A Mom Explains How Flexible Jobs Mean "No Deep Work"

I work from home and have pretty flexible hours — and when I tell this to anyone, they tell me I’m living the dream. But there’s a downside to this flexibility that doesn’t get talked about much: it automatically makes you the default parent, whether you like it or not.

While my partner works regular hours and goes about his day away from the home sphere, I deal with a surprising number of interruptions, from being in charge of appointments to being here for maintenance people, to taking care of pets and emergencies. These things add up! It feels like there’s something literally every day.

One of our favorite TikTok parents, @shesapaigeturner, is also a mom with a flexible job. And she set the record straight.

“I’ve always been the person in my marriage who has the more flexible job. My partner works a very rigid schedule with not a lot of flexibility. We knew that going into parenting,” she begins. “But what I didn’t realize before we got into parenting is how having the flexible job is both a blessing and a curse. You become the default for everything. For when your kids are sick, when they have a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day, when like days like today they don’t have school.”

So true.

“While it’s amazing to not have to take PTO or not have to sacrifice sick time, it is really hard to be the person who is constantly responsible to constantly be context switching between work and kids and work and kids,” she continues. “Always going back and forth because you never get to go deep work. So it actually takes you longer to do anything.”

Yes! Getting that deeper focus and harder work done is so difficult if you’re never able to let your whole mind shift to your job and career.

“And then on top of that, it’s 9 pm at night and I’m sitting on the couch and I have my laptop with me,” she says. “I’m probably going to work until 11 pm at night. It’s great that today that I had flexibility to play with my kids between meetings, but it means I have to work at night.”

At the same time, her husband gets to clock in and out exactly once per day, while her work literally never ends, either with her job or her kids.

“Nobody calls him at work,” she explains. “He doesn’t have kids asking him for snacks at work. He doesn’t have to take a break to take care of kids at work. He gets to get his work done in 8 hours uninterrupted. And I have the entire 24 hours to just squeeze in maybe seven hours of work.”

Down in the comments, other moms chimed in.

“Moms jobs just become flexible,” a popular comment reads. “A lot of men’s jobs could be more flexible, they just don’t want it to be.”

“Thissssss. And when you’re too good at balancing, they forget that it’s not normal to be doing so many things at once,” added another mom.

“I make my husband take things on too like dr appts, conferences, sick days, etc. that make him late to work or leave early sometimes,” said one prent. “He said the guys at work judge him and I said good, that’s how we’ll change the next generation of dads. The first ones to do it will be uncomfortable but oh well.”

“Sometimes I wonder if it's my job that's flexible or if it's just me,” another wrote.

It’s a good point. If moms do anything, they find a way to make things work. Perhaps instead of making one parent the flexible one, we should balance out these responsibilities more equally. Moms need to get some deep work in, too.