This is the final piece in our 3 part series on how Fission's techie parents handle work and life. Check out part 1 & 2! 

What tips do you have for other parents and people wanting a good work-life balance?

Roz: The best thing my family does together is go for a very long (like 8 miles) walk together on the weekend. It’s time that’s unplugged, unhurried, usually punctuated by a nice lunch. It’s worth so much more than being together when everyone’s busy and tired and focused on other things.

Cindy: In order to have successful careers and businesses, I believe that instead of women 'leaning in' and acting like men are expected to act, men need to 'lean back' and pick up or be allowed to express some of the qualities usually attributed to women. If men leaned back and made more room at the table for different perspectives, everyone would benefit.  If men leaned back and were supported in picking up more of the home-life responsibilities, everyone would have a more even playing field. And, everyone -- men and women -- would find more fulfillment in their careers and family/personal life.

Lori:  I just try to keep it in perspective. I like what I do, and I’m good at it, but there are a lot of programmers in the world. My kids only have one mom. I have this idea that a technical career has an image problem. If you go to a doctor, you know pretty much what they do for a living. In LA Law, have an image of what lawyers do, how they dress in power suits. A lot of professions have an image. Tech has a nerdy image. It’s a nice industry that allows a lot of flexibility, it’s a lot of creativity. The work atmosphere is more casual and laid back, which can mean not needing to find a maternity suit. When pregnant with my daughter I’d meet other women in my neighborhood, and they were mostly all lawyers who needed to wear suits when they went back to work. People don’t understand the creativity that code allows. People see it as a game of sudoku, brute force, but it’s a creative field. I can work at home, rearrange my schedule around my kids … as long as I have my laptop I can get work done.

Max: The first tip would be make sure that your child understands the time you are working and don’t spend with them is not because you don’t want to be with them. Be clear about that and have them understand that. For a little person it’s hard to understand that. You are here but not playing with them -- they might think you don’t care about them. Talk a lot about that and that you love them but are working and that’s why you’re not playing. If you explain that well, things will be a lot better. When they don’t understand that, they behave badly to get your attention.
 

Have a favorite book, movie, or resource that helps you particularly?

Roz: For the pregnant mammas: Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies? Or Brain Rules for Babies. These look at the science behind babies, which is a lot of fun. Also Babycenter.

Cindy: The best resource I had was one of the first parenting bulletin boards online. I joined 14 years ago with a diverse group of women who had one thing in common: they were expecting a baby in June '99. They all had strong opinions, varying from 'cry it out' to 'attachment parenting', and they had extreme liberal to extreme conservative political views. However, the debates, suggestions, and references regarding every phase of parenthood were invaluable to me.

Lori: I really enjoyed A Thousand Days of Wonder - about a child’s brain development in her first three years.

Max: My books are about coding! Movies … I don’t know … Back to the Future is a good one. I don’t look at many movies or much TV. I liked Star Wars growing up. Now I see cartoon movies with my daughter like Cars. A lot of princess movies too! That’s not that cool for me but I like to watch them with her. Because she thinks that she’s a princess. We have 100 princess books and a Beauty and the Beast costume. I took my daughter to DisneyLand and she was amazed.

What’s your advice for Cindy’s big question:
"How can we improve the work environment and build successful, rewarding, and productive careers for everyone, and successful businesses, while balancing our personal lives?"

Cindy: I’m not alone here. A lot of the men I worked with do not find the ‘lean in’ model satisfactory either. A recent study showed that when asking dying people what they regretted most, most of the men claimed that they spent too much time at work, and not enough life balance. Why not instead establish a business environment where the inherent strengths of women and men, regardless of gender, are equally valued, when ultimately businesses benefit from all these various strengths?!!

Roz: I’m with Cindy that a huge unfinished battle in this country is the shifting of expectations to equal parenting. It’s not only unfair to women, whose careers suffer from the expectation that they’ll be the ones to take time off -- it’s terribly unfair to men who not only have a hard time getting time off, those who try to ‘equal parent’ find themselves isolated, without resources (see the total lack of ‘daddy’ websites) or community (odd man out on the playground).

Lori: There are rapidly diminishing returns with more time spent at the office. You’re not necessarily more productive. Step back and realize that. In America we have a Protestant work ethic. We think more is more. I’m pretty efficient with tech. If a deadline really hits and something unexpected comes up, I’m happy to work late but when I read about people working 14 hour days regularly, I think “What’s taking you that long? How are you recharging? How are you not burnt out?” We should get away from more is more. That’s where helicopter parenting comes in -- what more can I do for her? That’s when I need to step back and let her figure out what to do. We’re not neglecting our parental obligations if we step back. My husband is a partner in a law firm and he works 55 hours a week, which isn’t bad for a lawyer. My husband answers emails some nights, but not for 2 hours.

Max: I think we should be trained to identify which tasks can be done from home and which kind of people can do those tasks. There are some who aren’t made to work from home. They lose focus, or don’t work. That’s one thing. Try to put all those tasks together on the same day -- one day a week everyone goes to the office, another day everyone stays at home. Here [in Argentina] it’s common that women take care of children, but that is changing and companies are paying more attention to this shift, starting to realize that parents need to spend time with their children too. Work is changing, in my case being a parent who can spend time with my daughter is great. Companies should help think about that to identify tasks that employees can do at home and spend more time with families and be more happy, and therefore more productive.