A reader writes:

I work from home, for a start-up. My only coworker has five kids, ages one to 11, and very little access to childcare (husband thinks she’s doing just swimmingly at this SAHM+working-parent thing and doesn’t want to pay for a nanny). This means she brings between one and five kids to all meetings and working sessions that we have, plus (during the summer) managing all five of them at home, all day every day.

My house is VERY much not kid-friendly (clawsy cat, Lego display sets, lots of stairs, etc), but it’s usually the best place to work for both of us if we need to actually get something done. It’s fine when just the baby comes — she’s very tactile, but can be happy gnawing on a dead Xbox controller for a good long while. The problem is the older ones — they’re hobgoblins. Literally, in a one hour lunch-meeting at a restaurant they: broke a lamp, tore down an umbrella that was over one of the tables, had a “who can scream the loudest” competition, almost broke a window (rammed a baby stroller at speed into it … whole plate glass shuddered and bowed), and a bunch of other stuff I can’t even recall anymore. I’m terrified of having them in my house … and if they’re there, no work gets done, anyway.

My coworker, from the looks of it (and sounds of it, she’s admitted as much), has given up controlling her brood. She’s in survival mode, which I totally get, but it also means that all that behavior mentioned above gets very little correction … and they know that at this point, the more distractions they make, the more attention they get from mom. I get the feeling they intentionally act worse when she’s trying to concentrate on something else.

All of this adds up to missed deadlines, broken promises and very uneven workloads.

Would it ever be appropriate to offer to pay for a babysitter for an afternoon, so that we could work in peace? Is that insulting?

And as a coworker, how do I deal with this? She’s a smart woman, and I appreciate her work when she can do it, but those deliverables are rare and now even rarer that school’s out for summer.

I don’t want to be a dick about stuff, and I’m trying to be a good, feminist, supportive-of-working-parents coworker … but man, I don’t know how to navigate this. I realize offering dog crates and Nyquil would be a bridge too far.

Being a good, feminist, supportive-of-working-parents coworker does not mean that you shouldn’t speak up when kids are getting in the way of your ability to work.

Tolerating a little bit of kid noise in the background on a call, sure. Understanding when your coworker needs to stop working at 5 on the dot to make it to her child care pick-up on time, yes. Advocating for flex time, parental leave, and other policies that support everyone’s ability to have a life outside of work, yes.

But bringing one to five kids, some of them very young, to all meetings and working sessions you have? Letting them run around breaking things, screaming, and otherwise being a huge distraction? Paying so much attention to the kids that deadlines are being missed and she’s not carrying her share of the work? No, no, and no.

In fact, I’d argue that feeling obligated to be okay with that stuff is actually a disservice to other working parents, who go to great lengths to not operate like this, and who are harmed by people getting the idea that this is what working parents do.

It sucks that your coworker is in this situation — it really does. But the way she’s handling it isn’t an acceptable solution. If paying for child care isn’t an option for her, it might be that this particular job doesn’t fit her life right now. And I know that’s a blow to say that when someone is trying to maintain a career, but it’s really, really not okay for her to put the burden of this on to you, her coworker. (And really, there’s a reason that most companies require remote workers to have child care in place for young children. It’s not heartless or unsupportive of working parents; it’s because work can’t get done otherwise.)

I don’t think you should offer to pay for a babysitter. She may or may not be insulted by it, but you shouldn’t have to pay for this yourself. It would be like paying to bring in a temp because your coworker wasn’t finishing all her work — it would solve the immediate problem, but at inappropriate expense to you.

All you can really do here is to lay out the problem in a kind, sympathetic tone. As in: “Hey, can I talk to you about something? When you bring the kids, it’s hard for us to get work done. We’ve even missed a few deadlines because of it. When we meet from now on, can it just be us?” If she says that she doesn’t have child care, then you say, “I totally get that and know that you’re in a tough spot. But it’s not working to have them at our meetings.”

Also, you didn’t mention how your boss is handling these missed deadlines, broken promises, uneven workloads, and rarely delivered deliverables. Does she know this is happening? Or are you stepping in to try to cover for your coworker? If the latter … it’s one thing to cover for someone when they have the occasional emergency (that’s just being a good coworker), but when the problem is systemic like this — when someone’s work outputs plunges for an entire summer because they’re caring for five kids when their boss assumes they’re working — that’s not something you can or should try to cover for. That’s a legitimate work problem that you should talk to your boss about.