A society should always prioritize its weaker members. Children are among these. The flexibility given to the parents is not a gift to the parents, but to the children.
Regrettably, this focused flexibility has an unintended side effect. It makes people with children less desirable in the job market. If it is a universal right, then it has the effect of pulling those with kids into parity with the non parents.
We have a lot of things an employer has to afford to parents in Germany. The only significant discrimination is against women who might have children in the future and that's more to do with them not being able to work for a while.
And it's your choice, which is absolutely respectable. But refusing to support your society's children because you're childless is not better that being against DEI because you're white.
When it's possible to give the same flexibility to everybody, that should be done of course, but it's not always the case.
It’s not “society’s children” they’re refusing to support, it’s their shitty employer under capitalism. If we lived in a utopian society, you’d have a point. It’s not the employee’s role to sacrifice for some other person the employer is accommodating at your expense.
Capitalism is not an excuse not to stand in solidarity within the working class. And capitalism doesn't make society disappear, in spite of what they would want us to believe.
But we're not talking about whether or not childcare would be subsidised (it should) or education and healthcare be free (they should). We're talking about whether being flexible to work from home or have flex hours should be allowed. And they should. For everyone, regardless of parental status.
Yeah, anyone who has to take care of a sick family member should get to work from home that day, whether it's a child or an elderly grandparent. That's what the same flexibility means, not getting to work from home the same amount of days as a parent tit for tat.
It's not always possible. When it is, of course it should be for everyone; but children should have their parents with them when they're sick or when school is closed. And that often means that childless workers can't be on holiday at the same time.
When it’s possible to give the same flexibility to everybody, that should be done of course, but it’s not always the case.
That's the crux of the argument, and one that I, as a father, side with the childless people.
Yes, they should get the same flexibility afforded to parents. 1000% But the problem comes in here: "When it's possible..."
Ask yourself why that's not always the case. The answer, of course, is that payroll is treated by virtually every business owner on the planet as pretty much a min/max game. Minimum wage possible for maximum productivity/profitability. It's not even just limited to having proper staffing levels...I've worked at places that would fire people for not accepting a promotion due to being in their current position for "too long" and having accumulated annual raises to the point where they made a whole few dollars more per hour then their colleagues in the same position...it wasn't even enough that they'd been there for years and were twice as productive, they needed to climb the ladder so they would be an underpaid supervisor instead of an "overpaid" worker. That's all that mattered.
The question people should be asking is why something like a single coworker being out of the office unexpectedly has such a large impact to the rest of the group. Why they're running so close to the bone so fucking always that all it takes is one or two people to get the flu and the whole fucking office is suddenly falling behind. The only reason that happens is because their employer lives in complete mortal terror each and every single day that they may be paying someone a full time wage and only getting 80% productivity in return. They would rather have all their people work at 100% all of the time, and then when someone gets sick or god forbid breeds, have the rest of their employees just work at 120% to keep up. Because that is cheaper for them then having an extra body around and the whole office working at 80% when someone isn't out. They don't care about burnout, they don't care about work/life balance. They care about getting, at a minimum, 100% output from someone working 100% of the time...or rather, they will settle for 100%, but if you made it 110%, hey, here's a pizza party a few times a year, aren't I magnanimous?!
This is just one of the many methods the ownership class uses to divide us. They tell you that so and so went out on maternity leave and there's just nothing they can do, they just need everyone else to work harder to make up for it, as if the possibility of hiring another person so that you can be down someone and still cruise along without everyone busting their ass like lunatics trying to stay afloat never existed in the first place.
Don't be mad at the people with kids. Don't be mad at the people without kids. Be mad at your employer who just refuses to have more than the barest minimum payroll at all times so that people can't even get sick without feeling fucking guilty to their teammates as if it's their fault that their boss won't build in a buffer.
You're right about the description of the work organization. And now? We're fighting to change these things but in the meantime? Class solidarity is not just words: it's accepting to make sacrifices for others who need something more than me.
And even in a perfect world where the employers would willing to hire more people, or if the firms were socially owned, things wouldn't be perfect. Some jobs are in tension: not enough candidates. Some times a big part of the workforce, no just one coworker, want to leave at the same time. Epidemics will still occur. School holidays will still be at the same periods for everyone. Even in a socialist utopia, there would be schedule conflicts (far less than today, but still).
We should in this matter like in the others apply the old principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Parents will always have more needs than childless people, because they are themselves needed, and the mode of production will not change that.
(Of course, it also applies to people having a relative suffering from a chronic or debilitating illness.)
Some people dont have children, but look after grandparents, or a chronically ill or handicapped person, or they take on a lot of responsibilities in the community.
Its very rare and not normal for people not to be involved in their community.
In my experience, people taking care of a family member are given equal flexibility at work. It's not like Sandra gets to leave early cause her kid is sick, but Matt doesn't get to leave early when his wife has chemo.
Many who don't have children are among its "weaker" members. Flexibility and being treated well should be a cornerstone of society no matter if you have kids or not, especially now when the vast majority are having a hard enough time.
do you wanna go pick up janes feverish toddler from daycare today? shes gonna scream and cry and you arnt getting sleep, also, be on alret because the fever may not break tonight and you may have to call out tomorrow too.
I mean yeah, if I can get time off work with no consequences in order to take care of a sick kid in need, of course I am choosing that over fattening some investors' portfolios.
Idk what your job is, so maybe it is wildly taxing on the average afternoon, but taking care of a sick kid sucks. They're miserable so you're miserable and it also means you're either already sick or about to be sick yourself. You can't bring them to the park or the library or the store or out to eat because then you're damning other parents to the week you're having. If you're a good parent it's not just sitting the kid on the couch with the TV and some ginger ale. Maybe it gets to be that easy when your kid is like 10. I hope so.
I'd pick my old office job 10/10 times when they're sick, but it's also not zero consequences. It's either you're taking PTO hours or you're calling in favors, or you're taking an FMLA day which is unpaid (in my state at least) and it also makes your coworkers resent you, which is a very real consequence.
My six-year-old daughter has the flu today, and I was just saying I'd rather have the flu than take care of her. Not for any selfless reasons, but because trying to get her to take a single sip of water is more taxing than being sick myself would be.
Wouldn't this be the workers asking for an equal number of cookies regardless of if they have children? Sounds to me like saying everyone should get more flexibility.
"Employees without children deserve the exact same treatment and flexibility as those with children" sounds to me very much like its saying the flexibility should be for everyone.
And I think if childless people were saying my grandmother has a fever and her ALF won't keep her today because of it, they'd be allowed the exact same remote allowances that a parent in their office is afforded. But if a childless person wants the same number of hours regardless of why, that's not the same flexibility.
Thare are too many different forms of employment to list every possible situation, but a simple example is flexitime being available to everyone and not just parents.
Also if you don't currently have benefits like that would you expect to get them when you have kids? Not having them might impact planning choices.
If everyone has the same flexibility there will be conflucts and someone will have to sacrifice. Whos sacrifice is less affective those with kids or those without
People sometimes have to go without time off anyway, regardless of kids. If I book time off work to go away and its already approved, someone with kids doesn't get to take that time instead of me.
Plus my partner is a teacher so we are even more restricted to school term times than the kids are. At least some kids just go on holiday during term time anyway.
This thread is so fucking sad to read. All of you are workers squabbling over the basic dignity to have paid leave from work. You all sound like slaves, justifying your lashes. What if, and I know this is radical, we enabled all workers to have as much flexibility as possible over how they are productive with their labour?
Flexibility in all things regarding work. Workers are worth more than just the work they can do. The will of any company or government should not be considered until the worker is satisfied.
I have kids, worked full time as a parent for 25 years and no problem with this. Set the baseline flexibility and treatment good enough to accommodate parents. You don't need to take it from childless people to give it to parents. Not a zero sum game here.
What I do have a problem with is hostility towards parents, and hostility towards non-parents. We are all in this together, and it's not frivolous to raise the next generation, someone did that for you. Nor is it selfish to just live your own life - work should not demand our whole lives.
Now that my kids are grown, I still work at a flexible employer, and use that flexibility for doctors appointments, errands to places only open during working hours, and concerts & shows. Would I defer to someone with a child or aged parent with an emergency? Yes. Would I defer to someone with no kids whose partner was having an emergency? Yes.
what i have observed is that they don't ask or simply don't take as many breaks. but yeah, stepping outside for five minutes and taking deep breaths is a good idea for most, regardless of nicotine!
I once started sitting outside with the smokers whenever they took their collective break. I was told I had to stop doing that because I wasn't a smoker...
I was like... "Do I need to start smoking? Cause I can start smoking..."
Should be "as many minutes" rather than "as many breaks". If a smoker get five 10-minutes smoke breaks a day, I'd rather take two 25-minutes breaks and use them for long(ish) walks around the area to breath some fresh(ish) air.
NO! Non-smokers should take up smoking while the smokers quit. Then the new smokers take the smoke breaks and the new non-smokers can catch up on the work they missed.
I think this question pits parents and others against each other, when it shouldn't. Parental leave is necessary to raise a child. But at the same time, workers in general need leave for mental health among other things.
I also think this is more of a problem for places like America where leave is really, really unfairly distributed and there's basically no worker protections. There should be plenty of medical and annual leave, as well as government support in case medical leave isn't enough to get better.
It absolutely does. If you have 2 employees and 1 works from home due to kids. All of a sudden the other guy gets butt hurt cuz he wants to work from home now you have to accommodate the asshole that wants to work from home so he can sleep in.
Can you explain how allowing both employees to work remotely "means taking that flexibility from parents"?
Also, why do you characterize people who want to work remotely as assholes?
This reads like you have some kind of personal animosity you're expressing here rather than a considered opinion based in something legitimate.
How do you know the worthless parents aren't sleeping in? What's this assumption that suddenly they're responsible adults because they popped out a kid? That's not guaranteed, I'll tell you that.
I'd argue they're less responsible if they're popping kids out left and right without being prepared for it financially or thinking of the childrens' well-being. But, as it is.
Funny. I was thinking about how I'd like a dog but I know it would strain my finances and I don't have the space for it so I have employed this radical strategy called "not spending money I don't have."
We shouldn't be bringing unwanted people into the world.
I have 6 figures available to spend on credit cards right now, but that money isn't mine and I'd have to pay to borrow it which is COMPLETELY unsustainable as an ongoing cost to maintain a pet.
10 years ago, that would've been pretty dangerous.
Now I've got much more self control and foresight to understand what will happen if I carry balances.
A lot of parents in the comments here.
I do believe that there are some concessions that parents should receive, but there is a noticeable imbalance in the flexibility given to parents and non-parents.
I think that paid parental leave is something that parents should receive over non-parents without question. You are being given that time to recover and raise your infant. In my country, it is even paid by the government to the employer so that they can pay the employee.
The thing that irks me is when parents get priority for leave requests etc because of their kids. My wife and I have missed out on family holidays because our employers have told us that parents get priority for leave during school holidays. Ignoring the fact that our families are travelling in school holidays because there are children in our family.
I have been told by employers that I cannot start an hour early today (in a job that has no client facing role) in order to leave early for an appointment. Yet there are people sending the “out of office for an hour to pick up the kids” message every other day.
Best take in the thread. This is what people are missing. They're focused on things like children being sick and that it's no picnic. But if my coworker jets at 3 to ref his child's soccer game which he volunteers to do because he likes and wants to, and others are not able to take time like that, is that the same flexibility?
The leaving to pick up kids, "don't worry, I'll be back online after", and they vaporize...all too common as well. It's a daily thing where I work.
It’s unfortunate when they make it zero sum. But before we talk about all the flexibility parents have, keep in mind the flexibility they don’t have. They can’t decide what time their kids’ school gets out or takes holidays. We’d love to have that, among other reasons so that we could accommodate your preferences.
I think it would be ideal if everyone could be afforded the flexibility they need in their own lives for whatever they might wish to do, but I don't think this take is a very good one.
The reason parents are often given these benefits is because there is an understanding that there is a literal human being's life on the line, and that this person cares incredibly strongly about that child.
I might care a lot about an event I want to go to, but when it comes down to it, any boss would probably pick making sure a parent can pick their kid up from school over me being able to go a concert or something.
If everyone had a kid tomorrow, you'd probably see a lot of these benefits not be offered as freely, considering how businesses would simply just be understaffed to handle that much demand for flexibility, skipping certain hours, schedule changes, etc.
All that said though, there is still room for benefits and additional flexibility to be afforded to workers... if corporations are willing to spend extra money on more staff, better accommodations like not requiring in-office work when the work only requires being on a computer all day, stuff like that.
On the one hand you are absolutely correct about these accommodations being for the benefit of the children
On the other hand, if your employer is denying your reasonable request for PTO, or denying accommodations in an emergency unrelated to children, then your company is already understaffed.
Any employer that can't handle the sudden absence of an employee is failing at management and is not somewhere I would want to continue working. If your shift needs everyone to show up or things fall apart, run for the hills.
As a patent of a small child, without some benefits in the form of flexibility in hours (not in output) either I or my partner wouldn't be able to work without external help.
Those who can't afford the help sometimes have to "work for free" because some hours they work just go to somebody to be with their children.
