What do you do after the leave is over though? This is what my wife and I are trying to figure out right now, as we plan to have a child sometime in the next year or so. Both of our jobs offer decent maternity/paternity leave, but then after that... what? Do we try to alternate days of working from home?
It's as though society has become disinterested in supporting stay-at-home parenthood. My wife and I need both of our incomes to support ourselves and our future child, and neither of our jobs pay terribly! (Neither is a Bay Area tech salary by any means—but we also don't live in the Bay Area.)
Like is it just a given these days that you have a child, take maternity/paternity leave, and then put the child in a daycare? We would like to avoid that if at all possible.
A friend of mine made things work by having his wife quit her job and start her own small daycare at home, such that she could care for a couple of other children in addition to their own. But is something like that necessary for median-income families to support their children while avoiding daycare, these days? It certainly feels like it is, at least...
What is there to "figure out"? Someone needs to look after the kid. If you as parents are unable due to full time work, you need to hire someone else to watch the kid (nanny, daycare, etc) or find a volunteer (extended family, friends, etc).
If you can't swing it financially, you have various choices -- Don't have kids, find higher-paying jobs, reduce expenses, or move closer to extended family/volunteers.
Nobody is "disinterested in supporting stay-at-home parenthood." On the contrary, the tax code is structured to give significant advantages to single-income (or at least lopsided-income) households over dual equivalent-income households.
It is rather absurd that one man working a city government IT job cannot support his family within said city without having to have his wife work (when she would rather raise children and keep the home instead). A few short decades ago this was an uncontroversial, common sentiment.
See my other post on this thread- this is a legitimately really hard thing to do. You almost certainly will need to use daycare and nannys/babysitters, but that still isn't nearly enough- it is very expensive, open short hours and limited days, and daycares often go out of business, kick children out, have no open spots, etc.
The main thing you can do, in my opinion, is be ruthlessly efficient at work, and find a way to deliver full time value with less than full time hours while working from home. Also squeeze in work at night, weekends, etc.
Don't sleep on daycare. It's good for the Childs social development. And a good daycare centre will follow modern pedagogical practices. If and your partner both enjoy your jobs, you'll appreciate not having to compromise your careers. And the break during the day is welcome, believe me.
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.
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.
Of course, but the subtext of that comment is that working anywhere while taking care of a baby is untenable, and the fact that you're working from a home office does not change the fundamental calculus of current work expectations.
Thank you for calling this out. Most of the commenters seem to have never read the article. I intentionally left the type of childcare out of the article as everyone's situation is different. But plenty of people WFH with kids around.
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.
Many people do not have this luxury. My ex-wife became aggressive and abusive, and refused to co-parent, and I needed to keep my job somehow to support my son. My son is also special needs, and has been kicked out of numerous daycares and schools. I also had no family or friends nearby that would help.
I spent 110% of my take home salary for a nanny, and burned through my savings to get through the first few years without losing my job. I could not initially find any open spots in a daycare, except some that were so awful they seemed unsafe. It was a bit demoralizing having a doctorate in the sciences and realizing childcare costs over my full salary at that stage of my career.
Now he is old enough to be in public school, but public school is only a half day and closed about 4 months a year, so I still need to work from home half the day while parenting at the same time. It has been extremely difficult, but I have managed to do it.
One thing that has helped is to be ruthlessly focused on work during the few hours I have alone, so I can work less the rest of the time. Most people don't really do 100% focused work for their entire work hours... so the truth is you can do what is expected or more at a full time job in less than full time if you are good at what you do, and really focus.
I also re-married, and my new wife is awesome, and does some of the parenting, but is also a busy professional with a demanding job.
What else could I do? Quit my job and raise my son as a homeless person? Give him up for adoption? No- I was going to fight with everything I had, and try to succeed at both my career and as a parent. I think I am doing pretty well at both- I am an academic scientist and was able to publish useful research and earn tenure during the middle of all of these hard times when I was working reduced hours.
It's as though society has become disinterested in supporting stay-at-home parenthood. My wife and I need both of our incomes to support ourselves and our future child, and neither of our jobs pay terribly! (Neither is a Bay Area tech salary by any means—but we also don't live in the Bay Area.)
Like is it just a given these days that you have a child, take maternity/paternity leave, and then put the child in a daycare? We would like to avoid that if at all possible.
A friend of mine made things work by having his wife quit her job and start her own small daycare at home, such that she could care for a couple of other children in addition to their own. But is something like that necessary for median-income families to support their children while avoiding daycare, these days? It certainly feels like it is, at least...