More and more people are taking their work home with them - for good. Having an office in the house lets them spend far longer with their children. But it's not all plain sailing.
Stay-at-home, work-from-home parents seem to have it all, but it's a tough road - and one made no smoother by the difficulty of finding descriptions of modern parents that don't offend or mislead. "Working parents" used to refer to those in paying jobs, but let's face it: all parents work, paid or not. "Stay-at-home parents" referred to the non-paid variety, but that's not quite right, either, as more and more of us are setting up office at home.
With childcare costs ranging from €4 to €14 an hour it's tempting to try teleworking, so you can stay at home and earn money. Almost 70 per cent of men and women who opt for such family-friendly ways of working do so with their childcare responsibilities in mind, according to a recent survey.
But despite the enthusiastic patronage of the Government there is no sign of a teleworking revolution in Ireland just yet. New data published by the Central Statistics Office reveals that 59,200 Irish people, or 3.5 per cent of the working population, are based at home. This is low by European standards. Slow broadband roll-out and expensive telecommunications are contributing factors.
But working from home while having to look after your children brings problems that no family-friendly working strategy can hope to address.
Firstly, unless your children go to school, dispensing with childcare might not be such a good idea. "Minding Patrick and working at the same time can be pretty frustrating," says Clare O'Reilly, a webmaster. "I usually type with one hand with the baby on my lap, using my right hand to stop him from pressing buttons on the keyboard. How can you tell him to stay away and go to play elsewhere? It's cruel."
Or you've put baby to the breast to stop him from crying while you try to finish an assignment with your one free hand - and the phone rings. A wailing child can become the backdrop to every conversation. "It is awkward if a client calls and hears a crying baby," says Mary McGrath, who runs a training company from home as well as minding an infant. "If I need to make daytime phone calls I do so when my baby is taking a nap. Having said that, I think it's important not to apologise for how I run my business and how I live my life. Clients can always go elsewhere if they object, but invariably they don't."
The Fianna Fáil TD Conor Lenihan was happy to be interviewed on radio recently with an audible youngster on his lap - and far from irritating listeners it got a fair few parents wondering why we don't all do that.
Work-from-home parents still feel as if they have to pretend to be calling from an office in order to sound professional. In reality it's very hard to draw boundaries between work and family life if you choose to stay at home. You have to be ruthless, and even then your work time can be eroded by others - and not just babies.
"People call by all the time for a chat," says a frustrated McGrath. "People ask you to do errands for them. My mother will ring me to go into the city centre and do some shopping for her. The worst was when a relative who was coming home from a trip to the US rang at 11 a.m., saying she was in Heathrow and would be in Dublin in an hour - would I pick her up? Nobody would expect a conventional worker to drop everything and run out to the airport. I think that fundamentally the home has no status in our culture, so nothing you do there has any status."
If you don't draw strict boundaries during the day, working from home can fast become a night-time affair. If there are two of you this can lead to shift parenting. This is fine if you've agreed with your partner to live this way for a while, but problems can arise if you drift into it without planning.
Parenting on opposite schedules means you don't see a lot of your partner - and you may even have to avoid each other at home if they're on parenting duty and you're supposed to be working. The most important factor for shift-parenting success is that both partners want to do it, says Prof Harriet Presser, founding director of the Center on Population, Gender and Social Inequality at the University of Maryland. "Even though it is difficult, the marriage may be more likely to stay together if it is a dual choice to live this way."
Incredible organisation is required, including keeping family calendars, scheduling time to spend alone with your partner and even celebrating birthdays at breakfast time if that's the only slot available. It's not everyone's idea of the good life.
Another option is to pay for a childminder to come round for a few hours a day or for a couple of days a week. That way you're near to your children but can get on with your work.
It's not quite like handing them and your home over to a stranger, because you're around to keep an eye on things. But don't forget that childcare costs money. Once you start shelling out for hired help there's an argument for going back to the office.
You can find out more about working from home, including how to get your employer on board or set up on your own, by visiting www.e-work.ie, www.telework.ie, www.freelanceireland.ie and www.familyfriendly.ie
Sheila Campbell, above, a public- relations consultant, lives in and works and parents from her home in Delgany, Co Wicklow. Promoting two large Irish charities and minding four children under the age of seven with no paid help means she often lives her life on a knife-edge. "There are times when I have to remind myself why I chose this lifestyle, but I do have good reasons, and they outweigh the negative aspects," she says.
Two of her four children are now at school, and her husband also works from home, so between the six of them everybody is taken care of. "We keep a family year planner on the wall, so that everyone knows what everyone else is doing well in advance. It would be pretty tricky for either of us to have an affair!"
So how do they do it? Everyone rises at 7.30 a.m. Then, with no commuting to be done, Mum and Dad can enjoy breakfast with the children and prepare them for the day. One parent will take the two eldest children to school before coming home to work while the other parent minds the smallest ones. "There are days when we are both really busy and we have to draft in outside help. Luckily, both our mums are really willing. Most of the time, however, our system works." If Campbell has been parenting in the morning she goes to her office in the attic in the afternoon.
Running two working lives and housing six puts a lot of pressure on a home: space is at a premium. "We did have an au pair in for a while, but there just wasn't enough room. This seemed like such a big house when we first moved here, from Blackrock in Dublin. The kids kept coming, though, and now it's a tight squeeze."
She tries to get everything done in the afternoon, but sometimes it's just not possible. If she has more work to do she tries to keep it until the kids have gone to bed. That way her work life doesn't encroach on their home life. "By the time I've attended to the last little screech it's usually about nine o'clock, and I can slip off and do a few more hours."
Some duties invariably mess with the finely tuned system. "After-school activities, like music lessons and sports fixtures, can really mess up your day. Sometimes it's just an endless round of picking up and dropping off."
Campbell and her husband find pockets of time for chores such as hanging out the washing and putting out the bins. It's amazing, she says, how you end up squeezing every drop from the day when there's so much to be done.
"I used to be an avid reader. I'd get through four books a week. Now, unless I can read it while watching the stir-fry and mopping the floor it doesn't get read." And Campbell can't remember the last time she watched TV.
"It's not easy, but it's well worth it. If it's a beautiful day I can drop everything and take the kids to the beach. I never have to sit in traffic and I rarely have to wear a suit. I'm here for the kids if they're ill or unhappy. I always know exactly what's going on in their lives. I wouldn't change that for anything."
Weighing it up
The pros
Not commuting can save tele- workers 10 or more hours a week.
No more quiet office hours when you wish you could be with your kids instead of twiddling your thumbs.
You can rearrange your days, perhaps working nights or weekends.
Childcare costs are reduced or eliminated.
You don't have to dress up in the morning.
The cons
Phone and Internet charges are high if you've no boss to pay the bills.
Convincing employers of the benefits of teleworking can be tricky.
The lines between work and parenting get blurred.
Other adults may not take your job seriously and can be unsupportive.
Teleworking can be isolating.