The shitty part is that (anecdotically based on my experience) those who complaint about any benefit for patents are the same who consider selfish to not have children.
i’ve thought about this a few times since having a kid and it’s made me realise that the most important change is the confidence to say there is something that work must be flexible over.
for example, it is a dealbreaker to me that i must be able to drop and collect my child from school. so my manager and i have spoken about arrangements that allow that to happen.
but it’s that same kind of confidence that someone without kids could bring to the table and say that wednesday is guild night and they need to leave early for it. i mean it doesn’t sound “socially acceptable” but i think that if having kids or religious observances allows you to say “i need this flexibility” you should have the confidence to demand it.
and if your manager is someone who only respects religious or family demands id also condone saying it’s for religious observances and taking no further questions.
I think we all should get more guaranteed time off to just enjoy our one finite life.
I think if someone needs to come in late/leave early/go home unexpectedly we shouldn't have to justify it because we are adults (so long as we get our assigned tasks done WHO CARES). If we can't meet work goals I think we should (as again - fucking adults) have a conversation with our team/manager to handle it.
I think if we are sick we should be given time and space to recover. It's not our employer's business how, what, or why (that includes not requiring an employee to see a doctor or get a FUCKING DOCTORS NOTE). When it comes to sick time I don't care if someone is taking care of themselves, their sick child, their elderly parents, or their chihuahua with a broken leg, they shouldn't have to explain it, they shouldn't have to justify it, and it should be given identical time and grace.
I don't think that unmarried or childfree people should have to cover all the holidays because ThEY dON't HaVE fAMilY. That's cruel and untrue and heteronomative. And if you have ever said this to someone, stood by while someone else said this, or benefited from someone using this logic to make the same person/people work EVERY holiday please know I think you are a trash person.
I think management/the owners/corporate will give us all as little time as they can get away with and LOVES it when we segment ourselves into in- and out-groups that fight over off-time like it's a resource the workers control. We don't. Don't let them convince you we aren't all in this together and that we don't ALL deserve more free time.
Not quite the same formulation, but I've read the argument that paternal leave should be equal to maternal leave, and that both should be mandatory, because otherwise it creates an incentive for companies to hire men rather than women who might make use of maternity leave. I can see a similar argument for all workers, so that there isn't an incentive to hire people who will never have children over those who will.
Of course, all of these scenarios presume that any companies would willingly provide any leave whatsoever, which is already a fantasy. A company will only provide as many benefits as it is forced to, and a functioning regulatory state is the only entity that could force such compliance.
Genuine question here -- where and how are employees without children treated differently? In the US, besides parental leave at the birth of a child (which only some employers offer), are there employers that offer differing time off? I work in healthcare, and everywhere I've ever worked provides paid time off equally to everyone. The biggest difference is parents usually end up burning vacation days due to sick kids or school holidays
In my working experience it is the ultimate get out of work excuse. Few questions/resistance offered from managers who then make the other workers who don't have kids cover shifts, work late, do the crap jobs that nobody wants to do, etc
Can he say no? Another way to view this is that because y'all don't have kids he has an opportunity to make more money than all his coworkers who have kids, assuming he's choosing to do this work
I guess I've never had a job or been a manager who questioned someone for calling out sick. Doesn't matter why someone is calling out sick unless it becomes a pattern
parents are often afforded flexibility by their bosses that other don't receive, such as:
"sorry I was late, the school drop off line was slow" --> while their coworker who was equally late because traffic was just exceptionally bad because of a crash is given a write-up
"I won't be able to cover so and so's shift this weekend, my kid has a game" --> which leads to a coworker covering who also had plans, but the manager deems their plans less important and tells them they have to even though it's not their dpmt
I've seen both of these things play out exactly like that.
Of course childless people have needs too and deserve workplace flexibility. This post smacks of looking into your neighbor’s bowl though. If you don’t have all the additional obligations that come with parenting, don’t claim to be the same as those who do. Whatever life concerns you also have: your own health, aging parents, mental wellness, pets, etc etc etc parents ALSO have on top of kids. So get the workplace flexibility you need without crying about what parents get. If you know, you know. And if you don’t know, you really don’t know (but your mother does).
I’m so fucking sick of being looked at like a prodigal slob for being a parent. SMfH. Here we are taking swipes at each other instead of focusing on the employers. Good job playing right into their hands. Fuck.
If everyone had the flexibility for everything they need in life, people would still complain if parents get more because they need more.
If childless people aren’t getting the minimum they need for health and wellness and family care or whatever might be named, then go agitate for that. Leave parents out of it.
I don’t need the same accommodations as a worker in a wheelchair. I’m not running around saying everyone should get them.
Raising kids is literally essential work to support human civilization. People gripe about parental benefits but somehow still want children raised well to do all the jobs and create this world we live in.
Agree completely. Even better, that’s what my employer offers. Take time off when you need it. As long as your work is done there is no cap. Any job can be remote. All teams are distributed and international so there is really no set hours.
Nobody has anything against parents getting these benefits or is saying that they don't need them. What's the problem is that everyone should be getting them, parents or not.
I can agree with that as far as it goes. In some workplaces there can be zero sum cases where someone has to be on duty. If it comes to that someone who has a sick kid to look after should get the flexibility over the person who doesn’t. And hey if the parent’s kid is not sick, and the childless person’s grandmother is, then THEY should get the flexibility.
Just stop saying that you need all the same flexibility as parents. You don’t.
Yeah I just tune those people out. Advocating for a child free existence is all well and good, and believe me, there isnt a parent on this planet that hasn't had a split second thought about how much easier it was before they had kids at some point or another.
But when it crosses the line to militancy, sorry but people are gonna breed, and whether they think thats appropriate or not frankly isnt their concern and their opinion on that carries precisely as much weight with me as my opinion to have children likely has on them...literal none.
But whatever they do, dont call having kids some kind of path to fuckin easy street. If they think that is the case, I invite them to come over and take care of my kids for a couple days and see how much fun it is.
Yeah, the system over burdens everyone. Parents need to take their share of the burden. It's not fair to hand it off on their childless coworkers just because those people don't have kids to deal with. We chose to not have kids because we knew it would be a problem with the way things are. You fucked up. Deal with it yourself. We didn't forgo kids so we'd have more time to do your work.
I don’t know about this. At face value it seems like someone saying whaaa I want a day off too if my coworker has to take time off to take care of a sick kid or something. These are not the same thing.
If some other event like a school cancellation outside a parent’s control puts them in a bind it isn’t their fault.
Society has decided that parents should care for their kids, so people tend to bend in that direction. It will likely never be the same for a childless person. If someone needs time off, ask for it off, but they’ll always be up against that.
That all said, I agree with how shitty work culture is that people don’t have access to guaranteed, penalty-free PTO and instead argue over whether or not a parent should have time for a kid because of the inequality regarding the childless not having the “excuse” of kids.
All my sick time/pto was used for my kid. If I was sick, I went to work. I got pointed one time because I had a fever and no one wanted to work near me, my supervisor said I could go home, and then pointed me.
When my young son was, when his symptoms blew up, I had to take unpaid FMLA because I was getting called out of work so much. I almost got fired for it.
and I also agree with your last paragraph.
I do know, In retail, in my time, the (young) childfree usually had to work second or third shift, and the older and parents got first shift. I thought it unfair, until I got older. Senority plays a factor too though. so idk.
edit,
and the whole time I was dealing with the stuff before I got fmla, I remember co workers saying I was getting special treatment. I did not want to leave work, I didnt want to cry and stress over lost income, I wanted to stay and do my job.
I was so stressed out, having panic attacks, sometimes at work, def at home, and even somedays was suicidal. The loss of work, because PTO ran out quick, was loss of income. Daycare wants you to pay for your child's "spot". so you pay for them weather they are home sick or at daycare, except if im home, Im not making money. I was worried every day about making rent, having food, and my little monster of a child having trouble. I wanted to kms I was so stressed out, and coworkers were talking behind my back how I was getting special treatment. I didnt want special treatment, I wanted a healthy kid so I could work unbothered, and pay rent on time.
Yeah, this seems like a post from someone in the US, and I empathize. People with kids should get some extra leeway, but there are many other legitimate reasons someone should also get more breaks/PTO like elder care, chronic illness, etc.
I do agree with this (and yes, in the US). I have yet to ever hear about a childless person complain about the "perks"of being a working parent when they need those perks for a different sick family member. It's only ever been because they think they should get equal priority for a music festival, or regular down time, or spending time with dogs or friends.
It's a bad take, because it's a false equivalency. In my (albeit limited) experience, if you're childless, but you ask for the same "perks" to also take care of a family member, you are afforded it.
Poverty is caused by greed and wealth hoarding, we should have good enough working conditions it wouldn't matter if you're a parent or not; 16 hour work weeks, universal housing, universal access to clean water and food, etc. without the constant distractions and division by a wealth class of leeches.
People should be accommodated by their workplace for their unique circumstances, even if others in that workplace don’t share those circumstances. This should not come at the expense of their coworkers. Accommodation can be fair without being strictly equal, but care needs to be taken or resentment will occur.
A lot of this could be solved if the standard business strategy about staffing wasn’t “cut payroll to the bone then hire back when things start to break down to maintain the absolute bare minimum at all times”
Agreed, all workers should have maximum flexibility to balance their lives. Why hurt productivity for the sake of a rigid schedule?
Its my contention that happy workers are more productive. Let every worker take the time they need to maintain their work/life balance, so long as the quality of their work is unaffected.
Extra time off isn't some kind of reward for having kids, it's to make having kids possible. We'll be old someday and we'll need those kids to support us. Give parents all the time off they want. Imagine the kind of guy who sees a new mom get time off work to take care of a literal shit machine and thinks "She's the one who decided to excrete a crotch goblin. I should get the same amount of time off work as she does so I can play more Elden Ring." Then imagine how that guy smells.
Edit: Wayyy more rambly than I normally am, but I'm genuinely surprised how coherent I was writing this haha
I agree with you, but I'd also say that work should just be more lenient and flexible in general, regardless of if a person is a parent. I believe one of the reasons we're seeing less people have kids in the last two generations is because they have less time and ability to take care of themselves, date and find partners, and such little free time outside of their soul crushing underpaid existence that when the idea of having kids at all comes up it becomes an extremely daunting and undesirable prospect to sacrifice the tiny amount of time they have for themselves to a kid that doesn't exist yet. I'm speaking to a US experience, so mileage may vary outside the shit show that is my country, but it very much so feels like here that if you have a moment of free time that isn't in service of a corporate overlord then you are a lazy good for nothing piece of useless crap, and you should just figure out how to schedule your doctor's appointments during your time off, even if that means that doctors just aren't open when you're not at work.
All that said, I don't actually believe parents get that much more leeway from their employers than nonparents do. It's just that parents say "I have to do x because I have a child" when requesting time off, and nonparents say "can I have this time off work because if x".
Parents tell their employers "I have to have this time off. I will not be here after 3pm on Tuesday" and nonparents tend to phrase as a request because that's how we're taught to ask for time off. In my anecdotal experience, anyway. My brother was the first person to point out to me the difference in phrasing, and since then, basically my entire working life, whenever I request time off I effectively approach it as telling them I just won't be here. Out of my hands. And fuck, it works. Employers find all kinds of ways to handle that, and that's normally by denying the requests made by people who phrase it as "pretty pretty please can I have a personal life for just a few hours in the 7th of March 2032?"
We need more militantly angry employees lol
Was about to hit submit when I saw how long this comment is, and realized I don't remember most of what I wrote. I'm recovering from a seizure I had a few hours ago (first one! Yay! Let's hope no more), and I'm too tired to reread it. Gonna leave it up for posterity to read tomorrow when I'm feeling better lol
I fully agree that we all need more time off. The average person is like a hundred times more productive than they were a hundred years ago, so we should be living like the damn Jetsons at this point. That said, I'll continue to think parents should get more leeway than non-parents even if we all had more than enough personal time off, for the simple reason that parents aren't taking personal time when they have to care for their children. If your kid has a doctor's appointment, then you aren't taking off work, you're working a different job. We all need more time off, and the extra time parents get away from their primary job isn't really time off.
And yeah, telling rather than asking makes a lot of sense. Takes more effort to deny a statement of fact than a request. "I'm going to be out of town from May 4th–6th" is a lot harder to say no to than "can I take off May 4th–6th?" That question mark basically invites a denial
Congrats on your first seizure! Don't have a second one!
And yeah, what I wrote wasn't articulated as well as it should have been given my state. But I agree. The labor of raising the next generation of humans is labor. Mostly unpaid, unappreciated labor. You should get more leeway for that. Like, constitutionally. Pay them folk. The point I was making wasn't supposed to be that parents do or do not get more leniency, I mainly was just loopy from the lightning in my skull and was rambly about how the way we treat labor in general fucking sucks and that being more firm when you tell an employer that they don't get to decide when you're available is damn near a life hack at this point
I believe the opposite, but for similar reasons. 🤪
When are young people supposed to socialize, get married, and have kids, if they're working all the time? The guy playing Elden Ring is absolutely exhausted and is spending what little time he does have to recharge his batteries. It's a symptom of his needs not being met.
