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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.
Same energy
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.
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.
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.
