Are you tired of whiny millennial parents / co-workers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m just a few years younger than you are. When my kids were little, my husband’s work more or less expected that I would handle everything at home, and he would be available at work. (It didn’t matter that I also worked for the same hospital and knew is boss and coworkers.)

My sister is 35, and things are so different. Her husband does close to half, and that’s what’s expected. He took paternity leave when the kids were born, takes time off when they are sick half the time, goes to the doctor with them half the time, etc.

As a working woman, I think this is good.

I'm 45 with the same set up as your sister. My husband does more doctor and dentist appointments than I do, he does half the work around the house, and he takes them to their sports half the time. He also gets them ready for school and puts them to bed half the time. Same with cooking. We alternate days on this stuff so I know he actually is doing half, it's not something I'm trying to convince myself of. He also took the first four weeks off, then another four after I went back to work after 16 weeks. He dealt with kids in the morning because my commute was worse so I left before they got up and I got home earlier in the afternoons so we each had them alone for the same amount of time M-F and neither of us has ever worked weekends. Now they're older and take the bus to and from school and we both work from home so things are much easier, but he has always been 50% responsible for everything related to the family.

It sounds like you were older when you had your kids and rather than being the parent of older teens, you are more in the millennial group that the OP is complaining about. You and your husband both take time off, won’t work weekends ever, come in late after dropping kids off, leave early for daycare pickup and to make dinner, etc.

I said our kids take the bus to and from school, so there are no daycare drop offs or pick ups. Before they were in school we had a full-time nanny.

We take the time off we are provided with PTO (and not all of it at that). We generally take a week at Spring break, a week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas (our two firms are actually both closed for over a week then anyway) and then a day off here and there for other things. We've never gone into negative PTO and actually have a lot of leave saved up because we don't use it all.

We don't work weekends because we get our work done during the week. There have been exceptions, generally for trials when I did litigation, but now we prioritize starting our days earlier so that we can get everything done and not need to work on the weekend. We have "real" jobs, with billable hours and other requirements, but we also push back on ridiculous expectations. I'm not going to answer your 11 pm email immediately. You can get a response during working hours. My husband is going to take paternity leave because he is equally as responsible for our children. We've never had problems getting promoted, being liked, earning bonuses, etc. Our HHI is $500K so we're not millionaires but we're not not rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, are you married? Did your partner work full time out of the house? What childcare did you use for your kids, and can you quickly check if it's still open? Relevant to the discussion.

FWIW, I'm 45 and have WFH (hybrid) since my early 30s: a lot of our generation actually did use WFH to make our childcare work. Mostly not the dudes, though.

As a family we decided to raise our kids with my wife staying at home until the youngest was 13 then she joined the work force with me. We are a very traditional household where in the husband provides and the wife nurtures. We are a team just as the QB does not try to block a DE...we stay in our lanes and do what we do best. Wife cooks cleans, I cut fire wood, fix appliances, cut grass, we both share with the kids.

The point I was trying to make earlier is not that I am magical, its that my co-workers right now think they are entitled to live a lifestyle of luxury and its someone else's problem that they need day care, or mortgage rates are high, or housing costs are high, yeah no crap dum dum...I got to buy a house in 2007 at 350K watch its value go down to 150K get trapped in a mortgage, raising 2 kids, and be the only income feeling as if I was stuck....but I worked hard and somehow both myself and family survived and now I hear people younger than me cry about how hard it is to buy a house, and how lucky I am....no I put in hard work for 17 years and now I am in a better position to handle the challenges of 2025, because of the hard work I did for the last 17.

Here is an idea, go get some friends and rent a 4 BR apt for $3,000 and boom you now have a rent of 750...figure it out, stop crying life is hard and expensive....its hard and expensive for everyone...get a clue

and yeah I was trying to stir some stuff up...but that's what message boards are for...I may have mis spoke and my co-workers I am talking about may be GEN Z...21-28 yo whatever they are

So you've had basically no responsibilities for your children for 20 something years and you can't figure out why others who are equal caregivers have issues?

You bought a house for $350K and you can't figure out why people are having a hard time doing that today?

You think you can find a four bedroom apartment for $3,000?