Are there some people who will just play more? Sure. But we can't reasonably extrapolate that a completely burned-out person will stay that way with sufficient time for self care and relationships.
Easy.
Companies themselves should not care about the employees families. They have no benefit from a person having children.
Governments should very much care about people having children. All benefits - if any, should be decided on the goverment level. And companies will have to adhere to the law.
Firms chase their own benefits.
The goverment (should) work for the benefit (and future) of all citizens.
No because they have different needs. Society should focus on providing people based on their needs, not how much they produce. Only a slave bases his worth on his productivity.
ITT: people pretending others "cheese" some unfair advantages by having kids when having kids is almost always a net negative in terms of time, money, career opportunities and so much more.
People who choose not to have kids do so for a reason, don't pretend these factors don't exist for parents. As a society we need a next generation, how would you ever retire otherwise? Because of this we should support parents, not envy them for whatever small benefits they get to slightly offset all the disadvantages and are often absolutely necessary to allow them to raise kids.
The only thing my heart can count as net negative is sleep time. It is completely fuked. Btw do not expect colleagues to help you. Do not expect your parents to help you. Everyone has their own life
Almost always a negative but people still do it though, that tells me whatever is the disadvantage, it’s still worth it in the end. So all in all advantages outweighs disadvantages. People have different capacities for suffering, just because they don’t have kids doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from some extra time off from work stress. Parents can give their non-parent coworkers some time off when they do come to work on time and don’t have to leave early as a thank you.
Net negative... You either don't have a kid or had it unplanned. It is hard but no way it is net negative if you knew beforehand and made a responsible decision
Post says about regular people complaining about getting less perks vs ppl with kids. Thats fair because you as a responsible adult made a decision to make a kid, spend less time with friends, doing hobbies, much less sleep and more expenses in household. But do not get spoiled and expect others to owe you, even your parents, they have their own life, they also get tired, and then people have the audacity to expect random colleagues to help.
That is the main theme, then the comment is kid is net negative. Net is not defined and can include many things and people immidiately jump into assumption that it is mother related topic both comment and post. Devalue what father brings onto the plate. So overall, not defining what is net, bringing misandry into the theme.
Then other comment brings motherhood penalty which is related strictly to career (are we seriously considering whole life which is Net only to be career?) and keep in mind that it is not global thing, maybe in your homeland but where I live mothers get support from gov which is ofcourse less than job paycheck but still not bad. They also can keep the job and being motivated climb the career ladder faster that is my observation.
If you brought the topic of career stagnation of mothers then there is a term called fatherhood bonus which helps to negate the overall effect of motherhood penalty. And father brings money home, usually fathers pay their wifes so called wife salary leaving themselves with less disposable income.
In conclusion, lets get back to main topic. People, not only mothers, can ask for paid dayoffs for example but that should be available for kidless people too, to not discriminate other employees. Some perks related to having newborn should be written in law, in that way workers wont feel unfairness. I hope that makes sense to you and other commenters
People saying that kids are important to society so we should allow parents extra flexibility, it rests on the assumption that what non parents would be doing with that flexible is less important to society. What if I'm giving blood, or helping an elderly parent, or volunteering at a homeless shelter? It's hardly the employers role to judge pass judgement on what is a worthwhile use of time.
Ok, but since you didn't know that means you didn't do it before you retired.
Also why does it bother you that someone might get some help for caring for people? Also the example that you gave about elderly parents would be treated the same way.
The reason employers do this is because they rather give that time to the employee rather than have them quit, because any normal person will put family first.
I did do it before I retired. But not as much. I knew that my employers allowed it, but I also knew it wasn't universal.
It doesn't bother me that someone might get help for caring for people. I'm just saying giving flexibility to parents and not to non-parents assumes only parents are helping people with that time.
Weird that you think parents exclusively parent? Parents parent, and then we also give blood, help elderly parents and grandparents, and volunteer.
The flexibility you want to give blood should be given to parents, as well. And then if your elderly parent's ALF calls saying your mom has a fever and they won't let her stay there until it's cleared up, you should be given the flexibility to leave work same as a parent.
The flexibility afforded parents to prioritize when their kids are sick and it's illegal to leave them home alone is not the equivalent to volunteering.
I think you're fighting a straw man there. I'm saying people should be all allowed flexibility at work, and that parents should get special flexibility. As we can't judge if what someone does with their flexibility is good for society just based on if they're parents or not.
As a haver of kids: Sure, why not? I'll take some smoke breaks as a non-smoker, too. I'm saying this unironically or whatever by the way, that second part isn't supposed to be a gotcha or anything. I'm also a worker in the US so I'm biased, used to workplaces that go the extra mile to try and squeeze every ounce of both productivity and humanity out of you. Give everyone all the flexibilities!
I agree in principle, and do sometimes get mildly annoyed having to cover for people because they are out due to parental obligations, but overall I really don't mind or care that much. I've had to do it a number of times now and sometimes it can be very stressful but that's why I get paid. Being a parent sucks so I feel bad for them having to put up with all the bullshit, it's not like they are off having fun when they can't be at work because their kid is shitting uncontrollably with a high fever or whatever nightmare is going on. Not having kids is great, the occasional extra work or responsibilities that comes with being more reliable than coworkers with kids is the tiniest of tradeoffs for me. Maybe it helps that I like my coworkers and am happy they get to be responsible parents.
Additionally, if your boss or someone higher up is out on extended parental leave it can be beneficial to your career if you fill in for them and get some time working "above your station" because your org gets forced into it. I know it was for me early in my career.
But, also, society in general and employers in specific should strive to provide a level of flexibility to all employees where all of them find joy in their lives.
I hate to be the person thats is all like "as a parent...", however - to me having to leave early, come in late or take a day off to deal with kids being sick, appointments or just daycare/school drop off/pickup is worse.
The premise of this feels like "smokers get a break so why shouldnt we?". But realistically my work is still there, i am stressed about the thing i havent done that should/needed to be done that day, the amount of work i now have to catch up on and the extra stress of trying to get the 'non-work' things done as quickly as possible so i can be back at work to get through my workload.
And ontop of that, you likely had to cut your work time short because your kid is sick or hurt and you are also stressed about that, its not like you jump in your car and start whistling to the radio heading home early.
So yes, i think a non-parent should have just as much flexibility as a parent, but thats a conversation to have with your boss and not some guilt you try saddle on parents when they cant be at their workplace for their full X-hours per day. I would never make a coworker feel guilty because they left half an hour early a couple days per week to go like practice for their sport or hobby or something, so afford the same respect for someone who has 'child commitments' instead of your 'leisure commitments' because they arent the ones saying you cant take time off too.
Mostly I agree. I have no kids and won't (vasectomy), and I'm a bit on the antinatalist side. Not so far in that I think people should never have kids. But reproducing at the rate we do is unsustainable and thus unethical. So there's a bias there.
I do think maternity and paternity leave should be given. And some grace should be allowed for small things. Like having to come in a little late or leave a little early for having to pick up/drop off kids, that kind of thing. To a point. If it's causing more than a minor burden to coworkers, then that's a problem.
But getting preference in scheduling, time off, etc? I don't agree with that. I shouldn't get the short end of the stick because they have a kid.
Edit: In reading some of the other comments, I saw a common sentiment which I'll sum up as "don't blame the parent, blame the system" which I can agree with.
I also had a "chose to breed" line in my last paragraph. I softened the language there, because it's not always a choice.
I don't think this is controversial. It's all about the ratios. And this says a lot about your work condition.
I got 27 days off annually. Before my child was born I had 26. It's not a game changer... If all my childless coworkers got an extra day off I probably wouldn't even notice.
So sure thay should have it, whatever. You Americans can argue about the weirdest things sometimes.
it isnt weird when most workers here dont get sick leave, let alone vacation time. Europeans are straight up ignorant when it comes to the US but they sure do like to spread their opinions.
edit: holy shit, thank you all for proving my point. of COURSE we want better conditions. europeans are too ignorant to understand why we cant "just change things then." and they dont want to listen to the reasons why. we are glorified slaves here and whenever we bring it up, all we get is abuse from people who will never comprehend our system or why we havent waved our magic wands over the situation.
No it is definitely weird when anyone wouldn't be able to get sick days. Every human gets sick. And bringing those germs to work spreads it even worse.
Sorry for expecting a first world country to act civilized.
i have a union and i still got in trouble for using too much of the sick leave i was lucky enough to have with this job. we are not a civilised country and its time people like you realised that and stop victim blaming. it isnt helpful at all
I'm sorry, I was kind of smug , you're right. Let me rephrase that. For me it is very strange that you are discussing, if needing time to take care of ones children is unfair to people who don't get this time off. It is a fair point, but it is such a nuance. I think it would not be an issue if most Americans would be able to spend some time on their self. But I'm not saying that our system is the ideal.
The long and short of it is, having children is not merely a personal benefit to the parent, it's a critical and necessary part of any functioning society. The proof is simply that you and everyone else owe your existence to your/their parents.
The burden of this task falls on the shoulders of parents. It's about as much work as a full time job.
Think of it as paying it forward for your parents and your own childhood. Maybe put aside the individualism that is rotting modern society from the inside out.
As much as a full time job? There are 168 hours in a week. Work is only 40. For many years, not even the night is your own. You are on call 24x7. Imagine a tech office asking a team of two to cover a 24x7 oncall rotation for for not 1, but 2 major applications that could crash at anytime, and do so often one way or another. Then ask them to spend 40 hours a week on a 2nd job.
The reality is that we as a society (in the US at least) do children a disservice. Each one is different. They learn differently, they feel differently, their needs are different. And we hand the controls over to two people with no experience, and hardly any sleep to make some of the most important decisions in a childs life.
Parents should have more support from trained professionals. That in turn would allow them to be more effective at work. Even couple where one parents stays home with the kids needs help. Often an outside perspective can spot things the people who are there all the time miss.
This is an argument for equality based on an individuals rights. A more robust argument for equality is Peter Singer's equal consideration of interests.
Jeremy Bentham argued that a being's capacity to suffer is what is morally relevant when considering their interests, not their capacity for reason. Equal considwration of interests - Wikipedia
For example: In a situation where an equal sum of time is given to everyone without considering the individual's interests, and those of people that rely on said person (eg, children, disabled, elderly), we would have increased neglect and less efficient systems of division of labour. Thereby negatively effecting the society as a whole and in time that individual who had an increased time allotted who doesn't necessarily have a need for it.
Its like the arguments for defunding government services, often that leads to a less safe society costing the wealthy in extra security who often are the key proponents of defunding government services.
The argument is highly related to Karl Marx's, "From each accoding to his ability, to each according to his needs." Maybe less prescriptive than Marx's argument.
Those who take the responsibility of caring for society's newest members should be given more leeway/support in many areas, not just employment. I don't have kids (yet, God willing), I'm just not unempathetic/extremely self-centered/nihilistic. We do live in a society, after all.
Everyone should have the freedom to take care of their lives when they need to.
This includes being paid a salary that doesn't keep you on the edge of poverty and ruin.
This should be the lowest bar legally. The fact that minimum wage isn't tied to inflation was inconvenient decades ago, now it is actively harming everyone in the US.
There are more labor protections that we need (see: EU countries with functioning democracies) but pay and leave minimums are the most impactful to the most people's quality of life.
This question is what you ask when you want to get your employees fighting against each other and not against the boss who is stealing all of their money.
The first step would be to fix wage theft and then the second step might be to get rid of the ultra rich, or maybe those could be done in the reverse order. At some point long after those things are accomplished we could talk about how people get jealous when they see someone else who apparently gets privileges that they wish they had. And sometimes there are small changes that can be made that will alleviate those situations.
Same treatment - yes. Same flexibility? No. Children do tend to provide legitimate emergencies from time to time.
I'm not saying a non-parent should have their months-ahead approved PTO cancelled because a parent suddenly decides they want to take their kid to some event on that same day. But if a parent needs to leave early because they got a phone call that their kid got wounded at school - that should be arranged even when non-parents are not offered flexibility of the same level.
Child emergencies, family emergencies, pet emergencies, personal medical emergencies, household emergencies... I mean, yeah, if shit is happening at home, everyone should have the right to go take care of it, child-related or not. If I were a boss, and someone said, "I need to go home, it's urgent," I'd shoo them out the door and reassign their task no matter what the nature of the emergency was.
Unless they 'urgently' need to stand in line to buy a video game. That isn't an emergency.
I’m all for it, but at the end of the day, humanity needs to reproduce. So if there was only room for flexibility for the parents then that’s what makes sense to put first.
In my country, a parent must be at home when their children arrive home. If both parents work, that means one has to come to an arrangement with their workplace to be home at 3.
If a non-parent has an important reason to be home at 3, they should also be allowed to leave early, but preventing kids from electrocuting themselves is a pretty important reason.
Once you make the workplace adjustments and accommodations for parents, there's no good reason not to do the same for everyone. It's like cutting curbs or making wide doors for wheelchair access. Once you've convinced the company to do it for new premeses, why would they ever decide to make some without that access? Shits and giggles?
