14 ms·

How do you juggle WFH with a baby?

xrd 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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.
  - latkin 2y ago
    Depends on the kid. Mine was a superstar sleeper from 2-6mo (8p-7a every night, predictable 90min-2h naps during the day), and then as he got older his napping took a nosedive -- shorter duration, lower quality, less predictable.
tobinfricke 2y ago
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.
- mike_ivanov 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      We raised two. They turned out great. It was not a full-time job.
    - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
      > 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 2y ago
higgins 2y ago
When I learned juggling it was years before I was confident enough to juggle babies
dboreham 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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.)
jmfldn 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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.
gehsty 2y ago
Living in abject chaos and constantly being surprised how little sleep you actually need.
- loco5niner 2y ago
  I would say how much sleep you can survive on rather than need. I definitely feel the lack.
ipaddr 2y ago
You take parental leave or your wife/husband does. How do you go into work and manage a baby at home. You don't.
- tptacek 2y ago
  This is an article about working from home.
  - hug 2y ago
    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.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      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.
      - hug 2y ago
        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.
      - remoteworkprep 2y ago
        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.
fHr 2y ago
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.
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  No it doesn't. That wasn't a norm historically and it's not a reality for probably most working families.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    > 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 2y ago
      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 2y 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.
2024user 2y ago
Is this from the view of a single parent? Really the only answer is to hire a nanny/au pair for your working hours.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
paxys 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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.
  - paxys 2y ago
    In your 29 years did you ever work in an environment where it was the norm to bring your toddler to work and take care of them all day while attending meetings and committing code?
    - tptacek 2y ago
      Bringing toddlers into work? Not on the regular (it happened). Working from home with toddlers? Absolutely. Once again: we are commenting on a story about WFH jobs.
alberth 2y ago
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)
bryanlarsen 2y ago
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...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
loco5niner 2y ago
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.

xrd 2y ago

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 2y ago
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.
- latkin 2y ago
  Depends on the kid. Mine was a superstar sleeper from 2-6mo (8p-7a every night, predictable 90min-2h naps during the day), and then as he got older his napping took a nosedive -- shorter duration, lower quality, less predictable.

tobinfricke 2y ago

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.

mike_ivanov 2y ago
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 2y ago
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.
- adastra22 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    We raised two. They turned out great. It was not a full-time job.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    > 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 2y ago

higgins 2y ago

When I learned juggling it was years before I was confident enough to juggle babies

dboreham 2y ago

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 2y ago
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.)

jmfldn 2y ago

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 2y ago
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.

gehsty 2y ago

Living in abject chaos and constantly being surprised how little sleep you actually need.

loco5niner 2y ago
I would say how much sleep you can survive on rather than need. I definitely feel the lack.

ipaddr 2y ago

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

tptacek 2y ago
This is an article about working from home.
- hug 2y ago
  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.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    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.
    - hug 2y ago
      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.
    - remoteworkprep 2y ago
      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.

fHr 2y ago

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.

cynicalsecurity 2y ago

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 2y ago

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 2y ago
No it doesn't. That wasn't a norm historically and it's not a reality for probably most working families.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
    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 2y 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.

2024user 2y ago

Is this from the view of a single parent? Really the only answer is to hire a nanny/au pair for your working hours.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

paxys 2y ago

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 2y ago
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.
- paxys 2y ago
  In your 29 years did you ever work in an environment where it was the norm to bring your toddler to work and take care of them all day while attending meetings and committing code?
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Bringing toddlers into work? Not on the regular (it happened). Working from home with toddlers? Absolutely. Once again: we are commenting on a story about WFH jobs.

alberth 2y ago

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)

bryanlarsen 2y ago

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...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

loco5niner 2y ago

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.