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Comment by milesskorpen | Hacker News Reader

It's not clear to me how you can be a full-time employee and be doing full-time child care. I understand the need for schedule flexibility, but if going back to the office means you need to find child care it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time on those days.

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Lots of legit reasons. Some I have seen:

- kids do remote school for whatever reason. This works when parent is at home, but not if parent is at the office.

- kids are < age when it's okay to leave them at home, but > age when it's okay for them to walk home from school.

- Have to be at work at 9, school drop-off starts at 8:35. School is 45 minutes from the office.

There are a lot of ways people organize their lives.

The cool thing about sales teams is you don't have to micromanage them in the office as they are one of the few teams in the company where results are unambiguous.

These are all legitimate but I found my self a bit bewildered that the concept of a school bus is absent entirely from the apparent thought process, given I rode the bus for the vast majority of my primary and secondary schooling

At least by me you have to be more than 1.5miles from the school to get a bus - that's a half hour walk! Doable certainly, but not fun, especially in the winter - or worse, when it's hot!

And teens need to live even farther from their school to qualify for a bus, but teens don't walk any faster than non teens. Most kids don't really want to spend the better part of an hour each way going to/from school.

A bike can make 1.5 miles an easy ride (I rode 4 miles to school in HS) but it's really rare to have safe bike routes in most places, sadly.

Sadly untrue where I grew up. The hills were brutal, walking and taking longer was preferable to not feeling your legs lol

I used to occasionally walk home from school in high school, about 3 miles. Not very many sidewalks as it was a semi-rural area (there were some in town but only for like 1/3rd of the walk), and I had to walk across a highway overpass, which was a bit sketchy to do on foot.

I would beat the bus when I did so, but only because I went to a charter school and there was a solid 40 minutes of sitting and waiting on a second bus at a different school that we were initially bussed to built into the bus commute.

Anyways, just reminiscing.

School buses are increasingly rare - https://www.vox.com/life/373743/school-bus-transportation-ki...

My kids start school at 8:40 and the train to work leaves at 8:54, meaning that if everything goes perfectly (no disasters at dropoff, train on time, I get the folding bike unfolded quickly and ride like hell, though I like that part) I get to the office at 9:27. I don't think it would be physically possible for me to do a 9:00 AM start time.

you don't think it's physically possible to drop your kids off at school early? The school doors are locked until 8:39am and there are zombies and werewolves patrolling outside making entering the building early, or waiting outside physically impossible?

Like it get that remote work is wayyyyyyyyy better and RTO sucks, but let's not make up lies

Do you think the teachers live at the school? There's going to be a time when they're just unable to accept kids. I would presume that 8:40 is the earliest that parent can drop off and the school actually starts the lessons a little bit later.

> you don't think it's physically possible to drop your kids off at school early? The school doors are locked until 8:39am and there are zombies and werewolves patrolling outside making entering the building early, or waiting outside physically impossible?

What the hell does "physically possible" have to do with anything? Did you ever go to school? The doors may not be locked, but unless the school has some kind of defined pre-care program, they're not ready to take care of random kids dropping in early. That's why they have a start time.

My kids' school has a 20 minute drop off window. They have an pre-care option, but you have to sign up for it (and pay) because they have to juggle staffing levels. You can't just physically dump your kid outside the door and leave because you'd like to.

This may be easier for you understand: A store opens at 9AM, but you're available at 8AM and have to be in the office at 9AM. Can you just drop in at 8AM to get your shopping done? No, if the employees are even there, they're busy with "getting ready for the day" tasks. Same thing goes with schools.

In some parts of the country, parents are arrested for child abandonment for leaving children unattended (that's the situation outside at the school before the doors are open).

Depending on when you have to leave for your commute, the doors may well be locked. And doors being unlocked does not mean you are allowed to leave your child there without ramifications. Again -- leaving a child in a school building without agreed-upon supervision is still a clear display of negligence.

Anyway, these are not serious solutions.

We need to return to latchkey parenting.

Also a bus/train rider in my youth (from 6 years old no less) but today it's a bit different. I live in a very safe rural part of the US but even here the school busses aren't entirely safe for kids (bullying, theft) so we ended up driving our kids after a few months of trying the bus. In addition the busses only run to school hours so if the kids attend any kind of after school activity, which turns out to be the case most days...no bus.

