RTO and No Childcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 2021, I had two kids in childcare. $600 per week. Now I have one. $500 per week.

People will have to quit. My bet is that is the design of the thing. There are fewer childcare spots now. I would be bullish on an expanded child tax credit, but I bet it doesn’t happen, rhetoric about family values aside.

No one will quit. People were paying for this before 2020, they will pay for it again.

You don’t think some people will quit or move away over a 40% increase in childcare costs, a housing boom that has made living close to work increasingly expensive, and a general increase in life stress due to commuting?

Many fed employees are like GS9 level and living outside the beltway. Ever increasing daycare bills and commuting costs may very well cause them to decide this isn’t financially worth it anymore. But you don’t really care if they get pushed out of the workforce do you?

Heyo, would have been nice if the Democrats in charge of local government hadn’t imposed zoning and other restrictions that resulted in skyrocketing housing costs and had focused on better transit and improving schools inside the beltway. NONE of that was a priority. DOGE takes blame for being hostile and ridiculous; but the practical and financial difficulties of living in this region are 100% Democrat made.

Haha there is the stereotypical conservative “what aboutism” that is always reliably posted whenever a problem is identified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dh is WFH for years now. Its amazing. He works 6-7:30. Then helps get kids off the school. Works again 8:30-4 and is done to get them from the bus and to an activity. I work 8:30-5 (very short commute) and come home and take another one to an activity. They do aftercare 2 days a week so I can have longer days. If he is RTO (unlikely) then it's goodbye to earlier activities and more aftercare and tired kids.

Yup. Kids will suffer a quality of life drop thanks to RTO. This brought to us by the party of “family values.”

Oh boo hoo. Why do you expect to have everything handed to you? It’s called a JOB.

I get it, you bow down to your employer. Some of us have options of where to work and don’t have to just take any JOB.

Then why are you on here complaining?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are a lot of women employed FT in professional careers really saying they have no childcare? That's not what I've seen on DCUM. People are often talking about the extra time for commuting and difference of being out of the house. So like a 10yp may come home from school and not have childcare from 4-5pm because they can entertain themselves while parent works. But the parent may not want them actually alone in the house. It's a childcare gap. Same with the mornings before school opens - I would need beforecare to RTO and it might not be available this school year (already full). Or preschool may close at 5pm but with commute I'd get home later than that, etc.

WFH necessitates childcare if you have a real job but can be for fewer hours, or you cover the occasional days off and breaks without always taking PTO etc

This. If you work FT you either have childcare or older kids -- you aren't working with a toddler in the house. But childcare options are better and easier with RTO -- you can find childcare near your house without worrying about commute or getting stuck in traffic or on public transportation when you need to be picking up.

RTO is also a godsend when you have a sick kid or there's a random day off from school. A kid with a fever and a cough can just spend the day watching TV or in bed (rest is what they need anyway) -- you can get lots of work done while home with them. With RTO you will likely need to take the day off of work because it's near impossible to find last minute childcare for a sick child. And on random days off school our options are much better with WFH -- we've coordinated with friends to each take a portion of the day off with the kids so the kids are covered all day without anyone having to take a full day off. Sometimes the school has childcare options but it's not always all day.

If employers really want RTO then this is what they need to offer for parents to help:
- Onsite childcare for infants/toddlers
- Start/stop flexibility to accommodate drop-off and pick up
- WFH options for sick days and random off days from school

I have been RTO for years. I offer all 3 of the above to my team. We have childcare on site although it’s a different building and there are other options since some people complain on site childcare is too expensive.

I offer flexibility and WFH with sick kids / family/ emergency as long as people get their work done.

I’m a mom so I get it, but my spouse also does childcare pickup. It shouldn’t be solely on the woman. I have a team member who refuses to let her husband do anything and she has 3 kids and 2 dogs and according to her she is the main earner. Share the responsibility.

One member of my team needed countless flexibility - leaving early for about a month (2:45 PM). I told her as long as she signed back on and was available by phone and did her work it was fine.

That didn’t happen so I had to talk with her again and say when you
leave at 2:45 to pick up your kids that doesn’t mean you can sign off at 2:45 especially not when you roll in at 9:15/9:30 and take a lunch. She had countless vacation and sick days she could take or take partial days if she didn’t want to sign back on.

