Comment by dustedcodes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dustedcodes | Hacker News Reader

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I disagree. I work from home as a new dad of a nearly 8 month old girl now. The first 3 months I took off work to be a full time dad, but since then I've returned back to a 4 day work week and when I work Monday to Thursday I am not distracted by my baby girl at all. I have a separate room as an office, if the door is closed then it means no interruptions. My wife is still on maternity leave so she is free to do the majority of the child care during the working week. She respects the door is closed rule and knows that I cannot be interrupted then. However, WFH with a young baby has some MASSIVE advantages which I wouldn't be able to get if I was going to an office:

- I get to spend time with my baby girl in the morning before I start work. I wake up at 6:30, it's by choice, I love getting up early and get half an hour of quiet and peace, drinking a coffee and watching breakfast news before the rest of the house wakes up. Then I get to cuddle my daughter for a while whilst my wife gets up and gets ready herself. By 7:30 or 8am I am in my office, often an hour or even two hours online before any of my peers and I'm already working away completely uninterrupted and get more shit done than so many others.

- When I come downstairs to top up a cup of coffee, have a snack, eat lunch, etc. I get to see my daughter again. I get a chance to quickly give my wife a hand with something, or often I just have the opportunity to cook for us rather than her, which is a huge help if nothing else.

- Because I start earlier than everyone else I can also finish on time and when I finish work then I'm immediately available to start winding down and spend time with my family and my daughter again.

Overall I get more work down, I get more sleep, I am more refreshed, I even get extra time to have an outlet after work, playing tennis, going to the gym, etc. and I get to be a much much better husband and a very involved dad even though I have to work 4 days a week.

This is priceless and if I had to go into an office I'd be less productive, more tired, more angry and irritated (less balanced life) and a worse husband/father.

I'm not sure how you disagree. It's still a full time job, done by your wife :)

I never said there's a hundred feet range around every child which makes work impossible. Only that you can't say that you can "just watch" the child, and expect to do work in the meantime. People do try this, on occasion.

Sorry to say but sweet docile 8 month old girl is EZ mode and very different from a 3 year old boy running around banging on your office door demanding your attention every 20 minutes.

Source: have 3 yo boy and 7 mo girl, even with stay at home mom to help. The girl’s presence is almost unnoticeable during work hours unless I want to see her, it’s fully under my control. The boy is a totally different story. Wouldn’t get anything done if I didn’t go to the office.

Will second this. I typically work later in to the day/night because our son is loud during the day and it can be hard to focus so I shift my hours.

So instead of setting boundaries and ensuring appropriate behavior and social skills for your child , you surrender to him and shift your work hours ?

Why?

That’s not healthy for either party.

Do you have children? Children ages from 3-5 are still within dog category of intelligence. They are still learning volume, time, routine, self-control and attachment, and they are hardwired to explore their environment within the safety of adult supervision. They are not designed for the autonomous two-parent household left alone for most of the day every day.

This is a very easy thing to say. However, I suspect it often does not pass the 'when the rubber meets the road' test.

Please stop parent-judging. It's just a terrible, terrible idea in general. It's so very tempting (speaking as a parent) but it's never worth it.

Just Say No.

If you have your own office at home and a dedicated adult even kids are not too much of a bother. Sure some occasional screaming and crying.

Two boys and one girl squad.

I have a one and a half year old baby boy who comes to visit me every few hours even if I’m in the middle of a meeting, with a big smile on his face and usually calling for me in our own goofy language. I wouldn’t trade that for the world. (Maybe I’ll be singing a different tune next year though; haha)

Absolutely. Father of 5 kids, oldest are teenagers now. 6 to 12 months is the golden age, and is as good as it gets (cherish this!). between 3 and 5 years old, it doesn't matter if you're meeting with the president of the US, that kid is gonna bang on the door and make all hell kinds of noise outside unless there's another parent/person physically present to distract them. And if it does get quiet all the sudden, you better go out and check on them because they're doing something really bad. Hopefully they're just dumping a whole bottle of shampoo into the toilet, rather than scribbling all over the furniture and walls with a permanent marker that they somehow materialized out of ether. Bear it well though, eventually that little baby won't need you at all anymore and nostalgia will erase the pain of the early days from your memory, leaving only the good times.

I work from home and strongly support working from home, but interruptions from kids are a serious challenge with no easy solution if you're the only parent/person/adult physically in the house at the moment.

IMHO the best thing for both parents and employers to do is allow flexible hours. if you want to work from 6 am to 10am, then be off for 6 hours and resum then from 4pm to 8pm, that should be easy (barring important meetings, etc).

The key point is that someone else is watching the baby while you work.

WFH is indeed wonderful for parents and families, but if you try to do it without childcare, you're not going to be working much.

It's kind of absurd to conflate lockdown WFH of the COVID era with regular WFH. Folks who think they can do childcare and WFH are quickly disabused of the notion, unless they happen to have the most independent of children.

If you don't have childcare, you can't go to the office at all though.

If you do not have childcare you can not work... from home or otherwise

and trust me your co-workers will notice and be annoyed by having to pick up the slack

Parent was indeed slightly incorrect. Up until maybe 2-3yrs they are little angels. Then everything changes. I would take 8 hours at the office over 8 hours with a high energy 4 year old. It would be way less exhausting.

My experience would say up until they are walking/crawling (assuming they sleep). After that, it was 24/7 duty to watch for falls, climbing, and by 15months or so, they are stacking things to get to get to higher places.

My daughter slept like an angel, my son has not slept through a single night since he was 5 months old.

When people lived in tribes (or even villages), I doubt one or two adults were responsible 24/7 for a toddler. There are a chain of younger to older children playing and looking after each other, as well as elders.

Completely agree, especially on the last point. We've raised our kid with zero help due to geopolitics and economics, and it's clear this is not how nature intended things.

The honeymoon phase will end man. When they are about one and half or two they will try to find ways to injure themselves nearly every 5 minutes the entire time they are awake.

If you are the person responsible for keeping them safe while working it’s an absolute nightmare.

Not sure if you noticed, there is someone else doing the caregiving. However, the big benefit OP gets is more frequent contact with the kid during the day. Both that setup and benefits of it are perfectly possible at one and half years old.

No offense mate but if your only experience so far is having an 8 month old, you don't get to have an opinion on this topic yet.

My experience is pretty similar to his and our daughter is now 6yr old.

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