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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s hard OP. RTO for me meant a 90 minutes each way commute to a place I’d never worked before and turned my family’s life upside down.

It is very, very tough. While on one hand, yes I am physically able to get to the office and “work” each day, it is destroying my productivity and physical and mental health, affecting my relationships with my kids and family, and just making life absolutely miserable. But the people in charge now do not care about those things. They want us to be miserable and quit. Many of us are stuck between a rock and a hard place. My kids are teens; it would be devastating for them to have to pick up and move to a new area, and near impossible to find a good enough paying other job in this market.

So I do like many women have for thousands of years: put up with it, put my own physical and mental needs behind those of others, and just hope it will get better before I drop dead.

I’m also not sure it is worth it to stay in the fed workforce just because of the pension.
If I could, I would quit, move far away to lower COL area, and just start over in a new job, but that would really hurt my kids.[/quote]

You think it doesn't impact men too?  I don't get why women make it just about women.  [/quote]

Ok, so this is a parenting forum, and I am a mother. RTO impacts mothers especially. Remote work (zero commute) was the first time I ever had enough time and energy to give 100% at work and also be 100% of the mother I wanted to be and also had time to take care of myself. And I experienced much less anxiety while WFH and was able to really advance in my career, for the first time in my life.

I know there are exceptions but I am not seeing a lot of fathers who are as emotionally as devastated as mothers who had to RTO. I don’t even have little kids. I can’t imagine what it’s like being a parent of an infant with a 3 hour commute.

Remember this is not simply a return to the way things were before. [/quote]You hire help.  It’s called childcare. Or, you live closer to your job. [/quote]

My kids are teenagers. They don’t need childcare, but they do need a parent or adult in their life who is present and not a zombie. And I am not up rooting my teenagers and ruining their lives for some job that might fire me anyway. You can go right to hell.[/quote]

So parents who work outside the home are zombies? [b]Plenty of people commute to and from work every day[/b]. My commute is an hour each way. My DH is maybe 55 minutes each way. That’s about average for parents I know. I think you are overreacting. [/quote]

IME basically no families with young kids have 2 parents working out of the home 5 days per week, especially with long commutes.

DH and I have both prioritized telework/flexible hours over chasing promotions. We have both been teleworking in some capacity since Obama 1.0 to make family life work.

Essentially everyone else I know is in this scenario of having at least one parent WAH, or they have one (or more) of the following: a SAH or part time working parent, local family help, or gobs of money to hire nannies/outsource. Or in the case of a teacher friend, she handles all school breaks / random days off and her husband takes the unexpected sick kid days off.

But you basically have to have some sort of adult on standby (either a parent, family member, or paid caregiver) while kids are young. I remember my kids’ preschool made us sign a contract that we could pickup within 1 hour if a kid got sick. No way we could do that while commuting over an hour each way.

And yeah, I do think someone who is commuting 3 hours per day, 5 days per week is going to have less energy to give to their kids. Zombie is an extreme word, but yeah, that lifestyle sounds draining unless it comes with a boatload of money to make other things easier.[/quote]

Prior to 15 yrs ago, very few people worked remotely. Maybe your memory is short. There are also many jobs that cannot be done remotely. My kids are in college now but when they were little, everyone in my neighborhood commuted to work every day. That was the norm. If a kid got sick, me or my DH got in the car and picked them up. Ditto for everyone else. Very few families had SAHPs. It wasn’t financially feasible. [/quote]
What is your point? 1000 years ago people raised kids without electricity. Does that mean we should we abolish lightbulbs?[/quote]

Yep. My agency has had some form of telework for lawyers since 1996. Nothing to do with Covid. Also not remote - twice a week, which is quite reasonable and why their retention rate for women with families has always been very high. [/quote]

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