But You Gotta Do the Work, Work, Work, Work
I've been at this stay at home parenting thing (and subsequently a world renowned blogger*) for over three years now. My current supervisors don't have a formal annual performance appraisal process in place, but they tend to be very good about giving me ongoing feedback. As they say, you should never be surprised about anything you learn at an annual performance review, as any areas of improvement should be pointed out on a continual basis, with suggestions for action items to help you improve on those areas. Believe me, I get plenty of these.
On multiple occasions, when I've told people that I am a stay-at-home parent, some have commented on how it is great that I have the opportunity to raise my own kids. I never really thought much about this idea, as we thought our kids were in a great daycare while we were both working, and part of my own hesitation for staying home with them was taking them out of that environment and subsequently learning all of my bad habits. As I've perfected this parenting thing (please note that was laden heavy with sarcasm), I've realized that there is certainly some truth to that statement. What I have appreciated has been my opportunity to raise our kids in the environment that my wife and I have created, which I'll, somewhat unfortunately admit, seems markedly different than today's norm.
It seems like the new normal for a family with dependent kids is a frenzied, stressful environment of rushing between home, school, work, and various activities. While we certainly have our fair share of stress in our house and do our fair share of frenzied rushing to various things, I've said before, and recently reiterated a number of times to various people, that me being home with our kids has reduced the collective stress level in our house. Just as kids pick up on the stress level of their environments, I think our kids have in turn become some pretty easy going children, at least when mom and dad are not around. Whether this is attributable to the vast amount of reggae music we listen to on a daily basis, I cannot make a definitive judgement.
Of course I've suggested before that being a stay-at-home parent is not for everybody, and focusing primarily on the children and domicile duties comes with its fair share of stress in other areas. This is also not to say that working outside the home has little merit beyond the monetary compensation that one receives to support his/her family. It does seem though like we'd (all) be better served with a little more balance, as hard as that can be to attain. Before I left my job, a colleague recalled a remark he made to his wife when their kids were young. He thought they should both work 20 hours per week, as opposed to him working 40 (or often more) and her not working at all. I agreed with him very much at the time, and still do. It is also a comment that my wife has often made, wishing for one or two days off per week, so that she could spend more time with the kids, while also being able to work and provide the Bruns Family Foundation with an operating budget.
Work is good, and it is certainly a defining part of our life in a lot of respects. Most of us (hopefully) feel a calling to do our work beyond just the paycheck (if we earn a paycheck for the work that we do), and find fulfillment in using our talents and being challenged. I've said before that as much as I don't like comparing "stay-at-home parenting" to a job, it draws a lot of similarities. I have good days, and bad days, just like I'm guessing those of you do who work outside the home do. Often though, we can really let our work define us and consume our lives, even when we wish it wouldn't, or we know we should try to find some better balance. I had the opportunity to go out for happy hour with some former work colleagues a few weeks ago. It was great to see them all, but as expected, once we covered the formalities of how our various families were doing, and what hilarious escapades my kids had been up to, the conversation naturally turned to work related topics. It was great to not have to worry about their work issues (that's what happy hour is for right, to complain about work), but I felt a little left out that I couldn't gripe along too.
Of course when us stay-at-home parents gather for our "playdates", a bulk of our discussion centers around kid related topics - school, child development, sleep schedules, the latest Odd Squad episode, etc. It's good to commiserate, but because we all parent in different ways and raise different kids, it can be hard to feel that connection at times to something larger. One of the challenges I've found with being a stay-at-home parent, and focusing primarily on child rearing and domicile duties, is the goals of your day to day can seem relatively abstract. Yes, you have concrete things that need to get done; kids dressed/fed/kept alive, house somewhat clean/not on fire, etc. But beyond that, and how you get to those various points, can be open to some pretty liberal interpretation. Fortunately, for me as a stay-at-home dad, and unfortunately (and unfairly) for the stay-at-home moms, the societal interpretation is probably even more liberal than it should be.
