Do we working mums actually have more time than we think?

A little while ago I blogged about a book that argues working women have more time than they think, entitled I Know How She Does It. In my earlier entry, I kept the red haze of rage at the very idea of having more free time than I realise at bay by deciding to actually read the book myself. Which I now have, and here are my thoughts: 

1. We all work less than we think!

The author argues that most people aren't as busy as they think they are and have more free time than they realise. When asked, most people will say they are busy. But, when they actually log their time, they forget about the hours they spend vegetating in front of The Block - during which time they clearly are not busy at all.

Of course, there are different levels of busy. We've all worked with that person who moans about how busy they are while drinking a cup of tea in the work kitchen, without stopping to think that if they really were busy, they would be at their desks, doing work. Some people think being busy means you can't have a sneaky internet surf during the day and pop out for a decent shop in your lunch break. To some people, though, busy means not finding time to eat lunch until 4pm.

I take the author's point. Sometimes it's easy to think I'm too busy to do something productive, but if I combined all of the time a spent on Faceook over a week I could probably do something worthwhile. BUT - and this is where I didn't totally agree - sometimes being busy makes me so knackered my brain seeps out my ears and I am barely coherent. I often need to do nothing, to give me the energy for being busy the next day. I might not be at work, but if work renders me useless, the time spent in a post-work blob haze isn't exactly leisure time as such. I don't think of it as free time.  It's recovery time.

2. Look over a week, not at each day.

The book argues that you shouldn't look at how much time you spend with your children each day, rather over the entire week, as for most people it evens out.

I really like this idea. When I thought about it, I realised that some days I might not see as much of my kids as I'd like, but I do little else than spend time with them in the weekends. When I was a stay at home Mum I was with my kids more in theory, but didn't necessarily spend more quality time with them - when home I spent more time doing laundry, cleaning the house, and obsessing about weird housekeeping things I don't even think about now. Looking at things over a week, rather than each day, makes me feel far less guilty, and anything that reduces Mummy Guilt of Doom is a good thing.

3. Let work and life bleed into one another if it makes things easier. 

I've always been as careful as I can to keep work and the rest of my life separate. Before kids, this was easy.  If I had a deadline to meet at work, I'd just stay later, then go home to my work-free house. Sometimes I worked weekends, but I did this at work, not home. Home was my sanctuary, declared free of work related cooties. Technology in terms of remote working has also improved a lot since the Times of Before, when I didn't have a Blackberry or work laptop.  But, that was fine. After all, isn't it conventional wisdom that keeping home life and work as separate as possible the path to that Nirvana of Work Life Balance? Isn't that what everyone says?

This book, though, changed my mind. When you leave work early to pick up children, work has a way of bleeding into the rest of life, and this just added to my stockpile of Things I Feel Like I am Doing Wrong in the  working-mum juggle. This book pointed out that if you are spending time outside of working hours doing work that you actually enjoy, it'll increase your overall job satisfaction. Work satisfaction can only be a good thing, especially if it makes the Sunday Dreads go away. And nothing brings on the Sunday Dreads more than that feeling of things spinning out of control due to falling behind at work.

The book also pointed out that we notice the hour or so we might work from home in the evening once the kids are in bed, but forget about the personal appointments we may take during work time. We also forget that one is often a trade off for the other. And, that's OK. Working for an hour in the evening is fine if it's the price for meeting a friend for lunch, or run an errand. Especially if it's an errand that can't be run at night time.

I do maintain, though, that we still need to have some boundaries between work and life, for our own sake. I may work in the evenings, but try very hard not to do anything moderately work-related when with my kids, and don't use my Blackberry when they're in the room. I don't want them to ever feel like they come second to my job, because they don't. But, maybe doing the odd thing in the evening isn't the end of the World if it makes for a nicer working day the next day.

So - my thoughts are that this book is worth a read. While I didn't agree with all of it, it still contained some real gems. And if you don't have time to read the book, well - apparently we all do have more free time than we think, so maybe you will have time after all!

Working mums: we have more time than we think?

Today I read a headline entitled "Working mums: you have more time than you think". Really? I thought, all ready have the red mist descend and to fly into an indignant strop. The heading itself practically had me reaching for a pitchfork and torch even before I had read a word of the article.

