Parenting older children

Another rant about work-life balance. When people talk about trying to balance parenthood and career, I find that they almost always refer to the baby stage. Yes, parental leave is really important when you have a newborn. Yes, sleep deprivation is a major issue when your kids don't sleep though the night. Yes, adequate access to daycare is a major problem. But parenting doesn't end when the children reach school age, and yet the challenges of raising older children while excelling in a a challenging career are not often discussed.

There was this article in The Atlantic back in 2012 by Anne-Marie Slaughter in which she discusses her decision to quit a high powered job to spend more time with her family. At the time, the article kicked off lots of discussion, mostly about whether women could "have it all" and not so much about the child raising parts.

The truth is, kids remain a huge time sink up until they move out of the house. Until the kids reach at least 11 or 12, someone has to be home with them in the mornings before school starts (not so much a problem for our family, since school starts pretty early) and after school (which ends in the middle of the afternoon). We are lucky to have quality after school programs for the Prodigal Kids, but not everyone is so fortunate. Even so, someone still has to do drop off and pick up on time every day. This makes work-related travel very difficult for the home parent, especially if there is more than one kid in more than one place. It also makes things like late meetings/late classes a problem at a time when the workplace is lot less sympathetic then it was for the baby stage.

It is true that older kids require less physical labor and are more self-sufficient, but they still don't buy food (or anything else!) for themselves, meal plan, cook, or do their laundry (at least ours don't--I know some people have their kids start helping out with the laundry at 10 or so). As they age, they need more stuff, and that stuff needs to be in the right place at the right time. Scheduling becomes another thing to do. The schools don't help, because sometimes they need a photo for tomorrow (which sucks for us, since we don't usually print ours), or a last minute school supply, or a trip to the library when the weekend is already full.

Worse, the problems they have now are more difficult to solve. It used to be they were hungry, thirsty, wet, or tired. As a parent, there was something we could do to help them. Now they have social circles to navigate (or not) and schoolwork to master (or not). They make decisions on their own that have long term consequences, and have to deal with the fallout. As a parent, we can offer advice, but they must do the work. It is really hard to watch your child struggle with a frenemy or have difficulty learning something, or be completely unable to organize themselves. And it isn't like power struggles go away--instead of fighting about wearing proper clothing with a toddler, now we are fighting about finishing homework with a tween.

I love my kids, and I am happy with the life choices I made. But I have to say that it really annoys me when people (especially men who have stay at home wives to deal with all of this) assume that because my kids are no longer babies, I can behave as if I don't have kids at home anymore, and that not doing so makes me lazy/uncommitted/less serious/not a real scientist.