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Agreed, all workers should have maximum flexibility to balance their lives. Why hurt productivity for the sake of a rigid schedule?
Its my contention that happy workers are more productive. Let every worker take the time they need to maintain their work/life balance, so long as the quality of their work is unaffected.
I don't think this is controversial. It's all about the ratios. And this says a lot about your work condition. I got 27 days off annually. Before my child was born I had 26. It's not a game changer... If all my childless coworkers got an extra day off I probably wouldn't even notice. So sure thay should have it, whatever. You Americans can argue about the weirdest things sometimes.
it isnt weird when most workers here dont get sick leave, let alone vacation time. Europeans are straight up ignorant when it comes to the US but they sure do like to spread their opinions.
edit: holy shit, thank you all for proving my point. of COURSE we want better conditions. europeans are too ignorant to understand why we cant "just change things then." and they dont want to listen to the reasons why. we are glorified slaves here and whenever we bring it up, all we get is abuse from people who will never comprehend our system or why we havent waved our magic wands over the situation.
I think it would be ideal if everyone could be afforded the flexibility they need in their own lives for whatever they might wish to do, but I don't think this take is a very good one.
The reason parents are often given these benefits is because there is an understanding that there is a literal human being's life on the line, and that this person cares incredibly strongly about that child.
I might care a lot about an event I want to go to, but when it comes down to it, any boss would probably pick making sure a parent can pick their kid up from school over me being able to go a concert or something.
If everyone had a kid tomorrow, you'd probably see a lot of these benefits not be offered as freely, considering how businesses would simply just be understaffed to handle that much demand for flexibility, skipping certain hours, schedule changes, etc.
All that said though, there is still room for benefits and additional flexibility to be afforded to workers... if corporations are willing to spend extra money on more staff, better accommodations like not requiring in-office work when the work only requires being on a computer all day, stuff like that.
Good take. I have just three things to add:
On the one hand you are absolutely correct about these accommodations being for the benefit of the children
On the other hand, if your employer is denying your reasonable request for PTO, or denying accommodations in an emergency unrelated to children, then your company is already understaffed.
Any employer that can't handle the sudden absence of an employee is failing at management and is not somewhere I would want to continue working. If your shift needs everyone to show up or things fall apart, run for the hills.
On one side people shouldn't get special treatment for things of their chosing - that's just the Principle of fairness of treatment.
Nowadays in modern countries with easy access to modern contraception, having kids is a choice.
However given how for example in America there is a crack down on abortion, things are going backwards in this and having kids isn't always a choice anymore, in which case it's actually fair to more easilly accomodate people who have kids more than people who don't.
On the other side if a country wants to incentivise people to have children in order to, at minimum, avoid a fall in that country's population, it makes sense to do things to make life easier for people when they have children such as providing free childcare.
Rule: if your company sets you up against your colleagues because you xor they have children, it's time for a strike or time to quit
People saying that kids are important to society so we should allow parents extra flexibility, it rests on the assumption that what non parents would be doing with that flexible is less important to society. What if I'm giving blood, or helping an elderly parent, or volunteering at a homeless shelter? It's hardly the employers role to judge pass judgement on what is a worthwhile use of time.