How working from home affects family life | Letters

Noel Hodson and his wife Pauline Hodson point out that WFH has its downsides

Re your editorial (The Guardian view on empty offices: goodbye to all that?, 4 August) on working from home (WFH), in 1992 I was commissioned to edit the book Teleworking Explained, which analysed and promoted the socioeconomics of not commuting to work. My colleagues have just formed a new group, Resurrect the High Street, to encourage the conversion of redundant commercial premises into 6 million new, good-quality family homes with home-telework offices or local hubs. From 30 years of case studies, we can assure employers, employees, families, economists, environmentalists and property owners that WFH is hugely beneficial and will, as you say, transform all nations and clean the air we breathe.

On the downsides, the most neglected issue is family life. My wife wrote Bringing Home the Electronic Baby in 1995, a psychotherapeutic analysis of the impact on families. One of the earliest recorded cases was of the Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson retiring to work from home. His wife, Maryon, commented: “I married him for better or worse. I didn’t marry him for lunch.” The disruption to the home is significant. As you say, we must plan for the downsides.
Noel Hodson
Oxford

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