Work-Parenting In 2020
Like yours, our family has been home together since March with David and I working from home full-time and no bright line between working time and parenting time.
I’ve been trying to understand what this new lifestyle is and have landed on "work-parenting."
Work-parenting = 24/7 management of our four kids education, mental health, socially distanced social lives and our two independent creative careers, which includes running two small businesses and ongoing third-party consulting projects.
I've not decided if that bright line is a huge positive and necessary for our human brains to focus or just something our modern society put in place to create more efficient industrialization.
But welcome to year 2020.
If you're a parent, YOU are work-parenting.
Working parents around the world have been managing the new normal of work-parenting since March.
The truth is that many of us had been managing work-parenting at some capacity for a while now, as we try to work in slivers of time during baby naps and late nights or early morning quiet homes, while our family sleeps.
Work-parenting is less about balance and more about flow.
So what does that mean for work-life balance?
The topic of "work-life balance" has filled many a blog post, corporate "wellness" email and private life coaching seminar room over the past several decades.
High access to technology put work-life balance in the forefront of mental health discussions, as employers and employees no longer left work at the industrial revolution factory or the one office computer.
Work started coming home in briefcases of the 70's and 80's, the Jack Spade laptop cross carry bag of the early 2000s and today's skinny jean pockets and multifunctional diaper bags filled with cell phones and tablets galore.
However, the concept of needing to balance work and rest has been around for millennia.
I'm sure I could find reference in the Torah, the Quran and teachings of the Hindu Vedic scriptures and Buddha, but I'm most familiar with the Bible.
"And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made," Genesis 2:2 (King James)
So where do we find the work-life balance for today's reality?
Work-parenting is going nowhere soon, my dear readers.
The 2020-2021 school year is looking more and more virtual for America every day.
That means kids continue to be home 24/7, and we continue work-parenting.
Below is a sample schedule our school district is suggesting for Elementary kids. 🙀
It's like the world has never heard of the negative effects the screen can have on the developing brain and body of a child!
In one swift Google search I found an article from Jennifer F. Cross, M.D., an attending pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital, where she notes:
"Data from a landmark National Institutes of Health (NIH) study that began in 2018 indicates that children who spent more than two hours a day on screen-time activities scored lower on language and thinking tests, and some children with more than seven hours a day of screen time experienced thinning of the brain’s cortex, the area of the brain related to critical thinking and reasoning."
🤯 That schedule has FIVE AND A HALF HOURS OF SCREEN TIME with only 50 minutes of movement/ eating breaks. Plus, our middle schools and high schools are proposing EIGHT hours of virtual school a day!
Six months ago this would have been considered child abuse. As hard as work-parenting is, we can't let screens be our solution.
I keep vacillating between wanting to weep with exhaustion and frustration at the lack of creativity our education system has applied to our current Covid-19 challenges and getting energized to carve out time to get creative with my husband and define what a new educational construct could look like for our family of six.
I'm crawling out of the denial hole to consider what a Fall of all 6 Muhlenfelds stuck to screens for hours on end might look and feel like.
AWFUL. TANTRUMS. DEPRESSION. etc.
It's bad enough my husband and I already create our living through the digital screen world...
Do our children need to increase their screen time to benefit from a traditional public education or can we do something different, like Articles like this one on Medium about micro-schools?
The phrase "Do Something Different" on the back of a counseling card given to me in 2011 has been a driving force in my life ever since.
I don't intend to let it stop leading me now.
Have you considered how you can stop feeling pushed around and overwhelmed by work-parenting and instead impact the present moment and future for you and your family?
That's what I'm doing now. Exploring the power of choice and being mindful of the options I have to create whatever work-parenting flow I want.
Join me on this adventure as we decide how modern parents leading the career trends of today and nurturing the future generations of tomorrow can support one another in the present.
It’s time to help our country's future workforce today through creative education and work-parenting ideas.
Lotsa love,
Leah
