That depends. a) I've found that I need to quit work cold turkey-style, just be OUT. Working part-time while caring for the toddler just means everyone at work

That depends. a) I've found that I need to quit work cold turkey-style, just be OUT. Working part-time while caring for the toddler just means everyone at work assume I am at work, leading to 100% work load and only X% time to do it in. (Where X is significantly less than 100!) Previous time around, we tried to both work part-time for a few weeks during transitioning from my wife being at home to me caring for the little one - worst mistake we ever made; totally ran both of us into the ground as we in practice wound up trying to catch up on work after the little critter had fallen asleep, trying to meet deadlines. Not good. b) As for being at home full-time, I've found that it works very well, provided (drumroll, important part) I get enough time to interact with adults during the day. True, the little princess is as cute as they get, all smiles (and, if she's not - time for some food and sleep!) and mostly a joy to be around - but what soon gets to me is not talking to someone with a vocabulary larger than 'Da-da!' and 'Tee-hee!'. So - every day, we go out, visit the library, shop for groceries, just chatting up random people we meet - to keep me sane. I've found that works a charm for me. Also, we try to keep to somewhat of a schedule, though obviously allowance needs to be made for her sleep schedule - which is still somewhat of a work in progress. We get up at about the same time every morning, eat at regular-ish intervals, I try to do some chores like cleaning, laundry &c while she's asleep, so that most of the day-to-day chores are done with by the time the older kids + missus come home in the afternoon. That basically means we can spend a couple of hours going over the 7-year-old's homework, play a little, read, whatever until kids' bedtime - rather than having to cram in all chores inbetween or -shudder- wait until after the kids have gone to sleep, giving us a couple of hours before adult bedtime to do adult stuff for relaxing, rather than playing catch-up on keeping the house tidy-ish and clean-ish. Tl;dr: I definitely cannot claim that my recipe will work for anyone, but for me, working in the industry I do, being at home full-time works a charm as long as I get some interaction with grownups during the day, have a schedule of sorts - and the wits to depart from it when need be.