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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?

#31

Post by tptacek »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #25
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, we're not disagreeing about semantics, we're disagreeing in substance. You can provide excellent care for an infant and toddler while delivering knowledge work (including software development) at competitive levels while working from home.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#32

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

adastra22 wrote: post #11
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Taking care of a newborn baby is absolutely full-time job. I don't know how to interpret "we did it as two full-time tech workers" other than "we grifted our employers by getting paid full-time to work part-time as we juggled having a baby at home." I'm as pro-natal as they come, but a newborn should have your full undivided attention.

> I'm as pro-natal as they come, but a newborn should have your full undivided attention.

Exactly - the attention it takes has to come out of SOMETHING - whether it is your work or health or the child. You can see the difference between kids that have full undivided attention of someone who cares a lot about them (family members or a great paid caretaker) versus ones who are physically near parents but ignored (since the parent is looking at a screen focusing on work) versus ones who have been distracted by some electronic stimulant versus ones who have been outsourced to daycare where the caretaker ratio means babies don’t get full attention.

But even leaving aside what’s best for the child, I think it’s about getting the most out of your own parental experience. You only get so much time with your children. That time goes away in a blink. Be there for them as much as you can, and make the best of it. Making it “just work” with less than that may be something you end up regretting later.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#33

Post by chgs »

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.

I’ve worked for bike longer than my kids have been alive, they’re in high school now.

If the house burns down then sure, I’ll stop work, but day to day I start work when I start and finish when I finish. I don’t do a half assed job trying to do a home job and a work job at the same time.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#34

Post by tptacek »

advantager wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most infants and toddlers make sporadic (and, increasingly, predictable) demands throughout the day, and yes, they do so by screaming. I'd respectfully suggest that it's more about the parent's ability to metabolize those demands and the discipline to get back into flow than anything about handling those interrupts being a "9-5 job". For the first several months, infants aren't even especially interactive; by 6 months, they're straightforward to work around.

I am stipulating a two-parent household (but stipulating both parents work). If your focus is especially fragile (and I've worked with and admire many people form whom that's the case), a sitter makes this even more tenable. And, again, we're talking about WFH; we're not even addressing commute issues.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#35

Post by tptacek »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #32
adastra22 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking care of a newborn baby is absolutely full-time job. I don't know how to interpret "we did it as two full-time tech workers" other than "we grifted our employers by getting paid full-time to work part-time as we juggled having a baby at home." I'm as pro-natal as they come, but a newborn should have your full undivided attention.

> I'm as pro-natal as they come, but a newborn should have your full undivided attention. Exactly - the attention it takes has to come out of SOMETHING - whether it is your work or health or the child. You can see the difference between kids that have full undivided attention of someone who cares a lot about them (family members or a great paid caretaker) versus ones who are physically near parents but ignored (since…

I think this is mostly just innuendo, and that there's very little empirical evidence to back up this assertion that there are observable deficits traceable to lack of "undivided attention" in early childhood. The parenting situations we're discussing here are drastically higher-attachment than was the norm for decades throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#36

Post by deltarholamda »

adastra22 wrote: post #11
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Taking care of a newborn baby is absolutely full-time job. I don't know how to interpret "we did it as two full-time tech workers" other than "we grifted our employers by getting paid full-time to work part-time as we juggled having a baby at home." I'm as pro-natal as they come, but a newborn should have your full undivided attention.

I took care of a newborn while working from home. It's quite doable. It helps to have long arms, but you can keep the infant in one of those baby slings while you tap away. They get all the attention they could need, especially if like me you tend to talk to yourself. With a baby you no longer seem like a crazy person.

When they get a bit older, you can put them in a Bumbo and have them on your desk, if you can do it safely.

It's harder to work from home when they get mobile to be honest.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#37

Post by paxys »

Why is this even a question? WFH doesn't mean "work from home while simultaneously doing household tasks, meal prep, laundry, and childcare". If you aren't able to do your job for 8 hours a day without distractions – whether from home or the office – then you should be taking a leave of absence or coming up with an alternate arrangement with your employer.

Articles like these are exactly why companies are reconsidering their remote work stance.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#38

Post by the_mar »

tptacek wrote: post #27
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

in the 1990s ~50% of women were in the workforce. in 1970 it was 40%, married women with children having to work is a recent phenomenon.

Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

#39

Post by foobarian »

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.

It's in the old "it takes a village" adage. Extended family and neighbors.
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