science

Work at home parent

Work at home parent is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Work at home parent rather than just read about it. In short: A work at home parent (WAHP) is someone who conducts remote work from home and integrates parenting into their working time and workspace. They are sometimes referred to as a WAHM (work at home mom) or a WAHD (work at home dad).

Key takeaways

Work at home parent belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Work at home parent to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Work at home parent from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A work at home parent (WAHP) is someone who conducts remote work from home and integrates parenting into their working time and workspace. They are sometimes referred to as a WAHM (work at home mom) or a WAHD (work at home dad). People work from home for a variety of reasons, including lower business expenses, personal health limitations, eliminating commuting, or to have a more flexible schedule. This flexibility can give workers more options when planning tasks, business and non-business, including parenting duties. While some remote workers opt for childcare outside the home, others integrate child bearing into their working time and workspace. The latter are considered work-at-home parents. Many WAHPs start home businesses to care for their children while still creating income. The desire to care for one's own children, the incompatibility of a 9-to-5 work day with school hours or sick days, and the expense of childcare prompt many parents to change or leave their jobs in the workforce to be available to their children. Many WAHPs build a business schedule that can be integrated with their parenting duties.

Integrating business and parenting An integration of parenting and business can take place in one or more of four key ways: combined uses of time, combined uses of space, normalizing children in business, and flexibility. Combining uses of time involves some level of human multitasking, such as taking children on business errands, and the organized scheduling of business activities during child's down times and vice versa. The WAHP combines uses of space by creating a home (or mobile) office that accommodates the child's presence. Normalizing acknowledges the child's presence in the business environment. This can include letting key business partners know that parenting is a priority, establishing routines and rules for children in the office, and even having children help with business when appropriate. Finally, the WAHP can utilize the inherent flexibility of the work-at-home arrangement. This may mean working in smaller increments of time instead of long stretches, looser scheduling of the day's activities to allow for the unexpected, and working at non-traditional times. A business that demands 9-to-5 business hours, a polished office, intense one-on-one time with clients, dangerous materials, or impromptu appointments may not work well for a parent with children at home. Thus, not all professions lend themselves to work-at-home parenting. Without good organization, the WAHP may experience decreased productivity due to added responsibilities and unexpected interruptions. Internet businesses or 'virtual assistants' are well-suited as work-at-home businesses. The Center for Women's Business Research, a non-profit organization, found that Generation X mothers are the most likely to work from home. The center also reports that between 1997 and 2004, employment at female-owned companies grew by 24.2%, more than twice the rate of the 11.6% logged by all businesses. Types of work that WAHPs may engage in include remote work, freelancing on project such as articles, graphic design or consulting, or working as an independent contractor, running home-party businesses, managing companies from home, and providing business and marketing support.

History

The concept of the WAHP has been around for as long as small businesses have. In pre-industrial societies, merchants and artisans often worked out of or close to their homes. Children typically remained in the care of a parent during the day and were often present while the parents worked. Societal changes in the 1800s, such as compulsory education and the Industrial Revolution, made working from home with children around less common. Entrepreneurship saw a resurgence in the 1980s, with more of an emphasis on work-life balance. Among the long-traditional groups of WAHPs are those professionals in private practice with home offices such as physicians, therapists, music teachers and tutors. The term WAHP began gaining popularity in the late 1990s especially as the growth of the Internet allowed for small business owners and entrepreneurs to have greater options for starting and running their businesses. Remote work opportunities have since increased with advances in technology. In 2008, WAHM Magazine, a digital magazine, was established specifically for work-at-home parents, designed to address the issues of the complete lifestyle of work-at-home parents regardless of field or industry, and has a mission to validate, empower, encourage, educate and support WAHPs in their personal, professional and lifestyle goals. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, many parents have to juggle paid employment and full-time daycare, which is likely to limit their productivity and the anticipated benefits of working from home. However, changes in technology and firm culture have increased the likelihood of working from home arrangements being made available to parents, particularly mothers.

See also Homeschooling Attachment parenting Home Business Superwoman (sociology) Work-at-home scheme

References

External links Internet moms: Getting the best of both worlds - 29 May 2007, CNN

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Work at home parent

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Work at home parent claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Work at home parent before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Work at home parent ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Work at home parent

In research: Work at home parent appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Work at home parent in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Work at home parent is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Business models, Entrepreneurship, Parenting, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Work at home parent outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Work at home parent in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Work at home parent means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Work at home parent out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Work at home parent in simple terms?

Why does Work at home parent matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Work at home parent?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Work at home parent.