It certainly doesn't feel like I have much free time at all, so the last thing I want to read is that the feeling of always being busy is due to my poor planning. Work is busy, parenting is busy, and I have entire weeks when I feel like I don't have any time to do anything for myself. Work's not suffering, and my kids aren't suffering.  When I'm busy, though, it's as if those two things take up all of my time leaving me nothing left for myself. It's hard. Exercise, going to the doctor for non-essential appointments, getting haircuts, eating well - that's what gets thrown by the wayside. I already do all of the things that internet forums, online listicles and my friends tell me I should do to make things easier: I cook in advance, my husband pulls his weight, I write lists, I have a slow-cooker, I write more lists, I do online shopping, and some evenings all we eat is tinned soup and toast. But, I'm still busy. And when I'm not busy anymore and the kids are in bed and I don't have work to do, my brain is instantly transformed into a pumpkin-like mush, and all I want to do is vegetate while grunting single-syllable words, preferably while watching television through glazed-over eyes. The last thing I feel like doing is anything useful. I think that if I spent that glorious brain-pumpkin-mush time doing useful things, I'd get so tightly would up, I'd snap. Or get sick.  Or get behind on my essential TV viewing.  I didn't want to read an article that told me otherwise.

Further reading showed that the article is about a book, which I suppose I should actually read before assuming that the ideas contained within will send me into a rage. In fact, the book, I know how she does it, actually looks quite interesting. Before reading it, though, I had a quick brainstorm about this extra time that I may actually be wasting (apart from my invaluable brain-pumpkin-mush time), and all I could think of was the time I spend asleep. What a waste of time that is! Maybe being a vampire would help? The weather's been so bad recently the whole not being in daylight thing may not even be an issue if I were to turn into the un-dead. Although, now I think about it, becoming a vampire is a tricky business. Plus, all of that fighting with werewolves would become tiresome, and potentially take up even more time. Maybe the sleep will have to stay, and I'll have to actually read this book to get tips. Watch this space, then, I suppose ... 

Working Mum, Stay Home Mum? I'm still me

Two months ago, I went back to work after 18 months at home with my lovely children. It's been an interesting experience, to say the least. It's also reminded me why the stay-at-home parent/working parent divide is silly:

I get different reactions when asked the "what do you do? " question, although these reactions seem to come with the same amount of judgement. I feel just as frustrated when people seem interested in my job but not my children as I do when people seem more interested in my children than my job. After all, the different parts of my "self" aren't that disconnected. Regardless of whether I'm inside a play-house playing lions and tigers, or wearing a suit and writing a report, I'm still me. 

I have moments when I feel like I'm good at what I do, and moments when I feel like I'm rubbish, just like when I was a stay at home mum. I also have moments when I am exhilarated by my work, and moments when I'd give a limb to be somewhere else, just like before. I also care about/worry about/think about my children just as much as I did before. After all, I'm still me.

I still hate doing the dishes, and still wish I could hire a team of magic pixies to clean the house while I slept. After all, I've never been a lover of housework, and I'm still me. 

I miss being at home, just like when I was at home I had moments when I wished I was at work. I crave intellectual stimulation just as much as before, and still struggle to find time for my hobbies and interests. While I have less time for myself now I work, I do have more adult conversation which probably just balances the two things out. But, working hasn't changed me, it's just changed how I spend my days. I'm still me. 

I still try hard to feed my children healthy meals, while secretly eating far to many marshmallows myself. After all, I'm still me. 

I still feel guilty about my choices at times, just as much as I did when I made different choices and was at home. I still feel defensive when I hear someone criticize whatever side of the fence I'm currently on, and affirmed when I meet other mothers who have made the same choices I have. But, I have to remember that those other mothers are still them regardless of whether they're home with kids or not, just as I'm still me. 

Most of all, I love my kids just as much as I did before. After all, they're still them, and I'm still me.

Why the Stay-Home-Mum vs Working Mum argument is silly

I'm sure I'm not alone in being completely sick of the stay-at-home vs working-mum debate. Although, in this context, "debate" makes the whole argument sound far more civilized than it actually is. Perhaps I should call it a mud-slinging match instead? Or, a version of fisty-cuffs in which parents throw figurative filthy nappies at one another? 

Whatever you call it, though, the whole argument's silly. Here's why:

1. We all love our kids. We all want what's best for them. We're all making the best decisions we can, with the resources we have, and taking into consideration the support, job options, and children we have. And, whether we work or not doesn't change how much we love our kids. It's not like parents sit around and decide on a course of action after detailed analysis indicates they only love their children 75% of the time, or only on Mondays. And in the sad cases where parents don't love their children and don't make what they consider to be the best decisions for them, whether or not these children have working or stay-at-home parents is the least of their problems.

