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Thursday, March 17, 2011

Staying at home(& Working)- pros and cons

A major part of last 1.5 years, I have been working from home or remotely. If I count the days I worked from office, it is comparatively very less. While it is advantageous in many ways, it has few disadvantages as well.
Pros:
As a parent: 
You get more time with your kids: Kids are too demanding and they need your quality time to spent for them. WFH helps you address all their needs on time and lets you prevail as a good mom.
Facilitate your child's learning: Every child develop their first set of skills right from the home. Their surroundings play a big role in their physical and mental well being. You can facilitate, control and be a guide and supporter while they advance in their early childhood.  

Watch your child grow OR know where is he/she: It is an awesome feeling to see the little champs growing up. Missing out the best moments of their life is a great loss which can not be compensated with anything else. Every milestone they overcome, make you feel proud. You will get to watch them, know their potentials, understand their weak points and behave accordingly.
Plan your kid's day: When it comes to kid's eating, most of them are fussy eaters. You can control their nutrition, have a healthy and nutritious menu and can plan a 'meal' time table. You can encourage them to have a sound sleeping hours. This is highly important in the mental and physical development of every child.


As a working woman:
 Keeps your career safe: You will not have a career break-up and will never feel the 'gap' and difficulty in getting along with changes happened during your 'absence'.
Flexibility of working hours: You can have flexible hours for home and work. Early morning and late evening can be dedicated for work, especially when you have any work in the bank, appointment with doc or when you need to go out for a grocery shopping or when you have unexpected guests etc. You can meetup with other parents and kids in the play areas/park nearby. You can opt to work on regular hours when you have nothing else to distract you.


Cons:
As a working woman:
You miss out fruitful, informal discussions: At Kern, chats on the lunch table, during tea breaks etc are really thought provoking times. People get around and discuss everything under sky. From learning solutions, usability to movies, songs, all contemporary issues etc. I guess such situations are common in all work environment where you get to learn a lot from the informal set up around you. 
Missing out the formal/brainstorming sessions: There occurs few brainstorming session, which may not be a part of the work you do, but might be an interesting subject for you. While in the office, you always have the opportunity to peep into the discussions and learn from the experts.
For example, there used to be discussions by Usability team on their recent field study, or edits session for budding IDs. These may not influence my day to day work, but definitely provide lot of insights which help in long run.
Flexible hours can be weary too: Having dedicated working hours helps over flexible timings in many cases. Most of the times, we end up working through day and half of night as we utilize frequent hours in personal work. This could sometimes make both official and personal work incomplete/imperfect. If not utilized properly 'fexi' working hours could be a big headache.


As a parent: 
Kids become more 'dependent' on you: Kids may need you for everything around them. They might not do things independently. 
You can't get time to yourself: You end up doing 'anything' and 'everything' for everyone around you and may not find effective time for yourself.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Nishana! This is a great post. I agree that there are both pros and cons to being at home. However, I've found that I've been able to overcome the cons because of my strong desire to stay at home. By networking online, I get to have great discussions and brainstorm with others. I set a schedule to ensure I carve out time for me. And I give my kids goals and reward them when they demonstrate independence. So overall, it's the most rewarding decision I've made.

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  2. Hey Roz,

    Thank you for sharing your thoughts. You are making a point by saying that 'my strong desire'. I totally understand and agree with that. WAHMs definitely require a passion and strong desire towards work. Definitely there will be lots of distractors and passion is something which help us cop up.

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