Available daily time after childcare

[Funkid]

Hello dear support group,

My wife and I need to do some planning. We have a 3-months-old daughter. I go on working fulltime. My wife doesn’t work outside, she takes care of our daughter. I help whenever she needs free time for herself, which is easy as I work from home. And she does the household tasks (for a 100 m2 flat). We plan to entrust our daughter to a nursery once she is 9 months old, part-time probably to start with.

Our question is : in the coming 6 months (until the nursery), if my wife keeps on being prime caregiver, and doing the household chores, how much free time can she plan to have for herself to work/study from home ?

Put in another perspective : if we exclude evenings and weekends (where working parents would take care of the child together anyway), and we consider just the 40 hours working week, say Monday-Friday 9:00 to 18:00, how many of those hours are taken by taking care of a child, and how much is free to engage in studying or working (from home !) ?

And I guess that also depends on the age of the child (or children). It’s our first child, so we are discovering this.

We would be super grateful if you have some indications .

Thank you !

The biggest difference is that when looking after children or the house, there's flexibility. You can adapt your day to suit their care and mood.

When working, your employer is expecting your full attention during your working hours. You can't miss a meeting because the child decided to throw a tantrum and there's nobody else to look after then. With studying, you have deadlines, you might have lectures at specific times and you'll have deadlines for assignments or to prepare for exams.

Studying in the evening if you take over the childcare is workable but it takes commitment from both of you. I work at a university with older students who are juggling childcare, work and studying. It's possible but it takes a lot of hard work and puts a lot of pressure on their spouses who end up picking up more responsibility.

What do you expect your baby to do during the hours your wife is studying?

You are asking different questions is it possible to look after multiple children, yes it is, two or more can play together, older children can help with LOs to an extent.

Is it possible to have very young children in the house while ignoring them to study or work no it's not possible.

While focusing on one child changing nappy or whatever it is still possible to talk to the other.
Impossible to study and chat to a child at the same time.

Children have a survival technique when focusing on smallest child, older child will divert attention by showing of their skills, jumping, drawing, whatever "Look mummy"
Younger children whine and cry for attention when the mum focuses on the older.

Years ago I watch a psychology programme on it, 5 family's from different parts of the world the older and youngest did the same things during the experiment.