Eh... it works the other way, too. School is (maybe accidentally) also designed so that people can be productive while their children are too young to be respon

Eh... it works the other way, too. School is (maybe accidentally) also designed so that people can be productive while their children are too young to be responsible for themselves. Many of the main benefits of universal pre-K, for instance, overlap a lot with universal day care. The standard work week (whether 30 hours or 40 hours) is about having a common cadence that everyone can plan things around. The counterexample to this is the plight of workers who have to juggle multiple part time jobs and the availability expectations of multiple bosses, their kids schools, and so on.