (food, dishes, laundry, etc. etc.) is, at least to me, at least a 9-5 job.

Our son demanded by wailing or screaming to be held during all waking until at least 12 months, including sleeping for more than 10 minutes alone. I worked from home during this period and I cannot fathom having been at home alone with him and attending any meeting or focusing on a task in a realistically productive way.

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