2. We all have different pre-children selves. Again, this isn't rocket science, but it's remarkable how many people seem to approach this issue like we're all robot clones. Someone who loved their job and career path pre-children is much more likely to find going back to work rewarding than someone who wasn't in a career path or profession they enjoyed in the first place. Someone who loved being a domesticated goddess even before having children is more likely to enjoy staying at home once they're born. We also have different partners, and earn differing amounts of money, so the decision to be a working or at-home parent is - you guessed it - different for each woman, and has different implications for each child.

3. In this case studies can prove anything, and say all sorts of things. Not only that, but selection bias will mean that we'll gravitate toward the deep corners of the internet to find those that justify our own life choices. There are also many mitigating factors to be taken into consideration in studies looking into this issue, such as the quality of care outside the home, the quality of parenting inside the home, and who's being studied. Nor is anecdote fact or representative. I wore a blue t-shirt today and it rained. That doesn't mean that everyone who wears a blue t-shirt will always get rained on. Just like one example of a child's experience at home/in care doesn't make it representative of all children. 

4. There are 2,134,983 different factors that will influence the adults that our children will become. Genetics, parental income, parents' temperaments, children's temperaments, experiences, birth order, number of siblings, and so on and so on. It doesn't make sense to hinge so much on just one of so many factors. 

5. We'll probably be both at some stage anyway. I've worked full-time with my husband as the at home parent, worked part time, been on parental leave, and been a bona-fide no-end-in-sight stay at home mother. Between now and when my children fly the coop, I imagine that between my husband and I we'll have any number of arrangements to make things work out for our kids. It's not like you are in one tribe or the other, and have taken a blood-oath that you will sit in one camp until you die. Most women will be both working and at-home mothers at some stage of their children's lives, and often their husbands will be too. Before chucking those figurative nappies into the other camp of the working/at home divide, it's worth remembering that you might be just criticizing yourself of the future. 

6. It's not all or nothing. It's really not. I know working mothers who are with their children over half the week, and women who call themselves stay-at-home mothers yet work casually, on the weekends, or work from home. It's not black or white, especially given how many women earn a living doing something other than the corporate 9-5.

There is also a difference between time spent with your children, and quality time spent with them.  I spend much more time with my kids now I am at home with them, but they also watch much more telly and eat more junk food. Having done both I honestly believe that the quality of my parenting is the same either way.

7. What about the fathers?  It's as if, in the course of all this bickering, everyone seems to forget that it takes two people to make a baby. And, whatever the mum ends up doing, the father is probably part of the decision making process as well, so if you're going throw nappies at each other, you need to at least be even-handed and throw some at the man as well.

8. Judging other people's parenting is mean. Especially when you are judging decisions they've made with their family in mind, and giving yourself a smug pat on the back in the process. Or taking snapshots of their lives (He watched too much TV that one day a month we spent together! She hit another child at nursery once!) and assuming it's representative of everything.

At the end of the day, what we should really be doing is celebrating that, unlike the women Modern Mothercraft was written for in 1945, we have a choice at all. Wouldn't that be much more fun than looking at each other with scorn and judgement? At the very least, it will be much more pleasant for us all, irrespective of what our own decisions may be.

Reflections on when my husband was a stay-at-home Dad

This week, my baby girl reaches the age my son was when what I like to think of as the Great Swap Over occurred - I went back to work, and my husband became a stay at home dad. It was a couple of years ago now, but I've been reflecting on the experience of being a woman in the workforce when my partner was at home, and what I consider the benefits and challenges of the arrangement to have been. 

First, the benefits:

1. It was great for my reintegration into the workforce. Having my husband at home made the transition back to work so much easier without be having to worry about leaving work in time to pick up my son from nursery, or dropping him off in the morning. Not to mention only having to get myself ready in the morning, and not having to worry about the chewed food or boogers that always somehow make it onto my clothes after leaving the house. And, unlike when my son went to nursery, I didn't feel bad for calling him every two hours for the first week for a complete blow-by-blow account of everything my baby was doing. 

2. My husband really liked it. He thrived as a stay-at-home dad, getting to know some of the local shopkeepers, and singing along with the other parents to 'The Grand Old Duke Of York' at the local library. He still considers his four months at home as being a really special bonding experience with our boy.