I found this past summer to be both my easiest and hardest summer as a stay at home parent. As our kids have grown, they've gotten pretty good at entertaining themselves, and most days this summer, they would be happy to go in the backyard and play with the neighbor kids. I was happy to let them, because I think that free play is vitally important, and it gave me a break from the unrelenting requests and questions that lacked easy answers. It was great that they would do this, but after a while, I would start to wonder what I was supposed to do. Sure I could do all sorts of things - read a book, fix a drink, write a blog, but inevitably I'd tend to gravitate toward things that seemed like they needed to be checked off my list, or added to the list so they could be checked off, providing me a measurable sense of accomplishment. This usually meant doing more laundry or spending more time in the kitchen prepping a meal that would cause my kids to recoil when I put it in front of them. My wife probably wishes it meant more time cleaning the house, but if there is any goal that is the most abstract when you have young kids, it's attempting to keep your house clean.
While we all seem to pine for a vacation, or even just a little free time from our regular live demands to do what we really want, when we find ourselves with that time, we don't always know what to do. This may be one of the reasons Americans failed to use half of their vacation days last year. We want to escape the grind, but seem to secretly need the structure that the grind provides us. With our technological advances, even a day out of the office can easily turn into answering emails and taking care of work related things. I recently read a couple of books that discussed the paradox of how our burgeoning societal affluence has created a wealth of other problems for us - a perceived lack of free time and more work, the obesity epidemic, general dissatisfaction with our current situation, higher stress levels, etc. What was striking was how James Wallman pointed out in his book, Stuffocation, that we hit a point following the Industrial Revolution, where our society could have chosen a culture of contentment, which may have led to economic theorist John Maynard Keynes' prediction that we'd eventually be working 15 hour work weeks.
Obviously, we've instead embraced a conspicuous consumption culture, in which our own economic livelihood is dependent on us using things, discarding them, and buying new ones. It's not nearly enough to have a phone (or, should I say, mobile device) that makes calls, can take pictures, and surf the web, but we need the newest version to replace our most recent version, whose product life was likely designed to only last about a year. But of course, the cyclical nature of this arrangement is what allows for jobs to exist in the various sectors of manufacturing, sales, support, management, product development, human resources, etc, so we can earn money to purchase those products. I don't want to discredit the merits of these products, and the relative usefulness they can have in our lives. As Gregg Easterbrook points out in his book, The Progress Paradox, technological advances have attributed to a lot of time saved (and lives saved) doing various day to day tasks. But I have wondered more than once, given the vastness of our technological advances, especially in the last 20-30 years, why 40 hour work weeks are still the norm. I've also found the concept of working 40 (or more) hours per week for 40 (or more) years to subsequently retire and not work anymore a bit bizarre. While some studies have examined a possible correlation between retiring earlier and dying sooner, I would hypothesize that any such link is likely due to the prominent role that work plays in our live, which might not be all good.
Maybe we could all be working 20 hours a week, or 15 hours, like Keynes suggests. This would obviously take a drastic change in our attitude toward our cultural norm of what work is, and what role it plays in our society. I would venture a guess that most working parents wished that they could work less and ultimately spend more time with their kids and family. We make decisions though on what we are going to prioritize, especially based on our most limited, and arguably valuable, resource, our time. When we typically spend a third of our day working and another third sleeping (or at least we should), that leaves just 8 hours (the remaining third for you fellow non-math majors) for us to spend time with our families, make meals, exercise, volunteer, engage in our hobbies that bring us additional fulfillment. Obviously, a vast majority of people work more than 8 hours a day, especially when you factor in commute times. Also obvious is that a vast majority of people do not sleep 8 hours a day, in detriment to our own health and well being, usually to try and cram more "productivity" into their day. I'll certainly acknowledge the fact, and if you've ever worked a "white collar job" I'm guessing you'd agree, that a fair amount of 40 hour work weeks don't always entail 40 hours worth of actual work.
Unfortunately, considering the tax code re-write recently passed by Congress, we've seemed to double-down (or however many down) on economic growth being best marker of the "good life". It certainly is the easiest to measure. Even if, as the President contends, the legislation can produce continuous growth of 4% and create millions of new jobs, claims that have been highly contested by many, will it make us any better off on the whole? It might raise wages, another concept many experts doubt, or create a new employment opportunity for someone who was previously without work, which probably won't make it any easier for all of those fast food places and gas stations who all seem to be hiring. But I can't imagine 4% GDP growth doing much to curb our rising spending on high care or increasing rates of depression. I'd certainly welcome a few extra dollars in my (wife's) paycheck. Maybe we could buy an iRobot, and decrease the amount of time I spend on vacuuming the house. Likely though, this would just give me more time to stress about other things, or stress about the fact that I don't have an imminent task to complete, causing me to question my purpose as a stay-at-home parent^.
