<story><title>Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19</title><url>https://www.cnet.com/news/tech-firms-face-growing-resentment-of-parent-employees-during-covid-19/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nicbou</author><text>Then is it cool if I skip a few meetings to volunteer to help the homeless?&lt;p&gt;We already heavily subsidise child-rearing through taxes and other benefits. As I said elsewhere, there are mechanisms for supporting parents already. If you tried to let any other charitable endeavour take over your work schedule, you wouldn&amp;#x27;t expect your compensation to remain unaffected.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not resentful at parents. It just seems completely unfair to make childless employees subsidise this adventure, as if they didn&amp;#x27;t already do it through 40 years of tax contributions.&lt;p&gt;Besides, let&amp;#x27;s not pretend that people choose to have kids as a service to humanity. I&amp;#x27;ve never, ever heard anyone claim that. People have kids because they&amp;#x27;re fun, and because making them is fun.</text></item><item><author>jdm2212</author><text>Someone has to provide the goods and services you&amp;#x27;ll consume when you&amp;#x27;re old. Those people are today&amp;#x27;s kids, whose parents are doing you a big favor at considerable expense to themselves.&lt;p&gt;Raising children isn&amp;#x27;t like smoking, a hobby, a side hustle, or other miscellaneous personal obligations. It&amp;#x27;s more like military service and jury duty -- an essential service that some people perform to ensure that society as we know it can continue to exist. And one which employers can, should, and often do make special allowances for.</text></item><item><author>nicbou</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t fully agree with you.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Likewise, parents are excused from work because they have children. I fully appreciate the difficulty of being a parent and the necessity for those measures. I don&amp;#x27;t think we really have a choice. It&amp;#x27;s either that or we watch them slowly crack under the pressure.&lt;p&gt;That being said, they chose to have children, and I chose not to. Whatever I have going on instead can&amp;#x27;t have priority over my work schedule. Whether it&amp;#x27;s a side hustle or a little league baseball team, it has to wait.&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; those parents to get the time they desperately need. However, if this arrangement is to last, then childless employees should also get time for their personal obligations, whatever they might be.</text></item><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I am a middle-aged adult with no children who&amp;#x27;s worked at tech firms for the past couple decades. To be honest, the &amp;quot;resentment&amp;quot; of those without children have for &amp;quot;benefits&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s next, complaining that the cancer patient gets extra time off so why don&amp;#x27;t I?&lt;p&gt;If anything, I&amp;#x27;m thankful for all those people with kids who will (a) take care of the continuation of the human race, and more selfishly (b) support our society and economy when I am too old to do so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dcolkitt</author><text>&amp;gt; We already heavily subsidise child-rearing through taxes and other benefits.&lt;p&gt;The US and most other Western countries run huge budget deficits at essentially zero interest costs. This is only possible because creditors have full faith in the ability of future tax payers to meet debt obligations.&lt;p&gt;In light of that, I’d say the overall balance is that those with children are &lt;i&gt;massively&lt;/i&gt; subsidizing the childless.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19</title><url>https://www.cnet.com/news/tech-firms-face-growing-resentment-of-parent-employees-during-covid-19/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nicbou</author><text>Then is it cool if I skip a few meetings to volunteer to help the homeless?&lt;p&gt;We already heavily subsidise child-rearing through taxes and other benefits. As I said elsewhere, there are mechanisms for supporting parents already. If you tried to let any other charitable endeavour take over your work schedule, you wouldn&amp;#x27;t expect your compensation to remain unaffected.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not resentful at parents. It just seems completely unfair to make childless employees subsidise this adventure, as if they didn&amp;#x27;t already do it through 40 years of tax contributions.&lt;p&gt;Besides, let&amp;#x27;s not pretend that people choose to have kids as a service to humanity. I&amp;#x27;ve never, ever heard anyone claim that. People have kids because they&amp;#x27;re fun, and because making them is fun.</text></item><item><author>jdm2212</author><text>Someone has to provide the goods and services you&amp;#x27;ll consume when you&amp;#x27;re old. Those people are today&amp;#x27;s kids, whose parents are doing you a big favor at considerable expense to themselves.&lt;p&gt;Raising children isn&amp;#x27;t like smoking, a hobby, a side hustle, or other miscellaneous personal obligations. It&amp;#x27;s more like military service and jury duty -- an essential service that some people perform to ensure that society as we know it can continue to exist. And one which employers can, should, and often do make special allowances for.</text></item><item><author>nicbou</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t fully agree with you.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Likewise, parents are excused from work because they have children. I fully appreciate the difficulty of being a parent and the necessity for those measures. I don&amp;#x27;t think we really have a choice. It&amp;#x27;s either that or we watch them slowly crack under the pressure.&lt;p&gt;That being said, they chose to have children, and I chose not to. Whatever I have going on instead can&amp;#x27;t have priority over my work schedule. Whether it&amp;#x27;s a side hustle or a little league baseball team, it has to wait.&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; those parents to get the time they desperately need. However, if this arrangement is to last, then childless employees should also get time for their personal obligations, whatever they might be.</text></item><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I am a middle-aged adult with no children who&amp;#x27;s worked at tech firms for the past couple decades. To be honest, the &amp;quot;resentment&amp;quot; of those without children have for &amp;quot;benefits&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s next, complaining that the cancer patient gets extra time off so why don&amp;#x27;t I?&lt;p&gt;If anything, I&amp;#x27;m thankful for all those people with kids who will (a) take care of the continuation of the human race, and more selfishly (b) support our society and economy when I am too old to do so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jdm2212</author><text>&amp;gt; Then is it cool if I skip a few meetings to volunteer to help the homeless?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the thing -- you won&amp;#x27;t actually go volunteer with the homeless. (Or at least, 99% of us wouldn&amp;#x27;t.) But parents actually have to change those diapers. If there&amp;#x27;s a little kid running around in the background of that Zoom call, someone is doing a lot of hard work to keep the kid alive. And unlike volunteering at the homeless shelter, they can&amp;#x27;t just decide they don&amp;#x27;t feel like it.</text></comment>