Hi Michelle, really appreciate you writing this out. I’m also a parent of a 3 year old (and his little brother who’s 1). I hope you’ll indulge me a few questions. Would you be able to say a little more about
Your outside of daycare support, like how much friends or family you have nearby to help with childcare? Or other arrangements?
How you and your partner ended up arranging your parental leave? How long did you have? Did you stagger your leaves? And did you go back to work full time right away at the the end of leave or did you work part time for a while?
If you think your assessment that having children didn’t make any difference to the impact you have over your life time would have changed if you had multiple kids?
1. Thankfully, my husband’s parents live an hour and a half’s drive away, and have lots of space. My husband and son go there very week, staying over Friday night. Nic’s parents look after Leo for much of Saturday and then Nic and Leo come home Saturday night. If Leo can’t go to nursery for some reason for a few days, we all go stay there and Nic’s parents help with childcare
We don’t currently have any other arrangements. We had a babysitter coming one evening a week for a while, but when they stopped (after about 6 months) we didn’t try to find another. It was surprisingly hard to find someone reliable. We had a nanny for about 6 months during the pandemic. She was an old friend of mine, and was fantastic (but not interested in staying longer than 6 months).
2. I took 3 months. He took a month at the start alongside me, and then he took 9 months after went back to work. He took longer than he expected to because the pandemic started when Leo was 4 months. But also it turned out he liked paternity leave (whereas I didn’t like maternity). I went back to work full time right away, though it took me a long time to be back to normal productivity (partly because of breastfeeding being time consuming).
3. To be clear, I do think having a child has made a difference to my expected impact—I think my expected impact is now lower. But I do think it’s in the same ballpark. I can’t speak much to having multiple children since I only have one. My guess is that it would be a continuation on the same spectrum. Eg maybe if I had another child I’d go from 5.5 days a week of working to 5 days. I find it hard to know how much these increments affect longrun impact. You might think that you do the least valuable work in your marginal half day. Or it might be that there are a lot of really effective jobs that are very long hours, and so with each marginal decrease in time you’re ruling out some jobs that might be really high impact. Plenty of people do manage to have very impactful jobs with many children though (like Hilary Greaves) so it’s clearly viable.
Thanks so much for your reply! Yes, grandparent help can make this whole project so much more manageable. We don’t have grandparents nearby but our nanny is able to take care of both kids if the preschool closes or the kids aren’t feeling well, and it’s a godsend.
That’s very inspiring that Hilary Greaves has kids! Do you know how many?
Hi Michelle, really appreciate you writing this out. I’m also a parent of a 3 year old (and his little brother who’s 1). I hope you’ll indulge me a few questions. Would you be able to say a little more about
Your outside of daycare support, like how much friends or family you have nearby to help with childcare? Or other arrangements?
How you and your partner ended up arranging your parental leave? How long did you have? Did you stagger your leaves? And did you go back to work full time right away at the the end of leave or did you work part time for a while?
If you think your assessment that having children didn’t make any difference to the impact you have over your life time would have changed if you had multiple kids?
Hey Ruth! Sure thing:
1. Thankfully, my husband’s parents live an hour and a half’s drive away, and have lots of space. My husband and son go there very week, staying over Friday night. Nic’s parents look after Leo for much of Saturday and then Nic and Leo come home Saturday night. If Leo can’t go to nursery for some reason for a few days, we all go stay there and Nic’s parents help with childcare
We don’t currently have any other arrangements. We had a babysitter coming one evening a week for a while, but when they stopped (after about 6 months) we didn’t try to find another. It was surprisingly hard to find someone reliable. We had a nanny for about 6 months during the pandemic. She was an old friend of mine, and was fantastic (but not interested in staying longer than 6 months).
2. I took 3 months. He took a month at the start alongside me, and then he took 9 months after went back to work. He took longer than he expected to because the pandemic started when Leo was 4 months. But also it turned out he liked paternity leave (whereas I didn’t like maternity). I went back to work full time right away, though it took me a long time to be back to normal productivity (partly because of breastfeeding being time consuming).
3. To be clear, I do think having a child has made a difference to my expected impact—I think my expected impact is now lower. But I do think it’s in the same ballpark.
I can’t speak much to having multiple children since I only have one. My guess is that it would be a continuation on the same spectrum. Eg maybe if I had another child I’d go from 5.5 days a week of working to 5 days. I find it hard to know how much these increments affect longrun impact. You might think that you do the least valuable work in your marginal half day. Or it might be that there are a lot of really effective jobs that are very long hours, and so with each marginal decrease in time you’re ruling out some jobs that might be really high impact. Plenty of people do manage to have very impactful jobs with many children though (like Hilary Greaves) so it’s clearly viable.
Thanks so much for your reply! Yes, grandparent help can make this whole project so much more manageable. We don’t have grandparents nearby but our nanny is able to take care of both kids if the preschool closes or the kids aren’t feeling well, and it’s a godsend.
That’s very inspiring that Hilary Greaves has kids! Do you know how many?
> Do you know how many?
6 last I heard, but I might be out of date.
That’s incredible!! New hero. Thank you!!