How do you juggle WFH with a baby?
(subscribe.marissagoldberg.com)32 points by remoteworkprep 6 days ago | 64 comments
mike_ivanov a day ago | root | parent | next |
FWIW it's not impossible, but it always requires some external help, esp. with single parents: friends doing your dishes when they visit, a nanny once-twice a week, etc, etc. Otherwise it's a highway to burnout and depression.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent | prev |
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.
advantager a day ago | root | parent | next |
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.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent |
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.
stdbrouw a day ago | root | parent | next |
I am really happy for you if that has been your experience, and I fully acknowledge that the fact that the extremely neurotic style of modern parenting so many people seem to practice is incompatible with pretty much anything does not imply that all kids and all kinds of parenting leave no room for anything else... still, please, recognize that there is an enormous amount of variance in what kids are like and that some things just cannot be "metabolized" that easily. I might have written something like what you wrote if we had only had our second kid, also given my experience with how wildly effective certain interventions (e.g. sleep training) can be. Knowing what our first is like, who by the way has no medical issues but just happens to be a pain in the ass, your remarks instead sound completely ridiculous.
jeppester a day ago | root | parent | prev |
Do you realize that while you are using words as "respectfully" and "admire", you are being quite condescending towards those who do not have it as easy as you did?
They lack the ability to metabolize their toddlers demands and the discipline to get into flow. Or maybe it's because their focus is especially fragile.
What would it take for you to not be able to work full time? Personally it was enough that I didn't get to sleep more than 4-5 hours every night, and I don't think a more "robust" focus would have helped in any way.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent |
If you can't work from home full time while caring for a child, don't, that's fine. The premise of the comments I'm responding to are that (a) it's impossible (several comments state that outright) or (b) that it's harmful to the children involved. Those statements are false.
I am sure there are software development jobs I am not well suited for, and should not take. In fact, I can think of a bunch of them. That doesn't make them impossible jobs; just not good fits for me. Lots of parents handle this problem just fine. If you can't, make other plans, that's fine too.
jeppester a day ago | root | parent | prev | next |
I do not doubt that this was possible for you, or that your kids turned out fine.
But I think you are making a very bold assumption based on a sample of two, and also being quite dismissive of the challenges that other parents are facing.
Personally I believe I would have broken down mentally had I not spent the vast majority of the downtime on getting sleep myself.
quietbritishjim a day ago | root | parent | prev | next |
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.
adastra22 a day ago | root | parent | prev |
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.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent | next |
We raised two. They turned out great. It was not a full-time job.
deltarholamda a day ago | root | parent | prev | next |
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.
latkin a day ago | root | parent |
It sounds like you are assuming work = solo work. My day is about 25% meetings, my wife's is about 90% meetings. We can't participate in meetings with a baby in the room (let alone strapped to our body!) who might start screaming at any moment. Sure, we could fake it -- camera off, muted, jump out periodically to tend to the baby -- but then we're not really fully engaged in work.
Even if I had no meetings, I can't concentrate on solo work with a wiggly/screamy thing on me or in the same room. One of the biggest benefits of WFH for me is avoiding the distractions of the office. Babies are FAR more distracting than anything at the office.
deltarholamda 10 hours ago | root | parent |
Well, sure, specific cases are different. But, FWIW, I did it with regular conference calls.
Infants aren't much of a distraction IMO. My cats were more distracting, at least until the baby got mobile. That stage is certainly more challenging.
blackeyeblitzar a day ago | root | parent | prev |
> 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.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent |
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.
jmfldn a day ago | prev | next |
Impossible without either harming your own wellbeing, the child's or both. And I suspect the quality of your work, even if you somehow manage to somehow pull it off, would be very badly affected. Caring for young children, let alone babies is an intense, full time job.
AnimalMuppet a day ago | root | parent |
If you have a spouse/partner/SO who is willing to be the fulltime caregiver while you're "at work", you can make it work, just like it would work if you were at the office.
If not, though... yeah, it's going to hurt somewhere.
ipaddr a day ago | prev | next |
You take parental leave or your wife/husband does. How do you go into work and manage a baby at home. You don't.
chgs a day ago | root | parent | next |
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.
hug a day ago | root | parent | prev |
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.
adamrezich a day ago | root | parent | prev | next |
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...
latkin a day ago | root | parent | next |
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.
adamrezich a day ago | root | parent |
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.
UniverseHacker a day ago | root | parent | prev | next |
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.
codeyperson a day ago | root | parent | prev |
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.
UniverseHacker a day ago | root | parent | prev |
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.