If you're talking about mat/pat leave then that's a separate thing (which everyone should definitely get)
I am one of 2 people in my department and we service the entire continent. He has been on paternity leave THREE TIMES in the years i've been here and each time he gets 5 weeks off.
I swear every time he takes off, it's a busy part of the year and i'm absolutely slammed doing everything by myself and customers don't understand.
Then he also gets like 4 weeks of vacation, so it feels really unfair for me with my dog and no kids. But then again, i hate kids and want nothing to do with them, so i guess he needs those 5 weeks.
Dude seriously. I had a whopping two weeks off for my paternity leave and people were seriously acting like Id just come back from holiday.
The first week I literally lived at the hospital (major complications with the delivery). The second week I was home with the infant alone as my wife wasnt released yet. What vacation? I slept like 24 hours total in two weeks time.
No? Definitely no. First of all child leave for extended times should be mandatory to provide. Also the flexibility that people with children are for the child.
Ideally with should always be flexible. However if it's not there should be a good reason for exceptions and having to care for a young child is often a good reason in my opinion.
I believe people without children can have good reasons as well and some people with children need less flexibility.
E.g. a single parent usually struggles more than one with a partner stays home to focus on the children or one who lives in the same house as the grandparents.
If you're speaking about vacations it's usually due to fixed school vacations so if the person with a child wants to be able e.g. wants to travel with their family they have to do it during the official school vacations.
At least here school is mandatory otherwise and not sending your child to school is a crime.
people with children dont get flexibility in alot of jobs either. depending on which job, most jobs have an "approval system, and in advance" when you can use PTO/vacation time, and they can be nitpicky if they want to change hours or schedules. Also i notice they start 'targeting you" if even ask them to do it.
I think this shows up in various ways. Watching a salaried worker come in late, stay home cause kids are sick, take off early because kids have dental appt, etc versus watching the low paid hourly worker under them go without pay to take care of all the same things because they aren't salaried, have no wfh ability, and are out of leave from using it so often sucks.
As a parent, I am given the same exact treatment as I was at the same company before. I already was a flex worker in the sense of WFH or office is entirely up to me (except when I need to be somewhere, but the need is the key), if I take my child to a doctors appointment, I am using my sick time which is allocated to all employees equally. My insurance is arguably a "better deal" since the "family plan" cost doesn't change when you add another dependent vs if it's just you and your spouse.
I would ask what these people think when they get "extra flexibility" when they have an aging parent or sick spouse they are responsible or assisting the care of? Is that flexibility okay, simply because having a child is a choice, and having a parent is not? Then what about your spouse?
I agree with others in this thread that are suggesting these people don't really care about flexibility, they just want to take it away from the parents that use it or need it.
On one side people shouldn't get special treatment for things of their chosing - that's just the Principle of fairness of treatment.
Nowadays in modern countries with easy access to modern contraception, having kids is a choice.
However given how for example in America there is a crack down on abortion, things are going backwards in this and having kids isn't always a choice anymore, in which case it's actually fair to more easilly accomodate people who have kids more than people who don't.
On the other side if a country wants to incentivise people to have children in order to, at minimum, avoid a fall in that country's population, it makes sense to do things to make life easier for people when they have children such as providing free childcare.
What extra flexibility do parents have? Are we talking about doctor and school appointments? I don't have kids and I'm allowed to go to a doctor during work hours. I'm also allowed medical leave to care for family members. I can come up with any excuse to leave work for couple of hours as long as I make up for it later. If I work less, I'm unreliable and it happens regularly I will eventually get fired, same as someone with children.
I see it this way: my boss has no right asking me if I have children or not and I have no obligation to tell the truth when asked. Its a non issue if you ask me.
Parents get to pay less taxes here, so their net pay is higher. I'm OK with that.
Sorry I should clarify, where did you get the idea that they're advocating for taking away flexibility, and them not wanting others to have flexibility.
If we're looking at existing staffing levels, then sure, giving some people flexibility would come at the cost of other people's flexibility. But that premise is exactly the problem here — it's fucked up that when people who aren't parents are in need of flexibility, their employers often say that it's not possible because staffing levels are too low. But this is a problem that arises because employers are cheapskates.
A possible option working within existing systems would be:
Parental leave: you get pop sustain rate (2.1?) parental leaves banked. You use 1 leave for every child you have and bank is allowed negative with no penalty. At 45 or so you get to use your bank without being a parent.
Something like 95% of people become parents.
Flex time/time-bank + home/hybrid office fix most other issues in office jobs.
Not exactly, you don't deserve to get dick days for your child being sick if you have no child.
Also you deserve additional leneancy when your child is sick. Cannot plan for that. They just do that and need more supervision than your sick partner.
Most things that reduce non parent's ability to work can happen to parents equally.
Vacation does in fact suck though. A lack of child shouldn't make it harder for you to take a vacation. But your employer also must enable parents to take time off when their kids need supervision, so that sounds like a staffing issue.
This seems like a bad faith take. If you have dependents — and I would include animals — then you have obligations to them. Employers tend to have carveouts for those obligations because they are universal to all humans.
Needing to care for a sick dependent is not the same as your middle-of-the-day champagne-and-pilates class, Sharon.
I think people fail to understand what it means to work in America. Y’all Europeans really have no clue how bad we have it. If your job is accommodating you because you have kids and someone else complains, your company doesn’t accommodate both. They cancel your accommodation because of “fairness”. There is no ADA accommodation for kids.
The fact they agreed to it in the first place is a miracle. So yes people with no kids need to stfu. You already winning by keeping your money and more free time. Let parents have this one thing.
I pay $3-4k more in taxes when I file with my wife. I get $2k per kid as a deduction. Married costs me. I get a little back for kids. But $2k is one month of daycare per child.
So... No. No special treatment. I don't get more sick days when my kids are sick. I don't get less work because I have children. I don't get easier projects because I'm a father. Whatever special treatment you think we parents are getting is delusional.
The children that these parents are taking care of, will probably grow up and work. Their work will allow our retirement. People without children just don't provide the same utility to the society.
We need "young people" and if we are unwilling to invest in that, we won't have them. And then we all moan about lack of social safe nets and pension safety.
Billionaires are the problem and we need children for e.g. pensions.
The labour needs to be done.
People without children aren't the problem, or the enemy. But they can't expect the same treatment as people with children. As people with children provide more to society.
You aren't listening. The labour needs to be done. Who cares about money? When you are 80 yrs old, who will be your doctor? Who will work the fields for your food? Who will provide you any services? Any products? Anything?
You will need young people and they don't come from nowhere.
Agree, the children's utility to society isn't about money. It's about having doctors and firemen and farmers and artists. Idc how much money you have, if the next generation is smaller, who will be the CNAs in the retirement home where the childless (and others) are spending their pensions?
I totally agree! If you can't put out a house fire yourself, you shouldn't have a house! Relying on strangers (the fire dept) to sacrifice their lives is so selfish.
Or
If I have to cover for your dialysis, don't have kidneys! Or don't have a job! Figure out your work life balance! It's not fair that I have to work hours I agreed to separate from your situation when you're not also working!
The parent is not asking for your sacrifice. If they were, you'd be able to say no as you choose. It's your boss telling you your hours. If you don't like your hours, negotiate.
Or, since it's all so easy and binary to you, if this bothers you, just move work places to an office where hours are set. Just get a job where coworker coverage is set in stone in your contract. Certainly that's as easy a life decision as whether or not to have children.
Yes, explain why should your coworkers suffer for your inability to manage your life? You can bitch about the situation being a result of capitalism and you're not wrong, but the reality is at the ground level, when someone has to leave early or call off all the time it's their fellow coworkers that are getting fucked with more work.
It is supporting capitalism to say you should give up on having offspring to make sure that you can be a good little worker that supports your co-workers. Capitalism is a construct of man. Having offspring is literally the entire purpose of our species. Which one should take precedence?
I mean the selfish carelessness of progressives today is really astonishing.
If your job sucks so bad because you have to make the most minor accommodations for your co-workers families, then just quit your job. Like, you have no responsibilities and nothing holding you back. What's your problem?
A society should always prioritize its weaker members. Children are among these. The flexibility given to the parents is not a gift to the parents, but to the children.
Regrettably, this focused flexibility has an unintended side effect. It makes people with children less desirable in the job market. If it is a universal right, then it has the effect of pulling those with kids into parity with the non parents.
We have a lot of things an employer has to afford to parents in Germany. The only significant discrimination is against women who might have children in the future and that's more to do with them not being able to work for a while.
This is why not only should fathers get the same amount of time off as mother's, but they should be required to take it.
From each according to there ability, To each according to there need.
People with children need more from society, as long as those people are also contributing as much as they are able, they deserve to have that need me
Why not both? I chose not to have kids because I think this world is idiotic and don't want more unnecessary suffering.
And it's your choice, which is absolutely respectable. But refusing to support your society's children because you're childless is not better that being against DEI because you're white.
When it's possible to give the same flexibility to everybody, that should be done of course, but it's not always the case.
It’s not “society’s children” they’re refusing to support, it’s their shitty employer under capitalism. If we lived in a utopian society, you’d have a point. It’s not the employee’s role to sacrifice for some other person the employer is accommodating at your expense.
Capitalism is not an excuse not to stand in solidarity within the working class. And capitalism doesn't make society disappear, in spite of what they would want us to believe.
But we're not talking about whether or not childcare would be subsidised (it should) or education and healthcare be free (they should). We're talking about whether being flexible to work from home or have flex hours should be allowed. And they should. For everyone, regardless of parental status.
Yeah, anyone who has to take care of a sick family member should get to work from home that day, whether it's a child or an elderly grandparent. That's what the same flexibility means, not getting to work from home the same amount of days as a parent tit for tat.
It's not always possible. When it is, of course it should be for everyone; but children should have their parents with them when they're sick or when school is closed. And that often means that childless workers can't be on holiday at the same time.
That's exactly what this debate was about, you're agreeing now.
The post says "flexibility".
If the ability to shift hours or wfh is provided to those with children, it should be provided to everyone.
Sure, comment op chose to not have kids, but parents also chose to have kids (or chose to not practice safe sex).
That's the crux of the argument, and one that I, as a father, side with the childless people.
Yes, they should get the same flexibility afforded to parents. 1000% But the problem comes in here: "When it's possible..."
Ask yourself why that's not always the case. The answer, of course, is that payroll is treated by virtually every business owner on the planet as pretty much a min/max game. Minimum wage possible for maximum productivity/profitability. It's not even just limited to having proper staffing levels...I've worked at places that would fire people for not accepting a promotion due to being in their current position for "too long" and having accumulated annual raises to the point where they made a whole few dollars more per hour then their colleagues in the same position...it wasn't even enough that they'd been there for years and were twice as productive, they needed to climb the ladder so they would be an underpaid supervisor instead of an "overpaid" worker. That's all that mattered.
The question people should be asking is why something like a single coworker being out of the office unexpectedly has such a large impact to the rest of the group. Why they're running so close to the bone so fucking always that all it takes is one or two people to get the flu and the whole fucking office is suddenly falling behind. The only reason that happens is because their employer lives in complete mortal terror each and every single day that they may be paying someone a full time wage and only getting 80% productivity in return. They would rather have all their people work at 100% all of the time, and then when someone gets sick or god forbid breeds, have the rest of their employees just work at 120% to keep up. Because that is cheaper for them then having an extra body around and the whole office working at 80% when someone isn't out. They don't care about burnout, they don't care about work/life balance. They care about getting, at a minimum, 100% output from someone working 100% of the time...or rather, they will settle for 100%, but if you made it 110%, hey, here's a pizza party a few times a year, aren't I magnanimous?!
This is just one of the many methods the ownership class uses to divide us. They tell you that so and so went out on maternity leave and there's just nothing they can do, they just need everyone else to work harder to make up for it, as if the possibility of hiring another person so that you can be down someone and still cruise along without everyone busting their ass like lunatics trying to stay afloat never existed in the first place.
Don't be mad at the people with kids. Don't be mad at the people without kids. Be mad at your employer who just refuses to have more than the barest minimum payroll at all times so that people can't even get sick without feeling fucking guilty to their teammates as if it's their fault that their boss won't build in a buffer.
You're right about the description of the work organization. And now? We're fighting to change these things but in the meantime? Class solidarity is not just words: it's accepting to make sacrifices for others who need something more than me.
And even in a perfect world where the employers would willing to hire more people, or if the firms were socially owned, things wouldn't be perfect. Some jobs are in tension: not enough candidates. Some times a big part of the workforce, no just one coworker, want to leave at the same time. Epidemics will still occur. School holidays will still be at the same periods for everyone. Even in a socialist utopia, there would be schedule conflicts (far less than today, but still).
We should in this matter like in the others apply the old principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Parents will always have more needs than childless people, because they are themselves needed, and the mode of production will not change that.
(Of course, it also applies to people having a relative suffering from a chronic or debilitating illness.)
if you’re having kids, best account for the reality of them
your lack of planning isn’t my emergency
That's the selfishness that will kill us ull.
totally not selfish to keep picking options that make others carry you, nope not at all, it’s their fault for proper planning
besides I believe in social safety nets, just not in childcare being uniquely special
The entirety of society is others carrying others.
let me quit my job, i’ll send you a bill for my expenses
You neglect to consider adopting parents.
