Balancing Parenting with a Work-From-Home Job

John Engler once put it this way: when a parent works and models that effort for a child, the child tends to stay in school, stay out of trouble, and finish an education. The sentiment is nice. The daily reality of pulling it off from a kitchen table, with a toddler nearby, is messier.

Caring for a small child while holding down a job under the same roof is hard. People who have never tried it picture something restful: no commute, pajamas until noon, work slotted neatly between naps. What actually happens is a constant handoff between two sets of demands, neither of which pauses for the other. Your time, your workload, and how available you are to your kid all compete, and the pressure of that can wear a person down.

Before you decide a home-based job suits you, be honest about what it asks of you. Your temperament matters. So does your home setup, your discipline about staying on task, and how old your child is. For some people, an office down the road turns out to be the easier arrangement, precisely because it draws a line between the two worlds.

Time management is where most of this lives or dies. Anyone with a job, in an office or not, can lose an afternoon to email, to scrolling Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, to phone calls with friends and relatives, to checking voicemail for the fifth time. The temptation is sharper at home, where no one is watching. If you have a young child, build your work hours around the times you have coverage: a spouse, an older kid, a friend, a daycare. No coverage available? Then work around school hours and nap windows. Part-time, if you can swing it, beats full-time here, because a little one who is home all day is going to want you, loudly and often.

A regular babysitter is worth considering. Someone can watch your child in your home or theirs while you work. If they come to you, they can feed the child, keep things quiet, and keep the child occupied while you stay at your desk. A daily or weekly planner helps too. Write the work tasks and the parenting tasks in the same place and a routine starts to form on its own.

There will be hard calls. Expect to trade time with your child for time at work, and vice versa. If you are raising a child alone, or the household needs the income, you may have to work on days you would rather not. The cost is real: you can miss the small milestones, the first steps and new words, because a deadline had you. That stings. The reverse stings too. Sometimes the child needs feeding, bathing, a diaper change, a trip to the park, and the work simply does not get done, and the money gets tight.

Saying no becomes part of the job. If a manager asks for extra hours and you have dinner to make or a doctor's appointment to keep, the answer is no, and if that manager can't live with it, you may be looking for different work. You are one person. You cannot be everything to everyone every minute. You weigh your needs against your child's and you choose, and when it comes down to it, you choose for the child.

Ask for help. Working from home does not mean doing it alone. A friend can take the child out for a couple of hours. A partner can take over while you finish something. Lean on the people you trust and you come off the clock less frazzled, with enough left in the tank to actually enjoy your kid instead of just surviving the day.

Creativity, support, organization, and plain stubbornness carry this. Ignore the people who judge you for it; most of them have never done both jobs at once and don't know what they are talking about. One thing is not optional: your child's safety. Don't leave a young child alone for long stretches, because that is how small kids get hurt when no one is looking. Safety gates and other childproofing are a worthwhile expense for anyone working this way.

References: Search Quotes. (n.d.). Working parent quotes. Sears, J. (2015). Avoid mommy burnout. Ask Dr. Sears. Stern, J. (2010). Balancing your work and your kids' needs. Psychology Today.