#workingparentsnetwork - Join the Movement!
Have you ever invested your precious time into a jigsaw, only to find that the pieces have been mixed up with another puzzle and there is no way it’s going to happen? The pieces you’ve got in the box were never designed to create the picture you were promised. It’s frustrating, disappointing and you feel like you’ve been wasting your time, trying to achieve the impossible.
Now, think about the jigsaw of fitting family-life with work-life. How is that jigsaw coming along? Is it the picture you had in your mind when you started out? Have you had some unexpected pieces show up that you have to force in somewhere, awkward and ill-fitting? Or are you nailing it? Stop laughing… there must be a few of you out there, no? [Echos]
When my eldest daughter turned four, fellow working parents around me suggested that I make the most of the last year of daycare. “Once your children get to school it all gets really hard!” was the message I kept hearing. As I talked to more parents with school-aged children they all had the same experience of trying (and feeling like they were failing) to fit school-life with work-life. Finding after-school care, breakfast clubs, holiday programmes, taking annual leave to plug other gaps, working from home for part of the day when there was a teacher only day they’d forgotten about, finding other parents who could share some of these gaps, etc.
Hearing these stories, I noticed how frustrated I was getting.
Here is what I realised:
Our traditional work patterns were never designed to coexist with school times and terms.
When these patterns were formed it was before most women were in paid work
We are left with a structural problem that each family tries to solve individually
We need to fix a structural problem with structural solutions
No wonder working parents are so exhausted!
Our experience of the pandemic has laid bare the importance and challenge of being a working parent to keep the wheels of our economy and society in motion. During lockdown parents were visibly blending, albeit an extreme version, of the challenge of worklife and family-life in a way that many colleagues had never been exposed to before.
Parents, here’s my idea. What if we fixed this together? What if we accepted that no matter how hard we try this isn’t something we can do completely on our own? What if we took the best of what we can do for ourselves and added to that by creating a network. Imagine a network of working parents across Aotearoa experimenting and sharing ways to make this jigsaw fit together better.
Here’s how I’ve been thinking about it:
To shift ourselves from exhausted to thriving we need to work out what sits in those top boxes that will make the biggest difference.
In your workplace why not create a working parents network and share ideas about what would make life easier. Things like:
Flexible work hours
Job sharing
School holiday programme favourites (check out My Kids Village and add to it!)
Leaders actively supporting working parents
Back in 2016 this problem motivated me to start up My Kids Village. It’s designed to help working parents find local childcare. I also work as a consultant in building flexible workplaces. Solving this problem really lights me up!
If you want to start a parent network in your workplace, share this with your colleagues and get started. Share your progress on LinkedIn so others can hear about it using the hashtag #workingparentsnetwork. I can’t wait to hear how you get on and the difference you make to New Zealand families!