I have a lot of tech / healthcare couples in my friend group and this is definitely the arrangement. Especially true since healthcare careers have very different timelines than tech.
In once instance, one partner is a clinician and absolutely has to be on site 5 days a week, not counting on-call. The other works 100% remote but the company is global, so depending on the week they may be on Europe time or Australia time.
This is definitely a work arrangement I couldn't have imagined being common 10 years ago. This shift will likely be one of the defining economic changes between the 10's and the 20's.
Not all that surprising - "care work" of all kinds, at least if going by distribution of unpaid care work [1], kindergarten [2] and later education [3] or nursing [4], is utterly dominated by women. Almost all care work by definition has to be done at the workplace, whereas (as we discovered in Covid) a lot of traditional "men jobs" (i.e. almost everything outside of mining, industry and security) can be done from home.
It's going to be an interesting next few years, as this shift can and does have serious implications not just on workplace and work condition equality question, but also if it will fuel further discontent among those men who have to go commute to a workplace vs those men who can enjoy the ability to work from home.
Decades ago, I knew two couples doing the "she heads off to work, he stays at home" thing.
Both husbands were doing essentially non-remote work at home (academia and a home-office business). And had multiple children to look after, at home, as part of the deal.
I never thought about it before reading this but most couples I know fall into this category. Probably because they largely fit the "tech guy marries non-tech gal" stereotype.
I don't know that it means anything, but I'm a tech guy married to a tech gal and we still fit this category. In our case, it's because her work project is classified. The company itself allows full-remote work if your project is unclassified, but you can't get a SCIF in your house.
It's amusing to me that this article claims it is usually the case that the husband is still not cooking and cleaning even though he's home. I'm cooking and cleaning all the damn time. With all the time spent at home, cooking has become my favorite hobby. I am quite often sneaking in prep for some elaborate, showy dinner while waiting for a build to finish or on a call that doesn't require me to present or speak.
It's been a while but I did work remotely for about 6 months back in 2020. I enjoyed not having to wake up earlier, not having to "hide" my short downtime breaks that I normally would at the office, and being able to do some basic quick chores during those breaks so that I'd have more time to spend with my partner after the work day. It was a nice pace but since my partner would also work from home with much longer breaks between her active working periods (multiple part time contracts), I would get heavily distracted because she wanted to take breaks together. I really did miss working at the office where if I wanted to focus, I could.
Certainly having a different dedicated work space works better for a lot of people. I think I've been pretty good--and certainly don't watch video or take more than short walks during the day--but I appreciate that keeping work/life separate can have advantages.
I really did miss working at the office where if I wanted to focus, I could.
extremely easy to mitigate as long as you're both not sitting on the couch or at the kitchen table in a small apartment or condo. even there, you might be able to carve out some home office space for focus work. depends on how longterm you view it and it actually is.
kids is another story altogether. definitely need a bigger boat in that case.
Breaks are a normal part of work. Smoke breaks, standing up and stretching your legs outside the office or going for a short walk, pomodoro breaks, coffee breaks, water cooler breaks, waiting for a build and reading a news site or just browsing the internet, etc.
The only difference here is sticking something in the oven instead of drinking coffee.
And I'll add, with remote the start of day and end of day work times become less well defined, so I think many people end up working more spread out hours at times that are more effective for the company (e.g. responding to late night pings, if they happen to be near their computer).
a lot of work requires being "present" but not really being at a desk.
my 1-on-1s with my team dont require me or them to be at a desk. i take a notepad upstairs and do dishes while on those calls.
during COVID my boss used to get on calls with me and it was clear he was at the grocery store because i could hear the self-checkout sounds in the background.
as long as items are communicated, remembered, and acted on -- who cares what is happening?
I didn’t read that part as saying “they’re not doing these things at all”, just that they’re not staying home them specifically to do them… they’re not “employed” as a “homemaker”, they are working from home. Unclear if you read it this way or are just commenting that you do more of those and you used to, several sibling comments seem to take, from your comment or the article, that this was a focus, and I don’t think it was?
You're assuming it needs "fixing". A different possibility is that people are choosing the things they prefer and what you see if biased by those preferences. In the latter scenario there's no need to "fix" anything.
something to be said about 'sexes in the workplace' here. women continue to make real progress toward equal representation in the physical workplace, which inevitably detracts from time for domestic responsibilities; and apparently a fair number of men are now taking their careers home, to the extent that it permits them to maintain some degree of organizational 'presence', while inevitably taking on more domestic responsibility. remarkable sorta-flip for sure.
Just some data about the percentage of each gender who can work remotely--which isn't all that different in the scheme of things. (Slightly higher for men as you might expect.)
> Different occupations have also had to take different approaches to remote working...About half of people working in computer or mathematical jobs work remotely full-time. The upshot is that, in aggregate, it is easier for men to work from wherever they please. A survey carried out by McKinsey, a consultancy, found that 38% of working men had the option to work remotely full-time, compared with 30% of women. Roughly half of women report being unable to work remotely at all, compared with 39% of men.
hey brother--working on a project that I'd love to get your perspective on based on a comment you made on a different thread that is too old to reply to.
If you're open to connecting, shoot me a message at amitthakrarcoaching@gmail.com!
Consider living with someone from a culture that doesn't treat growm men as toddlers who can't do the basic job of taking care of their living environment without a woman to baby them.
Western culture, and increasingly Asian culture as well. Anyhow, the stereotype of a man not being able to function without his mother or wife constantly wiping his ass is also just not practical.
Every person, at some point is going to have to spend some time living by themselves and thus has to know just as much as a woman how to run a home. It's too late to start to learn that after your mother/wife passes/gets sick/is pregnant or after you have to temporarily relocate for better work opportunities but can't bring them along. As you said in another post, home management is not so easy as to be able to 'just' pick it up. That's why everyone needs to be able to do it and should be gradually learning as they reach adulthood, as what we call home management are literally just the basic skills needed for independent living.
I'm currently having to deal with roommates who think basic aspects of homemaking are below them, result is going to use the bathroom to find that the last person blocked it and didn't think to try to unblock it, leaving their shit floating in there, snotty tissues everywhere, water sitting in the sink because they clogged the drain filter and didn't care to empty it out, fires in the stove from boiled over pots, cooked food sitting outside for days, garbage on the counters, stuff they dropped on the floor laying there all night, garbage cans overflowing because they can't be bothered to take it out and so on.
So your idea of a healthy cultures are the ones that will go extinct within the next 60 years because they are now so far below replacement every child today will have to support 2 pensioners in 30 years.
you showed this invalid too much respect. respect.
and considering you apparently still live with roommates, your take on home management in romantic partnerships is all over, around, and on the mark. any future cohabiting partner of yours will be lucky to have you.
We've spent the last 50 years telling women they shouldn't be house wives. The results are as predictable as the sun rising.
I don't understand how people can pretend that home management is an easy job that you can pick up whenever you need.
Somehow it's feminist to claim that a profession with thousands of years of history and tradition by apprenticeship is easy enough to pick up in an afternoon when you need it.
> I don't understand how people can pretend that home management is an easy job that you can pick up whenever you need.
I preferred learning how to cook than take such a blow to my manhood.
I mean, that's the one thing real men are supposed to do - put food on the f*ckin' table.
It takes a brave man to admit he struggles to put food on his own table, with his own hands, and relies instead on a cook at a restaurant - likely another man. Or needs his woman to do it.
