Fathers versus childless men, rather than husbands vs unmarried men. Telling.
What does it tell
It’s clearly telling that the study is looking at men with regards to their possession of a child or an infant of some kind, rather than regarding wether they take part in some sort of commited marital relationship or partnership
It’s a different world.
With a kid you get to know other parents, lots of social activities and people you are around.
This childless man loves his peace, quiet, and alone time.
But maybe I don’t qualify as I have dogs, friends, and kickass neighbors.
Well then call me the outlier, cause I’m a childless man who has been happily working remote since before covid. I’d rather be jobless than go back to office work. I have a small group of non-work friends that I enjoy spending time with, and back when I did office work the majority of my friends were not work friends.
I’m a childless man and I don’t miss the sense of community one bit.
Same here, much prefer the peace and quiet as well as avoiding the complication & stress of maintaining a personal relationship that may or may not last. As long as I have my dog with me I’m never lonely.
I have more time to spend with the community that isn’t tied to my income.
Also a father, so double benefits!
To me this highlights that many single men have problems with loneliness.
Remote work is a step in the right direction at least. In my case, I’m generally just too exhausted to bother going anywhere other than home and work, which definitely limits any socializing. Work culture isn’t entirely to blame of course, but it sure isn’t helping.
I would claim it’s only a step in the right direction for someone if they will actually start doing something social. It’s not enough that there is more opportunity to if you never actually do it…
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.
This is a good idea, but also working remote frees up time to meet new affinity groups.
Not to dump on people’s relaxation strategies, but even the most introverted person can’t survive on video games and gooning alone.
If you don’t want or like hanging with coworkers, find a local bar to hang out at and meet some folks, go to a community board game night, join a choir, attend an anime viewing night, just do something to take initiative and meet some folks that like what you like.
what is this study? why does the article not link to it and the data? what is the sample size, located where? waste of time post, downvoted.
It’s a finnish gov:t newspaper reporting on a gov:t study.
Here’s the link:
It’s propaganda.
Nah there’s no propaganda that will get people to think working in the office every day is in any way better to having freedom again
For a lot of disabled people it’s remote work or starve to death.
They’re not distinguishing “remote work” from “working from home” which are two entirely different things. There are whole communities of remote workers who meet and work together around the world. I guarantee you that remote working men who take advantage of these kinds of environments have a better sense of community than men who are forced to go sit in a cubicle with a group of people like the cast of The Office with less sense of humor.
In office, I’m a chatty bitch. I have a habit of maybe over-socializing. For sure, my productivity goes down in the office. Oh, and people listen to me just as much WFH as they did in the office when it comes to work stuff.
At home, I can just turn on some music and focus on what I need to get done. I can work on my 20+ jira points I have every god damn sprint. Meetings (ad-hoc or planned) already cause delays for me and I’m already working to much (the highest so far, has been a 16-hour day).
I don’t miss the ‘sense of community’ because there isn’t one. Plus, most of my co-workers live in different states, and many in different countries. There’s no in-person collaboration even if I’m in the office. It’s still everything done over chat/video call.
My company, like so many others, went back on everything they said about WFH. They used to say how great it was because they could find talent from anywhere instead of being arbitrarily constrained by location. Like, obviously, the best talent doesn’t just happen to live next to you. Then it moved to hybrid, for those all important in-person, face-to-face collabs and synergy and all the other bullshit LinkedIn BS you can spew. And now, they’re doing RTO full on and even shaming those who work from home or would want to. Full-on bully tactics in meetings too. Even started shaming the upper mgmt, because their excuse was “well, other companies are doing it” so I hit back with the “if other companies were committing fraud, would we?” a spin on the “well if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you” I grew up hearing all the time. I actually brought that up in a corporate meeting, they never responded, so I’m taking that as a yes… yes they would and will, so long as they figure they can get away with it (or the penalties don’t outweigh the profits).
And then I find out Tim Walz (Minnesota Governor) is also for RTO… so I emailed his office, letting him know just how utterly disappointed in him I was, and to not expect my vote ever again.
Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox. I’m just truly passionate about this. WFH, I’m far less miserable on a day-to-day basis. Working in the office, I was in multiple car accidents going to and from work (none of which I caused). I’ve been in exactly 0 since WFH. No longer spending 1-2 hours a day just traveling, so I can work remotely, in an office. If I ever win the lotto, I’ll be rich enough I could run for president and one of my pillars would be pushing businesses to utilize WFH if the position can do that. Fewer cars on roads, means less congestion for those who have to be onsite. There should be a noticeable decrease in vehicle-related accidents and fatalities.
Ownership will abuse labor as much as it can. Sometimes to make more profit. Sometimes for murkier reasons. I think some management are just stupid and they’d hurt the company to follow their unfounded feelings.
Labor should organize.
Childless man here, I work mostly remotely.
I don’t miss any sense of community.
Same. I came here to make the exact same comment.
Agreed. This article sounds like the kind of BS corporate media’s trying to parrot to gaslight us into giving up WFH.
Let’s fix this headline:
Remote work benefits all in different ways.
Oh c’mon the headline is clear. Get pregante XOR go home!
What community? Getting whipped along with your work colleagues? I swear these studies are totally sponsored by some business interests.
Same. What an asanine thing for the article to assert.
Same, but I do have my own community away from work and have always prioritized my friends over co-workers.
I’m not going to deny that some people enjoy going to work and enjoy interacting with their coworkers, but this feels like it’s missing the forest for the trees. What about the affects commuting has on one’s civic engagement in their actual community?
“There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.” https://archive.ph/2020.02.27-211238/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-again
I broadly agree, but I think there’s a bit of a “correlation is not causation” effect at play, too
I would expect people who are very career-focused would prioritise socialising less, and also be more willing to do a long commute for a job they are highly invested in. But the reduced socialising wouldn’t necessarily be caused by the commuting (not entirely, at least).
I’ve always thought that researchers should plot outcomes against commute times.
Come on, work being the sole source of community is the problem here. What are we even talking about?
Being back mandatory poker nights!!!
Yes, but it’s also the most logical place. What other activity do you dedicate so much time to? Maybe sleeping but it’s hard to build a community around that.
According to my kids, candies are the most logical place to get most your nutritions from. Where else could you get so many calories?
If most of your time at work is spent socializing, couldn’t you cut your work time and build your community elsewhere?
If most of your time at work you spent on honest hard-work working, how much community are you really building?
Cut you calories. Life doesn’t happen at work.
Eh, I became a stay at home mom over the pandemic, and while I’ve never worked in an office, but on the shop floor, I do miss the shenanigans. But its almost like a trauma bond, where its like, hey, we’re all stuck here, best make the nest of it and try snd have fun while we are here.
I’m fully isolated now, and at this point terrified of crowds, when i never was before.
Not arguing at all people who can work remotely shouldn’t, they should, for a litter or reasons. But I do miss my coworkers from my employee owned factory where culture was held in high standard. Im also not arguing this should be the only place one finds community, I’m only saying, for a person like me, it helped sometimes to joke around on the new guy or collectively bitch about issues at work or hear other folks problems and offer advice or help when I could.
We socialized outside of work too. I can’t get invited to a party, or a wedding, or anything if I literally don’t know anyone. I’ve only ever known how to make friends in structured environments. But that’s wierdo me.
No, I think that’s the fair take. But to me, it’s similar when people say “Studies may teach me a thing, but I’m glad I went there because I met all this people”… Yes, you spent X years there. You’d probably bound with someone over that time if it was a different place as well. It’s perfectly understandable to have a need for structure. I just wish that work isnt that sole source of structure in most people live.
It would be logical to work less and get our own community. A lot of people work hard all their lives and die soon after retirement. That’s not logical.
Quality over quantity.
Great places to socialize are sports-clubs, social-clubs, volunteering, activism, religious communities…
I’d much rather spend five hours a week distributed over two or three occasions with people i share interests with, than with people i share work with. Meanwhile at work i am mostly engaged in small talk, that is quite repetitive as i see the people every day and i have to guard what i can say and what i cannot say more than in other circles.
