So how many hours is okay? February 13, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Weblogs, Kids, Mom Phrases , trackbackMy good friend, The midlife Traveler, wrote an interesting post the other day, in which she opened herself up to criticism (sorry, MLT, you did). So, I thought about this. I am a part-time out of home worker. I have a 32 hour work week. My commute is 21 minutes (no traffic) to 1 hour (rush hour). Each way. I chose a daycare close to my work for several reasons,
- if there was an emergency, I could get there ASAP
- we could spend more time with our kids, talking on the ride there and home
- I didn’t like any daycares near our home!
The one thing that MLT said that made me think (and not get angry, because I know where she is coming from) is:
I’m still shocked by the reality that, in some households, allowing a
child the recommended number of hours of sleep would mean the parents
would literally not get to see their children when they got home from
work.Go ahead, shoot me for saying it: if your kid is away from you for 12
hours a day, 5 days a week, maybe you should have adopted a chihuahua.
NO FLAMING HER PLEASE…
This hits in a couple of ways:
First, our children are not good sleepers. They wake during the night (although luna is doing much better), and they don’t NEED as much sleep as the norm. Soleil usually sleeps from 10-7. That’s what, 9 hours of sleep? The guidelines say 10-13 hours a sleep for a child her age.
Second, we both work! So I started thinking about the time away from my girls.
Let’s take the "average" family. The parents work 8 hours a day. Let’s say they have a simple commute of 15 minutes. let’s assume a daycare situation. You take the kids to daycare. Take 5-15 minutes for the dropoff. Then go to work (15 minutes), work. Plus 30 minute lunch. then go to pick up the kids. That’s 9 hours right there.
Now, increase that commute to something more reasonable, 20-30 minutes, and you are away for about 9.5 hours. Okay, now what if you work a longer day? Say a 9 hour day, now you are away 10.5 hours a day from your kids.
How about the school situation? Some kids go to school early. Next year, the bus comes at 8:10am. We will be home close to 6. That’s 10 hours, just because I can’t control the time when school starts or ends.
This whole thing started me thinking about having children in general. We wanted children. Some was the basic programming gut instinct stuff, but some was for the experience. Jay wanted to life experience of raising children. Of helping a new person grow and learn. A bit egotistical, yes. Part of that human thing. As our children grow, we spend less and less time with them. We can still visit and talk, but there will be a point when the kids are out of the house. They are already their own people.
I can already see them learning, experiencing life in their own ways. School is yet another thing that will separate us, but I hope bring us together. Obviously, Jay and I have our own ideas on schools and helping our children in school, but I do hope to share our love of learning with them. Even when we aren’t there.
I guess this whole thing has me thinking about how we learn to work with our children in the context of a family. Even lovers aren’t together 24/7. Should we expect to be with our children that way?
Comments»
Interesting topic. And a difficult one for me as you know. I work 9 hours a day…my commute it 10 minutes. G goes to bed at 7:15. By the time I get home with the girls it’s 5:45 so what’s that 1.5 hours I get to play with G at night. It upsets me yes and I’m working on a way to change it.
Nice post, Spacemom. So what’s your answer?
I can see when your kids are older they have their own lives. But when they are 2? 5? 7? These early years are so short, and so critical. Maybe worth cutting back on hours at work (say, a 4 day week? ) or moving to a smaller home that cuts the commute time out of the equation? Change jobs? I think we women have more options than we think, and I don’t see a lot of support out there for informing women of that. In the great “SAHM/WOHM” debate there seems little talk of what lies in the middle.
So what do YOU think is too much?
This is an ongoing issue at our house. G and I both hate the lack of time we have at home during the week, but I honestly cannot see any way around it. Our commutes are about as short as it’s possible to get (10 minutes from home to school, 15 minutes from school to work), but because of her school start time, which dictates the time I get to work, we still don’t make it home until 6:00 at the earliest. I’ve pushed her bedtime back from 8:00 to 9:00 to allow enough time for her to play a little — she was literally coming home, eating dinner, taking a shower and getting ready for bed, and it was stressing her out. I know she’s not getting enough sleep because I practically have to drag her out of bed in the mornings, but I don’t know what else to do. Quitting work certainly isn’t an option, as I’m our sole source of support.
My kids NEED sleep. And I need my down time. I only work 20 hours a week,and it is mostly around their school schedule, so I am still kind of a SAHM, too. But my husband is another story. The kids go to bed at 7:30. If he gets home before they go to bed, great. If not, then he sees them the next day (hopefully). We spend a lot of quality time together on the weekends. It is the3 best we can do right now…
wow…food for thought for sure.
I too work 32 hours a week - which can’t be reduced or I lose the family benefits. I commute 45 - 60 minutes each way. D and I split our early/late days so we can each get some work done, but even still the kids are with the sitter from 8:30- 6:15 daily. 10 hours, and it breaks my heart.
Further, Coop goes to bed at 7:45, bedtime ritual starts at 7:15. He sleeps until 7 - 7:30. I’m not complaining, as he is a good sleeper (and I hope he’ll teach Bones to be the same, though we don’t see signs of that now), but as you can see, it doesn’t leave a lot of awake “together” time during the week.
Our way of finding balance, for now, is that we make weekends intense family time. Every weekend, as much time together as possible.
But I haven’t found the right balance. I WANT to spend more time w/them, especially while they are young, but we also need both incomes to pay the bills. I fret about this stuff all the time, and am resentful about my need to work (even though professionally, I really enjoy my work). Sigh..I could write an entire post in response (in fact, maybe I will!)