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> One thing I wish I could make my childless peers grok is that THERE IS NO VACATION when you have young kids. As a childless person who has nevertheless helpe

> One thing I wish I could make my childless peers grok is that THERE IS NO VACATION when you have young kids. As a childless person who has nevertheless helped a lot with childcare while growing up in a different country, here is a simple family-based solution – ask your family's older members to move in and help with childcare if possible, or move close by. Or ask a cousin or an aunt or a sister to move in with you or close to you, because you need help because you are overwhelmed with your kids. I bet you won't, because "it's weird" or "it wouldn't work out" or something like that. Yet this is traditionally exactly how parents have distributed the pain of child rearing. Now think about it – if you can't expect family to help you, why do you expect help from your coworkers in this situation? The nuclear family in the US is an experiment that has been generally quite stressful, and COVID has thrown it totally out of gear. This doesn't mean it was working too well in the first place.

robbiemitchell 6y ago
One example for you: My parents are dead or gone. We moved in with wife's parents for a few months. It was a lifesaver. But (a) they were still not quite retired and couldn't help much, (b) they're older and don't have a lot of energy, (c) they were "over it" with Covid relatively quickly and wanted to take way more risks than we did. Oh, and they have four kids, three of whom have multiple kids. We can't all just ask them to move in. Life is not at all simple.
- quadrifoliate 6y ago
  I am sorry to hear about your parents. > Life is not at all simple. This is the primary thesis of all the pro-parent arguments in this thread. And the response from a lot of people is is “Yes, and this is similar to all the other hard family-type situations that people have already found themselves in over the past few decades, and been unable to get help from work for”. Overall if the outcome from these discussions is a recognition of what you said, and a willingness to be flexible because of people's life circumstances, I'm all for it. If anyone is benefiting from extraordinary flexibility as a parent during this time, they should try and pay it forward by recognizing other people's needs and life circumstances in the future, and being willing to accommodate them by default in the future instead of as a special dispensation.

robbiemitchell 6y ago

One example for you: My parents are dead or gone. We moved in with wife's parents for a few months. It was a lifesaver. But (a) they were still not quite retired and couldn't help much, (b) they're older and don't have a lot of energy, (c) they were "over it" with Covid relatively quickly and wanted to take way more risks than we did. Oh, and they have four kids, three of whom have multiple kids. We can't all just ask them to move in. Life is not at all simple.

quadrifoliate 6y ago
I am sorry to hear about your parents. > Life is not at all simple. This is the primary thesis of all the pro-parent arguments in this thread. And the response from a lot of people is is “Yes, and this is similar to all the other hard family-type situations that people have already found themselves in over the past few decades, and been unable to get help from work for”. Overall if the outcome from these discussions is a recognition of what you said, and a willingness to be flexible because of people's life circumstances, I'm all for it. If anyone is benefiting from extraordinary flexibility as a parent during this time, they should try and pay it forward by recognizing other people's needs and life circumstances in the future, and being willing to accommodate them by default in the future instead of as a special dispensation.