Via Strollerderby comes this article by Steve Almond over at Babble. He writes about the “joy and pain of being a work-at-home parent” and how to balance working with spending time with his family. It seems like his wife is the primary caregiver for his daughter, so while a lot of what he writes about resonated with me, there were definitely parts where I found myself thinking “Huh, must be nice…”

Reading his article made me realize that we need a new category of parent type. We have working parents and stay-at-home parents and work-at-home parents, but what about us stay-and-work-at-home parents? Being the primary caregiver and a work-at-home parent has a unique set of challenges and experiences that isn’t quite covered by the other categories.

We could call ourselves working-stay-at-home parents, but that implies that there is a non-working stay-at-home parent, so that won’t work. We could say staying-work-at-home parents, but that’s just weird. Staying where? How about working-during-naps- and-any-other-time-the-kid-is-occupied- and-also-on-weekends- but-otherwise-hanging-out- and-having-fun parent? Hm, catchy.