Parent friendly workplaces

[Anonymous]

One person's parent friendly is another person's have to do my work and pick up another person's too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at a mid-sized law firm that is very parent friendly. We have a pumping room with a lock, couch, sink and fridge. On Friday my coworker opened a meeting saying she had a hard stop at 4pm to go get her kids. I have seen two male partners passing an infant back and forth while chatting in the hallway, while the infant's mother was in a meeting. One of my coworkers works a split-shift - half during the day and half after her kid goes to sleep at night. I went into a partner's office and his 12 yr old daughter was in there reading her book - she was there for the day.

Bringing infants to work is not representative of family friendly. It means it makes family work-friendly. A 12 year stuck in a law office all day?! Ugh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of nonprofits are actually not family friendly at all despite the policies they advocate for. Their are short on resources and also act self important about their work.

Pre-DOGE I would have said govt but honestly even big companies are often more flexible than nonprofits.

I would focus on tangible things like how many days WFH you get, # of sick days separate from vacation days, etc. Culture is harder to suss out unless you know someone who works there. But just bringing up your kids in later stage interviews and seeing the reaction you get is telling. A lot will depend on your own manager too and whether that person has kids (mine has kids and his wife works FT so he fully gets the juggle, sometimes takes calls from his car on the way to kid appts, etc.).

Nonprofits are for trust fund girls to have to fun at, do a stint saving the world, then SAH once babies show up. They are the worst of both worlds for jobs.

[Anonymous]

Rigid in person schedules is the definition of parent friendy. You start at a set time, end at a set time, have a lunch break at a set time. It is perfect for child care drop off, pick up and being able to give teachers, doctors, Mom, Kids exact times of when you can talk on phone.

If anything full remote less flexible.

[Anonymous]

I work at a money market/management firm that is remote and incredibly family/child friendly. As long as your work gets done they don’t care. I’ve had members on my team had their sick kid in their lap or in the background during zooms or if that’s not possible they just have their cameras off or revise their RSVP that they can’t join bc of sick kid. 6 months parental leave for birth/adoption and they will let you break it up (coworker did 1 month when his baby was born then staggered the other 5 months to the back of his wife’s maternity leave so the baby had almost a full year at home with one or both parents).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What types of orgs are parent friendly? I recently started a new job at a large non-profit in a highly technical field. It is surprisingly very rigid and not very flexible. I don't understand how working parents make it work - in fact, the only working parent on my team was recently let go and I only have met one manager who is a working mother.

I'm engaged and hope to have a kid in 2-3 years. What types of organizations. or companies are more accommodating for working parents, especially those of young kids? I think that if I have a kid while working at this organization, I will be let go eventually because of how inflexible they are - little sick time and strongly encouraged to not use it or all your vacation time, no flexibility on working hours for doctors appointments, etc. I don't see how I can manage a kid here even if I use daycare.

I was at a place very like that. After about 6 months, I realized I needed to find a different job — because my kids complained I was never at their school programs and they were always the last kids to be picked up from after care. Once I lined up the new job, I changed jobs. I really got lucky in that the new place is more flexible.

I know it might sound crazy, but I would suggest looking at technical civil service jobs. Some DoD/DoW sites are waivered and are hiring for civil service scientist / engineer jobs. Look at usajobs.gov for specific openings. Many more DoD/DoW sites - warfare centers and labs - are hiring people as contractors for now (to get around hiring freezes) but want to convert people to civil service later. Contractors often can arrange to take a few hours of LWoP (work a 36-37 hour week, instead of 40) without losing benefits.

The huge advantage to civil service jobs is that vacation time (“Annual Leave”) is supplemented by sick leave — and a parent can use their sick leave to care for a small child who is ill. Sick leave often requires documentation, but still better than a PTO-only system.

[Anonymous]

I think there's the expectation of most workplaces that your spouse will be picking up 50% of the kid duties. This is where so many federal employees got screwed with RTO. They were married to spouses with zero flexibility, as they all considered the federal government the flexible job. But when they lost that flexibility, their spouse wasn't able to pick up any slack.