Childcare is a job, especially with younger kids under, say, 6. The idea that you can execute childcare and your full time job effectively, simultaneously, is just a joke.
You work to live not the other way.
Family is more important than a job. So yeah, giving only 20-30% of your life to your job and keeping the rest for your family makes more sense than the other way around.
There is no point in a child's life that requires 100% attention during the day.
Even once they reach preschool/primary they don't.
You are of the opinion that it is more important that an employee be available 100% of the time from 9 to 5, I am of the opinion that it is most important that an employee get their job done.
I would 100% prefer a competent employee where I have to block out some brief segment during the day, than someone less capable where I can schedule a meeting whenever I like from 9 to 5.
I would also 100% prefer an employee I can trust to do their job regardless of supervision than someone who needs hand holding for everything.
Handholding is for interns and new employees learning how to work in industry (vs. academia or opensource).
I expect FTEs to be able to do their job without persistent oversight, and I expect them to do their jobs without persistent oversight.
Above 6-7 yo they are obligated to go to school, unless you homeschool, which is also incompatible with fulltime, good faith employment.
The same goes for middle managers though.
Just because you are unable to get your job done while having children around doesn't mean that's true of others.
It tells me that your only measure of getting a job done is "are you 'doing your job' from 9 to 5 with no break" rather than "are you getting the work your job requires done". Which is the standard trope of all these "we must be in the office, because without being in the office we lack the emotional maturity and competence to do our job" asshats.
I am done listening to all this "you must be in the office to do a job that has no functional requirement to be in an office" BS from people who are apparently not capable of doing their own jobs without being hand held.
Just because you can't do your own job without being in an office doesn't mean other people can't, so stop projecting your own issues on others and accept that maybe other people have different weakness. I can recognize that "Getting my job done without an office" discipline isn't universal, why are you folk incapable of recognizing that your own weaknesses are not also universal?
No, it really is. There's probably some age threshold where you can say "I don't care what you're doing, don't bother me for the next X hours" (that's not taking care of your child though). Below that threshold... what do you expect to happen when your kid wants to play and has a meltdown next to you?
Some days they demand ~100% of your time and there's no way around it - you would not be able to do your job while trying to look after the kid.
I mean… Do you always make so many random assumptions about the thoughts and lives of people you don’t know and know absolutely nothing about?
Let’s play this game.. Maybe your job is just not very demanding and you get paid for doing basically nothing all day?
I'm not sure why you're accusing me of this, when I was replying to the person saying that if you're a single parent your only option is unemployment
> Let’s play this game.. Maybe your job is just not very demanding and you get paid for doing basically nothing all day?
Feel free to, maybe it is, I don't think so, but that's kind of moot as I don't have kids. What I do know is that I have plenty of coworkers who are parents who seem able to do their job while their kids are around, and my experience working with them was very periodically rescheduling meetings rather, and not once them being incapable of doing their job.
Let's try this again: I am not saying that looking after kids is easy. I am not saying that looking after kids takes time.
What I am saying is very simple: people who have kids, of any age, are able to do their jobs. Requiring them to return to office means immediately and instantaneously that at least one must quit. Not because they're not doing their job, but rather because their employer has required that they be in the office from 9 to 5, they're now (let's be optimistic) away from home from 8 to 6. At that point the message is extremely clear: if you have children you cannot work here. An absurd hypothetical of children need only one minute of you being there during the day means you can no longer be in the office, and therefore are no longer permitted to work for your employer. Again not because you're not doing your job, but because you're not in the office.
It's also super fun that childcare penalization disproportionately impacts women. In the US at least, you only get 12 weeks of guaranteed maternity leave, but it's generally recommended that you breastfeed for 6 months. So the mandatory RTO policies say "are you a new mother? time to stop being employed in tech because mothers don't belong here".