Political Memes

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.

Same energy

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?

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.

And non-smokers should be given as many breaks as the smokers!

I love these wholesome debates. Let's all hate on each other as we fight over scraps from the Master's table.

ITT: people thinking that offering everybody the same flexibility means taking that flexibility from parents

smfh

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.

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.

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.

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.

Controversial take: Pit the workers against each other while the boss takes even more time off.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes. But blame the bosses, don't blame parents.

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.

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.