I recommended looking for other childcare which didn’t seem to be happening (school aged kids). She has a nanny for her youngest but refused to pay the nanny more $ to watch her two oldest after school. I almost had to take away that flexibility but after two discussions the childcare issues were resolved.

We’re adults and it’s fine if occasionally you drop the ball but you can’t expect it to be an every day occurrence. During Covid people got used to producing less work and having more time in their own. If that is your goal, fine, but then you might make less $ or be competing against a lot more people for those certain roles.

If you’re offered that flexibility don’t then take it for granted.

Same thing with WFH with sick kids. That’s fine if you actually work, otherwise use your sick leave. We are front facing so it’s not just me nitpicking.

I grew up with a single mom (dad died) who worked all the time. We were in aftercare and had a babysitter in the summer because she couldn’t afford camp. We had a neighbor who only worked PT and had a daughter in our class so our mom paid her to watch us some days after school.

The other days (when after care was not available) she paid a high schooler to watch us. My mom figured it out and didn’t complain. I learned to cook, clean, and do my own laundry at a young age. My mom to this day hates WFH- everyone she interacts with who WFH she says it takes them 2-5x longer to get the work done than pre Covid.

There are so many options people just don’t want to pay for them. Growing up we lived in a small old house and owned one old car and took one vacation a year. I played one sport a season and only on a weekend, we didn’t go out to eat, and didn’t wear name brand clothes. We figured it out. I also knew I needed to work hard so I could get a scholarship for college and paid my own way for undergrad and grad school.

Many schools offer after care, hire a high schooler, or offer to pay a SAHP to watch your kids after school. Also, many schools have clubs so sign your kid up for a club and you and another parent switch off over who will do the pick up. Or do a carpool situation. If more people worked together when they had WFH options maybe your neighbors would be willing to help you out more when you RTO.

If you aren’t happy look for a new role. It’s really that simple. If you want that pension and excellent healthcare benefit even after you retire (which no one else gets) then suck it up and stop complaining. My MiL retired mid 50s and gets a 6 figure pension and her healthcare paid for. She had a really crappy 20 years but her husband who owned his own business ended up having financial issues and if it weren’t for her pension they would be totally screwed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you bragging about how you don’t do stuff with your kids after school and how you spent plenty of childcare money/hours in traffic and bent over backwards to be in an office because your boss said so with one parent getting home late … this isn’t the flex you think it is.

To quote Varsity Blues: “I don’t want your life.”

Look, I don’t want FT RTO either. But the fact is you do need to plan your life, and it’s not a foregone conclusion that all parents need to dedicate all this time to after school activities. It’s not even clearly good for kids. Women placing these expectations on themselves (and it’s generally women) are going to drive themselves crazy. Your kid does not need to do travel soccer. They can do the school sports team and get themselves to and from there.

But if your vision IS that you spend from 4-7 shuttling your kid around, then yes, you need a better plan than perpetual FT WFH especially if you are a fed. Set your life up so you can prioritize what’s important to you. That may mean you and your DH flex in opposite directions, choosing a more modest home with a shorter commute, one parent going PT, or investing in childcare.

So prioritize what's important to you ... but not a job with WFH that makes the rest of your schedule possible and more pleasant. Choose jobs with flexible schedules or go part time ... but don't be full time 9-5 with WFH, that's entitled.

Do you hear yourselves?

I think what peeves me the most about the holier-than-thou lecturing is the assumption you thought of something I didn't. My middle schooler is in an alternative school without a bus or aftercare or these mythical school sports you speak of. We have two more years till she can walk to HS, something we planned for when we chose our house. Both DH and I worked from home before covid, something we negotiated - with accompanying pay cuts and limited promotion opportunities - to make this school work. Nobody in my house does travel sports, we just want to be able to get our kid to school in the morning, pick her up after, help with homework, and have dinner together at 6:00. But sure, tell me more about how I'm unreasonable and spoiled for not "prioritizing what's important to me" when I make career and childcare decisions.

Right?

So many of us *did* plan our lives as the PP suggested by taking lower paying flexible/telework friendly jobs (which have existed well before COVID). But that planning was apparently not the right type of planning?

