Apparently Nick Clegg is "killing himself" to take his children to school in the morning. But he does at least make the effort. I've just listened to a conversation on BBC Woman's Hour with an Express journalist idiotically suggesting that if people want a highflying career, they'll have to give certain things up, like, um, spending an hour at the start of the day with their kids.
What a depressingly uncreative mindset. There have got to be ways of managing your work to ensure that your children - surely the most important thing in your life - feel you're participating in the structure of theirs.
Negotiate your hours with your bosses. Don't ask, don't get. Nobody's pretending it's easy asking a reluctant boss to be flexible, but it's certainly becoming more acceptable, even if not to numpties like Express woman. I interviewed a chief exec of a major charity a few years ago who said she'd just appointed a senior manager - a man - who had made it a condition of his accepting the appointment that he could take his children to school on certain days and pick them up on others. She wanted him, so she said yes.
My partner goes into work early one day a week so he can pick our two up from the childminder. I do it two days a week, he does it once. It means I can work late or do a long day out on a story.
Before even having a baby we both decided to work four days a week so we would have them in childcare for fewer days than they're with us. We take a financial hit, but it means we spend proper time - exhilarating, frustrating, amusing, knackering time - with our kids.
Could we be more, er, highflying than we are? Weeeell, possibly... ! If we didn't have small children, there'd be more freedom to do exciting assignments abroad, travel for work, attend events that would help us network. But we don't do too badly - I write for national publications and have multiple deadlines weekly. My partner works for a wildife magazine and is in the same situation.
The point is that it wouldn't work if we didn't share the load pretty equally. And that means that we both do stuff like the childminder-run, bed-time, bath-time, doctors appointments and taking time off when one of the children is poorly. Over three years we've rethought and renegotiated the way we do our work to make that possible.
It's not perfect - in fact at times it's very stressful. It takes a lot of goodwill from each of us, a small adjustment on the part of my partner's work, and some careful diarising. To help us and parents like us, it's absolutely vital that people like Nick Clegg continue to demonstrate that with considerable commitment, having time for your kids is doable at (almost!) the very top of the career ladder.
Well said/written Louise!
ReplyDeleteIt's taken me quite a while to get my child-care arrangements just about right. My partner and I used to fall in to the trap of last minute panics: Who's turn is it to pick up? Is it piano lessons tonight? What time does the school trip get back? Inevitably one or both of us would feel they were the one doing the lion's share and tacit simmering resentment sneaked up on us both. Not good - for us or the children.
We took our work/child-care balance too casually and after one too many guilt trips about forgetting to collect from school on time or failing to take the right child to the right piano lesson on the right day we decided to get a grip!
It started (as so many good intentions do) with a spreadsheet. Seeing the weekly commitments laid out in neat colour coded tables may seem a bit anal to some - but for us it was a revelation! We realised that the kids had a better lifestyle than we did! All those extra curricular activities; fencing, french club, piano lessons, drum lessons, dance class, running club... no wonder they just wanted to veg out in front of the TV whenever they got a chance! I actually felt quite self satisfied that the children were having such an interesting and varied week!
Now we can see at a glance which child is where and doing what and when and we can plan ahead who is collecting who.
Being self employed and working from home makes it both easier and harder. Easy because we don't have to ask permission to take time out of work, but harder because its so easy to fall in to the trap of taking that phone call just as you are leaving for the school run, or finishing that email - leaving just not quite enough time to negotiate the roads congested with other parents doing exactly the same thing...running late!
We have found that just acknowledging that the commitment to schedule and share the pick ups and drop offs made us feel better, less guilty, and mutually involved. We are by no means infallible though. Occasionally we need to practise better diary management and sometimes one of us has to respond and negotiate quickly to an unexpected work opportunity or a meeting that runs over. But with better planning, timely communication and an agreed commitment to help each other out we are managing our work/childcare balance much better these days.
Now... is it piano lessons tonight or running club? Where did I file that spreadsheet?!