As a parent in the Houston Independent School district, one of the recent changes made by the state-appointed superintendent (we were taken over recently) was to fire all the bus drivers and rehire as contractors. The result is that elementary and middle school are combined, bus stops are up to 3 miles from home address, and bus trips are often in excess of 2 hours (for what should be ~20 minute drives). I also took the bus all growing up, but I walked a few blocks to my bus, and the route was only about 50% longer than driving directly.

Sadly, while we are all used to Texas state government hostility to public goods, even in my home state of Maryland, apparently bus trip lengths have now doubled. In an era of declining public investment, it's apparently easier to save money on non-teacher staffs...

If you think in systems, you can see the python squeezing everywhere: companies squeezing for profits as labor costs increase due to structural demographics and the cost of money has increased substantially from low or zero rates, public investment being squeezed because taxes won't go up to pay for teachers and ancillary staff (1600 school districts across 24 states in the US are on 4 day weeks to retain teachers [1] [2]), etc. I have seen pay for school bus drivers in fairly standard COL areas approach $25-$30/hr. That is what it takes to put people behind the wheel for those jobs now.

It's a natural experiment to behold as a curious scholar of systems, but also deeply disappointing to watch as Rome does not burn, but fades out in various ways. We could make better choices; we choose not to at scale.

[1] https://direct.mit.edu/edfp/article/16/4/558/97130/Are-All-F...

[2] https://direct.mit.edu/view-large/figure/4256961/edfp_a_0031...

> I have seen pay for school bus drivers in fairly standard COL areas approach $25-$30/hr. That is what it takes to put people behind the wheel for those jobs now.

Per FRED[1], median personal income in 2023 was ~$21/hr. Per ADP's most recent survey[2], median pay for people who did not change jobs was ~$29/hr.

Given that context, it is not surprising that the pool of people who can qualify for these jobs (no criminal record, drug screen, etc.) and who want them also demand to be paid near the median income.

(You of course know this, but I want to contribute this data point for the discussion.)

> We could make better choices; we choose not to at scale.

Honestly, this is the American Way. One day our luck will run out and we will fail or be forced to make better choices.

1 - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N

2 - https://payinsights.adp.com

Great points, thanks for sharing.

> Honestly, this is the American Way. One day our luck will run out and we will fail or be forced to make better choices.

Amen.

My district called bus service due to low ridership. The majority of parents in my district are single income and so one parent drives their kids to school every day. It's just another factor forcing low income families out of the neighborhoods.

I should have been clearer.

It doesn't matter that the 9-year-old comes home on a bus vs walking. They still are not allowed to stay at home by themselves for hours after school every day, even if they take the bus.

It's not the conveyance, it's that the parent is no longer on the premises at all.

I simply chose walking because most of the kids in our neighborhood walk to school.

In California the school buses aren't free.

If you are a divorced parent with shared custody, this can be challenging if you live in another town or even in the same town due to how they draw school boundaries. The child can only take the bus that is tied to the custodial parent's address so the other parent is on the hook for transportation to/from school.

With a 2 year old, sure. But a lot of my PTO used to be "elementary aged child is sick and has to stay home from school, so I have to stay home too because he can't be home by himself for 9 hours". Now I don't have to take PTO for that. Kids are sick and just stay in bed or on the couch, I check on them every so often. Doesn't interfere with work any more than going to get a coffee.

There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children.

If you as an employer provide a leave of just 15 days for the father (I've seen really big companies do this), and just a few months for the mother, don't be surprised if people lose productivity or just straight up leave when they have children.

Most EU countries have great paternal leave policies. Most other countries could learn something from them.

Somehow, it has become acceptable to forget raising a family for the sake of working, and it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies.

Edit with some more thoughts:

95% of all the time you will spend with your parents is gone. [1]

If your child is raised by a caretaker, you're losing a huge chunk of all the time you'll get with them. On your deathbed, would you feel proud of having delivered another feature instead of spending a bit more time with your family and children?

[1]: https://seeyourfolks.com/

> it's disheartening to see people actually defend companies when they set these policies.

HN is full of temporarily-embarrassed CEO-wannabes-in-waiting who tend to side with the disruptor, not so much with the disruptees.

“There's nothing wrong with caring for your child. The cause of this situation is insufficient paternal leaves, not having and raising children.”

Tell me you’ve never been a working parent, without telling me…

i don't get what you are trying to say here.

It depends on the level of needs for the child. There's a certain age range where a child can basically take care of themself for a few hours bur can't be trusted to be home alone (or haven't met the legal age).

Yeah, I can understand that.

