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Comment by lafar6503 | Hacker News Reader

Ok I understand that someone has proven that remote work doesn't affect productivity. Not in my case, but maybe I'm the outlier. But remote work combined with having small children - I'm pretty sure it not only affects productivity, but the productivity goes out of the window. And if productivity doesn't suffer when taking care of children then it means there was never any productivity to begin with, or the company was seriously overstaffed.

And in my case remote work allowed me to take better care of kids because of extra flexibility, but at the same time made my work days more chaotic and fragmented. Very hard to find undistracted chunks of time necessary for any advanced tasks. Plus the family gets used to me being available all the time and more needs creep in... All in all, an occasion to spend a full day in the office, alone, feels like a productivity boost :)

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Working from home doesn't mean you don't have to send the kids off to daycare each day. Yes, it is expensive. But taking care of young kids is a full-time job.

Indeed. Working from an office without daycare would be similarly unproductive.

I just mean don't take the remote work idea too far. Raising children is affecting the ability to do any professional work and because of that people deciding to have children should receive various forms of support and protection by social institutions and employment laws. Pretending that you can take care of children while working from home is very harmful idea imho.

> Pretending that you can take care of children while working from home is very harmful idea imho.

Nobody ever did that actually works.

How are you "taking care of children" and remote working? Sounds like you're trying to do two jobs at the same time and [correctly] pointing out that isn't sustainable.

How would this have worked without WFH? If the answer is "it wouldn't" then maybe that's the problem.

I don't think anybody resonanbly claims you can do remote work and care for children at the same time.

But not having to commute gives more time to be with your children. Being at home let's you see them briefly on breaks (if you have a partner or in home care caring for them at home). Makes it easier to bring them to/from daycare or your

Yep the extra flexibility is very helpful and convenient, but with years passing it becomes the norm. And kids needs increase with age, not decrease. So at some point you may realize that there's no more flexibility, you have been stretched to the limit or even further and everything is suffering - you, your work and your family. That's why I think it's dangerous - instead of having a clean cut between work and family we take it just a little bit further every time , all seems fine and productivity is unaffected, and so on until something snaps. So I'd rather say don't make such arrangements the norm because there's no easy way back to full work/family separation

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