That’s it! I’m taking “smoke breaks” every hour for my health…
Some people dont have children, but look after grandparents, or a chronically ill or handicapped person, or they take on a lot of responsibilities in the community.
Its very rare and not normal for people not to be involved in their community.
In my experience, people taking care of a family member are given equal flexibility at work. It's not like Sandra gets to leave early cause her kid is sick, but Matt doesn't get to leave early when his wife has chemo.
Its not that way in law and social circles in many places in the world. This is why I like the use of dependant in law.
Good thing our benevolent overlords grant us such gracious “gifts” 👌🏼🍆
Gift may not be the right word, you're right; but English is not my mother tongue and I didn't find a better one.
No problem. Your English is fine. It’s the concept in general, regardless of what words we use.
Your phrasing was an excellent change of perspective.
A better word might be "privileges".
Many who don't have children are among its "weaker" members. Flexibility and being treated well should be a cornerstone of society no matter if you have kids or not, especially now when the vast majority are having a hard enough time.
do you wanna go pick up janes feverish toddler from daycare today? shes gonna scream and cry and you arnt getting sleep, also, be on alret because the fever may not break tonight and you may have to call out tomorrow too.
I mean yeah, if I can get time off work with no consequences in order to take care of a sick kid in need, of course I am choosing that over fattening some investors' portfolios.
Idk what your job is, so maybe it is wildly taxing on the average afternoon, but taking care of a sick kid sucks. They're miserable so you're miserable and it also means you're either already sick or about to be sick yourself. You can't bring them to the park or the library or the store or out to eat because then you're damning other parents to the week you're having. If you're a good parent it's not just sitting the kid on the couch with the TV and some ginger ale. Maybe it gets to be that easy when your kid is like 10. I hope so.
I'd pick my old office job 10/10 times when they're sick, but it's also not zero consequences. It's either you're taking PTO hours or you're calling in favors, or you're taking an FMLA day which is unpaid (in my state at least) and it also makes your coworkers resent you, which is a very real consequence.
My six-year-old daughter has the flu today, and I was just saying I'd rather have the flu than take care of her. Not for any selfless reasons, but because trying to get her to take a single sip of water is more taxing than being sick myself would be.
I felt the same.
there is consequences is what im sayin
Same energy
Wouldn't this be the workers asking for an equal number of cookies regardless of if they have children? Sounds to me like saying everyone should get more flexibility.
I read it more like immigrants being helped to integrate into the host country. Extra help is sometimes granted where it is necessary
This post is crying about parents getting extra flexibility instead of the actual issue of capitalists exploiting workers to the limit
"Employees without children deserve the exact same treatment and flexibility as those with children" sounds to me very much like its saying the flexibility should be for everyone.
And I think if childless people were saying my grandmother has a fever and her ALF won't keep her today because of it, they'd be allowed the exact same remote allowances that a parent in their office is afforded. But if a childless person wants the same number of hours regardless of why, that's not the same flexibility.
Thare are too many different forms of employment to list every possible situation, but a simple example is flexitime being available to everyone and not just parents.
Also if you don't currently have benefits like that would you expect to get them when you have kids? Not having them might impact planning choices.
Ask for what you need instead of what I have.
Everyone benefits from more flexibility
Not everyone has the same needs.
Yes, but it's important that the option is there for all. I want benefits for everyone even if I don't specifically need all of them.
You will need parental benefits if you become a parent. And magically, you will also qualify for them.
If everyone has the same flexibility there will be conflucts and someone will have to sacrifice. Whos sacrifice is less affective those with kids or those without
People sometimes have to go without time off anyway, regardless of kids. If I book time off work to go away and its already approved, someone with kids doesn't get to take that time instead of me.
Plus my partner is a teacher so we are even more restricted to school term times than the kids are. At least some kids just go on holiday during term time anyway.
This thread is so fucking sad to read. All of you are workers squabbling over the basic dignity to have paid leave from work. You all sound like slaves, justifying your lashes. What if, and I know this is radical, we enabled all workers to have as much flexibility as possible over how they are productive with their labour?
I'm not sure I understand your question: do you mean the flexibility to be proportional to productivity?
Nah. Over meaning greater than.
Flexibility in all things regarding work. Workers are worth more than just the work they can do. The will of any company or government should not be considered until the worker is satisfied.
Yes, fight among each other and leave us millionaire bosses alone 🤑
I have kids, worked full time as a parent for 25 years and no problem with this. Set the baseline flexibility and treatment good enough to accommodate parents. You don't need to take it from childless people to give it to parents. Not a zero sum game here.
What I do have a problem with is hostility towards parents, and hostility towards non-parents. We are all in this together, and it's not frivolous to raise the next generation, someone did that for you. Nor is it selfish to just live your own life - work should not demand our whole lives.
Now that my kids are grown, I still work at a flexible employer, and use that flexibility for doctors appointments, errands to places only open during working hours, and concerts & shows. Would I defer to someone with a child or aged parent with an emergency? Yes. Would I defer to someone with no kids whose partner was having an emergency? Yes.
Hot take, company executives should get as little flexibility as the employee at the company that’s awarded the least flexibility.
I find it so sad that your take shouldn't be a hot take.
And non-smokers should be given as many breaks as the smokers!
what i have observed is that they don't ask or simply don't take as many breaks. but yeah, stepping outside for five minutes and taking deep breaths is a good idea for most, regardless of nicotine!
I once started sitting outside with the smokers whenever they took their collective break. I was told I had to stop doing that because I wasn't a smoker...
I was like... "Do I need to start smoking? Cause I can start smoking..."
The boss didn't like that...
You were a smoker though. A passive one.
I smoke a special brand of invisible, pink cigarettes. They have a unicorn pattern on the wrappers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn
Should be "as many minutes" rather than "as many breaks". If a smoker get five 10-minutes smoke breaks a day, I'd rather take two 25-minutes breaks and use them for long(ish) walks around the area to breath some fresh(ish) air.
True!
Hot take: as a non-smoker, I regularly took "smoke breaks" anyway. Often, i was hanging out on the loading dock with the smokers.
Same. I used to tell people I second hand smoked.
NO! Non-smokers should take up smoking while the smokers quit. Then the new smokers take the smoke breaks and the new non-smokers can catch up on the work they missed.
I love these wholesome debates. Let's all hate on each other as we fight over scraps from the Master's table.
I think this question pits parents and others against each other, when it shouldn't. Parental leave is necessary to raise a child. But at the same time, workers in general need leave for mental health among other things.
I also think this is more of a problem for places like America where leave is really, really unfairly distributed and there's basically no worker protections. There should be plenty of medical and annual leave, as well as government support in case medical leave isn't enough to get better.
ITT: people thinking that offering everybody the same flexibility means taking that flexibility from parents
smfh
I mean with money time and resources being a zero-sum game it kind of is is it not?
Of course these corporations have more than enough resources, but do you think they're going to use them for the benefit of us hell no.
It absolutely does. If you have 2 employees and 1 works from home due to kids. All of a sudden the other guy gets butt hurt cuz he wants to work from home now you have to accommodate the asshole that wants to work from home so he can sleep in.
But that’s not taking anything from the one that has kids. They still get to work from home
Can you explain why the childless employee is an asshole in this scenario?
Because breeders feel entitled, and they resent anyone who has a better life than them because they didn't reproduce
why can't they both work from home if they both have the same position?
how does the other guy working from home nagatively affect the parent?
if your answer is "because then the parent has to go in", then they don't have the same position
either the position allows for wfh, or it doesn't.
That’s exactly what I’m telling you. You are under the impression that work is fair in the US. That is not the case. The position isn’t relevant.
you are under the impression everyone here is from the US
Can you explain how allowing both employees to work remotely "means taking that flexibility from parents"? Also, why do you characterize people who want to work remotely as assholes? This reads like you have some kind of personal animosity you're expressing here rather than a considered opinion based in something legitimate.
How do you know the worthless parents aren't sleeping in? What's this assumption that suddenly they're responsible adults because they popped out a kid? That's not guaranteed, I'll tell you that.
I'd argue they're less responsible if they're popping kids out left and right without being prepared for it financially or thinking of the childrens' well-being. But, as it is.
Funny. I was thinking about how I'd like a dog but I know it would strain my finances and I don't have the space for it so I have employed this radical strategy called "not spending money I don't have."
If more humans put that thought in before making other humans willy nilly, we would be in a utopia.
We shouldn't be bringing unwanted people into the world.
I have 6 figures available to spend on credit cards right now, but that money isn't mine and I'd have to pay to borrow it which is COMPLETELY unsustainable as an ongoing cost to maintain a pet. 10 years ago, that would've been pretty dangerous. Now I've got much more self control and foresight to understand what will happen if I carry balances.
A lot of parents in the comments here. I do believe that there are some concessions that parents should receive, but there is a noticeable imbalance in the flexibility given to parents and non-parents.
I think that paid parental leave is something that parents should receive over non-parents without question. You are being given that time to recover and raise your infant. In my country, it is even paid by the government to the employer so that they can pay the employee.
The thing that irks me is when parents get priority for leave requests etc because of their kids. My wife and I have missed out on family holidays because our employers have told us that parents get priority for leave during school holidays. Ignoring the fact that our families are travelling in school holidays because there are children in our family.
I have been told by employers that I cannot start an hour early today (in a job that has no client facing role) in order to leave early for an appointment. Yet there are people sending the “out of office for an hour to pick up the kids” message every other day.
You should bring that up. This doesn’t sound right.
It doesn’t even need to be about flexibility for parents – the way they deal with someone having an appointment is not acceptable.
Best take in the thread. This is what people are missing. They're focused on things like children being sick and that it's no picnic. But if my coworker jets at 3 to ref his child's soccer game which he volunteers to do because he likes and wants to, and others are not able to take time like that, is that the same flexibility?
The leaving to pick up kids, "don't worry, I'll be back online after", and they vaporize...all too common as well. It's a daily thing where I work.
Essentially, it is often abused.
It’s unfortunate when they make it zero sum. But before we talk about all the flexibility parents have, keep in mind the flexibility they don’t have. They can’t decide what time their kids’ school gets out or takes holidays. We’d love to have that, among other reasons so that we could accommodate your preferences.
I think it would be ideal if everyone could be afforded the flexibility they need in their own lives for whatever they might wish to do, but I don't think this take is a very good one.
The reason parents are often given these benefits is because there is an understanding that there is a literal human being's life on the line, and that this person cares incredibly strongly about that child.
I might care a lot about an event I want to go to, but when it comes down to it, any boss would probably pick making sure a parent can pick their kid up from school over me being able to go a concert or something.
If everyone had a kid tomorrow, you'd probably see a lot of these benefits not be offered as freely, considering how businesses would simply just be understaffed to handle that much demand for flexibility, skipping certain hours, schedule changes, etc.
All that said though, there is still room for benefits and additional flexibility to be afforded to workers... if corporations are willing to spend extra money on more staff, better accommodations like not requiring in-office work when the work only requires being on a computer all day, stuff like that.
On the one hand you are absolutely correct about these accommodations being for the benefit of the children
On the other hand, if your employer is denying your reasonable request for PTO, or denying accommodations in an emergency unrelated to children, then your company is already understaffed.
Any employer that can't handle the sudden absence of an employee is failing at management and is not somewhere I would want to continue working. If your shift needs everyone to show up or things fall apart, run for the hills.
As a patent of a small child, without some benefits in the form of flexibility in hours (not in output) either I or my partner wouldn't be able to work without external help.
Those who can't afford the help sometimes have to "work for free" because some hours they work just go to somebody to be with their children.
The shitty part is that (anecdotically based on my experience) those who complaint about any benefit for patents are the same who consider selfish to not have children.
Good take. I have just three things to add:
i’ve thought about this a few times since having a kid and it’s made me realise that the most important change is the confidence to say there is something that work must be flexible over.
for example, it is a dealbreaker to me that i must be able to drop and collect my child from school. so my manager and i have spoken about arrangements that allow that to happen.
but it’s that same kind of confidence that someone without kids could bring to the table and say that wednesday is guild night and they need to leave early for it. i mean it doesn’t sound “socially acceptable” but i think that if having kids or religious observances allows you to say “i need this flexibility” you should have the confidence to demand it.
and if your manager is someone who only respects religious or family demands id also condone saying it’s for religious observances and taking no further questions.
A 21 year old in my Art group has a hard line with her job that she doesnt work tuesday mornings because we have group.
and power to her for drawing her line.
I think we all should get more guaranteed time off to just enjoy our one finite life.
I think if someone needs to come in late/leave early/go home unexpectedly we shouldn't have to justify it because we are adults (so long as we get our assigned tasks done WHO CARES). If we can't meet work goals I think we should (as again - fucking adults) have a conversation with our team/manager to handle it.
I think if we are sick we should be given time and space to recover. It's not our employer's business how, what, or why (that includes not requiring an employee to see a doctor or get a FUCKING DOCTORS NOTE). When it comes to sick time I don't care if someone is taking care of themselves, their sick child, their elderly parents, or their chihuahua with a broken leg, they shouldn't have to explain it, they shouldn't have to justify it, and it should be given identical time and grace.
