Parent friendly workplaces

[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.