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The Library & Information Science Professional's Career Development Center |
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Managing at Home: the Librarian as Working Parent |
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Having a happy family with both parents working is a constant challenge. I know -- I’ve been doing it for 5 ½ years. It takes hard work and a variety of skills to get everything done each day. But as librarians we have work skills that can easily be adapted to the home, and can help improve and increase family time. Read some job ads for librarians and you’ll see terms such as ‘excellent communication’ and ‘ability to work independently and in a team environment’. Add to that some dedication, planning, and organizational skills used every day at work, and you’ve got the tools needed to manage a family with working parents. Family Issues at Work Knowledge of your administration’s view on family is important. Discussing this with your boss up front can prevent problems when a family situation does arise. How much flexibility you have to leave and attend school events and/or leave for doctor’s appointments are important issues to discuss. Be prepared to give and take at work. Remember, just as you have personal reasons for taking time off, so do your co-workers. If someone covers your hours, you need to be prepared to cover theirs when necessary. Teamwork Communication and planning are important for the logistics of working parents. Issues such as who takes the kids to daycare or school, who cooks dinner, and who stays home when a child is ill, need to be dealt with up front. Every day also involves teamwork. Just getting out the door in the morning to head to work and school is a challenge for working parents. Parents need to work together to get the children up, dressed, and fed (if necessary) before heading out the door -- not to mention organizing lunches, dinners, family time or the dreaded housework. Organization Schedule your day as you might develop a reference duty roster. Plan when you need to start getting kids up and dressed, how long it takes to eat breakfast, brush teeth, and get everyone ready. Don’t forget to give yourself a little extra time for unexpected problems. Children are unpredictable and each day presents different problems in getting everyone out the door. Chores Who does the dishes, and when are they done? At our house I do the dishes right after dinner, and this has the added benefit of giving the girls some time just with daddy. If you take leftovers for lunch, fix your plate the night before while you clean up the dinner dishes. Have a bedtime routine and stick to it. Getting the kids to bed on a regular schedule can allow you and your spouse some time alone together every day, even if it is only 5 or 10 minutes before bed. Give your child chores; a child as young as 3 can help with cleaning off the dinner table, making the beds, or picking up toys. When you child is old enough to want to have some say in what they wear, have them pick their clothes out the night before. You can even do fun things with the clothes, like putting them on a stuffed toy, or laying them out like there is a person in them. Some mornings I even dress the kids while they are ‘hiding’ under the covers. This gives them a few more minutes to doze without making us run late. These things can make routine chores fun and they are also a good way to encourage cooperation and teamwork. Doing some chores at night can also reduce arguments in the morning and can be one less thing that could make you late for work. Cooking What’s for dinner? I used to hate this question until I applied my planning and organizational skills to the task and really got to know what was in my pantry. Sitting down for 30 minutes a week to plan a menu and grocery list saves much more time during the week. I developed my planning habits slowly, beginning with deciding to have chicken tomorrow and pulling the meat out of the freezer that night, and then working up to cooking from recipes almost every night. Dinner is on the table around the same time every day, and on many days there is time to play with the kids before dinner. You don’t have to cook every night, and you don’t even have to cook from recipes. Even if dinner is frozen lasagna and a bagged salad, knowing what you are going to have for dinner as soon as you walk through the door reduces stress and increases family time. If you have a well-stocked pantry, it can be as simple as deciding to have meatloaf, spaghetti, or burgers tomorrow and taking the meat out of the freezer that night. You can even make the weekly trip to the grocery store into a family event. Pile into the car and go shopping -- you can even let the kids pick out a snack item while at the store. It is a challenge, but is also an easy way to increase family time. Just keep in mind that if two parents are present, one parent should be in charge of keeping the kids out of trouble while the other picks out the groceries! Two benefits of shopping as a family are spending time together and focusing the family’s attention on your eating habits. As for who cooks, that can be based on schedules or desire. Whoever gets home first can cook, or if one of you enjoys cooking, then that person can be in charge of dinner. Cooking together is another fun option. How do you find time to cook? You can do something fast or slow. There are quite a few cookbooks with fast meals that you can prepare in 30 minutes. Another option is to make use of a crock pot so your dinner can cook while you are at work. Give the kids a snack while you prepare dinner, or even let them play or watch television. You can have older children help in the kitchen. This benefits everyone because you are doing something together and getting the children interested in cooking and nutrition. Grilling is a good summertime way to cook. That’s often the province of husbands so there’s not only help for the wife, but fewer dishes to wash. Grilling has become my new favorite way to cook, and sometimes I’ve sent my husband outside with an umbrella! Family Time Set aside some family time everyday. This might be at, before, or after dinner. Discuss your day, and stay interested in what your children did or learned at school, daycare, or camp. Even watching a television show together is better than spending no time together at all. Don’t spend all your evening time on the phone or focused on others. Have some toys in or near the kitchen. You can watch and talk to your children while preparing dinner. Maybe you can all sit down to breakfast together. Other ideas for bringing the family together are to make chores a family event. Get the kids to help plant flowers in the spring or help care for a small vegetable garden. Get them to run errands with you and treat them to lunch at their favorite fast food joint, or better yet, make a stop at your local public library and let them borrow some books. Flexibility What works for me is not necessarily going to work for everyone. I find that we often have to modify our schedule. This is particularly true during the summer when the kids want to go swimming or do some other outdoor activity in the afternoons or evenings, so they need sunscreen before leaving the house in the morning. Don’t expect to be able to handle everything perfectly right away. I don’t even do that now! It takes time to learn what works for your family and to explore different options before you find the best routine for you. Also, keep in mind that your family’s needs change. When my oldest turned 3, she became much more interested in picking out her own clothes, so first we changed from picking the first thing in the closet to letting her pick out her clothes in the morning. After one too many early morning arguments where she said she didn’t want to wear anything in her closet, we switched to having her pick out her clothes at night. You can use your professional skills to help juggle working and being a parent. Planning, organization, and communication play a large part in keeping your family happy when both parents work. Don’t be afraid to try new things to make you day run smoothly, and most importantly, be flexible! Leigh Hall is a Reference and Interlibrary Loan Librarian at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia. She’s also a working mother of two girls (ages 5 and 2). Article submitted July 2003 Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in LIScareer articles are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the LIScareer editors.
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Page last updated
10/03/2005
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