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childless men miss sense of community
Myself and everyone I know works remote. We're all childless/childfree and not a single one of us miss any community, we all feel there are zero downsides to it. This just comes across like propaganda to stop people working remote and return to office.
I work remote (Going on 9 years now) and I miss a sense of community. Do I want to stop working remotely? Hell no, screw that. But two things can be true the same time, I can enjoy and encourage them at work, dnd I can also miss a sense of community.
I think it's okay to hold this opinion because it's individual to everyone.
This just comes across as propaganda
Being dismissive and pulling the rhetoric that this is propaganda is toxic as fuck.
The truth often is somewhere in the middle
I'm single and childless and I personally like being hybrid. Full work from home fucks my mental health up pretty bad. I'm definitely in the minority among my peers though. I also wouldn't ever ask that anyone else be forced to come back to the office just because it isn't for me.
I go in office when I want to, a few hours a day or a few times a week for a couple hours. But full work from home had me talking to myself… way too much.
Yeah, every sense of community I've ever felt with a job was also ruined by that same job. I don't remotely miss it, and I'm firmly child-free.
I agree that forcing return to office is either stupid or harmful. But I do like the people I work with, and not seeing them anymore would be saddening
The solution is obvious though, simply allow choice
I have friends and live with friends and I still feel lonely when working remotely. I like hybrid the most because sometimes i need to just go into work and talk about the things im working on with people who actually understand (not work related talks just for fun)
So you like to go into work in order to waste time talking talking about non work related things? Make sense why you should stay remote.
Its not a waste of time, its very useful. I can see how a robot such as yourself wouldnt understand.
You can spend your 8 hours a day in a cubicle and I will spend it having fun and working along side people I genuinely like.
Best thing about working from home is stepping away from my desk, popping upstairs, and tossing my little baby boy up in the air a few times while he giggles and smiles.
me with my dog
me with my snake
That‘s one way to call it.
This was me until I realized I didn't have a child and that I lived in the first floor.
Where was I going? What giggled as I tossed it into the air?
The ability to work from home has given me innumerable benefits, but I must admit that as a very introverted guy who's been going through some shit, and who's go-to move during times of anxiety and depression is to distance themselves from everyone... yeah, sometimes I do miss my coworkers. A lot of them are pretty great people. Doesn't mean I'd rather spend 3 hours a day sitting in traffic to see them, just means I low-key miss someone to bitch with.
In theory, we have the Third Space for that kind of socializing. Parks, plazas, union halls, club spaces and dance halls, churches, community centers, libraries...
In practice, they've been gradually privatized and monetized until everything is The Mall. If you don't have $10 to spend for the hour, there's nowhere you can legally so much as sit down. Hard to socialize on these terms.
My city decided to take its $7B budget and close a $330M shortfall by gutting parks, libraries, and other public amenities. Meanwhile, the police and fire departments are seeing a budget surge of over $100M.
I want to kick your city in the nuts. How could you gut parks and libraries.
John Witmire is a DINO by every definition of the word. He's deep in bed with the police, he loves privatization of public services, and he makes common cause with the state's Republican leadership on a regular basis. Nothing the man loves more than "balancing the budget" on the backs of public workers and low income residents.
But he's been a Democrat since he took his State Senate seat and squatted in it back in 1983. So the party apparatus loyally and mechanically supported him all through the primary and general elections. The "It's my turn" candidate is taking his turn.
41 year old male, no kids, no wife or girlfriend, been work from home for 5 years now. I've never been happier and more productive.
I get my sense of community from my friends not my coworkers. This study is B.S.
You know there are always outliers because research often looks at populations in general and not the exact experience of a specific person. Unless it’s a case study but that’s different.
Either way that’s a really good thing for you, the modern world makes it difficult to make and keep close to friends.
Just because you have anecdotal evidence of the contrary doesn't mean it can't be true, quantitatively. I, too, am a childless man - although I do have a wife - and don't resonate with this, but that doesn't mean I'll just cast aside the findings. Many, especially young, men are unhappy in their everyday, partly due to a lack of sense od community in the "modern" world.
Yeah, you gotta have friends that are close by and you can get out with or they can come over. If you don't... Sometimes it feels lonely. But to be honest, you kinda get used to it.