This time of year, which tends to be considerably more stressful than the rest of year, if not also more joyous, seems to illuminate the type of environment that we've created. We will consume a lot over the next few weeks - both culinary and stuff made in China. To do so, it requires that we have the means to do such consumption, or the wherewithal to grow all of our own food and manufacture all of our gifts (homemade Christmas sweater anyone?). To achieve those means, or any means, it usually requires work, and typically that of the paid variety. The more we work, the more we can consume, but the more we consume the more we have to work. It's up to us to decide if this is the environment we want to be a part of. It can be hard to break the cycle, but as Tim Ferris, the author of The 4-Hour Work Week suggests, "to do the impossible, you need to ignore the popular." Decide what type of environment you want your family to live in. If it's different than start making some changes. It will take some work to put those changes in motion, but you might even get a promotion and you can do it from home, home, home.
Of course when us stay-at-home parents gather for our "playdates", a bulk of our discussion centers around kid related topics - school, child development, sleep schedules, the latest Odd Squad episode, etc. It's good to commiserate, but because we all parent in different ways and raise different kids, it can be hard to feel that connection at times to something larger. One of the challenges I've found with being a stay-at-home parent, and focusing primarily on child rearing and domicile duties, is the goals of your day to day can seem relatively abstract. Yes, you have concrete things that need to get done; kids dressed/fed/kept alive, house somewhat clean/not on fire, etc. But beyond that, and how you get to those various points, can be open to some pretty liberal interpretation. Fortunately, for me as a stay-at-home dad, and unfortunately (and unfairly) for the stay-at-home moms, the societal interpretation is probably even more liberal than it should be.
I found this past summer to be both my easiest and hardest summer as a stay at home parent. As our kids have grown, they've gotten pretty good at entertaining themselves, and most days this summer, they would be happy to go in the backyard and play with the neighbor kids. I was happy to let them, because I think that free play is vitally important, and it gave me a break from the unrelenting requests and questions that lacked easy answers. It was great that they would do this, but after a while, I would start to wonder what I was supposed to do. Sure I could do all sorts of things - read a book, fix a drink, write a blog, but inevitably I'd tend to gravitate toward things that seemed like they needed to be checked off my list, or added to the list so they could be checked off, providing me a measurable sense of accomplishment. This usually meant doing more laundry or spending more time in the kitchen prepping a meal that would cause my kids to recoil when I put it in front of them. My wife probably wishes it meant more time cleaning the house, but if there is any goal that is the most abstract when you have young kids, it's attempting to keep your house clean.
While we all seem to pine for a vacation, or even just a little free time from our regular live demands to do what we really want, when we find ourselves with that time, we don't always know what to do. This may be one of the reasons Americans failed to use half of their vacation days last year. We want to escape the grind, but seem to secretly need the structure that the grind provides us. With our technological advances, even a day out of the office can easily turn into answering emails and taking care of work related things. I recently read a couple of books that discussed the paradox of how our burgeoning societal affluence has created a wealth of other problems for us - a perceived lack of free time and more work, the obesity epidemic, general dissatisfaction with our current situation, higher stress levels, etc. What was striking was how James Wallman pointed out in his book, Stuffocation, that we hit a point following the Industrial Revolution, where our society could have chosen a culture of contentment, which may have led to economic theorist John Maynard Keynes' prediction that we'd eventually be working 15 hour work weeks.
