In praise of home working...I think.

There's probably been enough said about Marissa Meyer's decision to ban Yahoo employees from working from home...but the subject is one close to my heart and has been niggling away at me ever since I came across it.

Yes, I work from home. Originally a couple of days a week, but for the past year or so on pretty much a full-time basis. This coincided with both a change in role, and the redundancy of a number of former "work coffee buddies". Not one person I work with on a day to day basis is now based in the same country, let alone the same office as me. As long as I have a phone and a computer, it does not matter where I am when I want to talk to someone in Milan or Mumbai. I can relax at home, in comfort, without the stress of the commute, and still have time to do the school run. This way, my employer also squeezes a couple of extra hours out of me a week.

Sounds perfect, right? In many ways it is.

However, if I'm completely honest, it's the lack of familiar and friendly faces in my office any more that is the main thing that keeps me at home. Going into an office and no longer seeing people you know very quickly gets disheartening. Soon you end up going in less and less often, which means less contact with those who are still left, thus creating a vicious circle of "strangerdom".

Now, the thought of going into an office and effectively being a stranger fills me with dread. The thing is, if I look at it objectively, it probably is holding me back. I'm starting to feel more detached from my current employer, but the flexibility afforded by working from home is a big reason why I didn't look for another job a long time ago. Swings and roundabouts.

If I therefore look at Marissa Meyer's edict, I'm torn between being completely outraged that she could take away something that has a lot of benefits to individuals - especially working parents. However, deep down I secretly also understand her reasoning. Seeing colleagues face to face on a daily basis does help you share a special kind of camaraderie that you don't get over the phone, email or instant messaging. Yes, I miss that.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Because that's what we home workers do.

Fuelled by caffeine and conference calls

P.S. If you're reading this on a mobile device, and you'd like to comment, you might need to view the standard web version. Sorry, and thank you...

Do we not trust men with the kids?

A study today for the Telegraph with the title Most Young Women 'Want to Have it All' caught my eye

Now, I can't pretend that I am one of the young women interviewed, as I sadly no longer fall into the 18 to 35 year old age bracket (ahem), and I can only assume that most women interviewed were early on in their careers and did not yet have families. I have to say though, that a number of points in the following paragraph did get my back up:


"However, the poll of over 1,000 young people reveals fewer women than men are willing to have their partner stay at home to look after the kids while they went out to work, suggesting those that do want to run their own business also want to play the role of housewife and mother - "having it all".


(Firstly, the assumption that women "play" the role of mother. Parenting in any form is not a role you can play. It is something that becomes a part of your persona, whether you like it or not, whether you stay at home, or whether you go out to work, whether you are a mother or a father. OK, we'll let that one slide...)

I am mainly interested that the conclusion drawn from the fact that women are less likely to be willing to have men stay at home and look after the children is that somehow this means all women are aiming to be superwomen - "having it all". Again, I do not have access to the details of the study, but the most interesting question in my mind that wasn't asked, is why this might be the case?

I am of course purely speculating, but for me, it comes down to the fact that we still live in a society where a man staying at home to look after the children is a rarity. Is it therefore just an assumption that women make without much thought? How much did the responses come from a place of "oh, he won't want to anyway"? Or is it the fact that the phrase "having it all" is only ever mentioned in conjunction with women making us into control freaks who feel we somehow should be doing it all, without letting men get a look in?

I remember joking with my friends before I had children that I would not necessarily want my husband to stay at home with the children, not because I thought he would not be able to take care of them, but because I was worried that he would not understand my expectation that not only should he be taking care of the kids, but also taking care of the house. (With hindsight I can only laugh about my naivety in thinking it was possible to get ANYTHING else done when small children were around!)

After I went back to work in the first few months of my eldest daughter's life, we did share some of the childcare and both worked four days a week - he had Mondays off, I had Fridays off - so I came to eat my words. Because, guess what? It turned out that our daughter didn't perish - he managed to feed her, clothe her, change her perfectly adequately. On some occasions, he even managed a load or two of ironing. (Shock!).

I do know of some women who cannot bear to leave their children with the fathers for even an afternoon, at least without worrying massively. It then becomes a vicious circle - the kids never spend time alone with their dads, therefore dad has less clue about the practicalities, therefore mum is more convinced that he "can't take care of them".

Nobody is born a good parent. We all learn as we go along, muddling through as best we can. While it's true that making mistakes where kids are concerned can have more serious consequences than with other examples, we can only really get there with experience. Parenting is hard enough without one party not trusting the other with the kids. It helps if you are on the same page.

I hope, for the sake of the young women in the study, and the future fathers of any children they might have, that they will change their minds and see that the only way to truly "have it all" is with support from both parents involved. If that means conceding that it's ok for men to stay at home to look after the kids, maybe it's time for women to accept that fact.

Source

There's No Place Like Home

It's no secret that I have been lucky enough to travel a reasonable amount, mainly around Europe, but also (with the exception of South America and Australia) briefly touching the other continents.That's not to say that there aren't a great many places I have yet to visit that are on my "to do" list!

I've also been lucky enough to spend extended periods of time living in other countries in my childhood and early adulthood. I'm therefore no stranger to adapting to different cultures, although to be fair they have been mainly Western European!

Whenever I go anywhere, whether for business or for pleasure, I therefore naturally find myself wondering what it would be like to live in the particular country I am visiting. In my head I've lived in the US, done the expat lifestyle in Dubai, lived the good life in France, and even returned mentally to Germany and Finland. Whilst there have never been concrete opportunities, I am sure if at any point I had really wanted to, I could probably have found a chance to push for one of those locations over the past *cough* years.

I do often wonder what has stopped me from taking the plunge. There was always an excuse or other. I guess the truth is that in a two-career household neither of us felt strongly enough about it in order to warrant the inevitable disruption to the other partner's career it would have entailed. Then there are the little excuses that creep in; Dubai is too hot (true, and very valid), the US seemed too far away at the time, France has too many smokers (although the wine may balance that out), Finland is too cold and dark for half the year, I don't think I could cope with the formality of Germany any more etc etc.

When it all comes down to it, this funny little island we live in suits me. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the UK is perfect - far from it by all means. What I am trying to say is that I guess I have finally realised it is kind of perfect for me - probably more by a process of elimination than anything else.

Of course, now that there are children to throw into the equation, and they now both at school, there are different considerations to bear in mind. There's no doubt I'd love to give my children the same experiences I had, and the ease at which they would now earn a foreign language is almost too good an opportunity to pass up. However, I also remember the stress it caused me in my own childhood - the stress of starting a new school in a whole different country when you already have a grasp of the language is reasonable is bad enough... Whilst I know, deep down, that children are adaptable, maybe I'm just not brave enough to take that chance with my own. Finally, from a purely selfish point of view I have friends and family here. I have a support network - not something to be underestimated as a working parent, after all.

It never stops you wondering though, does it...