home

Before I got divorced, I worked from home most of the time. I traveled some for assignments, etc, but I mostly worked from home as a freelance writer. My husband worked at a "real" job. We both helped support our family.

The best part about this arrangement was the the children and I had plenty of unhurried, no-pressure time at home.

These days, I work 50 hours a week and have no husband at home to help. The children are at their father's house about 40% of the time. We very often do not get home after school/work/after school activities until 7:-7:30 pm. And this is one area of my life that I feel is not working well. We are just rarely hanging out at home gardening, cleaning, playing, making a home together.

We need more time to just veg out at home, with no plan, no agenda. I need more time to clean and organize and even cook some (yes, I coook a little and I like it a lot better when I'm not trying to feed three tired children at 8 pm after having been at work since 7 am.

Optimally, one person in a family should be based at home. This can be mother, father or even paid nanny, but somebody should be able to stay at home and keep the mothership humming along.