Career daze

PHOTO: BRUCE MURRAY/VISIONFIRE

How working from home might have changed your kids’ view on what you do

By Heidi Tattrie Rushton

Bankers count money, nurses heal people, and carpenters build things.

Children often sum up their parents’ jobs with a single sentence, if they have any idea at all about what they do all day. But when all our lives converged on the dining room table during the pandemic, many children got a front row seat into their parents’ work life, a view that may change how they think about their own futures.

Dr. Christine Chambers is a professor at Dalhousie University and scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health. Pre-pandemic, her work had her travelling extensively, presenting at events, and meeting many people.

“My entire job changed with the pandemic … all these meetings and travel got broken up into what has seemed like endless back-to-back virtual meetings,” Chambers says. “Before the pandemic I used to feel my children were so proud of my work, even though I was often on the road and away from them. Now I worry they don’t think my job is nearly as exciting as it used to be.”

Chambers has four children ranging from 10 to 15. Justin and Lauren are both 10 and say that they knew their mom helped kids in pain but mostly knew about the “fun” side of her job.

“She was going on important trips and sometimes we could come along,” Justin says. Lauren adds: “She used to work in her lab, and we used to visit and play with her toys.”

Since the pandemic started, they have new appreciation for the complexity of her work.

“She has a lot of meetings … it looks hard,” says Lauren, adding that she’s learned that she doesn’t want a virtually-based job. “I would have to be on Zoom calls all the time and I didn’t like Zoom calls when I was in virtual school.”

Justin says there were some advantages to his mom working from home.

“I got to see her more and I got to meet some of her colleagues (on the computer),” he says, but agrees with his sister that he wouldn’t want to sit in front of a computer all day.

PHOTO: BRUCE MURRAY/VISIONFIRE

Chambers says this opinion is a theme with all four of her children, and she echoes it herself.

“I’m very much a person who gets her energy from people and places, and so it’s been really hard for me to be at home all the time, and my kids can tell,” she says. “They really disliked virtual school so I’m pretty sure they will choose a career that has them interacting with real people in the real world.”

Melissa Mancini Burbridge is the CEO and founder of Alisiei Creative Solutions, a digital media firm. She started growing her business at the same time the global pandemic started, adding a host of challenges she wasn’t planning on tackling, including having two children in the front row of her business meetings.

“It was a tough balance at first, trying to explain to the kids what I was doing so they would understand all the Zoom calls and computer time. They just assumed I was always scrolling social media,” she says. “Now they understand all the work that goes on behind the scenes and how my work is helping small businesses get noticed and stay open.”

Her 11-year-old daughter, Danika says seeing her mom work at home has opened her eyes. It’s made her consider her own career goals and start thinking about finding something she loves as much as her mom loves her job.

“I didn’t really know what she did, just that she looked at pictures all day and wrote about them,” she says. “I learned that she does a lot of hard work that helps small businesses … I’m not sure what I want to do in the future yet, but I do know it doesn’t have to be something I hate.”

Seth is 13 years old and says that he knew his mom was a social-media specialist but didn’t really know what that meant. Now this aspiring space engineer understands her work more and has even found a way he can be part of her business.

“She has a lot of meetings (and) there is a lot more to her work than just writing social media posts,” he explains. “She does research and strategic planning. My favourite part is all the analytics that I help her with. I’m a math guy.”

Mancini Burbridge says despite the challenges of everyone at home together, it’s had one major advantage.

“This experience has allowed me to grow close to both my children again in a way I can’t describe,” she says. “It was something I wanted for so long that I couldn’t have in my old traditional job.” n

The lockdown gave Seth Burbridge a chance to discover there’s more to his mom’s social-media specialist job than he realized.