Weekend Work with Kids
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Anonymous
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I work in an industry where weekend work is not unusual generally speaking and absolutely expected during busy periods. It’s also very common for people to spend a few hours over the weekend catching up on work that they didn’t get to during the week.
Ever since having my first child two years ago, I find it exceedingly difficult to make time to fit work in over the weekend. It’s actually easier for me to deal with the busy periods where I know I’m going to have to spend the weekend working. When that happens, we just plan for my husband to take on most of the childcare, and we accept that we won’t get to some chores/errands until the next week. What’s really difficult is making time for work on “normal” weekends where I’m spending time with my daughter, doing family activities, running errands, doing chores, hopefully fitting a workout or two in, and occasionally making time for a date night or seeing friends. I feel like I get very little time to myself as it is, and I absolutely do not want to spend that time catching up on non-urgent work. However, the culture of my job is that most people spend a few hours catching up/getting a head start on the week on Sundays. If I rarely/never do this, I end up falling farther and farther behind my peers on my billables for the year. Working parents, how do you deal when putting in a few hours of non-urgent work every weekend is the norm? I didn’t fully appreciate how busy my weekends would be before my daughter was born, and I don’t see this getting any easier when she begins doing sports and other weekend activities. |
Anonymous
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I didn’t. We both chose jobs where weekend work was rare. That said, we did jobs that involved a lot of travel and it was extremely challenging when the kids were young. We put limits on the work and protected our work/life balance as much as we could at the time, although maybe not quite as much as we should have done.
You can’t have it all. You have to make choices about what is important to you. I will say, as someone about to be an empty nester, that there may be opportunities to step up your schedule and move into more demanding jobs when the kids are older/gone, but there won’t be more opportunities to spend time with them when they are young. |
Anonymous
| To make this work without sacrificing family time, I work at the following times on weekends: 6-8am, when child is at an activity, 9pm-midnight when I need to work. If your child is old enough for drop of activities, could try to schedule a workout during that time. It’s tough, it’s exhausting, but there’s no other way when you have billables. |
Anonymous
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It helps to have set times, like 7-9am, so you don’t have to “find the time.”
But it would wear on me. |
Anonymous
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I rarely work weekends except during super busy times (i.e. trials or major filings, I'm a litigator) but to sustain that I often have to log back on for a little while after bedtime or get up super early to get a few hours in before the kids wake up. If it's not urgent stuff, try giving yourself a designated long day or two where you either just work through dinner or log back on for 3 or 4 hours and do a late night.
Also, think about whether there are other ways to demonstrate your value beyond just billables and if there are, put your energy into standing out there. You're just not going to win the billable hour war AND do all the family stuff you want to do without sacrificing something else (like your sleep, workouts, and social life). And yeah, it gets harder when there are activities, multiple kids, etc. At least for a while. |
Anonymous
| Mom with four sporty teens - like another PP, I do 5-8 am on Sunday mornings. House is quiet, and I can crank out a lot (if kid(s) have later games then 6-8/7-9). But you might need to adjust expectations of “me” time while being a working parent with kids - the weekend schedules only get more hectic as they get older. I’m looking forward to more workouts and “me” time when kids are in college. |
Anonymous
My husband works at night and some weekdays during his busy period. He also travels constantly during a 4-5 month period of the year. Our one child is old enough that we have playdates so if he is at a friends house my husband will work then, if the kid is over here, our child doesn't care to see my DH so he works and I watch the kids. He attends sporting events and is around, but there is a busy period. When our child goes to sleep at 7:30 he usually goes to the gym for an hour then goes straight back to work (he gets home around 6) or works from home. Last night he worked until 2am, but usually he will work until 11PM. I had to change jobs so we had someone around. I have friends who both have busy jobs and they send their kid to daycare and have a nanny come every sunday morning so they can workout, go to brunch, and do a bit of work. They also have a nanny come maybe 1-2x in the evening on a saturday, but there child is 3 years old. When I had a busier job I would wake up at 5 AM, work out, then do extra work from 6-7:30 when our child woke up. |
Anonymous
| PP weekends not weekdays. |
Anonymous
Your husband's job sounds like literal torture |
Anonymous
| I work every 3rd Saturday where I'm gone most of the day. It's fine. DS and DH get a day together. I make sure DH gets off time other times. We've had this schedule since DS was born 12 years ago and it has caused zero issues. |
Anonymous
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I simply don't, sorry. As your kid gets older, the weekends will be busier and you will want to spend more time with them / your absence will be noted. I can fit in a late evening after bedtime but that's at the expense of other important things including my spouse.
So, you can either draw a firm line, or find a new job. Speaking as somebody who jumped to government, I probably could have stayed at least 2 more years before they fired me for low hours, and that is a significant amount of money left on the table to avoid the stress of "disappointing" the billing partner. And, I still have to draw that firm line in my government job because there is always work to do and always somebody who loves to send weekend emails. |
Anonymous
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Our kids are now teens, and so life has gotten a lot easier in so many ways. But when the kids were little, we sacrificed date nights and time with friends. And we outsourced errands and house stuff to the greatest extent possible. (We probably spent a bit too much on outsourcing, but it was worth it IMHO.) Being a working mom is not easy. I have always been a working mom, but I hope my own kids (if they become parents someday) are able to have one parent (mom or dad) at home, as it seems like a less stressful lifestyle. |
Anonymous
| Ask yourself if you want to do this indefinitely |
Anonymous
| I work Sunday nights and during my kids activities. |
Anonymous
| I work 8-11pm Friday, Saturday, Sunday after bedtime. It sucks. |