Working at the White House eats up every waking hour. It’s almost impossible to work there and raise kids without a partner as a full-time caregiver.

An article in the Wash Post discusses the weird disconnect between the family-friendly rhetoric of the Obama administration and the real life pressures of being a White House employee. A very old friend is a big mucky-muck at the White House. He is able to do his job, while raising the two small kiddies, because his wife, an Ivy League MBA, is a stay at home mom.

These work-family arrangement – one big pressure job and one SAHP – is very common around here. It some ways, it’s a throw-back to a traditional marriage, but in other ways, it’s not. Most of the SAHP’s around here are highly educated and not necessarily female. They are putting their own spin on stay at home parenting.

One SAHP that I spoke with last week practiced law part-time, when her kids were in school. Another teaches spin classes in the evening, when his wife is home from work.

It’s not an ideal situation. If you talk with people who are in these arrangements, they will complain that one person has too much work and the other has too much home. But the unique ways that these family cope is really interesting.