+1 another fed who was WFH half the time well before Covid. It's a reason I chose my agency and stayed there.

[Anonymous]

I returned to office in 2021 and it was impossible to source childcare in NOVA. We were paying $25/hr! Most of the au pair looking for extra work ghosted me. I used a couple college girls during summer but they had to return to school.

We end up finding lady without childcare experience, she worked in medical billing before. Glad it worked out but that was distressing and impacted my job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 2021, I had two kids in childcare. $600 per week. Now I have one. $500 per week.

People will have to quit. My bet is that is the design of the thing. There are fewer childcare spots now. I would be bullish on an expanded child tax credit, but I bet it doesn’t happen, rhetoric about family values aside.

No one will quit. People were paying for this before 2020, they will pay for it again.

You don’t think some people will quit or move away over a 40% increase in childcare costs, a housing boom that has made living close to work increasingly expensive, and a general increase in life stress due to commuting?

Many fed employees are like GS9 level and living outside the beltway. Ever increasing daycare bills and commuting costs may very well cause them to decide this isn’t financially worth it anymore. But you don’t really care if they get pushed out of the workforce do you?

Heyo, would have been nice if the Democrats in charge of local government hadn’t imposed zoning and other restrictions that resulted in skyrocketing housing costs and had focused on better transit and improving schools inside the beltway. NONE of that was a priority. DOGE takes blame for being hostile and ridiculous; but the practical and financial difficulties of living in this region are 100% Democrat made.

Are you really saying dem politicians haven’t tried to loosen zoning regulations and invest in public transit? Because I live in Arlington the home of Missing Middle and the “car diet” so I’d like to disagree. Not saying they handled those well, but let’s not act like republicans are this bastion of trying to make the DC area a better place for the middle class.

Also Musk and Ramaswamy aren’t even part of the government. What qualifications do they even have to make any of these suggestions? And why are we ignoring their significant conflicts of interest and stated intentions to basically burn it all down.

Too little too late obviously! And the feckless Dem politicians will crater to the Dem NIMBYs anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 2021, I had two kids in childcare. $600 per week. Now I have one. $500 per week.

People will have to quit. My bet is that is the design of the thing. There are fewer childcare spots now. I would be bullish on an expanded child tax credit, but I bet it doesn’t happen, rhetoric about family values aside.

No one will quit. People were paying for this before 2020, they will pay for it again.

You don’t think some people will quit or move away over a 40% increase in childcare costs, a housing boom that has made living close to work increasingly expensive, and a general increase in life stress due to commuting?

Many fed employees are like GS9 level and living outside the beltway. Ever increasing daycare bills and commuting costs may very well cause them to decide this isn’t financially worth it anymore. But you don’t really care if they get pushed out of the workforce do you?

Heyo, would have been nice if the Democrats in charge of local government hadn’t imposed zoning and other restrictions that resulted in skyrocketing housing costs and had focused on better transit and improving schools inside the beltway. NONE of that was a priority. DOGE takes blame for being hostile and ridiculous; but the practical and financial difficulties of living in this region are 100% Democrat made.

Haha there is the stereotypical conservative “what aboutism” that is always reliably posted whenever a problem is identified.

There’s nothing “whatabout” about it. The long commutes and expensive housing are caused by Dem policies full stop. Childcare costs are less to be blamed on Dems although they certainly are trying their best to increase childcare costs through licensing requirements.

[Anonymous]

People forget that before COVID working from home agreements stated you must have childcare if you have minor children at home and you are working from home. That was relaxed during COVID because of labor shortages and the fact no one wanted to work. However that time has passed so you must have childcare at home or take PTO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you bragging about how you don’t do stuff with your kids after school and how you spent plenty of childcare money/hours in traffic and bent over backwards to be in an office because your boss said so with one parent getting home late … this isn’t the flex you think it is.

To quote Varsity Blues: “I don’t want your life.”

Look, I don’t want FT RTO either. But the fact is you do need to plan your life, and it’s not a foregone conclusion that all parents need to dedicate all this time to after school activities. It’s not even clearly good for kids. Women placing these expectations on themselves (and it’s generally women) are going to drive themselves crazy. Your kid does not need to do travel soccer. They can do the school sports team and get themselves to and from there.

