Working from home tilts the balance

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/06/2022 (1361 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the work-from-home model became mainstream during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was new and a bit scary.

Those of us with school-aged children were also participating in (and often failing at) home learning and trying our best not to drown in the hectic and foreign dynamic.

I remember how hard it was to adapt to this change, though I knew early on how privileged I was to be able to secure myself and my family during a pandemic.

I missed that work version of myself — the one who did her hair and wore red lipstick; someone who wasn’t being asked for a snack or a glass of chocolate milk every five minutes. I remember how sorely I missed my work friends and our cubicle and lunchroom chats. It felt isolating to be away from that building I spent nearly every single day going to and from.

It was hard to unravel my job, the work, and the culture as a major part of my identity. But as time went on, even though it was hectic, something strange started to happen…

I found a sort of balance in this unique setting of being able to work from home, especially when the children went back to school. It wasn’t perfect, but the impossible task of working like I have no children and raising children like I don’t have a full-time job seemed far more attainable when I could do it from home.

It isn’t ideal, and I am not glamourizing or advocating for working parents to pile even more onto the mountain of tasks on that never-ending to-do list, but I can’t tell you how much I’ve appreciated popping a load of laundry in during the day or preparing dinner a little earlier because I’m not making my way home in rush-hour traffic.

I am so grateful I get to hang out with my children for more than an hour before they go to bed, and that I’m set up to finish my work in the evenings easily if I need to.

When I look at the way things used to be (and the place they are headed back to) I realize how impossible the task of being a full-time, working parent can be. Obviously, it’s doable or at least survivable, but working from home has made balancing life and motherhood drastically better for me, and probably many others.

Last week, my partner sent me screenshots of leaked emails linked to billionaire Elon Musk, declaring the era of working from home is over.

“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean “minimum”) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla,” starts one message. He goes on to say he will review and approve exceptions if there are “particularly exceptional contributors for whom this doesn’t work”

He went on to tweet about people “should pretend to work somewhere else” or something like that when someone asked him about the leaked emails. (I’ll be honest, I try hard not to pay much attention to Musk.)

Frankly, he and his employees can do whatever they want with their time and perception of work — but this got me thinking about how we, as a society, talk about the importance of a work/life balance but the concept of it seems terribly confusing and unattainable in a typical 40-hour workplace structure.

Australian journalist Annabel Crabb said (and I loosely quoted earlier): “The obligation for working mothers is a very precise one: the feeling that one ought to work as if one did not have children, while raising one’s children as if one did not have a job.”

The first time I read that quote a few years ago, those words cut deep.

I know many businesses (that are able to) have adapted to a hybrid model of working in the office and from home, and I think that’s great.

I think there are benefits of going into the office and interacting with your co-workers and being part of the culture, but I can’t speak enough about how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to find a little more balance in my work/life situation.

shelley.cook@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter @ShelleyACook