An unsolvable math problem
Many years ago, Randi Zuckerberg famously said, "Work, sleep, family, fitness, or friends. Pick three."
Her point was that, in a 24-hour day and a 7-day week, there's only so much time to go around. The laws of physics prevent one person from focusing on all of these things at the same time.
Before becoming a parent 17 years ago, I optimized for work, fitness, and friends. Since becoming a parent, I've optimized for work, fitness, and family. And here's what I've discovered: The world really doesn't know what to do when one person's list contains both work and family.
An even more unsolvable math problem
After I had my daughter, I was no longer able to stay in the office until 8 or 9 every night. Her dad and I traded off child care responsibilities, so some days I stayed late, and other days I left at 4. The days I left early, I was offline until she went to bed, and then back online for a couple of hours after bedtime.
As my daughter got a little older, daytime school events started popping up. Parents, can you volunteer at the class Halloween party at 11am? How about chaperoning the field trip at 10? Don't forget the cross country meet that starts at 3, right in the middle of your big presentation!
The schedule was tough enough with one kid. A few years later, I married someone with two kids of his own. All of a sudden, we had three kids, hard jobs, and no extended family in the area. Uh oh.
Here is some real math
These days, our three girls are all in high school: a senior, a junior, and a sophomore, at three different schools with similar but not identical calendars. They have no overlapping extracurricular interests, activities, or good friends.
On any given night, I might go to the junior's volleyball game while my husband heads to the senior's back to school night, and we try to figure out who is going to pick up the sophomore from choir practice in the middle of it all. Every week, there are sports games, theater performances, school events, driving lessons, math tutoring sessions, and more.
And, oh yeah, don'r forget about our jobs.
To visualize it all, I mapped out every kid activity in our household over the last month that a parent was supposed to attend or arrange transportation for. This does not count any other things we might theoretically want to do together, like have dinner with everyone or hear about someone's day.
In the last month, there have been just two days total with no formal kid activities scheduled. One of them was Halloween, which was spoken for in other ways.
Across the four weeks, this is 65 separate appointments, taking a total of 160.5 total hours, often scheduled in conflict with each other. The activities demand an average of 5.73 parent hours /day. Almost two thirds of those parental hours are required, not optional.
Of course, none of this includes our jobs, the work that we get paid to do and need to be accountable for. It does not include work travel, which both adults in our household have a substantial amount of, or after-hours calls and projects.
Maybe you don't have three kids in high school. Maybe your kids go to the same school. But I know a lot of other parents, and I don't think our calendar is out of the ordinary.
Pick three? Really?
Randi Zuckerberg may have said, "Work, sleep, family, fitness, or friends. Pick three." But in real life, it feels like we're pushed to choose either work or family, and then we can slot in one or two of the other items around that choice.
The world does not make it easy to include both work and family on your list at the same time. With fitness, friends, and sleep, you can often make choices about when you do them. But when it comes to work and family obligations, they're scheduled when they're scheduled. And they're often scheduled in conflict with one another.
The bottom line: It's not just in your head. If you're a working parent, your schedule really is impossible.
Kieran
p.s. Up next week in our second installment of this series for working parents: How does parenthood change your career trajectory? It's more complicated than you might think. (Subscribe here if you're not already!)
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