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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

They are working as much or more. Just not on the same things. It's not as if being a parent somehow translates into more free time, in fact it translates into substantially less free time if any at all.

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By that measure, one could get the absurd idea to expect getting paid time off for that woodworking project. It even has "work" right in the name. Nobody does expect that though. Better arguments should be easy to find.

Woodworking is a hobby. Raising kids is a full time job, no time off, no pay, no changing jobs.

What if "woodworking" was replaced with "volunteer firefighting"?

This has to be the all time prize winner in moving the goalposts.

I'm not trying to move goalposts. My point is that parents get a special privilege that people with similarly charitable obligations wouldn't. If I wanted to do something undeniably good for society that is NOT rearing children, my employer wouldn't let me off the hook without a pay cut.

Maybe instead of focusing on parents getting some flexibility that you don't you should drop that completely and only make the argument that everyone (parents included) should be given leeway by employers to have flexibility when it comes to contributing to the public versus a private organization.

That's exactly the argument I have made, but perhaps it was under a different branch. I get a bit confused by the flow of conversation on HN.

What if you joined the national guard I’m pretty sure they would. Why don’t you try it and see

Making accommodation rules is hard. There's a lot more parents than there are firefighters. Maybe it makes sense to have a one off rule for parents.

I've worked for several companies that offered paid time off for volunteering. (With plenty of conditions and limits, of course.)

Funny how we all seem to have just implicitly accepted that any people having any number of children under any circumstances is “undeniably good for society.”

Funny, how those that don't have children most likely do expect to have their pensions paid for by the children of the people that do have children.

No, we do not expect to have pensions.

If the region is at threat from massive wildfires, yes!

Just the same, if there is an national pandemic that has upended all traditional childcare options, then maybe give some slack to the parents

I mean, having kids is a hobby too. Both woodworking and having kids are born from free-will and decisions (except in exceptional circumstances).

Historically, the exceptional circumstance is the free-will you speak of. It is a biological imperative, not a hobby.

Having kids is not a job.

Don't get caught up splitting semantic hairs: having kids takes a lot of work. That's all people mean when they refer to it as a "job"

Well, jacquesm must mean something more than that, because woodworking is also a lot of work but jacquesm seems to feel that parenting should be treated differently.

Recognizing a distinction someone else is trying to draw with a term isn't splitting hairs.

Completely agreed.

But in the US we don't pay stay at home mother's for their time either.

These companies should help their employees, I'm saying that there is a much deeper problem in our society in how we handle individuals who are not profitable.

Fair enough, but that's a problem that could be solved by adopting those 'socialist' measures that are normal in other first world countries. The individual parents are not in a position to make any changes there and their lives are as expensive - and probably more so - as the lives of singles. Resentment is a ridiculous response to a societal problem.

> They are working as much or more. Just not on the same things.

The same can be said about anyone with a hobby though. They are working as much or more. Just not on the same things.

Kids are a hobby?

Your point -as I understood it- was that they do work the same amount, just not on work-stuff, ergo they should be treated as if they worked the same amount on work stuff. And you can absolutely work on hobbies just the same.

Kids are a choice, first and foremost. And we are, as societies, helping quite a bit with the consequences of those choices, and yes, that's mostly funded by the single people.

Kids are not a choice in aggregate. Kids are fundamental to the survival of our species, the only intelligent life we know if in our universe. How myopic.

I would argue that having kids is the only reasonable goal you can have as a species. Everything else that humans do is optional.

I don't disagree. Yet individually, they are a choice. We're at a strange time in human history, where "(almost) everybody has children" no longer holds true. While children in total are necessary for a society, any individual person's children are not.

We encourage having children by severely lightening the load that comes with having children, but we're not encouraging having children as a life-style choice where you get to cuddle with them and the state takes over any other duties.

Yes, raising children is hard work. No, parents are not doing it for altruistic reasons. Yes, we should support them. No, we shouldn't just push more and more work on non-parents so parents can have an easier time.

Hang on. Who the hell is having to do more work than before because of parents? Projects get pushed back, scoped down. Childless engineers don't have to be doing 100 hour weeks to compensate.

I guess that most people have children not for societal duty to continue human species, but for personal emotional fulfilment. So in this sense they are hobby.

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