561–570 of 1001 posts
One thing I wish I could make my childless peers grok is that THERE IS NO VACATION when you have young kids. I’m taking this week off and people speak as if I’m on vacation. Please please hear my words literally: my job is my break. Weekends are more physically and intellectually exhausting than weekdays when I get to $&@# off to work for eight hours. My paid time off is a way to give us a fighting chance at laundry…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the "resentment" of those without children have for "benefits" those with children get strikes me as extremely selfish, immature and displaying a total lack of empathy. Unpopular opinion: We should not be rewarding or elevating people for having unprotected sex without the support network to take care of their children in the event they are unable to attend school. There's a thousand reasons a child might not be ab…
The point is that COVID removed any support networks that may have been there. Even the most well-oiled and well-rehearsed routines were blown clear out of the water. Where before you could rely on family, friends, neighbors, baby sitters, after-school clubs, public transport and so on, you now had ZERO options available. Basically anything - or anyone - outside of your home was no longer an option. You could be at B…
That's not true. Bezos or Zuckerberg could (and probably do) pay their childcare staff to live with them fulltime and maintain quarantine. Not really an option for most people though.
I am a middle-aged adult with no children who's worked at tech firms for the past couple decades. To be honest, the "resentment" of those without children have for "benefits" those with children get strikes me as extremely selfish, immature and displaying a total lack of empathy. This is time off specifically to take care of children, something now that has become exceedingly more difficult in Covid times. What's nex…
Having kids is a personal choice. Getting cancer isn't. What are you on about?!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would posit that no one should be working until 11 and everyone should be comfortable saying its 6pm, I'm going home. It's not the parents fault there is resentment its everyone else's for allowing themselves to be abused into working until 11. We turn on each other when we should really be focused on those making us work the late hours.
Yep, this is exactly what I proposed in the first line of my comment :-/ Yet HN people are downvoting me to oblivion, yet again, for proposing a reasonable solution: "legally-protected personal time". I guess they all enjoy working till 11pm.
> a person who chose to have children ends up being able to be excused from work to take care of children, ... a person [with] no children is not as easily excused to do what they want to do
On this point, taking care of your children is not always something you want to do. It's a never ending, unrewarding responsibility that is often met with fighting the party you're trying to help in order to make sure they don't die. "Eat this so you don't starve", "Don't eat this so you won't get poisoned", "Don't crawl into the oven to hide".
Which leads into...
> We need to be prioritizing peoples' personal time and respecting however they choose to use it. Regardless whether someone chooses to spend their personal time raising kids or raising orphans in an orphanage or rescuing animals or reading books or hiking the wilderness or community service or being social and sleeping and watching movies, all of these things are good for their own mental health, and we need to not discriminate between these choices in giving people their personal time.
I'm not sure what you mean by raising orphans in an orphanage, but if you mean volunteering to feed and do day care for children at an orphanage, then that again is a choice not comparable with the obligation of being a parent. There's a certain social pressure that you can not just give your baby to somebody else when you get tired of it as you would a pet. Parenting is definitely not something people do for fun for their mental health. And it's not something everybody signs up for. Yes, the actions that created that child may have had known outcomes, but it's also very hard (and very easy) to get pregnant.
> It's when people are working till 11pm and someone says "I need to leave at 6 to make food for my kids" that the resentment happens. If everyone got off at 6, there wouldn't be any resentment.
The ire should be directed at those you feel pressured by to stay until 11, such as managers. Not those who have to take care of another life. Just as "people choose to have children", people also choose to have whatever job says they must work till 11. It's just that there is much, much less pressure to leave a job than to leave your children. The 2 are really not comparable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By that measure, one could get the absurd idea to expect getting paid time off for that woodworking project. It even has "work" right in the name. Nobody does expect that though. Better arguments should be easy to find.
Woodworking is a hobby. Raising kids is a full time job, no time off, no pay, no changing jobs.
In SV there is a myth that employees that are young and single are somehow more productive. That might be in a cruel sense true for the founders, as you most likely have no obligations outside of your company and generally feel like spending 24 hours devoted to it, but for an employee, this notion is utterly false.
Plenty of married/parents spend unhealthy amount of time on their work, and plenty of single employees spend way too much time talking and playing games in the office, all to appear as if they are putting in the long hours.
Meanwhile, although parents certainly have a lot less "free time," you also learn to be very efficient with it. Talk less, do more, be more strategic, ..etc.
There is no one size fits all, and it's just lazy to say that one group is more productive than the other solely based on the factor of hours theoretically available to do work.
Personally, I struggle with these feelings as well. It seems nuts that someone working 50%+ less than someone else is going to keep all the same equity, vacation, and salary. Then again it seems nuts that they don't. All employees who had children or family members to care for before or after COVID get none of the same support. I don't think backpay is coming for those who were forced to take leave or even quit their…
Have small elementary age kids. It’s rough. 8-10 interruptions the first couple hours of work. Then meltdown over being hungry. Then afternoon interruptions because they are bored. Lots of crappy reasons, but also because they want me to spend time with them. Also dealing with my own chronic illness. I was managing to cope/hide before Covid. Between it all is a sense of guilt of not getting enough done for work and n…
Between trying to juggle it all, not only feel like I’m letting down my work, but my kids as well. They don’t understand why I can’t spend as much time with them while I’m working, nor is it their fault that I’m so much more tired during the times when I would have spent time with them previously.
You aren’t alone man and we’re all doing the best we can with a really tough situation. Try to be as kind to yourself as possible during all this and don’t be afraid to ask find solutions that ease some of the burden.
One thing I wish I could make my childless peers grok is that THERE IS NO VACATION when you have young kids. I’m taking this week off and people speak as if I’m on vacation. Please please hear my words literally: my job is my break. Weekends are more physically and intellectually exhausting than weekdays when I get to $&@# off to work for eight hours. My paid time off is a way to give us a fighting chance at laundry…
That is called life. There is no vacation when you have a sick spouse, or bought a new house, or are in a car accident. Your job shouldn't be your break, regardless of your situation. My wife is at a FAANG company currently covering for 4 people who all get double digit weeks off because they chose to have children. Does she get any time off for literally working 18 hour days 7 days a week? No of course not.
I am a middle-aged adult with no children who's worked at tech firms for the past couple decades. To be honest, the "resentment" of those without children have for "benefits" those with children get strikes me as extremely selfish, immature and displaying a total lack of empathy. This is time off specifically to take care of children, something now that has become exceedingly more difficult in Covid times. What's nex…
Nobody plans to have cancer.
Of course there is a purported difference in feelings toward the two, and the responsibilities they entail.