Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:54     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I'm a mom and stopped RTO because it was a time suck, so work from home. So I'm like those dads. Otherwise, I notice some parents stay at home or have very part-time jobs because the spouse makes $$$. Think spouse works at Amazon so mom can be a freelance graphic designer sort of thing. Some people negotiated fulltime WFH during Covid and got grandfathered in. Also, don't forget in expensive cities, a lot of people have generational wealth or some sort of leg up that affords them to not work full-time.


That wealth will not carry to future generations if they they have that mindset


It really depends on how much wealth their family has. For many of them, they are definitely burning up their family fortune. However, if your family has a significant amount of wealth (min 30M+), and you have only at most 2-3 kids per generation it’s possible to maintain a comfortable this lifestyle indefinitely and subsidize each generation.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:52     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:50s with kids in elementary is pretty old. I had my youngest at 39. I will be in my 50s when he is done with school and I can readily admit that I will be pretty old, definitely older than the average parent. But, I knew what I was getting into.


If you had a kid at 39 you'd be 51 when they are leaving elementary school...


Having a kid at 39 in my town would make you a very young mom or dad. I had my last at 45. My good friend had his first at 49 with his 42 year old wife and to my suprise had three kids the last one at her 47 and him 54. He lives in a super rich town where second and third wives are common. He is actually a young dad. He has Dads in their 70s in the elementary school.

It is all perspective. No one bats and eye Bruce Willis, Alex Baldwin having kids at their age. Janet Jackson had a kid at 50 and Halle Berry had one at 47.



They may not bat an eye but it's still old. But, no, women aren't cranking out kids in the 40s, especially late 40s like candy. It happens, but it's still pretty rare. I was 39 but my husband was even older. He can't related to a lot of the younger dads at the elementary school.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:51     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:50s with kids in elementary is pretty old. I had my youngest at 39. I will be in my 50s when he is done with school and I can readily admit that I will be pretty old, definitely older than the average parent. But, I knew what I was getting into.


If you had a kid at 39 you'd be 51 when they are leaving elementary school...


Having a kid at 39 in my town would make you a very young mom or dad. I had my last at 45. My good friend had his first at 49 with his 42 year old wife and to my suprise had three kids the last one at her 47 and him 54. He lives in a super rich town where second and third wives are common. He is actually a young dad. He has Dads in their 70s in the elementary school.

It is all perspective. No one bats and eye Bruce Willis, Alex Baldwin having kids at their age. Janet Jackson had a kid at 50 and Halle Berry had one at 47.

Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:50     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:50s with kids in elementary is pretty old. I had my youngest at 39. I will be in my 50s when he is done with school and I can readily admit that I will be pretty old, definitely older than the average parent. But, I knew what I was getting into.


If you had a kid at 39 you'd be 51 when they are leaving elementary school...


So, in my 50s, as I said. And that's much older than the other parents. I feel like the young mom in my oldest's kids class.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:48     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
I think there is a causality issue here. 9am is pretty late to be starting a commute to the office! The people who have to work in an office are gone long before 9am. The people who don’t have to go into the office are self-selecting into a 9am school drop off.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:47     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:In your 50s with elementary school aged kids? Sounds awful.


NP. It's not. Go away. We are not even the oldest parents at our Bethesda ES. OP needs to learn the difference between possessive and plurals, however.


We have four kids. When my youngest graduated college I was 52. I retired at 53.

Elementary school kids in your 50s is old AF.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:44     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
My block I say zero go to an office every day.
Of women, 95 percent are stay at home Moms or retired.
Of men most own their business or work from home or part time.
There are two of us who go to office. Me, two days a week and a neighbor who is a diplomat who drives to DC.

Houses are all 2-2.5 million my block. And I drive to work I ofen cut through Betheda and Potomac between 745 am and 845 am and tons of 40 something Dads in short or even PJs at bus stops.

If anything more women in the less expensive parts of town work. Nurses and Teachers are in person.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:43     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
I often see mothers wearing yoga pants and other casual clothing when they drop their kids off at school and I, too, wonder what jobs they are doing dressed like that. I mean, do they go home and change before Zoom calls or before heading into the office (late)?
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:43     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:50s with kids in elementary is pretty old. I had my youngest at 39. I will be in my 50s when he is done with school and I can readily admit that I will be pretty old, definitely older than the average parent. But, I knew what I was getting into.

This is the norm in my neighborhood. I am one of the younger moms having had my kids early 30s. Some are much much older and usually the worst behaved socially 60+ with elem or middle school kids and it's just a different set of values in what you allow and what you are overly strict about.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:41     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:People have all kinds of jobs and schedules.

If you’ve lived a pretty regimented life, it can be easy to forget/not see how much variation there is.

But actually, there are tons of us out here not on a 9-5 office job for one reason or another! Take a sick day and drive around. You’ll be shocked.


+1 LOL. No they don't all work in sales. Do you not know anyone in your bubble who works as a health care professional or has an international facing career where the time zones may necessitate different work hours?
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:40     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I don't find any of it surprising at all. I'm more surprised so many people still work.
There were so many opportunities to became financially free in last 6 years. Several crypto and individual stocks I bought made 10X. Can't even name one that went down.
I simply manage our money from home.
Rate cuts are coming, so there's more money to be made. I told my boss that I cannot help him anymore as I lose money while at work.


Not everything is about money.


OK, enjoy giving up money and family for the honor of going to work at your special job at 9am.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:36     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:We live in North Arlington, and our local elementary starts at 9 AM. We are older parents in our 50s, and we both work so I go to work in person and dress business casual.

When I’m walking to drop off, I often see father’s dropping off their kids, and they are dressed in shorts and sweats and T-shirts, but they are younger like in their 30s early 40s.

Does everyone have a work at home job now except me? I thought we had RTO happening, or these dad’s going to work late after going home and changing first and getting there at like 930/10?

Our neighborhood is very expensive, I did not know they were that many jobs that paid that well to stay home in your sweats! Except maybe tech, but I am in tech and I’ve never met anyone else in our school that is in tech.

I guess they’re all in sales?


Wage slavery doesn't create wealth. I am a business owner, so I only dress up for special meetings and do a lot of work on phone/Internet and travelling, not dressed up at an office.

Anyway you didn't say what percent of dropoffs are these casual dads. WFH dads and 10am job dads and unemployed / retired / heirs / flexibly employeed dads are over represented at dropoff, obviously.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:34     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:50s with kids in elementary is pretty old. I had my youngest at 39. I will be in my 50s when he is done with school and I can readily admit that I will be pretty old, definitely older than the average parent. But, I knew what I was getting into.


If you had a kid at 39 you'd be 51 when they are leaving elementary school...
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:31     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
A lot of people are hybrid/remote or they travel for meetings etc but not in the office everyday.

Also a bunch of people (including my DH) are currently unemployed/SAHD due to the loss of govt and other DC type jobs.

We are in Bethesda so socioeconomically similar to your neighborhood probably. Most parents of both genders are in casual clothes at dropoff (we walk to school) which is a little before 9 for us.
Anonymous
Post 09/08/2025 10:29     Subject: Dads at elementary drop off
Anonymous wrote:I don't find any of it surprising at all. I'm more surprised so many people still work.
There were so many opportunities to became financially free in last 6 years. Several crypto and individual stocks I bought made 10X. Can't even name one that went down.
I simply manage our money from home.
Rate cuts are coming, so there's more money to be made. I told my boss that I cannot help him anymore as I lose money while at work.


Not everything is about money.