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Comment by threemux | Hacker News Reader

> employees who now have to spend money on [...] childcare

Excuse me, what? Unless he's referring to something like before and after school care for an older child, he's saying people were foregoing daycare for their young children? As a parent of two children younger than kindergarten age, I don't understand how productive remote work was being done without childcare.

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It depends on the age of the child - having a 7-year old return from school at 2pm and hangout at home with an adult present is fine and saves you the cost of afterschool care.

A lot of people abused it to care for babies and very young children while working though. I understand the appeal but it doesn’t sit right.

My wife and I work remotely. Everyone in my team has children, so everyone's very flexible. We tend to work less during the afternoon, and pick it up later in the day. I start earlier when I'm not the one doing the morning drop-off.

My daughter still goes to after-school care twice a week, but this lets us save three days of after and five days of before-school care.

You’re right for younger children but for older children in school you can definitely handle it while working remotely. You just pick them up from school and then they can mostly do stuff on their own the afternoon. But if you have to go in office suddenly that doesn’t work anymore.

To expand on this a touch, kids are only in school for 6 hours a day. For ages between kindergarten and grade 4 or so, it is generally frowned on to let them make their way home alone. A single parent with no child care cannot be in an office for 8 hours straight.

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