Like so many others, I've had that conversation a few times too. My defence is that "I'm a freelancer, I have to work to get paid", and really, that's a crap excuse.

I was late to the smartphone era, but since I joined, the wife has commented more than once about the amount of time I spend on there, so I do try and limit my interaction with it. As per Sam's suggestion, I've just been and blocked notifications for Twitter, Facebook, Slack et al and I'm keen to see if that reduces my interactions further.

If you go out for a meal wth the family or friends, then put all the phones on the table, and the one to look at theirs first has to pay for everyone else.

In terms of business, I've got the luxury of being able to choose to work on projects that don't have hard deadlines. So if something needs to wait until tomorrow or next week, then I feel less stressed about it, and less guilty about it sitting there during family time. As a journalist Jeff, that may not be quite so easy to follow, but still, a news article coming out lunchtime tomorrow instead of last thing tonight isn't going to kill off readership.

Our routine, for most days, enforces a break and some time together. My wife gets home before 5 pm, we have dinner together (and we try and get it on the calendar so I have no excuse not to help prep some of whatever we're having) before picking up the twins together from nursery. We come home and put the kids to bed, together. Most times now, I'll try and stay downstairs with her - sometimes watching TV, or maybe even on the laptop, but it's still more sociable than disappearing upstairs to the office.

The laptop, as it happens, only has a subset of the typical tools I'd need and use on the desktop machine, so that forces me to leave some tasks until the next day.

It's uncommon that I go to bed at the same time as my wife - she's a morning person, and I'm a night owl, but I do try, because she specifically asked me to. Even if that's 10 pm here in the UK, that's 5 pm EST in the US, so my client's are, or will be, clocking off soon anyway.

My long-term plan is to put some products out there that don't need 24/7 support. Something that still needs an investment of time, but isn't critical that I respond straight away. I've got a couple of small products and earning money whilst I've been out at the park with the kids is an extremely satisfying feeling.

I've improved communications with my wife too - she knows what I'm currently working on, and what the long-term plans are. She can see the shared calendar when I have business calls scheduled, and she'll accommodate them as needed. Me and my business being less of a black box to her allows her to be more understanding on those rare occasions when I do have put work first.

Note that nothing here so far is about money. You can always earn more money, but time is a limited resource. My wife supported me when I was working and not having much income to show for it. I've been self-employed since 2008, and this financial year (ended in April) has been my most profitable and the first one for which I'm not embarrassed by the low numbers. I do think that having financial security is a positive thing for a relationship, but getting to that stage and not irrevocably harming the relationship is the balance most of us face.

What would really be interesting, is asking partners (and kids?) to read this article and our comments and getting them to leave their own comments from their perspective. Do they agree that strategy X or effort Y that person A says is working, really works for the person A's partner?