I don't think that unmarried or childfree people should have to cover all the holidays because ThEY dON't HaVE fAMilY. That's cruel and untrue and heteronomative. And if you have ever said this to someone, stood by while someone else said this, or benefited from someone using this logic to make the same person/people work EVERY holiday please know I think you are a trash person.
I think management/the owners/corporate will give us all as little time as they can get away with and LOVES it when we segment ourselves into in- and out-groups that fight over off-time like it's a resource the workers control. We don't. Don't let them convince you we aren't all in this together and that we don't ALL deserve more free time.
Controversial take: Pit the workers against each other while the boss takes even more time off.
Not quite the same formulation, but I've read the argument that paternal leave should be equal to maternal leave, and that both should be mandatory, because otherwise it creates an incentive for companies to hire men rather than women who might make use of maternity leave. I can see a similar argument for all workers, so that there isn't an incentive to hire people who will never have children over those who will.
Of course, all of these scenarios presume that any companies would willingly provide any leave whatsoever, which is already a fantasy. A company will only provide as many benefits as it is forced to, and a functioning regulatory state is the only entity that could force such compliance.
Genuine question here -- where and how are employees without children treated differently? In the US, besides parental leave at the birth of a child (which only some employers offer), are there employers that offer differing time off? I work in healthcare, and everywhere I've ever worked provides paid time off equally to everyone. The biggest difference is parents usually end up burning vacation days due to sick kids or school holidays
In my working experience it is the ultimate get out of work excuse. Few questions/resistance offered from managers who then make the other workers who don't have kids cover shifts, work late, do the crap jobs that nobody wants to do, etc
Has he ever tried setting boundaries around that? Is he getting compensated more for coming in on a weekend?
Guess it's time for you and he to have some kids! If you don't want to 'steal' pictures from facebook, there's always the new image generators.
Can he say no? Another way to view this is that because y'all don't have kids he has an opportunity to make more money than all his coworkers who have kids, assuming he's choosing to do this work
I guess I've never had a job or been a manager who questioned someone for calling out sick. Doesn't matter why someone is calling out sick unless it becomes a pattern
parents are often afforded flexibility by their bosses that other don't receive, such as:
"sorry I was late, the school drop off line was slow" --> while their coworker who was equally late because traffic was just exceptionally bad because of a crash is given a write-up
"I won't be able to cover so and so's shift this weekend, my kid has a game" --> which leads to a coworker covering who also had plans, but the manager deems their plans less important and tells them they have to even though it's not their dpmt
I've seen both of these things play out exactly like that.
And everyone should have a stable home, healthcare, good paying job, etc.
Of course childless people have needs too and deserve workplace flexibility. This post smacks of looking into your neighbor’s bowl though. If you don’t have all the additional obligations that come with parenting, don’t claim to be the same as those who do. Whatever life concerns you also have: your own health, aging parents, mental wellness, pets, etc etc etc parents ALSO have on top of kids. So get the workplace flexibility you need without crying about what parents get. If you know, you know. And if you don’t know, you really don’t know (but your mother does).
I’m so fucking sick of being looked at like a prodigal slob for being a parent. SMfH. Here we are taking swipes at each other instead of focusing on the employers. Good job playing right into their hands. Fuck.
If everyone had the flexibility for everything they need in life, people would still complain if parents get more because they need more.
If childless people aren’t getting the minimum they need for health and wellness and family care or whatever might be named, then go agitate for that. Leave parents out of it.
I don’t need the same accommodations as a worker in a wheelchair. I’m not running around saying everyone should get them.
Raising kids is literally essential work to support human civilization. People gripe about parental benefits but somehow still want children raised well to do all the jobs and create this world we live in.
Agree completely. Even better, that’s what my employer offers. Take time off when you need it. As long as your work is done there is no cap. Any job can be remote. All teams are distributed and international so there is really no set hours.
Nobody has anything against parents getting these benefits or is saying that they don't need them. What's the problem is that everyone should be getting them, parents or not.
I can agree with that as far as it goes. In some workplaces there can be zero sum cases where someone has to be on duty. If it comes to that someone who has a sick kid to look after should get the flexibility over the person who doesn’t. And hey if the parent’s kid is not sick, and the childless person’s grandmother is, then THEY should get the flexibility.
Just stop saying that you need all the same flexibility as parents. You don’t.
Yeah I just tune those people out. Advocating for a child free existence is all well and good, and believe me, there isnt a parent on this planet that hasn't had a split second thought about how much easier it was before they had kids at some point or another.
But when it crosses the line to militancy, sorry but people are gonna breed, and whether they think thats appropriate or not frankly isnt their concern and their opinion on that carries precisely as much weight with me as my opinion to have children likely has on them...literal none.
But whatever they do, dont call having kids some kind of path to fuckin easy street. If they think that is the case, I invite them to come over and take care of my kids for a couple days and see how much fun it is.
Yeah, the system over burdens everyone. Parents need to take their share of the burden. It's not fair to hand it off on their childless coworkers just because those people don't have kids to deal with. We chose to not have kids because we knew it would be a problem with the way things are. You fucked up. Deal with it yourself. We didn't forgo kids so we'd have more time to do your work.
I don’t know about this. At face value it seems like someone saying whaaa I want a day off too if my coworker has to take time off to take care of a sick kid or something. These are not the same thing.
If some other event like a school cancellation outside a parent’s control puts them in a bind it isn’t their fault.
Society has decided that parents should care for their kids, so people tend to bend in that direction. It will likely never be the same for a childless person. If someone needs time off, ask for it off, but they’ll always be up against that.
That all said, I agree with how shitty work culture is that people don’t have access to guaranteed, penalty-free PTO and instead argue over whether or not a parent should have time for a kid because of the inequality regarding the childless not having the “excuse” of kids.
All my sick time/pto was used for my kid. If I was sick, I went to work. I got pointed one time because I had a fever and no one wanted to work near me, my supervisor said I could go home, and then pointed me.
When my young son was, when his symptoms blew up, I had to take unpaid FMLA because I was getting called out of work so much. I almost got fired for it.
and I also agree with your last paragraph.
I do know, In retail, in my time, the (young) childfree usually had to work second or third shift, and the older and parents got first shift. I thought it unfair, until I got older. Senority plays a factor too though. so idk.
edit,
and the whole time I was dealing with the stuff before I got fmla, I remember co workers saying I was getting special treatment. I did not want to leave work, I didnt want to cry and stress over lost income, I wanted to stay and do my job.
I was so stressed out, having panic attacks, sometimes at work, def at home, and even somedays was suicidal. The loss of work, because PTO ran out quick, was loss of income. Daycare wants you to pay for your child's "spot". so you pay for them weather they are home sick or at daycare, except if im home, Im not making money. I was worried every day about making rent, having food, and my little monster of a child having trouble. I wanted to kms I was so stressed out, and coworkers were talking behind my back how I was getting special treatment. I didnt want special treatment, I wanted a healthy kid so I could work unbothered, and pay rent on time.
what does "pointed" mean?
Penalty for unapproved absence from work. After so many points you get reprimanded/fired.
Yeah, this seems like a post from someone in the US, and I empathize. People with kids should get some extra leeway, but there are many other legitimate reasons someone should also get more breaks/PTO like elder care, chronic illness, etc.
I do agree with this (and yes, in the US). I have yet to ever hear about a childless person complain about the "perks"of being a working parent when they need those perks for a different sick family member. It's only ever been because they think they should get equal priority for a music festival, or regular down time, or spending time with dogs or friends.
It's a bad take, because it's a false equivalency. In my (albeit limited) experience, if you're childless, but you ask for the same "perks" to also take care of a family member, you are afforded it.
Yes. But blame the bosses, don't blame parents.
Poverty is caused by greed and wealth hoarding, we should have good enough working conditions it wouldn't matter if you're a parent or not; 16 hour work weeks, universal housing, universal access to clean water and food, etc. without the constant distractions and division by a wealth class of leeches.
People should be accommodated by their workplace for their unique circumstances, even if others in that workplace don’t share those circumstances. This should not come at the expense of their coworkers. Accommodation can be fair without being strictly equal, but care needs to be taken or resentment will occur.
A lot of this could be solved if the standard business strategy about staffing wasn’t “cut payroll to the bone then hire back when things start to break down to maintain the absolute bare minimum at all times”
Agreed, all workers should have maximum flexibility to balance their lives. Why hurt productivity for the sake of a rigid schedule?
Its my contention that happy workers are more productive. Let every worker take the time they need to maintain their work/life balance, so long as the quality of their work is unaffected.
Check out the crabs in the bucket.
Extra time off isn't some kind of reward for having kids, it's to make having kids possible. We'll be old someday and we'll need those kids to support us. Give parents all the time off they want. Imagine the kind of guy who sees a new mom get time off work to take care of a literal shit machine and thinks "She's the one who decided to excrete a crotch goblin. I should get the same amount of time off work as she does so I can play more Elden Ring." Then imagine how that guy smells.
Edit: Wayyy more rambly than I normally am, but I'm genuinely surprised how coherent I was writing this haha
I agree with you, but I'd also say that work should just be more lenient and flexible in general, regardless of if a person is a parent. I believe one of the reasons we're seeing less people have kids in the last two generations is because they have less time and ability to take care of themselves, date and find partners, and such little free time outside of their soul crushing underpaid existence that when the idea of having kids at all comes up it becomes an extremely daunting and undesirable prospect to sacrifice the tiny amount of time they have for themselves to a kid that doesn't exist yet. I'm speaking to a US experience, so mileage may vary outside the shit show that is my country, but it very much so feels like here that if you have a moment of free time that isn't in service of a corporate overlord then you are a lazy good for nothing piece of useless crap, and you should just figure out how to schedule your doctor's appointments during your time off, even if that means that doctors just aren't open when you're not at work.
All that said, I don't actually believe parents get that much more leeway from their employers than nonparents do. It's just that parents say "I have to do x because I have a child" when requesting time off, and nonparents say "can I have this time off work because if x".
Parents tell their employers "I have to have this time off. I will not be here after 3pm on Tuesday" and nonparents tend to phrase as a request because that's how we're taught to ask for time off. In my anecdotal experience, anyway. My brother was the first person to point out to me the difference in phrasing, and since then, basically my entire working life, whenever I request time off I effectively approach it as telling them I just won't be here. Out of my hands. And fuck, it works. Employers find all kinds of ways to handle that, and that's normally by denying the requests made by people who phrase it as "pretty pretty please can I have a personal life for just a few hours in the 7th of March 2032?"
We need more militantly angry employees lol
Was about to hit submit when I saw how long this comment is, and realized I don't remember most of what I wrote. I'm recovering from a seizure I had a few hours ago (first one! Yay! Let's hope no more), and I'm too tired to reread it. Gonna leave it up for posterity to read tomorrow when I'm feeling better lol
Recover well friend
Feeling much gooder today. Just been awake too long lol
I fully agree that we all need more time off. The average person is like a hundred times more productive than they were a hundred years ago, so we should be living like the damn Jetsons at this point. That said, I'll continue to think parents should get more leeway than non-parents even if we all had more than enough personal time off, for the simple reason that parents aren't taking personal time when they have to care for their children. If your kid has a doctor's appointment, then you aren't taking off work, you're working a different job. We all need more time off, and the extra time parents get away from their primary job isn't really time off.
And yeah, telling rather than asking makes a lot of sense. Takes more effort to deny a statement of fact than a request. "I'm going to be out of town from May 4th–6th" is a lot harder to say no to than "can I take off May 4th–6th?" That question mark basically invites a denial
Congrats on your first seizure! Don't have a second one!
Thanks! I hated it!
And yeah, what I wrote wasn't articulated as well as it should have been given my state. But I agree. The labor of raising the next generation of humans is labor. Mostly unpaid, unappreciated labor. You should get more leeway for that. Like, constitutionally. Pay them folk. The point I was making wasn't supposed to be that parents do or do not get more leniency, I mainly was just loopy from the lightning in my skull and was rambly about how the way we treat labor in general fucking sucks and that being more firm when you tell an employer that they don't get to decide when you're available is damn near a life hack at this point
I believe the opposite, but for similar reasons. 🤪
When are young people supposed to socialize, get married, and have kids, if they're working all the time? The guy playing Elden Ring is absolutely exhausted and is spending what little time he does have to recharge his batteries. It's a symptom of his needs not being met.
Are there some people who will just play more? Sure. But we can't reasonably extrapolate that a completely burned-out person will stay that way with sufficient time for self care and relationships.
(I've been both of these people)
Easy. Companies themselves should not care about the employees families. They have no benefit from a person having children. Governments should very much care about people having children. All benefits - if any, should be decided on the goverment level. And companies will have to adhere to the law. Firms chase their own benefits. The goverment (should) work for the benefit (and future) of all citizens.
monkey's paw / evil genie / etc:
Wish granted. All employees - with or without children - will now be treated badly and given no flexibility
Hey, nothing changed.
No because they have different needs. Society should focus on providing people based on their needs, not how much they produce. Only a slave bases his worth on his productivity.
