December days: Being a working parent

[cjwatson]

ghoti asked me to talk about being a working parent, having initially misread a "being an incoming parent" prompt from a previous day. Due to my particular circumstances, some of this overlaps with a previous prompt, "working from home", but there's probably a bit more I can write about independently.

I tend not to use the phrase "working parent" to describe myself, since any time I try to do ghoti's full-time-parenting job for more than an hour or two I'm reminded of just how much work it is to do it well! (Although today I got both little children to sleep earlier than usual and without an epic tantrum, so am feeling flush with success, at least until it next goes wrong.) I do sometimes feel that the business of earning money is the easy job in relative terms, and it's all too easy to hide in my study when the children are being particularly difficult. I've been trying to do better at avoiding that.

In practical terms, of course, it means I'm not routinely able to do very much with the children during the week, and if we go away for the weekend I normally have to be back in time to work on Monday. More insidiously, if I've been having a stressful time at work then it's very hard to find much energy to play with the children; unfortunately I don't find that one activity helps me recharge for the other, rather the opposite. So I'm very much hoping that my new job in the new year will leave me with more energy for the evenings and weekends.

On the other hand, my job does pay well enough that the children don't lack much (except space, but we're working on that more gradually), and hopefully that will continue. As the primary earner I do feel a pretty strong responsibility to turn my skillset into a comfortable lifestyle for them.

I may have missed some part of this question, so please do say in comments if this is too narrow an answer and I'll try to expand on it.

This post is part of my December days series. Please prompt me!