A "good" old-school parent would ideally have limited after-hours work as much as was reasonably possible and imparted solid lessons about meeting commitments w

A "good" old-school parent would ideally have limited after-hours work as much as was reasonably possible and imparted solid lessons about meeting commitments without compromising family values as well. All of that sounds like a separate consideration. The question at hand is more: assume X hours of 'overtime' work needs to be done: would we rather have that chunk be composed of unpredictable interruptions of unpredictable length through any and all 'family' time? Or gathered up into larger, fixed chunks of extra 'at work' time with advanced warning, discrete start/end times, etc?