Obviously, we've instead embraced a conspicuous consumption culture, in which our own economic livelihood is dependent on us using things, discarding them, and buying new ones. It's not nearly enough to have a phone (or, should I say, mobile device) that makes calls, can take pictures, and surf the web, but we need the newest version to replace our most recent version, whose product life was likely designed to only last about a year. But of course, the cyclical nature of this arrangement is what allows for jobs to exist in the various sectors of manufacturing, sales, support, management, product development, human resources, etc, so we can earn money to purchase those products. I don't want to discredit the merits of these products, and the relative usefulness they can have in our lives. As Gregg Easterbrook points out in his book, The Progress Paradox, technological advances have attributed to a lot of time saved (and lives saved) doing various day to day tasks. But I have wondered more than once, given the vastness of our technological advances, especially in the last 20-30 years, why 40 hour work weeks are still the norm. I've also found the concept of working 40 (or more) hours per week for 40 (or more) years to subsequently retire and not work anymore a bit bizarre. While some studies have examined a possible correlation between retiring earlier and dying sooner, I would hypothesize that any such link is likely due to the prominent role that work plays in our live, which might not be all good.
Maybe we could all be working 20 hours a week, or 15 hours, like Keynes suggests. This would obviously take a drastic change in our attitude toward our cultural norm of what work is, and what role it plays in our society. I would venture a guess that most working parents wished that they could work less and ultimately spend more time with their kids and family. We make decisions though on what we are going to prioritize, especially based on our most limited, and arguably valuable, resource, our time. When we typically spend a third of our day working and another third sleeping (or at least we should), that leaves just 8 hours (the remaining third for you fellow non-math majors) for us to spend time with our families, make meals, exercise, volunteer, engage in our hobbies that bring us additional fulfillment. Obviously, a vast majority of people work more than 8 hours a day, especially when you factor in commute times. Also obvious is that a vast majority of people do not sleep 8 hours a day, in detriment to our own health and well being, usually to try and cram more "productivity" into their day. I'll certainly acknowledge the fact, and if you've ever worked a "white collar job" I'm guessing you'd agree, that a fair amount of 40 hour work weeks don't always entail 40 hours worth of actual work.
Unfortunately, considering the tax code re-write recently passed by Congress, we've seemed to double-down (or however many down) on economic growth being best marker of the "good life". It certainly is the easiest to measure. Even if, as the President contends, the legislation can produce continuous growth of 4% and create millions of new jobs, claims that have been highly contested by many, will it make us any better off on the whole? It might raise wages, another concept many experts doubt, or create a new employment opportunity for someone who was previously without work, which probably won't make it any easier for all of those fast food places and gas stations who all seem to be hiring. But I can't imagine 4% GDP growth doing much to curb our rising spending on high care or increasing rates of depression. I'd certainly welcome a few extra dollars in my (wife's) paycheck. Maybe we could buy an iRobot, and decrease the amount of time I spend on vacuuming the house. Likely though, this would just give me more time to stress about other things, or stress about the fact that I don't have an imminent task to complete, causing me to question my purpose as a stay-at-home parent^.
This time of year, which tends to be considerably more stressful than the rest of year, if not also more joyous, seems to illuminate the type of environment that we've created. We will consume a lot over the next few weeks - both culinary and stuff made in China. To do so, it requires that we have the means to do such consumption, or the wherewithal to grow all of our own food and manufacture all of our gifts (homemade Christmas sweater anyone?). To achieve those means, or any means, it usually requires work, and typically that of the paid variety. The more we work, the more we can consume, but the more we consume the more we have to work. It's up to us to decide if this is the environment we want to be a part of. It can be hard to break the cycle, but as Tim Ferris, the author of The 4-Hour Work Week suggests, "to do the impossible, you need to ignore the popular." Decide what type of environment you want your family to live in. If it's different than start making some changes. It will take some work to put those changes in motion, but you might even get a promotion and you can do it from home, home, home.
 |
| "Well, the kids seem to be entertaining themselves. Guess I'll just tear some siding off the garage for the hell of it." |
*I've seen the Blogger audience stats, people have read this thing overseas. At least one person did. Once.
^Considering the infrequency with which I actually vacuum our house, any time savings realized from having a iRobot would be very negligible.
Liberal sampling taken from Fifth Harmony in the titles and final paragraph.
^Considering the infrequency with which I actually vacuum our house, any time savings realized from having a iRobot would be very negligible.
Liberal sampling taken from Fifth Harmony in the titles and final paragraph.
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