“Most employers won’t let you WFH and look after children”

[choochoowah]

Is this actually the case? I know some must have this policy but my husbands certainly doesn’t: they don’t know or care what he does in the day as long as the work gets done (he works from home twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.)

WFH isn’t an option in my job so I don’t know. I’m just wondering how common this is as an actual policy.

From the perspective of the child, I just think it can’t be good for them to feel second best to a screen for extended periods, or see their mum and dad staring at a screen and not them, or telling them to be quiet for a minute whilst they do something … it just feels awful. About a decade ago, I had a video call with a really important client/ director at 6pm and did it from home. I had to feed my then young DD some dinner before the call, then I gave her a bowl of sweets on ice cream and 8 episodes of Peppa Pig back to back to bribe her not to speak whilst I was on the call and concentrating. It was a really hard call and I remember thinking I can NEVER merge these worlds!!

Yes and no. My employer certainly expects childcare to be in place for young children and something would be said if someone constantly had their toddler disturbing calls etc. But they are also are very flexible around things like school pickups and older children being around occasionally if off school sick or in the holidays.

It’s in my contract (academic support services) I can’t be in sole charge of a child during working hours. I’m senior enough that people don’t tend to question my time so I’ve been able to cover sickness on occasion by putting in hours later to make up for work I’ve missed. I wouldn’t do it often and it’s only in a real emergency - waiting for my parents to get here (they love 90mins away) or on an afternoon where I’ve been called to pick up from nursery. I’d never do it when I had meetings scheduled or plan a full day of it.

We're not officially allowed children under 12 there as the sole adult. Realistically my youngest is the most independant of all my children and has been here when I've been working since he was 9 and has been fine and my bosses know, excluding one time he was off school ill and I got a day special leave as did need to care for him.

Exactly this.
Not possible to work and care for children!
Too many people milking it

On screen calls and phone calls where you need silence aside, it's not that much different to doing housework and chores while looking after your child.

You have to be super organised and split work into smaller chunks, save anything that needs extra concentration for nap times or after bed time.

But just like you can chat away to your child and engage them while you are ironing, or cooking, or folding laundry, I was able to do that while working on a computer.

What about contracted hours?
Does that come into it?

Do contracted hours come into it?
I would be disappointed to have a meeting with someone / baby with them

In my last job, we had pretty good autonomy over our own diaries, and were able to fit our hours in officially between 7am and 7pm. So it wouldn't be an issue if 90mins of the afternoon were blanked out 2 days a week, as you would be able to put any meetings in at that time the other 3 days, and you could easily start at 7am or 8am or work until 7pm to make sure you did your hours. You couldn't do that every day as it would make you too unavailable, even though a lot of our work was done independently.
So, him having non-working time for 90mins 2x a week would be fine.
OTOH, him pretending to work, when he is actually looking after a 4 year old, wouldn't be.
Nor is it fair on the 4 yr old.

There’s some sly people about 👀

If your husband really can manage his work as he sees fit, why not start earlier so he can finish work at the end of the school day and look after your son properly?

Not all jobs have fixed hours.

I saw a real a rise in my school just after lockdown of kids who spent their holidays ‘being independent’ whilst a supervising parent WFH. Luckily, it has dropped a bit again in the last year.

It very often seemed to be ‘easy’, single children, aged between 8-11. In the past, they’d have spent their holidays in a sports camp, or whatever, socialising with others, and then they were expected to spend their holidays keeping quietly busy whilst the supervising adult worked. I get the pressure/cost involved, but it really seemed to be affecting mental health and resulting in increased screen engagement. ‘Independent’ often meant academically capable of quietly engaging with online things that were too grown up and inappropriate.

100% this!

at my last job, the HR manager wfh with toddler at least one day and only paid for childcare 9-3 so even when she came into the office, she was only in for 5 minutes. Totally took the proverbial and despite colleagues raising it, overall manager too spineless to address it.

If my work are going to keep closing offices and mandate I spend more time at home then they can swivel if they think they get to decide who else is at home when I am.

There is a simple test. Ask your employer if they are ok for you to be the sole adult in the house responsible for a primary school age or younger child during your working day.
Some of them will presumably say "as long as the work is done, it's ok" but I suspect many of them won't, and it's a bit of "don't ask, don't tell"

Totally standard. Everywhere I've ever worked has had contract wording requiring you to have childcare for all working hours for under 10s.

My boss/team are sensible reasonable about the odd crisis where a DC voms at school & are sent home etc, but routinely working without childcare would have you facing disciplinary

I did say he sometimes has meetings, but DS doesn’t interrupt. He would have a couple of years ago, so I quite agree you couldn’t with a toddler. And DH has worked there for twenty years so I do think he knows the company well enough to say whether it’s a definite no.

We can't. It's an insurance issue, not just because it's highly disruptive.

We originally had a no under-12 year old rule but several employees pointed out that 11 year olds are already at secondary school and it was changed to no under Year 6 children as most schools will allow Y6 to walk alone and be able to be independent for the 1 1/2 hours or so at home with a snack and TV.

It's also that some of our departements have tight deadlines, a school run around 3.30pm is impossible for some people as they are required to do work at exact that time. So unless it's a real emergency you stay at home at your desk.

its a no from my employer too, we have a totally flexible working policy, encouraged to do the school runs, go to a mid morning gym session, pop in to care for an elderly relative etc - but the expectation is when your actively WFH you are free from distractions and clients can always contact you during core hours.

The question is can you chair a video call without kids appearing and distracting you? How do you entertain kids and concentrate at work at the same time?

I don’t think they really mind at my work as we all wfh two days a week and lots have kids of varying ages. They wouldn’t welcome kids on calls etc though and you need to get your work done to the same level as if you were in the office.

Nothing explicit in the policy though.

Why should there be? Your husband is employed to do work. What a pair of chancers you are.

Fine where I work as long as the work gets done! Great agile working policy which makes the summer holidays a whole lot easier!

I've also had dogs and kids appear on video calls - again not an issue.