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Having young children can place constraints on your ability to shift work hours away from conventional 9-5. Childcare/schooling/etc are not as flexible in the

Having young children can place constraints on your ability to shift work hours away from conventional 9-5. Childcare/schooling/etc are not as flexible in the schedules they follow, and not everyone has a spouse/partner with sufficient free time to compensate for your unavailability.

gcp 10y ago
School starts at 8.45 and ends at 15.30hrs here. Without shifting work hours, it's outright impossible to take care of kids with 2 working partners, unless you want the kids to spend a lot of time in aftercare etc. With shifting hours, it's possible by shifting both partners relative to each other, so IMHO this is a point in favor of flex hours. In reality, most families need help from grandparents, too.
ryandrake 10y ago
Another difficulty is that very young children don't always understand the concept of "daddy is working now and can't play". Hell, not all spouses understand the concept of "no, just because I'm home doesn't mean I can watch the kids while you go out and run errands". Being physically in an office somewhere else helps to prevent the lines between "work time" and "home time" from becoming blurred.
- gcp 10y ago
  Never had problems explaining to the kids I'm unavailable during work time. You pretty much need a separate office room, of course. Home time and work time do end up hopelessly intermingled, but it works both ways. The extra flexibility ends up giving me more time with my kids, I think.
Arizhel 10y ago
Exactly. This is why people with children shouldn't also have jobs. At least one person needs to be at home to take care of the kids. However, with divorce so commonplace, you can't count on having one spouse earning an income any more, it's just too much of a risk, so I don't think anyone should have any kids at all. Having kids simply is not compatible with living in modern society. (No, this is not satire.)
- rewrew 10y ago
  What? Wow. You're kinda off the deep end there.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Do you have a solution? From what I see, parents simply have no time to actually spend with kids, they have to spend the equivalent of a full apartment rent on daycare, the cost of raising kids properly is utterly unaffordable, and the cost of living and healthcare makes it impossible for one parent to stay home instead of both having jobs, and the very high probability of divorce makes it foolhardy to enter into such an arrangement in the first place. On top of all that, the time needed to get an education and get established professionally makes it very difficult to have a kid before you're 30, and the older you are the higher the likelihood of birth defects or autism or Down's syndrome. Society isn't going to do anything to help you in raising your kids, so unless you're lucky to have some really great extended family or something, it's just way too much of a risk and an expense. I fail to see how this is "off the deep end", this is just the reality of modern American society.
    - westbywest 10y ago
      Many other cultures (and even many of my relatives) frame the task of rearing children as means to better ensure for your own care towards the end of your life, rather than as a high-risk endeavor comparable to purchasing real estate.
      - Arizhel 10y ago
        I've heard of this, but what kids actually stick around to take care of their parents when they're old? In fact, isn't that rather cruel? By the time the parents are unable to take care of themselves (if they get to that state; lots of elderly people are fully mobile and capable of taking care of themselves), their kids will now have their own kids, and it will be flatly impossible for them to both have two jobs, take care of their kids, and take care of their parents all at the same time. That's an unreasonable expectation to have of your children.

gcp 10y ago

School starts at 8.45 and ends at 15.30hrs here. Without shifting work hours, it's outright impossible to take care of kids with 2 working partners, unless you want the kids to spend a lot of time in aftercare etc. With shifting hours, it's possible by shifting both partners relative to each other, so IMHO this is a point in favor of flex hours. In reality, most families need help from grandparents, too.

ryandrake 10y ago

Another difficulty is that very young children don't always understand the concept of "daddy is working now and can't play". Hell, not all spouses understand the concept of "no, just because I'm home doesn't mean I can watch the kids while you go out and run errands". Being physically in an office somewhere else helps to prevent the lines between "work time" and "home time" from becoming blurred.

gcp 10y ago
Never had problems explaining to the kids I'm unavailable during work time. You pretty much need a separate office room, of course. Home time and work time do end up hopelessly intermingled, but it works both ways. The extra flexibility ends up giving me more time with my kids, I think.

Arizhel 10y ago

Exactly. This is why people with children shouldn't also have jobs. At least one person needs to be at home to take care of the kids. However, with divorce so commonplace, you can't count on having one spouse earning an income any more, it's just too much of a risk, so I don't think anyone should have any kids at all. Having kids simply is not compatible with living in modern society. (No, this is not satire.)

rewrew 10y ago
What? Wow. You're kinda off the deep end there.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Do you have a solution? From what I see, parents simply have no time to actually spend with kids, they have to spend the equivalent of a full apartment rent on daycare, the cost of raising kids properly is utterly unaffordable, and the cost of living and healthcare makes it impossible for one parent to stay home instead of both having jobs, and the very high probability of divorce makes it foolhardy to enter into such an arrangement in the first place. On top of all that, the time needed to get an education and get established professionally makes it very difficult to have a kid before you're 30, and the older you are the higher the likelihood of birth defects or autism or Down's syndrome. Society isn't going to do anything to help you in raising your kids, so unless you're lucky to have some really great extended family or something, it's just way too much of a risk and an expense. I fail to see how this is "off the deep end", this is just the reality of modern American society.
  - westbywest 10y ago
    Many other cultures (and even many of my relatives) frame the task of rearing children as means to better ensure for your own care towards the end of your life, rather than as a high-risk endeavor comparable to purchasing real estate.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      I've heard of this, but what kids actually stick around to take care of their parents when they're old? In fact, isn't that rather cruel? By the time the parents are unable to take care of themselves (if they get to that state; lots of elderly people are fully mobile and capable of taking care of themselves), their kids will now have their own kids, and it will be flatly impossible for them to both have two jobs, take care of their kids, and take care of their parents all at the same time. That's an unreasonable expectation to have of your children.