Work-at-Home Advice for a Work-at-Home Dad

Filed in archive home business people on June 22, 2007

There's this discussion going on in MetaFilter about a homebased father who's looking for some advice on how to handle his home based hosting business since he is about to become a father soon enough.

Here's his question:

I currently am self employed and work at home. We have our first kiddy on the way. What am I going to need to compromise on/totally change?

Currently I work relatively long hours running a web hosting company from home but my work allows me to takes lot of little breaks to speak to the wife, get a drink etc. I generally don't have to concentrate hard for anything more than 15-30 minutes at one time but its a long day to cover support for customers.

Now I'm aware there are going to be major changes but are there any work at home dads (or mums) who can tell me what to expect. Obvious would be to hire someone to cover me but that isn't doable currently. Any hints / tips would help

Best advice I can think of is either hire a virtual assistant (I wish he mentioned why it's not doable to hire someone to cover him) or just a house chores help. If he was accustomed to doing his share of the household chores, that should be the major problem while his wife is recuperating. And the baby? Eager dads won't have too much of a hard time adjusting, really, especially if they've been working at home for quite some time. This is because they "almost" have mastered the ways to deal with distractions.

Any first-hand experience on how to deal with these kinds of situations?