Controversial take: Pit the workers against each other while the boss takes even more time off.

Everyone should have the freedom to take care of their lives when they need to.

This includes being paid a salary that doesn’t keep you on the edge of poverty and ruin.

This should be the lowest bar legally. The fact that minimum wage isn’t tied to inflation was inconvenient decades ago, now it is actively harming everyone in the US.

There are more labor protections that we need (see: EU countries with functioning democracies) but pay and leave minimums are the most impactful to the most people’s quality of life.

I think we all should get more guaranteed time off to just enjoy our one finite life.

I think if someone needs to come in late/leave early/go home unexpectedly we shouldn’t have to justify it because we are adults (so long as we get our assigned tasks done WHO CARES). If we can’t meet work goals I think we should (as again - fucking adults) have a conversation with our team/manager to handle it.

I think if we are sick we should be given time and space to recover. It’s not our employer’s business how, what, or why (that includes not requiring an employee to see a doctor or get a FUCKING DOCTORS NOTE). When it comes to sick time I don’t care if someone is taking care of themselves, their sick child, their elderly parents, or their chihuahua with a broken leg, they shouldn’t have to explain it, they shouldn’t have to justify it, and it should be given identical time and grace.

I don’t think that unmarried or childfree people should have to cover all the holidays because ThEY dON’t HaVE fAMilY. That’s cruel and untrue and heteronomative. And if you have ever said this to someone, stood by while someone else said this, or benefited from someone using this logic to make the same person/people work EVERY holiday please know I think you are a trash person.

I think management/the owners/corporate will give us all as little time as they can get away with and LOVES it when we segment ourselves into in- and out-groups that fight over off-time like it’s a resource the workers control. We don’t. Don’t let them convince you we aren’t all in this together and that we don’t ALL deserve more free time.

Mostly I agree. I have no kids and won’t (vasectomy), and I’m a bit on the antinatalist side. Not so far in that I think people should never have kids. But reproducing at the rate we do is unsustainable and thus unethical. So there’s a bias there.

I do think maternity and paternity leave should be given. And some grace should be allowed for small things. Like having to come in a little late or leave a little early for having to pick up/drop off kids, that kind of thing. To a point. If it’s causing more than a minor burden to coworkers, then that’s a problem.

But getting preference in scheduling, time off, etc? I don’t agree with that. I shouldn’t get the short end of the stick because they have a kid.

Edit: In reading some of the other comments, I saw a common sentiment which I’ll sum up as “don’t blame the parent, blame the system” which I can agree with.

I also had a “chose to breed” line in my last paragraph. I softened the language there, because it’s not always a choice.

I’m all for it, but at the end of the day, humanity needs to reproduce. So if there was only room for flexibility for the parents then that’s what makes sense to put first.

Option C, watch the comments degenerate into warfare while eating popcorn.

What kind of a stupid fucking question is this

Yes. But blame the bosses, don’t blame parents.

No because they have different needs. Society should focus on providing people based on their needs, not how much they produce. Only a slave bases his worth on his productivity.

I think this question pits parents and others against each other, when it shouldn’t. Parental leave is necessary to raise a child. But at the same time, workers in general need leave for mental health among other things.

I also think this is more of a problem for places like America where leave is really, really unfairly distributed and there’s basically no worker protections. There should be plenty of medical and annual leave, as well as government support in case medical leave isn’t enough to get better.

Check out the crabs in the bucket.

I love these wholesome debates. Let’s all hate on each other as we fight over scraps from the Master’s table.

I hate to be the person thats is all like “as a parent…”, however - to me having to leave early, come in late or take a day off to deal with kids being sick, appointments or just daycare/school drop off/pickup is worse.
The premise of this feels like “smokers get a break so why shouldnt we?”. But realistically my work is still there, i am stressed about the thing i havent done that should/needed to be done that day, the amount of work i now have to catch up on and the extra stress of trying to get the ‘non-work’ things done as quickly as possible so i can be back at work to get through my workload.
And ontop of that, you likely had to cut your work time short because your kid is sick or hurt and you are also stressed about that, its not like you jump in your car and start whistling to the radio heading home early.

So yes, i think a non-parent should have just as much flexibility as a parent, but thats a conversation to have with your boss and not some guilt you try saddle on parents when they cant be at their workplace for their full X-hours per day. I would never make a coworker feel guilty because they left half an hour early a couple days per week to go like practice for their sport or hobby or something, so afford the same respect for someone who has ‘child commitments’ instead of your ‘leisure commitments’ because they arent the ones saying you cant take time off too.

Not quite the same formulation, but I’ve read the argument that paternal leave should be equal to maternal leave, and that both should be mandatory, because otherwise it creates an incentive for companies to hire men rather than women who might make use of maternity leave. I can see a similar argument for all workers, so that there isn’t an incentive to hire people who will never have children over those who will.

Of course, all of these scenarios presume that any companies would willingly provide any leave whatsoever, which is already a fantasy. A company will only provide as many benefits as it is forced to, and a functioning regulatory state is the only entity that could force such compliance.

ITT: people thinking that offering everybody the same flexibility means taking that flexibility from parents

smfh