But if your vision IS that you spend from 4-7 shuttling your kid around, then yes, you need a better plan than perpetual FT WFH especially if you are a fed. Set your life up so you can prioritize what’s important to you. That may mean you and your DH flex in opposite directions, choosing a more modest home with a shorter commute, one parent going PT, or investing in childcare.

So prioritize what's important to you ... but not a job with WFH that makes the rest of your schedule possible and more pleasant. Choose jobs with flexible schedules or go part time ... but don't be full time 9-5 with WFH, that's entitled.

Do you hear yourselves?

I think what peeves me the most about the holier-than-thou lecturing is the assumption you thought of something I didn't. My middle schooler is in an alternative school without a bus or aftercare or these mythical school sports you speak of. We have two more years till she can walk to HS, something we planned for when we chose our house. Both DH and I worked from home before covid, something we negotiated - with accompanying pay cuts and limited promotion opportunities - to make this school work. Nobody in my house does travel sports, we just want to be able to get our kid to school in the morning, pick her up after, help with homework, and have dinner together at 6:00. But sure, tell me more about how I'm unreasonable and spoiled for not "prioritizing what's important to me" when I make career and childcare decisions.

Right?

So many of us *did* plan our lives as the PP suggested by taking lower paying flexible/telework friendly jobs (which have existed well before COVID). But that planning was apparently not the right type of planning?

+1 another fed who was WFH half the time well before Covid. It's a reason I chose my agency and stayed there.

I think agencies will go back to pre COVID telework Policies. In my case that is 50% of the time. There is no space to go back 5 days a week. However, I am still paying for aftercare in case they ask me to go everyday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are a lot of women employed FT in professional careers really saying they have no childcare? That's not what I've seen on DCUM. People are often talking about the extra time for commuting and difference of being out of the house. So like a 10yp may come home from school and not have childcare from 4-5pm because they can entertain themselves while parent works. But the parent may not want them actually alone in the house. It's a childcare gap. Same with the mornings before school opens - I would need beforecare to RTO and it might not be available this school year (already full). Or preschool may close at 5pm but with commute I'd get home later than that, etc.

WFH necessitates childcare if you have a real job but can be for fewer hours, or you cover the occasional days off and breaks without always taking PTO etc

OP here - I consider a childcare gap a lack of childcare. Before or after school care programs are not going to quickly sprout up.

My school has a private after care company come in for on site care until 6pm but I get home around 7pm, this gap is harder to address because you can’t find a sitter for
6-7. 3pm - 7pm is a do-able schedule for sitters then you are looking to pay 3000/month.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are a lot of women employed FT in professional careers really saying they have no childcare? That's not what I've seen on DCUM. People are often talking about the extra time for commuting and difference of being out of the house. So like a 10yp may come home from school and not have childcare from 4-5pm because they can entertain themselves while parent works. But the parent may not want them actually alone in the house. It's a childcare gap. Same with the mornings before school opens - I would need beforecare to RTO and it might not be available this school year (already full). Or preschool may close at 5pm but with commute I'd get home later than that, etc.

WFH necessitates childcare if you have a real job but can be for fewer hours, or you cover the occasional days off and breaks without always taking PTO etc

This. If you work FT you either have childcare or older kids -- you aren't working with a toddler in the house. But childcare options are better and easier with RTO -- you can find childcare near your house without worrying about commute or getting stuck in traffic or on public transportation when you need to be picking up.

RTO is also a godsend when you have a sick kid or there's a random day off from school. A kid with a fever and a cough can just spend the day watching TV or in bed (rest is what they need anyway) -- you can get lots of work done while home with them. With RTO you will likely need to take the day off of work because it's near impossible to find last minute childcare for a sick child. And on random days off school our options are much better with WFH -- we've coordinated with friends to each take a portion of the day off with the kids so the kids are covered all day without anyone having to take a full day off. Sometimes the school has childcare options but it's not always all day.

If employers really want RTO then this is what they need to offer for parents to help:
- Onsite childcare for infants/toddlers
- Start/stop flexibility to accommodate drop-off and pick up
- WFH options for sick days and random off days from school

I have been RTO for years. I offer all 3 of the above to my team. We have childcare on site although it’s a different building and there are other options since some people complain on site childcare is too expensive.