3. He understands. After his stint at home, my husband wrote in his blog: "anyone who thinks that being the stay-at-home parent is a cruisy deal, hasn't done it." This makes things much better for me, now I'm at home again.  Not only does it mean the dreaded question "what do you do all day?" never gets asked, but he also understands what suburban neurosis can feel like. You know the feeling: when the thought of dealing with another nappy gives you a nervous twitch, and when you swear that the house has shrunk to Lilliput-esque proportions after a spell of rain. Or the sense of immense pride from finally having tackled Mt Washing-ton, only to be quickly followed by feeling like a total lame-o for caring so much. It's lovely that he gets what that's like.

But there were also challenges:

"Leaning in" in practice - how on earth to do it?

This evening, I listened to Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In TED-talk while cleaning the toilet. It's all very interesting and thought provoking, and I appreciated what she had to say. Women need to lean in more? Sure! Men need to be real partners? Of course! And women need to stop leaving work before they've left work? Makes perfect sense to me. It's a bit late for me now as I'm now at home with two children, but me of three years ago would have benefited from her words of wisdom about that one. Although, to be perfectly honest, such was my pregnancy-addled mind in the final stages of pregnancy, it would have taken a lobotomy to stop me leaving work mentally before I left physically. But, I take her point. That's different from needing a lobotomy to remain committed to work while trying for a baby. 

I found myself nodding along with her as I scraped the brush inside the bowl. Then, I realised what I was actually doing. I was listening to a well-informed piece about women in the workforce, while fulfilling my domestic duties. When, technically, I am currently a stay at home mum.  Right at that moment, the only thing I was leaning into was the toilet. 

That got me thinking: where does advice like Sandberg's leave women like me? Women who had jobs they loved, but now have children they love even more. Women who would dearly love to make both work life and family life work out, but have no idea how to actually do that in practice. Women who already have children, so if they do work they don't have the time or the mental energy to do all of that leaning in anymore, as there are meals to cook, children to collect from nursery, and washing to be done. So much washing. Piles, in fact. Washing that breeds while we sleep and quadruples its amount before you can get it anywhere near a machine. 

The hard thing is, I think, that we women are far too dependent on other people to make it work. First and foremost, as Sandberg points out, we're dependent on our partners to pull their weight and contribute equally to household chores. I have one friend who's husband said recently that looking after children "wasn't in his DNA", and there are a number of women who don't have partners at all. I know plenty of others with husbands who would win a gold medal at the slacker Olympics, and plenty of women who don't expect them to help in the first place. 

Second, we're dependent on our employers. We're dependent on them for flexible arrangements, and for not holding us back when we can't travel or work long hours. Leaning in is great in theory, but hard when you've got children. Last year I was on a work trip while 28 weeks pregnant, and the most important meeting of the trip happened to occur at 9 pm. I attended, but had to leave at 10.30. With a toddler at home and a baby in my belly, I was far too tired to stay up any longer. I certainly wasn't able to lean in on that occasion. Unless you count leaning into the pillows in my hotel room, harbouring that awful feeling that many working mothers have that we're not doing anything well. Can't be a good mum as I'm away from my son, and can't be a good worker as am too tired to stay at meeting. Lose lose all round. 

Yet, in spite of us being so dependent on those other factors, the decision whether to work or not seems to sit on our shoulders more than anyone else's. It's heartening to see change in how many families perceive women's work, but there is still a long way to go. Phrases like "the mother should be at home," "women can't have it all", "all of my wage will be eaten up by childcare" (rather than part of the household wage) and "what's the point in having kids for someone else to raise?" are still commonly used. Just last week someone said to me that they thought women should be at home, as no kid deserves a "part-time Mum". Sadly, though, I can't conjure up a perfect part-time solution out of the air that will both allow me to advance my career and spend time with my children. When faced with this decision, rather than lean in, many women lean out. They lean out so far they're no longer in the traditional workforce. Which, according to recent studies, leaves the women harbouring as many regrets in the future as women who went back to work full-time.

I'm glad that Sandberg has said what she did, as it's useful. At the very least, it's provided some interesting conversation fodder with other mothers I know. I also want to "Lean in" and have a good career. But I want to spend time with my children too. So, while I agree with Sandberg in theory, I still don't know where to start.

And until I figure that out, at least I can still do some leaning in while cleaning the bathroom.