Monday, August 24, 2009

Can you really work from home when you have young children?

Working from home, in whatever career, business or job you choose, requires time, and generally at least some child free time. The most child friendly work from home business I can think of is family day care, where you look after other children in your own home. But even this requires time for paper work, doing the finances, planning activities, making meals, preparing and cleaning up the area you use with the children and attending meetings and training. Family Day Carers are regulated like any other children's service and must provide a professional level of care.

With a lot of other jobs, such as tutoring or running a party plan business, there are specific times, when you cannot do the job with young children there.

I came to the conclusion that within the first two years of your child's life, it is very difficult to set up any work from home opportunity without having some sort of outside care for your child, and as one of the major reasons for working from home, is to be there for the children, if they end up in day care anyway, isn't it defeating the point?

However, as the children get older, they benefit from external care. We used Occasional Care when our children were 2, for just one day a week to start with. Not much you might think, but it allowed me a few precious hours to concentrate on something other than children. I may not be making a fortune, but I could start to work towards it, and I had a mental break which refreshed me for the rest of the week. At 3 or 3 1/2 pre-school is available, and my personal feeling is that my children benefit hugely from attending pre-school, where they are exposed to a wide range of different activities we don't do at home, and they get the chance to socialise with other children and adults. My decision was that I could then work during those hours, but still be there each day to pick up my children and spend time with them. As we get to the school years, I still want to be able to do the same thing, but will have 5 part time days a week I can work in.

One other option is to share care with your partner. For example, I have a Saturday morning job teaching a pre-schoolers' sports class. I can do this, because the other half does not work on a Saturday, and will happily take care of the children. A friend who works for Tupperware, plans her parties of an evening, again so hubby can be with the kids. The only danger is maintaining the balance and not loosing too much precious time with your family.

I think the basic message is that you cannot expect to work around your children when they are very young, as you'll probably resort to television to claw back a few hours, and then you'll feel guilty, and won't enjoy that time. If you're lucky you have family who will support you, but if not, you need to work out how much time you need and want on your own, and when you feel your children will be ok with external care.

3 comments:

  1. Nice blog..Realistic info according to present scenario..Virtual Assistant Services

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here in Australia, here is a huge number of work from home employees specially for mothers. Their daily performance rely mainly on the quality service offered by an Australian broadband service provider in which they have a contract with. I believe being a mother while working from home can go together as long as you the the proper skills and equipments. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Best scholarships in UAE
    click
    Al Ain University
    Home

    ReplyDelete