The Hazards of PWW: Parenting While Working
Last week, Robert Kelly, a professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, was on BBC providing his expert analysis of international issues via Skype, and his (adorable) children ventured into the background. Kelly’s little girl walked in there like she owned the place (which, after all, she does―it’s her home.) Then, as second children have been doing since time immemorial, the baby followed the older child, be-bopping into the room in his walker. After a few moments, their mother (Kelly’s wife, Jung-a Kim) skidded into the room caught on with moves worthy of the Caped Crusader, and retrieved both children. You can watch the video here.
All of this occurred on live TV during a Very Serious Newscast on an Extremely Professional News Station with a Long and Storied History of Quality Programming.
The whimsy-driven interwebs pounced on this jewel of a TV moment. Mostly, there were reactions of laughter, but naturally, the sanctimommies and Fathers of the Year (FOTY) came out: some people didn’t like that the good professor kind of pushed his daughter aside as he was trying to work. The first time I watched it, I didn’t like it, either―but I’ve done it. I’ve pushed my kids out of the room when I was on a work call. I’ve given them looks that they later described as “Mommy’s death ray glare” when they interrupted my work. I’ve had to mute conference calls to put a crying newborn on my boob (note: these were NOT video calls.) I’ve used daily couch matinees of “Finding Nemo” to placate a toddler who had just started loudly refusing his regular afternoon nap, destroying the work schedule I had carefully constructed around his waking hours. And do you know what was in the background of my Skype until a client (a client!) noticed it one day? A 3-foot-tall, garishly pink Barbie house.
I don’t know this dude. He could be FOTY or he could be Daddy Dearest, we can’t know that from a split second on live TV. (I will say this: no little kid walks into a room the way that adorably sassy little girl did unless they’re pretty sure of a warm reception. Also, the family has since responded to the story and it’s clear to me that these kids are well-loved by their parents.) But I do know that anyone who has ever worked from home reacted to this video with rueful laughter; they’d either “been there, done that” or they knew, with a spine-tingling chill, that they’d only escaped the exact same situation by virtue of luck. Sheer. Fucking. Luck.
See, PWW―Parenting While Working―comes with a whole set of circumstances we never had to deal with in our cubicles. The daily routine of it is never, never the least bit routine. In fact, when the New York Times article about the video called “toddler invasion” a “new” drawback to the WAH life, I literally laughed out loud. Any WAHM certainly knows that “toddler invasion” is pretty much par for the course, and how you handle it becomes another measure by which you are judged.
Working at home is a balance, and those of us who make it work are usually teetering on the edge of that balance, giving up time, showers, and sleep (there is a reason my content marketing company is called 3am Writers.) We have all felt the panic that Kelly must have felt at that moment when he noticed his daughter in the background; and most of us aren’t PWW on live TV, on the BBC. It takes enormous energy and patience (two things that are in short supply when you have toddlers and babies in your life) to manage, let alone thrive in, the chaotic situations that PWW produces on the daily.
Working at home has a huge upside. My WAH schedule allows me to be available for field trips, sudden onset can-you-please-come-pick-up-your-feverish-child situations, and wine club, I mean, grocery deliveries. I don’t catch colds from martyr employees who come to work coughing up a lung to prove their indispensability to the company. And nothing beats a WAH snow day―sitting in your jammies, sipping hot chocolate as you work on your laptop before a roaring fire. Most of the time, it’s pretty great and I’m glad I decided to start working at home 15 years ago.
When Steph Curry did press conferences with his toddler in his lap, and Licia Ronzulli, the EU Parliament member, became famous for governing with her baby in a sling, I loved it. I loved seeing these high-profile professionals take their parenting in stride, integrating it seamlessly into their lives. It did my heart good to think we could get to the point where our work and home lives could mingle publicly, and people wouldn’t think any less of someone because they were performing some of their job with a child in tow.
I’m not advocating that we bring our kids everywhere. Yes, we need to be professionals. But it’s essential that we normalize PWW because a lot of us are doing it. Careers are different. Families are different. We must evolve with the changing world. And as WAH professionals joyfully embrace the role that is (often) the reason we decided to work at home in the first place, we can sit more calmly in the balance that PWW imposes. Jobs have taken over our lives to an unhealthy point, and if our lives can begin to grab a little of that focus back, we’ll all be happier as a result. Because as Professor Kelly said in his follow up interview, “This is my life, man!”
