8-hour Workday My Ass

I was reading this post by Nick Kiddle at Alas, and generally agreeing with what was being said, right up until this statement:

I love my daughter, but I also know that there are very few high-stress jobs that can compare to the task of looking after her. In a job, you clock off at the end of the day and your time is your own.

I'm calling bullshit. You're daughter isn't a balky firewall that's prone to going down at 2 in the morning and cutting off about a million paying customers from their email. You're daughter, precious though she may be, represents an extrinsic responsibility to a single person. Admittedly that's an extreme case, but the notion that professionals clock out at the end of the day is just wrong. Business just doesn't stop anymore. I've a better job now... I still spend lots of my ostensible free time on work, but I very rarely get woken up in the middle of the night. My boss, now that's another story. He gets woken up in the middle of the night all the fucking time I'm sure. You know the last time I had a job where I was actually "done" at the end of the day? When I was working as a line cook for a catering company. So please, tone down the rhetoric about busy professionals and their freetime. Lots of professionals have jobs that come home with them whether they like it or not and include obligations to much more than a single individual. And, as long as I'm ranting, how much attention does a child need?

Looking after a baby is exhausting. Normal tasks like showering and preparing breakfast require careful planning so that the baby doesn'’t get frustrated with boredom and start crying.

You know, its OK for the kid to be bored. And, if you can't take the crying, its OK to park the kid in front of the Teletubbies for 5 minutes while you wash the funk off. Have you considered that this behavior might be counterproductive in the long run?

Trying to cram everything you didn'’t get done during the day into the evenings when the baby's asleep means you don'’t get enough sleep, which makes it even harder to cope with what can often feel like never-ending demands.

Damn right... you spend so much time with your kid that you end up resenting its imposition on you. Oh yeah, and you're sleep-dep'd, so if the shit does hit the fan you're unlikely to be thinking clearly.