I myself have experienced those challenges. And IMO it is an opportunity to help with kids more and without becoming all consuming: on break, during would-be-commuting time, and during emergencies.

Spouses and kids--even young ones--can adapt if healthy boundaries and expectations are established. Office life is a modern phenomenon. Before that most families lived and worked together.

> small children don't understand why daddy is home but can't play with them

This is exactly correct.

My office did work from home Tuesdays / Thursdays even before the pandemic. My wife stays home with our three kids. I tried it precisely once. My kids were grumpy, my wife was grumpier. There is an unspoken expectation that if you are present you should be helping / interacting. I'm sure we could have worked it out, but it wasn't worth the effort.

Having the entire office (5 people, so nothing big) to myself twice a week was pretty nice though. And it set a great precedent so that I've been the only person going into the office the past four months.

We had our child in February. I took a planned two weeks off, then had planned on working from home two to three more weeks to help transition, then to go back to the office as I was required to do. By the time I was looking at going back to the office, I went in for about a week to onboard a new employee then pushed the office into WFH for everyone due to the pandemic.

My wife and I haven't had an issue at any point. She understands that the reason we're not homeless right now is because I spend all day on the computer. She doesn't come to my workspace and communicates with me as she would as if I was at an office (i.e., via IM). She will, very occasionally, shoot me a message and _ask_ if I can spare some time to give her a hand with something but there's no animosity if I say no and for the most part she will try and work it out herself, even if it's inconvenient (e.g., finding somewhere to safely park the baby for a few minutes while she throws a load of laundry in).

I think the only one in the house that doesn't understand "dad working != dad at home" is the dog so she sometimes has to be crated when I have important meetings.

And I wouldn't trade the extra 2-3 hours a day I get with my family or to spend on hobbies instead of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for anything.

I'm just going to point out that if you kid was 2-3 years old, both you and your wife would be having a VERY different experience. A newborn mostly eats and sleeps. A toddler will tear your house appart, constantly interrupt you, call for you (usually lowdly), etc.

Those are not comparable experience, the month I spent at home when my kid was born was spend playing MMOs most of the day, now I cant have 5 minutes alone unless the TV is on 24/7 (wich is terrible, also).

I have done the WFH with a 2/3 years old, and my experience wasn't all that different than the comment you're responding to. Even children that young respond to boundaries.

> And I wouldn't trade the extra 2-3 hours a day I get with my family or to spend on hobbies instead of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for anything.

This is the actual difference between our situations.

I have a ten minute commute. Avoiding ten minutes in the car isn't worth the hassle of working from home (we don't have space for me to have my own "office", so I'd just be in the living room with everyone else)

If I did have a multi-hour commute every day, I'd absolutely be working from home any chance I could.

And yeah, if I had a ten minute commute and had to work in my living room I'd probably be working out of my car in a parking lot somewhere to have a hope of getting anything done. :)

Wasn't trying to invalidate your situation or anything, just throwing more anecdata at the wall.

you have a real baby. that is the easiest kind of kid to have during a time like this.

It's almost as if different folks have different family situations. :)

Personal circumstances vary of course, but for me, one of the perks of working from home is that I can help out when my spouse is having a rough day. Obviously, I don't spend all day helping with children, but I can occasionally take a break to comfort a crying child or help with something when my spouse's arms are full.

Also, after the first couple of weeks my young children had no problem understanding that when I'm in my office room I am working, and I can't play. But they do really enjoy seeing me at lunch, which didn't happen when I was WFO.

But again, that's just my experience and I'm sure it's different for other people.

Our 2-year old understands pretty well that he can't disturb me when I'm working. It's not like there's zero distraction, but it's no worse than random people stopping by to chat when I used to work in an office. I think it's very different when the kids know you work when you're in the home office vs random covid-wfh where there's no pattern.