I offer flexibility and WFH with sick kids / family/ emergency as long as people get their work done.

I’m a mom so I get it, but my spouse also does childcare pickup. It shouldn’t be solely on the woman. I have a team member who refuses to let her husband do anything and she has 3 kids and 2 dogs and according to her she is the main earner. Share the responsibility.

One member of my team needed countless flexibility - leaving early for about a month (2:45 PM). I told her as long as she signed back on and was available by phone and did her work it was fine.

That didn’t happen so I had to talk with her again and say when you
leave at 2:45 to pick up your kids that doesn’t mean you can sign off at 2:45 especially not when you roll in at 9:15/9:30 and take a lunch. She had countless vacation and sick days she could take or take partial days if she didn’t want to sign back on.

I recommended looking for other childcare which didn’t seem to be happening (school aged kids). She has a nanny for her youngest but refused to pay the nanny more $ to watch her two oldest after school. I almost had to take away that flexibility but after two discussions the childcare issues were resolved.

We’re adults and it’s fine if occasionally you drop the ball but you can’t expect it to be an every day occurrence. During Covid people got used to producing less work and having more time in their own. If that is your goal, fine, but then you might make less $ or be competing against a lot more people for those certain roles.

If you’re offered that flexibility don’t then take it for granted.

Same thing with WFH with sick kids. That’s fine if you actually work, otherwise use your sick leave. We are front facing so it’s not just me nitpicking.

I grew up with a single mom (dad died) who worked all the time. We were in aftercare and had a babysitter in the summer because she couldn’t afford camp. We had a neighbor who only worked PT and had a daughter in our class so our mom paid her to watch us some days after school.

The other days (when after care was not available) she paid a high schooler to watch us. My mom figured it out and didn’t complain. I learned to cook, clean, and do my own laundry at a young age. My mom to this day hates WFH- everyone she interacts with who WFH she says it takes them 2-5x longer to get the work done than pre Covid.

There are so many options people just don’t want to pay for them. Growing up we lived in a small old house and owned one old car and took one vacation a year. I played one sport a season and only on a weekend, we didn’t go out to eat, and didn’t wear name brand clothes. We figured it out. I also knew I needed to work hard so I could get a scholarship for college and paid my own way for undergrad and grad school.

Many schools offer after care, hire a high schooler, or offer to pay a SAHP to watch your kids after school. Also, many schools have clubs so sign your kid up for a club and you and another parent switch off over who will do the pick up. Or do a carpool situation. If more people worked together when they had WFH options maybe your neighbors would be willing to help you out more when you RTO.

If you aren’t happy look for a new role. It’s really that simple. If you want that pension and excellent healthcare benefit even after you retire (which no one else gets) then suck it up and stop complaining. My MiL retired mid 50s and gets a 6 figure pension and her healthcare paid for. She had a really crappy 20 years but her husband who owned his own business ended up having financial issues and if it weren’t for her pension they would be totally screwed.

Your employee needs to leave early once a MONTH and it's such an enormous deal that you wrote multiple paragraphs about it??

Yes life has been and still is very hard for many people. Most are not aspiring to that though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The issue for me is the 8-6 in office requirement. Right now, I work 8-5, pick up my kids, and then work a few more hours at home in the evening. Daycare closes at 6 and I have a 45 minute commute, so I'm not sure what I will go if the 8-6 requirement goes into effect.

For who? Stop that. They pay for 8 hours give them 8 and manage expectations after that.

I can't not. I'm a prosecutor and I am assigned cases. I am expected to write warrants, provide discovery, appear in court, respond to filings, etc. If I let a ball drop, I don't only risk dismissal/acquittal in a case against a dangerous defendant, I risk my bar license.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People forget that before COVID working from home agreements stated you must have childcare if you have minor children at home and you are working from home. That was relaxed during COVID because of labor shortages and the fact no one wanted to work. However that time has passed so you must have childcare at home or take PTO.

Thanks HR. That's not what this thread is about. Try reading.

[Anonymous]

My husband and I both work hybrid, so someone is always home.

