Working Parents Challenges

The cluster focuses on the difficulties parents face balancing childcare and family responsibilities with demanding work schedules, especially in remote work or pandemic scenarios, including debates on flexibility, daycare, resentment from childless colleagues, and societal expectations.

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20
Years Active
5
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#9627
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Keywords

PT ZERO WFH OK archive.ph FT parents kids children home child parent daycare working wife job

Sample Comments

arp242 Oct 23, 2021 View on HN

If that's an issue for you then don't be a parent. Or have one of you be a stay-at-home parent. Or get a job with fewer hours.The unspoken assumption here is that people without kids aren't doing anything outside of their work that might be considered "work". They just choose to spend their time on different things.Parents really aren't special.

Glyptodon May 17, 2019 View on HN

You working for your kids doesn't mean your kids worked.

bradlys Oct 23, 2021 View on HN

Point is that the parents have all those things happen to. They just get the excuse of their children having those things happen to them and they get to take time off of work for it too. Whereas the single/childless/whatever people are not going to have that freedom. So, yeah, they’re gonna have to pickup the slack at work as per usual.

cortesoft Apr 17, 2021 View on HN

Well, two parents working means the kids would be in daycare normally, that wouldn’t change with WFH or not. This is more of a pandemic issue than a WFH issue.Also, the choice of whether one or both parents work is about more than just money. For one thing, it is basically choosing to end your career; we might not wish it to be so, but getting back in the workforce after being out for years is very difficult, and will require moving down the career growth ladder quite a bit.

CalRobert Jun 11, 2021 View on HN

"Needing to return home to your family is no longer an excuse to stop working because you can be with your family while at work."If you have young children or infants you can spend your time caring for them and worrying that those with older kids (or no kids!) will judge you.

zaccus Mar 20, 2015 View on HN

Grandparents/other family might not want to take care of your kids every day while you're at work, which is understandable.

Markoff Apr 20, 2017 View on HN

same here, it's just not possible with small child at home even if you are not supposed to take care of it during work hours

uberman Nov 19, 2022 View on HN

So you're not interested in parents who kept thier jobs but made other tradeoffs?

nugator Jul 21, 2017 View on HN

Seems like this works great until you get children. If you want to spend time with them and take responsibility for the household. Or am I wrong?

int_19h Nov 23, 2025 View on HN

Raising children is basically a full time job. Why not compensate it as such?