Career interrupted
Working at home might sound luxurious, but with children, the reality is a lot messier, as viral BBC video shows
If you spent more than a nanosecond online over the weekend, you probably saw the video of a toddler video-bombing her dad as he’s giving a Skype interview with the BBC.
The first time I watched it, I laughed out loud as the little girl bounced into her father’s home office, followed by a younger sibling in a walker. Then, their panicked mother who drags the kids out of the room.
I laughed, and then I cringed, because I’ve been there.
I’ve nearly dislocated my shoulder trying to shoo my kids out of the room while doing an interview, or typed frantic “get them out of here!” texts to my husband as tiny voices shout “mom!” under the locked door.
I work from home with kids. On a good day, it feels like a comedy of errors. On a bad day, I wonder what I’ve done.
With many workplaces offering little flexibility as to when and where parents can work, and daycare costs continuing to rise, more parents are choosing to leave their careers to carve out new paths as freelancers or entrepreneurs.
More often than not, it’s women, not men, who are entering this new fray: not quite stay-at-home moms, not quite working moms, but some sort of hybrid version of both. They get to spend their days with their children, but to do that, they have to give up meaningful full-time jobs, colleagues and coffee breaks, dependable income and benefits.
Irene Boeckmann, assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto, says children are one of the big driving factors forcing women from work, and that this doesn’t tend to be the case for fathers.
“There is definitely an interesting gendered story here,” she said, pointing out that mothers with younger children are more likely to work from home than other women.
“Research shows that children increase Canadian women’s (but not men’s) likelihood of self-employment.”
I left the conventional workforce when I was pregnant with my second daughter. My full-time job as a newspaper editor wasn’t particularly flexible and daycare for two in Toronto sounded hugely cost prohibitive. Plus, I wanted to spend more time with my kids. My husband made more money than me, so in that sense, it was a no-brainer.
It sounded luxurious at first: as a freelance journalist, I could choose my own schedule, work in pyjamas, have wine at 3 p.m. But the reality ended up being a lot messier. The truth is, I feel I’m pulled in more directions than I can manage.
When home life and work life are one in the same, there’s no real break from parenting or working — you’re doing both at all times.
Household chores that were divided up evenly when I worked in the office now fall almost exclusively on me, as my husband’s work hours are set and mine are flexible. So, I do the bulk of daycare drop offs and grocery shopping, meal prep and doctor’s appointments.
Crammed in between all of that, I’m researching, interviewing and writing. I’m signing kids up for swimming lessons while sending invoices, changing diapers and setting up interviews. A story that should take three hours to write easily takes three days.
It’s two full-time jobs and there is never a break from either of them. Because of this, I often feel like nobody really gets my full attention — not my work and not my family.
Melissa Milkie, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto, says a lack of feasible part-time professional work, along with workplaces with inflexible work hours, can be push factors that drive women out of the office, or to entrepreneurial work from home.
“The unfriendly workplace, fulltime work, (they’re) not easy to combine with motherhood,” Milkie said. “So if they move to freelance or other forms of work, the perks, the money are often sacrificed and it may be difficult to re-enter the workforce down the road.” For many women, that means work life and home life become one and the same and there is no longer a strong distinction between the two.
“What we call ‘role-blurring’ between work and family roles is actually linked to more distress for work- ers — more anxiety, depression, anger and so on. And role blurring is common among those working at home,” Milkie said.
Erica Mills, who works from her Beaches home while looking after her boys — 7, 4 and 2 — says she often feels guilty leaving her kids so she can get work done, but appreciates that at least her job is flexible, so she can drop it if she has to.
“I’ve been doing some sort of work from home forever,” says Mills, who is a personal trainer, a Stella and Dot stylist, and an artist. “(My first son) would come to sales calls with me and I would spend half days in my home office creating while he coloured along side of me.”
“I do struggle with taking enough time for me, but I do know that my mental health is essential for the happiness of each member of my family.”
Self-employment has been a wonderful opportunity for my family. It meant a pay cut, but it has also meant a degree of freedom I never had in my previous working life.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy, as the parents in the viral video can tell you. As I type this, my 1-year-old is lying on my chest and my 3-year-old is yelling for help from the kitchen. It’s hard.
But it’s also the best.