The nuclear family concept of child rearing is awful. Humans did not evolve to raise kids in isolation from the extended family and the other adults of the tribe.
What's the alternative? Just have everybody constantly work and "time share" the kids between peoples shifts?
The nuclear family concept has its pros, it's also far from "raising kids in isolation", pros which these days are marginalized in favor of "alternative family concepts", but what all of them fail to address is the original reason why the nuclear family fell apart: Middle-class jobs can't support single income families anymore.
That is the actual problem, not in what constellations people chose to parent their kids.
As the economic pressure increases, more people from the family are forced into more work, leaving less time for the actual family and taking care of children.
In an ideal world work-load would have shifted, so both partners only work like half the time, leaving both of them time for family stuff. But that's not what happened, nowadays often both parents work full-time jobs and still make not enough to be able to afford a nanny, which would be an even worse solution.
But that does also not deal with the actual problem, it's just outsourcing parenting due to both parents having to work so much.
Imho that's the actual problem, solve that and you will free up more times for parents so the question of "What to do with the kids?" doesn't even come up in the first place.
I think the phraseology you've chosen here is confusing. Agreed 100% that multi-generational upbringing is the natural and ideal style, but I don't think that "nuclear family concept" is necessarily closed off or exclusive to other extended family members. Multi-generational living involves several "nuclear families" all clung together. It doesn't oppose the concept.
I have two young kids, one 2.5 years and one 10 months. I have a full-time job and a lawn that needs to be mowed every week. My wife and I split childcare and house chores pretty evenly. I still manage to work out 2 or 3 times a week, run semiweekly meetup, and work on a side project or three, and get a full 8 hours of sleep every night.
What I don't do is hang out in bars or watch sports on TV. You have a lot more time per week than you think.
If you are a single parent or have a deadbeat spouse or need to work two jobs on your own or have special needs children, yeah, that's a whole other ball of wax. But what I'm trying to say is, this standard narrative that "having children is the death of side projects", without any other qualifier, is a woefully tired story that is really nothing but projecting one's own inability to be disciplined in their work on one's children, the people with the least agency in their lives.
I have a kid, a dog (that needs to be walked 2x per day), a fulltime job, I workout at least 3-5 days per week, and spend most of my weekends doing construction, but I still make slivers of time for my side project. (FWIW) :)
I have to optimize my time to waste as little of it as possible and try to create the largest coherent chunks so that I can ramp up on whatever I am working on and get something done. This often means taking care of the stuff I have to without any sort of procrastination (work, chores, etc).
When the kids are at daycare, you'll get 8 hours a day at work to do your work. One of the hardest challenges I had to overcome after becoming a parent is learning to get everything I need to get done actually done in those 8 hours.
But it's going to be hard, you'll have less sleep. Sometimes I stare at the monitor and my head is so cloudy I have no idea what I need to get done.
To add stress, your younger coworkers are going to be working 10-12 hrs a day, and will probably be more productive than you. You'll look bad, and you'll feel worse.
At about 3 years of age, things start to get better.
As someone who probably qualifies in the "younger coworker" category, I'd be irritated if there was any level of expectation that I worked 10-12 hours a day, unless I wasn't working 5 days a week.
Agreed, and I've seen this elsewhere too. There's always this implicit assumption that people who don't have kids will naturally spend that extra time at work.
Let me clarify, not everyone in the "younger" group will work 10-12 hours, but those that have the option probably don't have kids. Those in the "high performers" category almost certainly exercise that option and work extra hours. There are obviously exceptions, but I think it's just that. An exception to the rule.
This is kind of the place where I'm at personally. I used to be the "high performer". I was always the go-to guy. I got there by working extra hours. Now that I can't work those hours, and I'm starting to meet my physical limits, I'm getting talked to about my performance.
I end up working ten hours a day some days, not every day, but I also work 6 days a week most weeks. My coworker with two kids works probably more overtime than me, usually 9 hours at least every week day then most Saturdays. His wife doesn't work or drive and his parents live with them and don't work or drive. He ends up spending just about all his free time running his family around to different appointments and things. I honestly don't know how he stays so cheerful all the time.
He's only about 4 or 5 years older than me(I'm 30). But, that's what the culture's like where he's from though I suppose. He's been here for about ten years and spent just about all his time working to bring his family over and then support him. He impresses the hell out of me, though, i'm glad I don't have to do that.
Sometimes I do, and the overtime pay definitely helps. There's a few reasons. We have a schedule to maintain. We have a certain number of jobs that need to be finished every day, if we can't finish everything we have to stay. Right now there's only me and two other people properly trained to do our jobs and each of us work in different sections. One of the jobs is manageable by one person, my job and the the other guy's job are two person jobs.
Right now me and one guy have a couple new guys helping us who don't really know what to do and can't really be left to do a lot unsupervised. Each of us also relies on the person before us completing our jobs on time. I'm right in the middle of the process, so if I don't finish everything I need to the people that come after me have to work even harder to finish everything on time.