ITT: people pretending others "cheese" some unfair advantages by having kids when having kids is almost always a net negative in terms of time, money, career opportunities and so much more.
People who choose not to have kids do so for a reason, don't pretend these factors don't exist for parents. As a society we need a next generation, how would you ever retire otherwise? Because of this we should support parents, not envy them for whatever small benefits they get to slightly offset all the disadvantages and are often absolutely necessary to allow them to raise kids.
The only thing my heart can count as net negative is sleep time. It is completely fuked. Btw do not expect colleagues to help you. Do not expect your parents to help you. Everyone has their own life
Almost always a negative but people still do it though, that tells me whatever is the disadvantage, it’s still worth it in the end. So all in all advantages outweighs disadvantages. People have different capacities for suffering, just because they don’t have kids doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from some extra time off from work stress. Parents can give their non-parent coworkers some time off when they do come to work on time and don’t have to leave early as a thank you.
Net negative... You either don't have a kid or had it unplanned. It is hard but no way it is net negative if you knew beforehand and made a responsible decision
I'd say it depends.
Fine I will engage to this debate
Post says about regular people complaining about getting less perks vs ppl with kids. Thats fair because you as a responsible adult made a decision to make a kid, spend less time with friends, doing hobbies, much less sleep and more expenses in household. But do not get spoiled and expect others to owe you, even your parents, they have their own life, they also get tired, and then people have the audacity to expect random colleagues to help.
That is the main theme, then the comment is kid is net negative. Net is not defined and can include many things and people immidiately jump into assumption that it is mother related topic both comment and post. Devalue what father brings onto the plate. So overall, not defining what is net, bringing misandry into the theme.
Then other comment brings motherhood penalty which is related strictly to career (are we seriously considering whole life which is Net only to be career?) and keep in mind that it is not global thing, maybe in your homeland but where I live mothers get support from gov which is ofcourse less than job paycheck but still not bad. They also can keep the job and being motivated climb the career ladder faster that is my observation.
If you brought the topic of career stagnation of mothers then there is a term called fatherhood bonus which helps to negate the overall effect of motherhood penalty. And father brings money home, usually fathers pay their wifes so called wife salary leaving themselves with less disposable income.
In conclusion, lets get back to main topic. People, not only mothers, can ask for paid dayoffs for example but that should be available for kidless people too, to not discriminate other employees. Some perks related to having newborn should be written in law, in that way workers wont feel unfairness. I hope that makes sense to you and other commenters
You really are special. Wrote the whole essay and you still pick headliners.
People saying that kids are important to society so we should allow parents extra flexibility, it rests on the assumption that what non parents would be doing with that flexible is less important to society. What if I'm giving blood, or helping an elderly parent, or volunteering at a homeless shelter? It's hardly the employers role to judge pass judgement on what is a worthwhile use of time.
Actually many companies offer time off for these kinds of activities. My current company does and I saw it in previous ones as well.
This sounds like a hypothetical, because if you were involved in those activities, you likely would know about it.
I give blood all the time and help out with my parents. But I'm retired so don't have to clear it with an employer.
Ok, but since you didn't know that means you didn't do it before you retired.
Also why does it bother you that someone might get some help for caring for people? Also the example that you gave about elderly parents would be treated the same way.
The reason employers do this is because they rather give that time to the employee rather than have them quit, because any normal person will put family first.
I did do it before I retired. But not as much. I knew that my employers allowed it, but I also knew it wasn't universal.
It doesn't bother me that someone might get help for caring for people. I'm just saying giving flexibility to parents and not to non-parents assumes only parents are helping people with that time.
Weird that you think parents exclusively parent? Parents parent, and then we also give blood, help elderly parents and grandparents, and volunteer.
The flexibility you want to give blood should be given to parents, as well. And then if your elderly parent's ALF calls saying your mom has a fever and they won't let her stay there until it's cleared up, you should be given the flexibility to leave work same as a parent.
The flexibility afforded parents to prioritize when their kids are sick and it's illegal to leave them home alone is not the equivalent to volunteering.
I think you're fighting a straw man there. I'm saying people should be all allowed flexibility at work, and that parents should get special flexibility. As we can't judge if what someone does with their flexibility is good for society just based on if they're parents or not.
This one is wildly different between Europe and the US context.
As a haver of kids: Sure, why not? I'll take some smoke breaks as a non-smoker, too. I'm saying this unironically or whatever by the way, that second part isn't supposed to be a gotcha or anything. I'm also a worker in the US so I'm biased, used to workplaces that go the extra mile to try and squeeze every ounce of both productivity and humanity out of you. Give everyone all the flexibilities!
Caring the reason why someone needs flex time is a bullshit thing.
I agree in principle, and do sometimes get mildly annoyed having to cover for people because they are out due to parental obligations, but overall I really don't mind or care that much. I've had to do it a number of times now and sometimes it can be very stressful but that's why I get paid. Being a parent sucks so I feel bad for them having to put up with all the bullshit, it's not like they are off having fun when they can't be at work because their kid is shitting uncontrollably with a high fever or whatever nightmare is going on. Not having kids is great, the occasional extra work or responsibilities that comes with being more reliable than coworkers with kids is the tiniest of tradeoffs for me. Maybe it helps that I like my coworkers and am happy they get to be responsible parents. Additionally, if your boss or someone higher up is out on extended parental leave it can be beneficial to your career if you fill in for them and get some time working "above your station" because your org gets forced into it. I know it was for me early in my career.
Rule: if your company sets you up against your colleagues because you xor they have children, it's time for a strike or time to quit
I'm fine with people with dependents getting higher priority. If you have one pill, one sick person, and one healthy person, you don't give each of them half a pill for equality sake. https://welleatyouupweloveyouso.com/2023/08/14/what-does-equity-and-equality-have-to-do-with-being-spoiled/
But, also, society in general and employers in specific should strive to provide a level of flexibility to all employees where all of them find joy in their lives.
I hate to be the person thats is all like "as a parent...", however - to me having to leave early, come in late or take a day off to deal with kids being sick, appointments or just daycare/school drop off/pickup is worse.
The premise of this feels like "smokers get a break so why shouldnt we?". But realistically my work is still there, i am stressed about the thing i havent done that should/needed to be done that day, the amount of work i now have to catch up on and the extra stress of trying to get the 'non-work' things done as quickly as possible so i can be back at work to get through my workload.
And ontop of that, you likely had to cut your work time short because your kid is sick or hurt and you are also stressed about that, its not like you jump in your car and start whistling to the radio heading home early.
So yes, i think a non-parent should have just as much flexibility as a parent, but thats a conversation to have with your boss and not some guilt you try saddle on parents when they cant be at their workplace for their full X-hours per day. I would never make a coworker feel guilty because they left half an hour early a couple days per week to go like practice for their sport or hobby or something, so afford the same respect for someone who has 'child commitments' instead of your 'leisure commitments' because they arent the ones saying you cant take time off too.
Four day weekends for everyone, and three months of vacation time too.
Yes. Flexibility for everyone. Unironically, this is not a bad idea.
You just described Europe.
plays star-spangled banner on a dirty broken kazoo
I have a feeling that that's not what they had in mind.
Yep. And that mean that everyone shall have the time and confort to rise a child. And then choose to do it or not. Fuck the bosses
Mostly I agree. I have no kids and won't (vasectomy), and I'm a bit on the antinatalist side. Not so far in that I think people should never have kids. But reproducing at the rate we do is unsustainable and thus unethical. So there's a bias there.
I do think maternity and paternity leave should be given. And some grace should be allowed for small things. Like having to come in a little late or leave a little early for having to pick up/drop off kids, that kind of thing. To a point. If it's causing more than a minor burden to coworkers, then that's a problem.
But getting preference in scheduling, time off, etc? I don't agree with that. I shouldn't get the short end of the stick because they have a kid.
Edit: In reading some of the other comments, I saw a common sentiment which I'll sum up as "don't blame the parent, blame the system" which I can agree with.
I also had a "chose to breed" line in my last paragraph. I softened the language there, because it's not always a choice.
I don't think this is controversial. It's all about the ratios. And this says a lot about your work condition. I got 27 days off annually. Before my child was born I had 26. It's not a game changer... If all my childless coworkers got an extra day off I probably wouldn't even notice. So sure thay should have it, whatever. You Americans can argue about the weirdest things sometimes.
it isnt weird when most workers here dont get sick leave, let alone vacation time. Europeans are straight up ignorant when it comes to the US but they sure do like to spread their opinions.
edit: holy shit, thank you all for proving my point. of COURSE we want better conditions. europeans are too ignorant to understand why we cant "just change things then." and they dont want to listen to the reasons why. we are glorified slaves here and whenever we bring it up, all we get is abuse from people who will never comprehend our system or why we havent waved our magic wands over the situation.
I suppose we find it weird as you have some dystopian levels of worker rights. Land of the free sure does love to bow down to their corporate masters.
slave owners founded this "land of the free." it was always a lie
No it is definitely weird when anyone wouldn't be able to get sick days. Every human gets sick. And bringing those germs to work spreads it even worse.
Sorry for expecting a first world country to act civilized.
i have a union and i still got in trouble for using too much of the sick leave i was lucky enough to have with this job. we are not a civilised country and its time people like you realised that and stop victim blaming. it isnt helpful at all
I'm sorry, I was kind of smug , you're right. Let me rephrase that. For me it is very strange that you are discussing, if needing time to take care of ones children is unfair to people who don't get this time off. It is a fair point, but it is such a nuance. I think it would not be an issue if most Americans would be able to spend some time on their self. But I'm not saying that our system is the ideal.
Classic equality/equity debate.
The long and short of it is, having children is not merely a personal benefit to the parent, it's a critical and necessary part of any functioning society. The proof is simply that you and everyone else owe your existence to your/their parents.
The burden of this task falls on the shoulders of parents. It's about as much work as a full time job.
Think of it as paying it forward for your parents and your own childhood. Maybe put aside the individualism that is rotting modern society from the inside out.
As much as a full time job? There are 168 hours in a week. Work is only 40. For many years, not even the night is your own. You are on call 24x7. Imagine a tech office asking a team of two to cover a 24x7 oncall rotation for for not 1, but 2 major applications that could crash at anytime, and do so often one way or another. Then ask them to spend 40 hours a week on a 2nd job. The reality is that we as a society (in the US at least) do children a disservice. Each one is different. They learn differently, they feel differently, their needs are different. And we hand the controls over to two people with no experience, and hardly any sleep to make some of the most important decisions in a childs life. Parents should have more support from trained professionals. That in turn would allow them to be more effective at work. Even couple where one parents stays home with the kids needs help. Often an outside perspective can spot things the people who are there all the time miss.
Simple solution: lie and say you have kids
Sir, this is a meme community
Modern problems require modern solutions
With generative AI I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone tries to make a fake child to get that parental leave.
This is an argument for equality based on an individuals rights. A more robust argument for equality is Peter Singer's equal consideration of interests.
For example: In a situation where an equal sum of time is given to everyone without considering the individual's interests, and those of people that rely on said person (eg, children, disabled, elderly), we would have increased neglect and less efficient systems of division of labour. Thereby negatively effecting the society as a whole and in time that individual who had an increased time allotted who doesn't necessarily have a need for it.
Its like the arguments for defunding government services, often that leads to a less safe society costing the wealthy in extra security who often are the key proponents of defunding government services.
The argument is highly related to Karl Marx's, "From each accoding to his ability, to each according to his needs." Maybe less prescriptive than Marx's argument.
Those who take the responsibility of caring for society's newest members should be given more leeway/support in many areas, not just employment. I don't have kids (yet, God willing), I'm just not unempathetic/extremely self-centered/nihilistic. We do live in a society, after all.
I could really go for a 6 months hiatus and the same for my girlfriend. We both never had kids.
I know that having kids isn't a vacation though. It's a lot of work. So it's not quite the same.
Paternity/Maternity leave isn't for the benefit of the parent, it's for the benefit of the child.
This is like seeing your coworker get time off for cancer treatment and wondering why you aren't afforded the same time off
LoL yeah pretty much.
Everyone should have the freedom to take care of their lives when they need to.
This includes being paid a salary that doesn't keep you on the edge of poverty and ruin.
This should be the lowest bar legally. The fact that minimum wage isn't tied to inflation was inconvenient decades ago, now it is actively harming everyone in the US.
There are more labor protections that we need (see: EU countries with functioning democracies) but pay and leave minimums are the most impactful to the most people's quality of life.
This question is what you ask when you want to get your employees fighting against each other and not against the boss who is stealing all of their money.
The first step would be to fix wage theft and then the second step might be to get rid of the ultra rich, or maybe those could be done in the reverse order. At some point long after those things are accomplished we could talk about how people get jealous when they see someone else who apparently gets privileges that they wish they had. And sometimes there are small changes that can be made that will alleviate those situations.
Same treatment - yes. Same flexibility? No. Children do tend to provide legitimate emergencies from time to time.
I'm not saying a non-parent should have their months-ahead approved PTO cancelled because a parent suddenly decides they want to take their kid to some event on that same day. But if a parent needs to leave early because they got a phone call that their kid got wounded at school - that should be arranged even when non-parents are not offered flexibility of the same level.