I'm a Gen Xer and I think you're ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Honestly telework makes it worse in a lot of ways. I have a ton of vacation but am expected to respond constantly so I rarely get a real break. If I attempt to take a snow day off, I am pulled into meetings anyway. I can try to say no but I am the only woman in a sea of gen x men who were "involved dads" but had SAHMs when their kids were little and boomers who probably don't know what elementary school their kid went to. I would rather just be off when I'm off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Considering how GenZ is shaping out, I would reserve crowing about it.

Oh, and you are the DAD? Who did pickups and drop offs, or took to the 430 gymnastics class twice a week?

I’m guessing you dropped them off at 830 and went to work, and coached soccer once a week. Your DW did all the pickup and afternoon activities 4x a week which is career nightmare fuel.

I'm one of the moms that worked full time, did the sports/activities pickups, doc appointments etc. It's not hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gen X is really shaping up to be the new boomers, eh?

Let's see you survive, pre-gramps...

Rent: $2572/mo
Utilities: $350 (water, power, trash, internet)
Health insurance: $416/mo (is the half we pay & company pays other half)
Eye insurance: $50/mo ($25 ea for both me & hubby - kid is covered under health insurance)
Dental insurance: $44/mo ($22 eas for both me & hubby - kid is covered under health insurance)
Car 1: $0 - paid off
Car 1 insurance: $40/mo
Car 2: $216/mo but paying $400/mo so it will be paid off by July
Car 2 insurance: $65/mo
Student loan 1: $683/mo
Student loan 2: $515/mo
Daycare for 18 mo: $1314/mo
=$6096

And that doesn't even include groceries, tolls/gas/car expenses, personal care items, or other monthly expenses.

And yes, we've been trying to buy a house for 3 years now. We keep getting outbid, like, $50k-$70k outbid.

I’m not OP but this isn’t the winning argument you think it is. We were paying 3100/month for a house in Fairfax in 2004 (475k at 5.2% interest - which admittedly you couldn’t get now but it’s in the same sphere as the housing cost you’re quoting) and daycare was 1,200/month for my 12 month old. Car payments were $400 each and despite not having smartphones, internet/cell/landline/cable was all about $300/month. I can’t remember other charges but it was tight. We made $65k each as feds. When siblings came we had to shell out even more for daycare/aftercare as we both stressed out commuting to/from L’Enfant and CH every.day as telework was laughed at.

Granted, kids grew, cars got paid off, refinancing took place. But that commute was relentless until about 2018 when we could each take 1 day per pp to telework.

So I do empathize with young parents but, the truth is, it’s always going to be difficult. Both parents are better about helping out now (although my DH was great then) and parental leave is actually generous. To OP’s point, it’s just hard to believe that young parents think they can take so much time/TW without any pushback from their employers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m 46 and my husband is 44 so theoretically we span generations depending where you make the cut.

For our first child (born in 2012), we put our names on 11 DC area waitlists for childcare as soon as I found out I was pregnant. Only because the childcare at my office was lottery based did we get into that. Most childcares I never heard from or we were accepted well after her first birthday. So I was very lucky to be able to commute with her. Also we could spend the $80-100 per application and I could take 5 months (4 unpaid) staying home because that’s when the childcare became availabile.

When she was 2 we moved to CA for a new job for DH. I worked mostly from home so we found childcare near DH’s new office. We flew to CA, took a few days visiting daycares and applying, paid a deposit for one, and then lost our deposit when our preferred daycare (next to DH’s new office and had infant care too) opened. When our 2nd child was born both girls went there.

When the pandemic hit our younger daughter had just turned 3. Her daycare initially closed entirely and then opened to certain people (such as children of first responders). As she approached her 4th birthday we were offered a spot, but they couldn’t accommodate her needs (she had some delays such as needing speech therapy and they said she’d be put in the two year old classroom). It took us another 3 months to find a daycare that could offer us a slot, and that slot was available two months later. It was in our neighborhood, which was great, but had lost a large number of staff and as a result had gone from being open 7-6 to being open 8:30-5. Our prior daycares made similar changes.

My husband and I both work from home - his company doesn’t have a physical headquarters but they do have retreats a few times a year. I go to the office once a month or so. Our girls are now in school but if we were recalled to offices and had to mange daycare 8:30-5 as well as commutes I have no idea how we’d do it. And we each spent a few years commuting with babies and / or toddlers so it’s not that. We’d figure it out, but if we had to spend hundreds on waitlists and leave a daycare we were happy with we’d complain too!