Itt: cognitive disonannce.
The study isn't bs. Lemmy users just won't accept that they don't even come close to representing the average individual.
Or if we use less adversarial language, this study is far from universal and its findings should be applied with the understanding that not all people will not match those who were in the study. As with most things, far more research is needed to get a thorough understanding.
Lol my old boss hated remote work because he had to spend time with his family.
"I gotta get to the office mates!"
As a childless man, they will have to pry my work from home out of my cold, lots of free time having hands.
I actually don't like my coworkers very much I definitely wouldn't hang out with them so not having to be near them all day is a benefit.
It's not even that they are bad people, it's just that they are people who I wouldn't choose to hang out with.
No we don't. Work is work, not fucking community.
I like my coworkers. They're cool. I just went to acro yoga with one, and go bouldering with another. We show up, talk shit, and get the job done - sometimes it's a good time. Sometimes we get our asses kicked. But that builds camradrie, too.
I will say, this is blue collar stuff. When I worked as a software dev, I definitely didn't care about spending much time with my coworkers.
Being childfree is its own reward.
It's something I've noticed in general.
I had an amazing boss who was single and lived alone, and really love her staff. We had unecessarily long staff meetings every week. When I started I was annoyed by them until someone pointed out that the time we spent with everyone getting distracted and going off-topic and padding out the meeting while we ate our lunch around the conference room table was, for her, the weekly family meal.
I still don't like unnecessary meetings, but it gave me a different perspective on why some people like them.
Childless man here, I work mostly remotely.
I don't miss any sense of community.
Same, but I do have my own community away from work and have always prioritized my friends over co-workers.
Take the same approach as home schooling. Community comes from engaging in other activities.
I'm a childless man and FUCK that, the office isn't my social scene. I don't care to drive in there just to talk to the same people in person. ZERO point in doing that. We have meetings electronically and that's more than enough.
Come on, work being the sole source of community is the problem here. What are we even talking about?
Another person already said it, but the issue is the lack of third spaces. You don’t need to physically go to an office to get a sense of community. Working remotely makes it easier to get a sense of community if there are third spaces because you’re not stuck in a building for 8 hours. If your only source of community is your workplace, then you have other problems.
My oldest has no children and works fully remote.
When the pandemic started, his company decided to have everyone work from home. They very quickly discovered that they were just as productive, and the owner decided it made sense to dump their office space.
A group of employees decided to go on vacation together, while still working. Since they are all remote, they didn't actually have to work from home. They got an Airbnb with good Internet, worked during the day, and saw the sites and had fun together after work.
If you're remote and you miss that sense of community, reach out to your coworkers and ask them if they want to hang out after work. It's possible they don't and you'll be disappointed. It's also possible that they feel the same way but didn't know they could do something about it.
Either you'll be the hero that saved everyone from their solitary existence, or you'll have to accept that they don't want to hang out with you.
I know this a gross oversimplification, but:
"Remote working benefit those with a reason to stay home, but doesn't for those who don't have a reason to stay home" seems to be the general idea of the headline.
edit: I think this is the study they're talking about, please double check the source before quoting: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36718392/
This childless man loves his peace, quiet, and alone time.
But maybe I don't qualify as I have dogs, friends, and kickass neighbors.
I work in a bar, and I love seeing most of my coworkers. I obviously can't speak on the WFH aspect, as it'd be impossible for me, but enjoying the company of the people you work with isn't a foreign concept, especially in the service industry
For me WFH has helped me have a community. The office was never a real community, and the fact that we all worked together got in the way of being actual friends. Instead with the added time from WFH I was able to prioritize my social life and go to more events and meet people I actually have stuff in common with. Additionally my in-office job forced me to live in a dead suburb, WFH allowed me to move to a city with a lot more social opportunities.
Of course probably not everyone prioritized that. The office might be good for some people, but for people like me who don't necessarily socialize at the office very easily WFH is much better for community.
To me this highlights that many single men have problems with loneliness.
Oh, yes! I sure do miss that community made up of ass kissers and people who are just as miserable as I am! Or those 2-3 chill people with whom I meet for a chat weekly anyway, outside work hours because I sure as hell ain't in the mood for socialising while I'm wasting (at least) a third of my day and life doing busiwork for someone else!