Full RTO would be very challenging for us. Right now, whoever is WFH each day can walk the kids to school and be back in time to start work at 9. Then can leave right at 5 to get the kids from aftercare at 5:15 and be home by 5:30. The person in the office has a 40 min commute (ours are essentially the same) so is out of the house from 8:20-5:40. It works out well. We do pay for aftercare, which theoretically goes until 6, and we pay for childcare for all the random days off school (weird holidays/teacher workdays/etc) so that wouldn’t change. But they’d have to be in before school care too and in aftercare longer too if we were back in the office full time. That would cost us only slightly more, but would be a huge negative for the kids, being at school prob 8:15-5:30 instead of their current 8:45-5. That’s already a long day for preschool and early elementary kids. An extra hour and we’d barely see them!

Also, when a kid is sick, our kids at least just turn into sleepy, feverish puddles, so it’s easy to set them up in front of the TV and still work a full day. I don’t know what the heck we’d do if we were both full time in the office. It’d be so many days off!

Plus - when they have special events at school (thanksgiving potluck lunch, assemblies when the kids are singing, etc) one of us can almost always step away for an hour or two, using our lunch break or maybe working an hour after bedtime. If we were in the office all the time, we’d miss all that.

So it’s be a huge logistical headache, decrease in our quality of life, decrease in the kids quality of life, cost more, and for what? Ugh.

Luckily, neither of our companies are even considering RTO, so it’s a non-issue for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you bragging about how you don’t do stuff with your kids after school and how you spent plenty of childcare money/hours in traffic and bent over backwards to be in an office because your boss said so with one parent getting home late … this isn’t the flex you think it is.

To quote Varsity Blues: “I don’t want your life.”

Look, I don’t want FT RTO either. But the fact is you do need to plan your life, and it’s not a foregone conclusion that all parents need to dedicate all this time to after school activities. It’s not even clearly good for kids. Women placing these expectations on themselves (and it’s generally women) are going to drive themselves crazy. Your kid does not need to do travel soccer. They can do the school sports team and get themselves to and from there.

But if your vision IS that you spend from 4-7 shuttling your kid around, then yes, you need a better plan than perpetual FT WFH especially if you are a fed. Set your life up so you can prioritize what’s important to you. That may mean you and your DH flex in opposite directions, choosing a more modest home with a shorter commute, one parent going PT, or investing in childcare.

So prioritize what's important to you ... but not a job with WFH that makes the rest of your schedule possible and more pleasant. Choose jobs with flexible schedules or go part time ... but don't be full time 9-5 with WFH, that's entitled.

Do you hear yourselves?

I think what peeves me the most about the holier-than-thou lecturing is the assumption you thought of something I didn't. My middle schooler is in an alternative school without a bus or aftercare or these mythical school sports you speak of. We have two more years till she can walk to HS, something we planned for when we chose our house. Both DH and I worked from home before covid, something we negotiated - with accompanying pay cuts and limited promotion opportunities - to make this school work. Nobody in my house does travel sports, we just want to be able to get our kid to school in the morning, pick her up after, help with homework, and have dinner together at 6:00. But sure, tell me more about how I'm unreasonable and spoiled for not "prioritizing what's important to me" when I make career and childcare decisions.

I mean yes - planning to have to FT working parents but never have after school child care is entitled. Sorry!

DP but why? Why is wanting to spend afternoon with your kids and being home in time to cook dinner for your family more “entitled” than things like expecting to have good health insurance options, deciding you need a certain level of pay for the job to be worth your time, negotiating for things like transit benefits, expecting paid PTO, etc.?

The only difference is that telework has allowed many women (who were historically home with kids) to join the full time workforce. It’s internalized misogyny telling you that *this* is the thing that employees are entitled for wanting.

I don’t know what to tell you. 40 hrs/week is a standard schedule. there are a variety of ways to make it work and generally they involve paying for childcare.

I *do* work 40 hrs/week. That is the point. I used to do it 6:30 - 3:00 in office with kid in on-site daycare, and now I do it 8:00 - 5:00 (or later) with a 20 minute break to drive my ES kid somewhere in the afternoon. This is one of the variety if ways to make it work, but you don't like this specific thing because...?

FWIW my availability is better now than when I was in office.