This is probably between age 6 and 11, so with the average 1.94 children family with ~2 year spacing, there's a need for something like 7 years of after school monitoring...

I guess depends how far you are from the office, and how much time you'll end up burning on commutes. Childcare may be a 5 minute walk from home but a 1+hr unreliable commute from the office.

Hanging all day in meetings also feels like not working full time…I have to admit, there are meetings where I sit with my child’s and build legos. Those are the most productive meetings I have…

When they're between 1.5-5 you don't really have to watch them all the time, but you can't leave them alone. Depending on your job (fine for my partner when she's being a PM, not fine for me when I'm being an SWE) that can be manageable.

And daycare is booooooonkers expensive. I'm sure a lot of people were like "hmm, $3k/mo or constant low-key distraction... how bad can it be"

I don't see mention of someone working full-time while also doing full-time child care. I see people who have part-time child care who now need full-time, like:

> A sales-team member who's a parent said they started searching for additional childcare arrangements

and

> Under the hybrid model, one worker was able to leave the office at lunchtime to manage pickup times and shared childcare duties with their partner, who worked from home. The worker said managers were flexible about people signing on later from home to complete their hours.

> Their productivity numbers had not fallen, they added.

The job of a worker can often be realistically done in far less than 40 hours a week. If you're salaried, maybe working 9-12 and 2-4:30 is feasible and legal for performance, and 5x/week for 8 hours in the office takes you away from what you were doing in the padding.

Secondly, RTO means a lack of flexibility in work hours even if you did 40/week. People who didn't have to commute, who had time to take their kids to school or pick them up, now don't have that pre- and post-work time to help kids.

Think elementary age children who go to school. Most parents would not want a first grader to have to be home alone for a couple hours. School age kids don't need 100% interaction while at home - they just need to be safe, and their parents need to be available occasionally. I would imagine returning to the office means finding after-school care in many cases.

You're implying that none of them are on part-time daycare because they should easily be able to convert to full-time daycare now. That is false. You cannot simply convert up if the daycare does not have capacity, to say nothing of the associated costs.

I couldn’t find any mention of employees doing full-time childcare in the article. But I suspect you don’t really understand the issues. If you need an extra hour childcare because of your commute you are unlikely to find childcare that covers that one hour only and works around you. You most likely need to find afternoon/early evening cover. Good luck.

Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect.

Be glad you don’t have to sort out childcare or deal with people thinking you “weren’t really working”.

> Also, you can work from home distraction free whilst ensuring the kids are not killing themselves. But you can’t just leave them at home incase they kill themselves. They call that neglect.

Are you speculating or telling from personal experience?

If the first the answer even common sense will give you is no.

If the later you contribute to the problem that a vast majority of responsible workers pay the bills for a minority who overstretched the system.

Personal experience.

Something like that might include a casual arrangement like a neighbour watching them after school before you get home, a grandparent dropping by, etc.

I’m don’t quite get what you mean. It wouldn’t be that unexpected in a nice friendly community for a neighbor to help out occasionally, but people don’t just work occasionally, right?

Of course, I was referring to “ an extra hour childcare because of your commute you are unlikely to find childcare that covers that one hour only and works around you. ”

I just meant examples exist. I can’t use these things since I live 3000 miles from parents and my neighbours and friends all work full time anyway.

Incidentally I understand this is a challenge in China where the retirement age was recently raised and grandparents often provide care.

The problem is a near-immediate reversion to pre-WFH/hybrid times. They now have five days to solve planning that may have taken some people years, and the family as a whole is probably going to suffer, and one parent's career prospects are probably going to be damaged as a result. A lot of people aren't living near grandma and grandpa right now, which is something they might have considered doing if they knew they were going to be tethered to a desk in an office.

Implying you're full time producing value - head in the game - when you're in the office?

This is a good point. When I started working remotely, I was really clear with my spouse that this doesn't mean that I'm suddenly available to supervise the kid, do work around the house, go pick things up at the store, and so on, just because I was physically at home. I'm still working just as if I was in the office, just without having to drive to a separate building.

Strong boundaries. But the divorce is going to burn a bunch of your work time..

It seems like a healthy relationship to me… they communicated and understood each other’s needs.

> it seems to suggest some of these people weren't really working full time

Only if you think it's impossible for people to work while their children are home.

Elementary schools close at 3pm. No longer can you just take a break mid-day to pick them up because you’re stuck at the office until 5.

Lots of daycares close by 6pm. Good luck leaving the office, commuting, picking up the kid on time.

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