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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

Your thinking falls apart when you consider that children are a choice. And often a selfish one at that. You are not afflicted with children, you make an active decision to have them and everything that comes along with that. I would of course not begrudge a coworker for taking time off to deal with cancer, for example, but when you decide you want kids? That's a different story.

The other part of this discussion that gets left out is state vs. company responsibility. In the US, the state has generally failed when it comes to supporting parents, so people have turned to companies to fill the gap. However, it's not clear to me why companies should be the ones to do that. The state needs children and eventually benefits from them. Companies do not.

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I disagree that my thinking falls apart. Maybe my message is not coming across clearly so I’ll try and restart it: We are not talking about a benefit that is systemic and a typical part of our workforce. We are talking about a reaction by companies to help their employees during an unprecedented failure of normal institutions during a moment of global crisis. To extrapolate that into an argument of choices around kids, equity of benefits, or the the role of government vs. private responsibility. We’re taking about something that started 6 months ago and has still not returned to normal, if it ever will. This will require a fundamental rethink of how we work, yes, but in the interim, parents needed help, companies stepped up and complaining about any of that seems selfish and missing the point.

I understand your message, but you keep framing it as a temporary issue and response when that doesn't matter - it's a preferential response, which is the whole issue. Rather than providing actually-equal time flexibility and time off to all employees in response to WFH challenges, companies provided those to only one class of employees.

> Your thinking falls apart when you consider that children are a choice. And often a selfish one at that.

You seem pretty hostile to people having children, why is that?

> I would of course not begrudge a coworker for taking time off to deal with cancer, for example, but when you decide you want kids? That's a different story.

And to be clear, most people, when deciding to have children, assume various things - for example, they assume that there is an education system in place to help shoulder some of the childcare burdens. This is part of what people's taxes are going towards - and many parents also privately spend money on additional/alternative day care.

No one could predict such an unprecedented and global catastrophe that makes all of that unavailable.

It may be a choice but without a younger generation growing up behind you, the whole house of cards - your life included - all comes down pretty quick. We all benefit from children.

(This is part of why we all pay for public education)

I respect that opinion, but personally disagree with it pretty strongly. 1) The earth does not need more humans on it, it needs fewer. 2) It should be the responsibility of the state to cater to the needs of parents, not the responsibility of private corporations. I am perfectly happy to pay tax dollars toward public education, childcare, maternity-related disability, etc. I am not ok with picking up the slack at work without additional compensation for people who choose to have kids. You might argue that these are equivalent in net result, but I would say that paying into a pool for the public good is quite a bit different than directly being asked to shoulder more burden for free.

Curious how the state should solve the current situation?

Overrule companies vacation policy and give all parents extra PTO?

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