For what it’s worth, having your first kid at 34 basically places you in the Millenial parent cohort. You definitely are in thick of it. But you may have had cheaper housing, and it sounds like your DH makes fairly big money.

Pp here. Unfortunately yes the thick of it (kids are 7 and 12). Didn’t have cheap housing - well, didn’t have much in the way of housing costs because we lived in a 509 sq foot condo until older DD was almost 3. My DH was in grad school and then a post doc. Then we moved to CA (Bay Area). He makes about $220k and I make about $130k. I was able to take leave for kids and pay deposits for daycares because of savings and help from my parents, but housing is a stretch. 3 bedrooms / 1 bath homes in our town and neighboring towns start at over $2m, so we live in an apartment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m just a few years younger than you are. When my kids were little, my husband’s work more or less expected that I would handle everything at home, and he would be available at work. (It didn’t matter that I also worked for the same hospital and knew is boss and coworkers.)

My sister is 35, and things are so different. Her husband does close to half, and that’s what’s expected. He took paternity leave when the kids were born, takes time off when they are sick half the time, goes to the doctor with them half the time, etc.

As a working woman, I think this is good.

I'm 45 with the same set up as your sister. My husband does more doctor and dentist appointments than I do, he does half the work around the house, and he takes them to their sports half the time. He also gets them ready for school and puts them to bed half the time. Same with cooking. We alternate days on this stuff so I know he actually is doing half, it's not something I'm trying to convince myself of. He also took the first four weeks off, then another four after I went back to work after 16 weeks. He dealt with kids in the morning because my commute was worse so I left before they got up and I got home earlier in the afternoons so we each had them alone for the same amount of time M-F and neither of us has ever worked weekends. Now they're older and take the bus to and from school and we both work from home so things are much easier, but he has always been 50% responsible for everything related to the family.

It sounds like you were older when you had your kids and rather than being the parent of older teens, you are more in the millennial group that the OP is complaining about. You and your husband both take time off, won’t work weekends ever, come in late after dropping kids off, leave early for daycare pickup and to make dinner, etc.

I said our kids take the bus to and from school, so there are no daycare drop offs or pick ups. Before they were in school we had a full-time nanny.

We take the time off we are provided with PTO (and not all of it at that). We generally take a week at Spring break, a week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas (our two firms are actually both closed for over a week then anyway) and then a day off here and there for other things. We've never gone into negative PTO and actually have a lot of leave saved up because we don't use it all.

We don't work weekends because we get our work done during the week. There have been exceptions, generally for trials when I did litigation, but now we prioritize starting our days earlier so that we can get everything done and not need to work on the weekend. We have "real" jobs, with billable hours and other requirements, but we also push back on ridiculous expectations. I'm not going to answer your 11 pm email immediately. You can get a response during working hours. My husband is going to take paternity leave because he is equally as responsible for our children. We've never had problems getting promoted, being liked, earning bonuses, etc. Our HHI is $500K so we're not millionaires but we're not not rich.

Good for you! I think this is all great and a huge step in the right direction for two parent working families.
It was NOT like this twenty years ago. My husband and I were both physicians at the same hospital, and it was expected that he take no leave, work whenever needed, and that I would take care of everything related to the kids. My boss was a boomer, and she sounded a lot like OP saying that in her day women didn’t even mention that they had kids at work, let alone that they needed to leave by 6 or 7pm to take care of them.

I hear you, and I see the young men and women I work with, and I am SO HAPPY that things are changing!

[Anonymous]

i am nearly your age and i am whining about it.
It was one thing when we had no choice but to be in the office. now we do have a choice but they are making us do it anyway for NO REASON which makes everything ten thousand times harder.
in the past, women just left the workforce. dropped out altogether bc they could not work this sh*t out. Remote work gives women a glimmer of a chance to make their lives actually work. But noooooo. We want you to pay for childcare so you can drive for an hour or more a day and sit in a room OF MY CHOOSING to conduct video calls and input into digital shared documents that you could easily access from home or even the moon.
so no, not all 'our generation' feel like you do op.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is this in the relationships forum?

That is “chefs kiss” of how adle brained OP is…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering how GenZ is shaping out, I would reserve crowing about it.

Oh, and you are the DAD? Who did pickups and drop offs, or took to the 430 gymnastics class twice a week?