If we're even a couple hours late for a job, customers complain, contractors cancel jobs and the boss is unhappy. I personally don't like burdening my coworkers more than I have to and honestly we do high quality work, I like knowing my work is well done.
We're a small place, we all work together to get things done. The boss puts in his time with everyone he's probably the last one to leave at night treats his employees well. Anything we need anytime to get our jobs done he'll get it for us right away, if we've ever got problems in life or other things he's understanding and tries to accommodate or help out as best he can, they've taught me so many things since i've started here and everybody was patient while I learned and at this point the shop relies on me to be there to do my job.
Oh and my boss is one of the few people I know I can honestly say is a hero. He rescued is family from genocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 70's when he was in his 20's, escaped to China then brought them all to Canada and started his business with nothing. So the way I see it, I can't really complain to much about having to work hard or long hours, i've never had to deal with watching my friends and family get lined up and executed with an axe to the skull.
And honestly, I just enjoy my job. I get to make things everyday, I program, I do physical work, operate and maintain giant machines, I get to be creative and i'm pretty much left to do whatever I want as long as i get my job done. Plus it's pretty cool to work making things from one of the earliest materials shaped by humans.
If your boss is regularly expecting you to do the work of two people and consistently work overtime to do so it doesn't sound like he is a good boss and looking out for you.
The fact that he works longer hours than anyone else isn't justification for this. As the company owner his decision to do so is an option he has chosen and the benefit he gets from do so greatly exceeds the benefits you get from doing so.
Even with two people the way the schedule ends up you still need overtime. The thing is, the boss can't just start turning down jobs because we lose staff, if we can't do it we won't have jobs. It's not because he's a dick and wants to work us to death, it's because in order to maintain his business he needs the revenue. If we start turning down jobs our customers will go elsewhere. We've already had a few of our big contracts get cancelled because we can't keep up. It's the way the business works.
You have to work around the schedules of other contractors and professions and if you don't well, your company doesn't get jobs. There's a lot of competition in the industry. He doesn't expect me to constantly work overtime, I won't be fired if I don't, i've been told any time I can't it's ok, i'm never told I have to. I either make the decision to do so myself so the next day will be easier or i'm asked if I can.
I've never gotten in trouble for saying no and there are days where we're slower and there's not much to do. We don't get shit for taking it easy on those days or when we're standing around chatting when we have nothing to do. I personally work as hard as I do because I know I capable of it and it'sy job. I'm being paid to get shit done, when i'm at work i do what i'm being paid to be there for.
I haven't always had to work by myself. There were others doing my job when I started, one became the manager and has pretty much forgotten how to do my job. The other one first got moved to a different position outside after months of not being able to learn this job, eventually he got fired for fucking around too much. I was by myself for a few months after that while they kept trying to hire people who would either stay or actually work when they showed up.
I ended up getting a friend of mine a job with me and she did well at it. She was here for a year and a half before she had to leave due to health and overwhelming life issues at the beginning of this year. Since then i've been alone we hired one guy a little while ago, turns out he was just interested in things like where the security cameras were, which doors get locked at night, how much everything was worth, needless to say he didn't last long. The guy working with me now's been here a few months, he tried a few of the other jobs in the shop but the other people that work here weren't big fans of his work so for the last couple weeks he's been helping me. He's been picking things up, but there's a lot to learn and it takes time which I have to find in between doing my job. It's the kind of thing where a tiny mistake can cost thousands of dollars.
It's just kind of how it is, i'm in a fabricators facebook group. The top complaints from just about everyone is the lack of quality employees. Finding people willing and able to learn as well as being willing to work is difficult.
I dunno, everyone I work with is pretty dedicated to the shop and everybody else there. We like doing a good job. We like knowing our work is respected and valued. People are happy with what we make and we do things other people can't do. It feels good working hard in a place like that.
If he has more work than people the options aren't to regularly expect your employees to work overtime or turn down work. The answer is to hire more people. After this many years in business the owner should have a handle on his turnover rate and should be staffing appropriately so that loss of an employee doesn't leave him severely understaffed for an extended period of time.
If those in your industry are finding it hard to attract quality employees then it is likely that your industry is not offering the proper compensation to attract those employees.
We have two and my wife is lucky enough to stay home with them (and not need daycare). One thing I didn't account for is the load parenting all day places on the spouse staying home. In a perfect world you could share the load 50/50 after work, but on good days it's probably 60% on me to parent in the evenings. A bad day can mean I'm 100% on parenting duty.
This is very true in my family as well and seems seldom talked about. I've been on both sides of it because I work M-F and my wife works Saturday. If we can get out to the playground or something it's lovely, but on a bad day stuck in the house she can't come home soon enough and I am done.
Children are big plans. You don't get to pick sleep, and you don't get any other big plan.
Fortunately Children for all their work are rewarding. You won't grow as much at work. However you get to see and do many interesting things in return. If you are lucky you can get your kids interested in your hobbies (this isn't that hard)
One reason to never become CEO: they travel 200 days/year and thus don't get to see their kids much - at less than $10 million/year they are grossly underpaid for the time away from family.
