I have a kindergartener and left my job at the end of March to volunteer on COVID efforts. Now, a month and a half into it, I work from ~6a-12p ET, then take over homeschooling while my wife works from 1-6p. When working, we're in the attic and not to be disturbed, and we keep pretty strict about that.
I've always said that working parents know how to make the most of their 8-hour days in the office, and that's only been amplified. In general, I'm pedal-to-the-metal for my 5-6 hours a day, and then have our family lunch hour to recover before the not-really-relaxing homeschooling begins. We'll get a spot of work in most evenings, half-an-hour of TV, and then it's to bed to start it again the next day.
As for my wife and I, we're both mostly exhausted and guilty – guilty that we're not getting more done at work (even though I'm volunteering!), not doing a better job on homeschooling, etc.
When it's time to get a new job on my end, I'm really nervous about how it's going to go. I'd typically be doing 10-plus-hour days as I ramp up on new teams and material, but that's just impossible these days. In a normal world, I had lots of arguments for why a business should want to hire working parents, but right now it's really tough to justify.
My kid is great, and certainly not a "tough" child by any real measure, but still... Camps and schools can't open up soon enough.
We're fortunate we both still have jobs and can work from home, but doing so full-time while caring for a demanding 3yo, homeschooling an inquisitive 8yo with ADHD and cooking/ cleaning/ washing/ housework; we feel like incompetent plate-spinners. We too take it in shifts, up at 6am, to bed gone midnight.
I've never felt more knackered or guilty. Guilty neither of our kids (nor our employer) get the best of us. Guilty at feeling hard done by when we're not really: we've friends who've lost their livelihood and know health workers are risking their lives. We know it ends, but man... not soon enough.
I feel you. I felt so guilty I had to clear this up with my boss. Thankfully it turned out they are pretty understanding and this won't go in any performance review of anyone in this situation (both parents work standard office hours, kid at home, etc). IF the business survives the pandemic and lockdown, that is.
Well, I'm not a teacher (I lead a USDR team), but they really do. When restrictions started, my wife and I set up twice-daily Zooms for our son's class while the schools figured out what to do. It was exhausting, but eventually our kid's teacher started joining them and now has taken them over. She also conducts a dozen "small group" sessions throughout the week, and juggles the wildness and lack of attention of kindergarteners with the responsibility of raising her own newborn.
It's cray for everyone, just in different shapes and sizes.
USDR is the U.S. Digital Response[0] – a band of volunteers (over 5000 folks have volunteered, maybe a few hundred are active), mostly technologists, who are working pro-bono on behalf of state, city, county, and local governments across the US to help improve COVID response and recovery efforts.
My team is a couple dozen folks who typically dive into issues relating to internal challenges governments have wrangling their data into shape so they can make decisions. We've worked with NYC on their PPE crisis, Pennsylvania on hospital capacity tracking, Oakland on homeless encampments, and several others. Sometimes it's a quick python script to automate data ingestion, other times it's a complete web app.
In our case, most of it is private/internal, so it's not sexy work, but it really feels like we're having an impact.
I've always said that working parents know how to make the most of their 8-hour days in the office, and that's only been amplified. In general, I'm pedal-to-the-metal for my 5-6 hours a day, and then have our family lunch hour to recover before the not-really-relaxing homeschooling begins. We'll get a spot of work in most evenings, half-an-hour of TV, and then it's to bed to start it again the next day.
As for my wife and I, we're both mostly exhausted and guilty – guilty that we're not getting more done at work (even though I'm volunteering!), not doing a better job on homeschooling, etc.
When it's time to get a new job on my end, I'm really nervous about how it's going to go. I'd typically be doing 10-plus-hour days as I ramp up on new teams and material, but that's just impossible these days. In a normal world, I had lots of arguments for why a business should want to hire working parents, but right now it's really tough to justify.
My kid is great, and certainly not a "tough" child by any real measure, but still... Camps and schools can't open up soon enough.