Reply to RTO and No Childcare.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.”[/quote]

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. [/quote]

Well my kids’ elementary school doesn’t have sports teams. Rec level practices tend to be … after school with 1-2 practices/week. Times 2 kids that can be several days per week you need a parent around. And we let ours take at home music lessons 2x/month. I hardly consider a sport and an instrument overscheduled.

And I did build my life around this by taking a fed job that has allowed telework since before Obama. I guess before having kids I should have foreseen a reality show entertainer would take over our country and pimp it out to a couple deranged billionaires who want to destroy and de-regulate our government to pad their own investment accounts. But since I didn’t I guess I’ll have to look for more flexible/higher paying work in the private sector.

I don’t know why so many people are acting like WAH has been some recent COVID perk when it’s been around for a very long time. Getting “back to reality” by RTO 5 days per week is more draconian than many jobs were (including mine) 15 years ago. [/quote]

Elementary school kids don’t need after school sports … they can do it on the weekend (just like when we were kids).

I think telework should be preserved but not on the grounds that kids have to be shuttled intensively to activities from the age of 5. [/quote]

Well my DH and I were athletes growing up. Sports are important to us as our family prioritizes physical fitness. I don’t think playing a sport on the weekend is enough movement for kids.

Sure they can get that from running around with friends after school, which also … requires a parent nearby until they are older. There are also school projects to work on. And family dinner to prep. Or are these not important either?

I get some disgruntled people on this site love to hate on sports, but the reality is kids have to do *something* from school ending until bedtime and many are of an age that requires adult supervision.

I’m sorry that you think employees spending hours in traffic (bad for their health and their environment, but I digress) to sit in an office building typing on a computer and having Teams meetings with people in other offices so they can then spend their pay check to have someone else watch their kids after school just isn’t the ideal setup for our country.[/quote]

if you prioritize all that - then you need to prioritize things like shortening your commute, choosing a smaller house/different schools, or flexing your hours. (I was also told that flexing hours was unacceptable.) I do absolutely run out of sympathy for people who are depending on Covid-era telework to forgo childcare. [/quote]

I *did* do all these things! I live in a smaller older home that is walkable to metro, that was a short commute to my job (which was hybrid even prior to COVID). But now they got rid of our office building lease b/c COVID telework being so successful. If I have to go back? I have no idea where they would try to fit us (could very well be farther from my house). And as a fed I do have a flex work band. Even my coworkers in their 50s have had this flex band for hours. I don’t think it’s crazy to expect this would continue. And I don’t have “COVID-era” telework. I always had telework.

Suddenly having to go to an office 5 days per week that is likely not as short of a commute as my old office would have me significantly worse off than before COVID ever happened. This isn’t a proposed change to how we did things before and there is no business need to do so. It’s punitive and I think it’s reasonable for people like me to feel upset. And fwiw a lot of Feds are in a similar position. Telework was a recruitment tool prior to 2020 and agencies have done a lot of office downsizing over the past 4 years meaning people’s commutes will suddenly change.[/quote]

So what’s the problem? You used to drive kids from 4-7 but now you have to work those hours? What does the place of work have to do with this dilemma which seems to be time related? If you’re shuttling kids around you’re not working either at home or in the office.[/quote]

Oh wow, I didn’t think I had to explain this to you like a toddler, but apparently you can’t follow along.

Flex band means I can be done working by 4. Teleworking means fewer hours commuting.

Having more time in my day and being able to set my own hours means I can be with my kids from 4-7. I was never working in an office after 4 pm since becoming a mom over a decade ago. [/quote]

You’re not coming across as very sympathetic. Assuming you would never have a commute was a bad assumption on your part.[/quote]

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