And anyone else should have that same flexibility to cover legitimate emergencies even though they don't have children.
How dare you claim there are other emergencies than non-kid-related ones!?
Child emergencies, family emergencies, pet emergencies, personal medical emergencies, household emergencies... I mean, yeah, if shit is happening at home, everyone should have the right to go take care of it, child-related or not. If I were a boss, and someone said, "I need to go home, it's urgent," I'd shoo them out the door and reassign their task no matter what the nature of the emergency was.
Unless they 'urgently' need to stand in line to buy a video game. That isn't an emergency.
except non-parents should also have the flexibility to leave early if some sort of emergency comes up
I’m all for it, but at the end of the day, humanity needs to reproduce. So if there was only room for flexibility for the parents then that’s what makes sense to put first.
What kind of a stupid fucking question is this
Option C, watch the comments degenerate into warfare while eating popcorn.
Fairness shouldn’t depend on your personal life—flexibility should be about people, not categories.
Based on the tone and language of the discussion, this is very USA things.
And for that I've a song.
In my country, a parent must be at home when their children arrive home. If both parents work, that means one has to come to an arrangement with their workplace to be home at 3.
If a non-parent has an important reason to be home at 3, they should also be allowed to leave early, but preventing kids from electrocuting themselves is a pretty important reason.
Once you make the workplace adjustments and accommodations for parents, there's no good reason not to do the same for everyone. It's like cutting curbs or making wide doors for wheelchair access. Once you've convinced the company to do it for new premeses, why would they ever decide to make some without that access? Shits and giggles?
If you're talking about mat/pat leave then that's a separate thing (which everyone should definitely get)
I am one of 2 people in my department and we service the entire continent. He has been on paternity leave THREE TIMES in the years i've been here and each time he gets 5 weeks off.
I swear every time he takes off, it's a busy part of the year and i'm absolutely slammed doing everything by myself and customers don't understand.
Then he also gets like 4 weeks of vacation, so it feels really unfair for me with my dog and no kids. But then again, i hate kids and want nothing to do with them, so i guess he needs those 5 weeks.
You make it sound like paternity leave is a vacation. The poor bastard didn’t sleep for 4 of those 5 weeks.
Dude seriously. I had a whopping two weeks off for my paternity leave and people were seriously acting like Id just come back from holiday.
The first week I literally lived at the hospital (major complications with the delivery). The second week I was home with the infant alone as my wife wasnt released yet. What vacation? I slept like 24 hours total in two weeks time.
His wife is a stay at home mom, so I think it's a break for her more than for him. She finally gets help during the day.
He made a choice
It's not compulsory to breed.
Maybe they should hire another person. Your problem shouldn't be with this dude who's doing this thing that literally creates a new generation.
And you should get a legit amount of vacation, but paternity leave also isn't vacation.
But he also needs to stop having his kids during busy season, come on guy.
I guarantee that during those 5 weeks paternity he was jealous of your office work and well defined sleep schedules.
I mean he wanted the kid more apparently
Yeah we all should be baby machines, making sure the labour force is big enough..
God forbid people want to enjoy a life without them
No? Definitely no. First of all child leave for extended times should be mandatory to provide. Also the flexibility that people with children are for the child.
Ideally with should always be flexible. However if it's not there should be a good reason for exceptions and having to care for a young child is often a good reason in my opinion.
I believe people without children can have good reasons as well and some people with children need less flexibility.
E.g. a single parent usually struggles more than one with a partner stays home to focus on the children or one who lives in the same house as the grandparents.
If you're speaking about vacations it's usually due to fixed school vacations so if the person with a child wants to be able e.g. wants to travel with their family they have to do it during the official school vacations.
At least here school is mandatory otherwise and not sending your child to school is a crime.
people with children dont get flexibility in alot of jobs either. depending on which job, most jobs have an "approval system, and in advance" when you can use PTO/vacation time, and they can be nitpicky if they want to change hours or schedules. Also i notice they start 'targeting you" if even ask them to do it.
I think this shows up in various ways. Watching a salaried worker come in late, stay home cause kids are sick, take off early because kids have dental appt, etc versus watching the low paid hourly worker under them go without pay to take care of all the same things because they aren't salaried, have no wfh ability, and are out of leave from using it so often sucks.
As a parent, I am given the same exact treatment as I was at the same company before. I already was a flex worker in the sense of WFH or office is entirely up to me (except when I need to be somewhere, but the need is the key), if I take my child to a doctors appointment, I am using my sick time which is allocated to all employees equally. My insurance is arguably a "better deal" since the "family plan" cost doesn't change when you add another dependent vs if it's just you and your spouse.
I would ask what these people think when they get "extra flexibility" when they have an aging parent or sick spouse they are responsible or assisting the care of? Is that flexibility okay, simply because having a child is a choice, and having a parent is not? Then what about your spouse?
I agree with others in this thread that are suggesting these people don't really care about flexibility, they just want to take it away from the parents that use it or need it.
On one side people shouldn't get special treatment for things of their chosing - that's just the Principle of fairness of treatment.
Nowadays in modern countries with easy access to modern contraception, having kids is a choice.
However given how for example in America there is a crack down on abortion, things are going backwards in this and having kids isn't always a choice anymore, in which case it's actually fair to more easilly accomodate people who have kids more than people who don't.
On the other side if a country wants to incentivise people to have children in order to, at minimum, avoid a fall in that country's population, it makes sense to do things to make life easier for people when they have children such as providing free childcare.
What extra flexibility do parents have? Are we talking about doctor and school appointments? I don't have kids and I'm allowed to go to a doctor during work hours. I'm also allowed medical leave to care for family members. I can come up with any excuse to leave work for couple of hours as long as I make up for it later. If I work less, I'm unreliable and it happens regularly I will eventually get fired, same as someone with children.
I see it this way: my boss has no right asking me if I have children or not and I have no obligation to tell the truth when asked. Its a non issue if you ask me.
Parents get to pay less taxes here, so their net pay is higher. I'm OK with that.
Absolutely
Highly controversial take: people without handicaps should get all the same treatment as people with handicaps.
Thoughts?
Maybe then they would have children too.
that's just a management skill issue
your claim requires an agreement that staffing at appropriate levels cannot be done for some reason
It's not about "deserving". It's about enabling the reproduction of the proletariat so that there's proletariat left to exploit in the future.
I made up a whole family back in the early aughts. Honestly i did get my time off every single time with near no explanation.
The process of keeping up the facade was just more work then fighting with hr for my pto.
So are you for giving more flexibility for people who don't necessarily need it, or for taking away flexibility from people who do?
They're advocating for equal treatment for equal pay. Having kids doesn't make you special.
They're advocating for taking away flexibility. I'm all for giving extra flexibility, but let's be honest, they just want others to not have it
Based on..?
Sorry I should clarify, where did you get the idea that they're advocating for taking away flexibility, and them not wanting others to have flexibility.
Or did you really just base it off just that?
Not at all what follows from that conversation. You're just assuming instead of clarifying or asking.
Ya, of course choosing to not do something doesn't make you special.
Correct it's class warfare but bringing that up undercuts your first comment.
Its called discussion. It's why we have comments at all. Sorry for critiquing your clearly shallow comment
I didn't make a dig at workers
This is not a zero sum game.
If we're looking at existing staffing levels, then sure, giving some people flexibility would come at the cost of other people's flexibility. But that premise is exactly the problem here — it's fucked up that when people who aren't parents are in need of flexibility, their employers often say that it's not possible because staffing levels are too low. But this is a problem that arises because employers are cheapskates.
A possible option working within existing systems would be:
Parental leave: you get pop sustain rate (2.1?) parental leaves banked. You use 1 leave for every child you have and bank is allowed negative with no penalty. At 45 or so you get to use your bank without being a parent.
Something like 95% of people become parents.
Flex time/time-bank + home/hybrid office fix most other issues in office jobs.
As a society and species that only survives by way of humans, having children supporting humans with children makes sense.
The hot take in the OP is dumb, selfish, and short sighted.
Whomever wrote that never had children.
Not exactly, you don't deserve to get dick days for your child being sick if you have no child.
Also you deserve additional leneancy when your child is sick. Cannot plan for that. They just do that and need more supervision than your sick partner.
Most things that reduce non parent's ability to work can happen to parents equally.
Vacation does in fact suck though. A lack of child shouldn't make it harder for you to take a vacation. But your employer also must enable parents to take time off when their kids need supervision, so that sounds like a staffing issue.
This seems like a bad faith take. If you have dependents — and I would include animals — then you have obligations to them. Employers tend to have carveouts for those obligations because they are universal to all humans.
Needing to care for a sick dependent is not the same as your middle-of-the-day champagne-and-pilates class, Sharon.
I think people fail to understand what it means to work in America. Y’all Europeans really have no clue how bad we have it. If your job is accommodating you because you have kids and someone else complains, your company doesn’t accommodate both. They cancel your accommodation because of “fairness”. There is no ADA accommodation for kids.
The fact they agreed to it in the first place is a miracle. So yes people with no kids need to stfu. You already winning by keeping your money and more free time. Let parents have this one thing.
The problem isn’t the people without kids who complain, the problem is the company taking the flexibility away from everyone and being greedy
Why do I have to subsidize your weak pull-out game?
All the money I make is taxed as income and I have no deductions.
Parents get deductions for each kid. And just for being married. And special treatment at work.
Cry me a river.
I pay $3-4k more in taxes when I file with my wife. I get $2k per kid as a deduction. Married costs me. I get a little back for kids. But $2k is one month of daycare per child.
So... No. No special treatment. I don't get more sick days when my kids are sick. I don't get less work because I have children. I don't get easier projects because I'm a father. Whatever special treatment you think we parents are getting is delusional.
So don’t do it?
Don’t ask me to help, anyway. I didn’t ask you to have more children.
You don’t. Just do your job and don’t worry what other people have going on.
Because the continuation of society requires children.
I feel like people don't think half a step ahead.
The children that these parents are taking care of, will probably grow up and work. Their work will allow our retirement. People without children just don't provide the same utility to the society.
We need "young people" and if we are unwilling to invest in that, we won't have them. And then we all moan about lack of social safe nets and pension safety.
Billionaires are the problem and we need children for e.g. pensions.
The labour needs to be done.
People without children aren't the problem, or the enemy. But they can't expect the same treatment as people with children. As people with children provide more to society.
You aren't listening. The labour needs to be done. Who cares about money? When you are 80 yrs old, who will be your doctor? Who will work the fields for your food? Who will provide you any services? Any products? Anything?
You will need young people and they don't come from nowhere.
Agree, the children's utility to society isn't about money. It's about having doctors and firemen and farmers and artists. Idc how much money you have, if the next generation is smaller, who will be the CNAs in the retirement home where the childless (and others) are spending their pensions?
At the rate prices are going up I'll never be able to retire. So, fuck those kids.
It's a prisoners dilemma. The employer who accommodates parents won't reap the benefit themselves.
That is why it shouldn't be up to the employer. It is called rights.
Sure, as long as they take care of other human beings in need during their time not working as well.
I totally agree! If you can't put out a house fire yourself, you shouldn't have a house! Relying on strangers (the fire dept) to sacrifice their lives is so selfish.
Or
If I have to cover for your dialysis, don't have kidneys! Or don't have a job! Figure out your work life balance! It's not fair that I have to work hours I agreed to separate from your situation when you're not also working!
The parent is not asking for your sacrifice. If they were, you'd be able to say no as you choose. It's your boss telling you your hours. If you don't like your hours, negotiate.
Or, since it's all so easy and binary to you, if this bothers you, just move work places to an office where hours are set. Just get a job where coworker coverage is set in stone in your contract. Certainly that's as easy a life decision as whether or not to have children.
That's a very pro-capitalist stance.... Given that it was the pressure of losing one's job that even created the emergency...
How is "I don't want to do extra work to cover for your ass because you can't balance your personal life and your job" a problem capitalist stance?
Op's position is"don't have kids if you are going to make your co-workers' lives more difficult"... Need i go further?
Yes, explain why should your coworkers suffer for your inability to manage your life? You can bitch about the situation being a result of capitalism and you're not wrong, but the reality is at the ground level, when someone has to leave early or call off all the time it's their fellow coworkers that are getting fucked with more work.
So now you agree with me. My entire point was the attitude is pro-capitalism. Thanks.
It's not supporting capitalism to say that you shouldn't expect your coworkers to take on extra work to accommodate your personal problems.
It is supporting capitalism to say you should give up on having offspring to make sure that you can be a good little worker that supports your co-workers. Capitalism is a construct of man. Having offspring is literally the entire purpose of our species. Which one should take precedence?
"I need to run out early to take my kids to the dentist."
"I need to run out early to... Well nothing. I have no other actual responsibilities. I just want to leave."
Sorry, but not the same things.
I need to run early to take myself to dentist.
Did you know that parents also would like to go to the dentist?
Yeah and they should book a half a day paid leave exactly like I do
When did progressives get all "Got mine first!"
I mean the selfish carelessness of progressives today is really astonishing.
If your job sucks so bad because you have to make the most minor accommodations for your co-workers families, then just quit your job. Like, you have no responsibilities and nothing holding you back. What's your problem?