Feels like this only works if your bosses (your spouse and employer) are willing to acknowledge the realities of WFH with a baby. Otherwise, forget it.
jimbob45 a day ago | root | parent |
The first six months are by far the most difficult. Once you can get the baby on a consistent sleep schedule, you can start to plan around that. Granted, you won't have time for much else in the world but you also won't be at risk of being fired.
The real crime here is that maternity/paternity leave is far too short and it seems that most employers simply look the other way for the first year in observance of that fact.
dboreham a day ago | prev | next |
Long time ago but I found you can write quite a bit of code with a baby balanced on your lap late at night.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent |
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.)
loco5niner 11 hours ago | prev | next |
I don't juggle. At all. When I am WFH I am at work. My office is in the basement, separated from our living space. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, and I took 12 weeks off each time when 2 of my babies were born. Even with these advantages, parenting is hard work. We are certainly blessed. I can appreciate now the recommendation to "Embrace the phase". It's a precious period of time and I only get to enjoy them like this and give them these memories one time. Who cares if the house is a mess? I'm reading them a book instead.
higgins a day ago | prev | next |
When I learned juggling it was years before I was confident enough to juggle babies
bryanlarsen a day ago | prev | next |
This is totally possible as long as you don't have a colicky baby, you have flexible work and a supportive partner. Newborn sleep 12-16 hours a day, you work while the babies are sleeping.
When I did it, I got about 4 hours of work done during the 9 hours of my partner's work+commute and another 4 after my partner came home.
One indispensible tool was the combination of a standing desk and a front carrier. My baby slept well in that. Another trick was to take them to the park, tire them out and then they'd fall asleep in the stroller on the walk home. Park the stroller in the back yard and pull out your laptop and work in the back yard.
And one of the newborn naps should be a parent nap too, since you likely didn't get a solid 8...
2024user a day ago | prev | next |
Is this from the view of a single parent?
Really the only answer is to hire a nanny/au pair for your working hours.
You don't and this is one of the reasons why we who can work and hustle as hard as in the office from anywhere have to RTO ultimately.
alberth a day ago | prev | next |
Short answer: you don't - it's no different than if you worked in an office.
(most companies don't allow bringing your baby to the office, why would WFH be any different)
gehsty a day ago | prev | next |
Living in abject chaos and constantly being surprised how little sleep you actually need.
loco5niner 11 hours ago | root | parent |
I would say how much sleep you can survive on rather than need. I definitely feel the lack.
paxys a day ago | prev | next |
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.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent |
In 29 years of working with software development teams of varying sizes I'm not sure I have ever worked with a team in which a reliable, contiguous, distraction-free 8 hours of work was a norm across every team member. In fact, if there's one through-line I've seen in every working environment I've been in, it's that there are always a couple high-performing team members who get their real work done after dinner.
If you're older than I am, maybe you're familiar with cubicle culture norms I just didn't get exposed to in the late 90s, but from my perspective flexible schedules and evaluation by completed work has always been one of the perks of this field.
I can't speak to other fields where people commonly work from home, but ours is marked by a particular reverence for focus and flow, so I'm not inclined to expect the situations are much more difficult.
cynicalsecurity a day ago | prev | next |
You don't. You need a good partner who is going to support you during the time you are going to take care of the baby.
blackeyeblitzar a day ago | prev |
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 is needed. Anything less, and you are definitely dropping the ball SOMEWHERE to make it work - you’re either hurting your own health or depriving your child of parenting/attention or whatever else. There’s no shortcut and I simply do not believe anyone says everyone just makes it work. Sorry they only do that by providing a reduced amount of parental attention to their baby, full stop.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent |
No it doesn't. That wasn't a norm historically and it's not a reality for probably most working families.
blackeyeblitzar a day ago | root | parent |
> 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.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent | next |
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.
the_mar a day ago | root | parent | next |
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.
tptacek a day ago | root | parent |
Standards of parental attachment, caregiving intensity, early childhood enrichment, and quality time with parents outside of working hours are radically different today than they were in the 1980s or the 1970s. The 1970s were not a golden era of intensive mothering; in fact, in a lot of ways, the norms of early childhood parenting we know now are reactions to 1970s parenting.
At any rate, I was just making a comment about the prevalence of multigenerational caregiving. I would contend: it was also not a major thing in '70s and '80s America (though it probably was much earlier in the 20th century, and in other countries).
popalchemist a day ago | root | parent | prev |
That doesn't make it any less true; you simply need to widen your gaze to include more of history. Multi-family homes was the case for more of history than it wasn't; the nuclear family arose with modernity. Further back, as in millions or hundreds of millions of years, prior, we also lived in tribes.
foobarian a day ago | root | parent | prev |
It's in the old "it takes a village" adage. Extended family and neighbors.
tobinfricke a day ago | next |
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.