Comparative Advantage and the Part-Time Life: Part 1

Note to readers: While this post is about the concept of comparative advantage and the time management hurdles of a part-time working mother, the issues brought up are not unique to women with babies, but anyone who has a "baby" that takes up time they previously had for other things. For example, a man with a hobby like being in a band, or a woman who wants to become a caterer on the side in her spare time, or a couple paying 2 mortgages, living in one home, while remodeling their dream home.

We all have "babies" that need and deserve our attention. This post series is about how to navigate and make decisions about how we spend our time when everything seems important.

Part-Time Mama 

I work part-time, and yet, I'm a full time wife, mother, and homemaker. It doesn't add up.

Yesterday I revealed to the other mothers in my play group I feel more irritable, tired, and overwhelmed than usual and of course, since having a child. The group leader, an expert in child development, mother of 4, and leader of many groups of new moms said, "The part-time working mother has it worse than the full time working mother. It's obvious to the full time mom she can't do it all and doesn't feel guilty think twice about getting daycare or a maid to help clean up the house. The part-time mom thinks she shouldn't get any help and really ends up doing 3/4 of both jobs, working the equivalent of full time and a half, yet always falling behind in both!"

While I had my suspicions this was the case, I have to admit there was something tremendously validating about hearing it from an "expert." (Update: this is not to say full time moms do not struggle with guilt and what they are capable of, but at the very least, they are fully aware the X amount of hours they work outside the home must be compensated by someone else doing X amount of work they are missing for them.)

After hearing this I actually had the idea that I should hire someone find a computer program that could track my every movement throughout the day and after a week's time spit out a thorough analysis of what exactly I'm spending my time on. My rough estimate is it would go something like this:

Minutes in a day	1440
Days in a week	7
Minutes in a week	10080
Task
Wandering around trying to figure out what to do, Being interuppted	840
Playing with/feeding/tending to babby	1260
Cooking/Eating	630
Grocery Shopping	480
Working (Mostly Paid)	1200
Working Out	240
Putzing online	630
Sleeping! (or trying to sleep)	3360
Cleaning, Organizing, Shuffling Items from one place to another	840
Laundry	210
Showering, Makeup, etc.	315
Watching Netflix	630
Checking emails/to do list	630
Total	-1185
Minutes Used	11265

As you can see, even by a rough estimate, my tasks exceed the number of minutes I have in a week. Because of this, I tend to shave time off of areas like Cleaning, Laundry, Eating, Sleeping since those are the least enjoyable/easiest to ignore in the short term and only when chronically ignored have major repercussions.

Because I work part-time for pay, I have been thinking to myself, "Well, I don't work all that much, I don't need much extra help." This ignores the fact that I am still working much of the rest of the time without pay. Yes, caring for my child is a worthwhile and enjoyable endeavor, but it's not all fun and rainbows, and it is both physically and psychologically exhausting.

I have been toying with getting additional help with the running of my life (even though I already ask my mom to babysit at least a few hours every week, and I have a mother's helper come over from time to time). Clearly, the amount of help I'm currently getting is not making up for the overage in work I am still doing/expected to do. The thing is, what is stopping me is guilt, rather than a rational analysis of the situation. The overly emotional, self-chastising part of me says: if I were a good mother, I wouldn't need help. If I were a good mother I would never want/need to be away from my child. If I were a good mother, I'd be rich and wouldn't need to work. Of course, none of these thoughts are even close to rational.

However, if I accessed the economist in me, I would make my decisions to work and get help based on the following questions:

• What am I very good at, or what is most worth spending my time on in terms of returns (both psychic and monetary)?
• Will the outcomes be worse if I let someone else/hire someone else to do X?
• Is my time better spent on task Y or can I earn more money doing Z so someone else can do Y?
• Am I more qualified to do A?
• Can I/Should I eliminate B from my life altogether? 

So far, I make all these trade-offs, decisions and mental calculations in my mind, on the fly, tempered by emotionalism. The end result is constant guilt, constant exhaustion, and no solutions.

In my next post, I will attempt to do an analysis of these questions, as well as starting to more accurately track what I spend my time on. This should be interesting.