701–710 of 1001 posts
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> Your job shouldn't be your break, regardless of your situation. If it's less stressful that the ambient level in your life, then it's a break. Why shouldn't it be?
If your day-to-day life is that stressful, I strongly encourage you to reach out to the National Parent Helpline at 1-855-427-2736.
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IMO the real broken part of this system is that people are not getting legally-protected personal time. A big part of the resentment is that a person who chose to have children ends up being able to be excused from work to take care of children, while a person who has no children is not as easily excused to do what they want to do, because it is deemed low priority compared to children. We need to be prioritizing peo…
"A big part of the resentment is that a person who chose to have children ends up being able to be excused from work to take care of children, while a person who has no children is not as easily excused to do what they want to do, because it is deemed low priority compared to children." So, a few problems here: 1. Parenting is not a choice when you have children in your home. 2. Most parents do not want to be woken u…
1. Yes, children need self-care. But so do adults. Just as it is wrong to tell someone they can't take care of their child, I'd say it's equally wrong to tell an adult that they can't, for example, get their exercise time, because I would consider that also a human necessity. You risk early death if you do not exercise. For medical reasons I don't need to state here, the risk may be even higher for me personally if I don't get that time. Other adults have other medical conditions they need to attend to. However, not all workplaces recognize these as on par with taking care of children.
2. Those that choose not to have children may also be playing essential roles in our society in their off-hours. Heck, they may be volunteering at the Red Cross and saving other children from death, who knows, that may be why they chose not to have kids. Should we judge?
3. Let's not underestimate how important mental health is to society. People will die (from various causes, including suicide) if they are made to work late every day. Yes, I agree that children need to be taken care of. But the response to that shouldn't be to take an unreasonable work share given to a working parent and shove the excess onto the single/child-less workers in the same organization to slave away for 80 hours a week. This actually happens, and I have seen it happen. Instead, the response should be to give everyone a fair, normal 40-hour work share and let them do whatever they need or want to with their spare time.
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In modern society it's basically required that both parents work full-time jobs. It's not the 50s anymore; you can't support an entire household with children on one income. So you can't have the expectation that one of the parents give up a large chunk of their salary just to have kids. If you do structure society in this way then you get rapidly declining birth rates and very bad long-term population demographic pr…
Ok, it is not the 50s but why could people do it in the 50s and why can't we do it now? We are hearing "automation will destroy jobs" left and right and for some reason, we can't afford stay at home moms. The "universal child care" argument makes me feel uncomfortable. It one step short of a dystopia. One where women would surrender their child to a state sponsored center where child care specialists make them produc…
With regards to productivity and pay, I share with you many illustrative charts. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
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 a child is a choice, getting cancer isn't.
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…
I don't fully agree with you. Back when I worked in retail or fast food, smokers could step out for a 5 minute smoke break every once in a while. As a non-smoker, I wasn't allowed to just sit there for 5 minutes. At the end of the day, we got paid the same, but smokers got 30 minutes off, courtesy of the non-smokers who picked up the slack. Likewise, parents are excused from work because they have children. I fully a…
What I'm seeing overall is a shocking lack of empathy for that situation and seeing home-parenting obligations during a pandemic as not being too dissimilar from taking time to binge Tiger King or take a road trip.
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…
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>an essential service that some people perform to ensure that society as we know it can continue to exist I empathize with parents, but please don't make it sound like it's a selfless act they are doing for the good of society. Also, childless couples/singles get taxed at quite a high rate (after any returns) vs parents. You compound that over 21 or whatever years it takes for kids to become "productive". Furthermore…
I assume that at age 66 you still want access to things like medical care, fire departments, etc. What value do you place on that? Your taxes enable young people to exist/grow-up and extend those services to you. Providing for kids is selfish, not selfless. Until the singularity happens, we need young children to grow into functioning adults that continue and (hopefully) advance society.