I’m guessing you dropped them off at 830 and went to work, and coached soccer once a week. Your DW did all the pickup and afternoon activities 4x a week which is career nightmare fuel.

I'm one of the moms that worked full time, did the sports/activities pickups, doc appointments etc. It's not hard.

So you had a full time job that allows you to be home picking up kids at 430? And you advanced to a $200k+ professional career?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gen X is really shaping up to be the new boomers, eh?

Let's see you survive, pre-gramps...

Rent: $2572/mo
Utilities: $350 (water, power, trash, internet)
Health insurance: $416/mo (is the half we pay & company pays other half)
Eye insurance: $50/mo ($25 ea for both me & hubby - kid is covered under health insurance)
Dental insurance: $44/mo ($22 eas for both me & hubby - kid is covered under health insurance)
Car 1: $0 - paid off
Car 1 insurance: $40/mo
Car 2: $216/mo but paying $400/mo so it will be paid off by July
Car 2 insurance: $65/mo
Student loan 1: $683/mo
Student loan 2: $515/mo
Daycare for 18 mo: $1314/mo
=$6096

And that doesn't even include groceries, tolls/gas/car expenses, personal care items, or other monthly expenses.

And yes, we've been trying to buy a house for 3 years now. We keep getting outbid, like, $50k-$70k outbid.

You forgot your salary, sweetheart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering how GenZ is shaping out, I would reserve crowing about it.

Oh, and you are the DAD? Who did pickups and drop offs, or took to the 430 gymnastics class twice a week?

I’m guessing you dropped them off at 830 and went to work, and coached soccer once a week. Your DW did all the pickup and afternoon activities 4x a week which is career nightmare fuel.

I'm one of the moms that worked full time, did the sports/activities pickups, doc appointments etc. It's not hard.

So you had a full time job that allows you to be home picking up kids at 430? And you advanced to a $200k+ professional career?

DP but I'm one of these moms too. There was this amazing thing called aftercare. Pick up kids from aftercare and take them straight to practice. You sound lazy.

[Anonymous]

I'm 48, my kids are 8 and 12, so while I'm not a millennial, my children have friends whose parents are. I don't know anyone as whiny and annoying as people who claim to be millennials and gen z on DCUM.

Most of the dual income families I know either have flexible or staggered schedules or extensive use of before/after care. I don't know anybody that was on daycare waiting lists for months because most people here use in home daycares until their children are 2 or 3 and the ratios at daycare centers/preschools get better.

Most of our friends our age bought homes 10 years ago, but DH and I bought a townhouse back then and upgraded to a single family house a couple years ago. The 30-somethings we know all bought homes in the past 10 years too. I just don't know who you people on this board are that are complaining that you can't afford anything. I don't know anyone in their 30s and 40s that is in that situation.

[Anonymous]

Daycare is expensive, but at least designed for dual working parents. I literally cannot get into licensed school age childcare after school unless I am willing to either interrupt my work at 3pm to drive my kindergartener to aftercare or hire a personal after school babysitter/driver. I am beyond frustrated at this. I have money to throw at it but don’t want to deal with a regular sitter as my employee.

Also, all people should be able to work less and live more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering how GenZ is shaping out, I would reserve crowing about it.

Oh, and you are the DAD? Who did pickups and drop offs, or took to the 430 gymnastics class twice a week?

I’m guessing you dropped them off at 830 and went to work, and coached soccer once a week. Your DW did all the pickup and afternoon activities 4x a week which is career nightmare fuel.

I'm one of the moms that worked full time, did the sports/activities pickups, doc appointments etc. It's not hard.

So you had a full time job that allows you to be home picking up kids at 430? And you advanced to a $200k+ professional career?

DP but I'm one of these moms too. There was this amazing thing called aftercare. Pick up kids from aftercare and take them straight to practice. You sound lazy.

So your kids were in aftercare until 5:30PM -- assuming you had a 9-5 and a short 30 minute commute, had fast food for dinner or ate dinner at bedtime? Let me guess you drove an RV and cooked from the soccer field?

Our soccer practices start at 5pm, gymnastics was 4pm. or you had ALL the activities on the weekends, and missed half of them because of birthday parties, games, etc.

I see none of you address our career progression, and probably had a pink collar job that let you zip out at 430 but never cracked $100k