Society Needs to Accommodate Children, Not the Other Way Around

The new-school-year rush has settled, and finally so has the scramble to patch together after-school care for our kids — not without its annual logistical and financial strain. At my child’s elementary school there’s the in-house after-school care program which costs several hundred dollars a month. And then there are after-school clubs, for which I am the coordinator. 

Parents can either spend hundreds of dollars a month on Monday through Friday care, often at the expense of our retirement, kids’ college funds and our savings accounts — let alone paying the electric bill, for many families — or sign up for as many after-school clubs as we can afford, for a measly 90 minutes per week apiece. If they opt for a club or two, they then have to juggle work and care with their partner (if they have one) for the rest of their working hours, generally suffering a collective migraine over the whole ordeal. 

The stress and pressure of getting our kids cared for while holding down a job has reached a breaking point, and parents are fed up. There is no earthly reason why we should have to shoulder this impossible burden — bending time, space and dollars — just to raise a family. 

The solution isn’t just one law (though I’ll propose one below). It’s a total reversal of our priorities and our attitudes toward parents and children. 

Right now, America’s culture revolves around corporations and the economy. I fully grasp the rewards of this support and appreciate it; America is a prosperous country. However, the group that deserves reverence is parents, not businesses. Parents’ service to humanity is priceless and comparable to little else, yet we barely get a passing thought, let alone some basic flexibility, to ease our workload even a little. It is time for America to do away with the “your kids, your problem” attitude. 

Parents are running out of ways to say it: We need child care so we can work 

I guess this still needs clarifying: We can’t be in two places at once, and you can’t leave a 5-year-old home alone. Our elected officials hear the same mantra from parents year after year: We need subsidized child care. Yet child care is extremely expensive to provide because of its large labor force. 

From a political lens, many liberals lament that in many European countries, governments subsidize or provide universal child care — so why can’t we? Conversely, many conservatives would say the price tag is too high and there’s no way they would support raising taxes to help make child care more affordable. Many conservatives also flippantly assert this is easy to solve — women should simply leave the workforce and raise the kids. This is a fundamental reason they refuse to even consider subsidizing child care, and it is a laughable fantasy. 

The stress and pressure of getting our kids cared for while holding down a job has reached a breaking point, and parents are fed up.

To the politicians who expect millions of women to quit their jobs as doctors, dentists, lawyers, senators, teachers, CEOs, musicians, scientists, engineers, chefs, administrative assistants and a thousand other things, for the last time — you are deluded. While some moms who have financial flexibility will choose to stay home to raise kids, leaving the workforce will never be a sustainable solution for the masses, and the sooner you can move on from that pipe dream, the better. Women aren’t giving up their dreams or their paychecks. 

Instead of expecting women to be lifelong, unpaid servants, or the government to spend millions of dollars it doesn’t have to pay employees to look after children, I propose a third option which costs nothing. In fact, I insist upon it. 

The law that would change everything 

Mandate by law that companies allow parents to leave the office to pick up their kids from school and finish their workday at home. Make it illegal to restrain parents in a cubicle outside of school hours. 

It costs companies nothing to let part of their workforce leave at 2 p.m. and finish their workday at home, and any word to the contrary from them is pure BS and posturing. 

Passing such a law would allow parents to get their kids from school and be with them at home, easing excessive strain on families. Even more importantly, it would upend the culturally entrenched notion that work comes first, kids come last; that workplaces deserve every convenience and accommodation, and families are expected to shoulder the cost at the expense of their mental health, valued time with their children and significant child care costs. 

As a side note, fathers need to commit to at least half these pickups. While the division of parenting labor deserves its own article, it is too important not to give it mention here. Our culture not only says kids are parents’ property and problem, but that child-rearing is the job of women to both figure out and then accomplish. Moms then get penalized in the workplace since they are seen as less committed and capable, while dads are only held in higher esteem because they have kids. Moms cannot constantly be the ones leaving for essential child care. When dads use flex time to get the kids, they disrupt sexism, shining an important light on the accepted status quo. 

I have heard some people suggest the school day should be longer to match the work day. Yet longer school days would be another way the public has to foot the bill for child care using taxpayer dollars. Why do this when Wi-Fi exists, and we know (thanks to the pandemic) that working from home did not result in a loss of worker productivity. In fact, some studies show productivity increases with remote work and can save companies money. We can only guess at corporations’ reasons for forcing the daily commute and cubicle routine on many workers, but we can rule out cost. 

Parent considerations — let alone rights — don’t even exist 

Parents have been nothing short of saintly in their quest to accommodate every whim and mandate of their workplaces. They bend themselves in every possible direction, so they can simply hold down jobs, without which they couldn’t feed their families. Corporate America gets to hold this over our heads every day of our lives. 

The hurdles and hoops we must jump through to simply work and give our kids basic care are absurdly unfair — and never remotely appreciated. If anything, it meets resistance and eye rolls. Raise your hand if you have been thanked lately. 

The world treats child-rearing as an expensive hobby and gripes and moans when we need to be able to actually look after our children. Many prominent figures then have the audacity to publicly whine that women aren’t having enough kids. 

From a political lens, parents lament that in many European countries, governments subsidize or provide universal child care — so why can’t we?

Workplace contributions, even including a simple acknowledgement of the near impossibility of handling both being a parent and working, have totaled nothing. 

I am not fooled into believing that work is saintly and all-important, and that child-rearing is a public nuisance. We act like parents needing anything at all is not only a weakness but a reversal of healthy priorities when the polar opposite is true. 

Parents’ contributions to humanity and the economy are incalculable. Where’s the applause? 

Raising children is volunteer work that costs us hundreds of thousands of hours of time as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s not 1910 and we aren’t living on family farms, with our children providing valuable labor toward the family business. Yet corporations absolutely balk at parents asking to work from home a little bit so we can continue that service. 

Not surprisingly, after numerous post-pandemic return-to-office mandates, women have been leaving the workforce lately in huge numbers — 3 percent per month from January to June of this year. Such return-to-office mandates are anti-family, sexist and treat humans as one-dimensional machines, rather than human beings with lives. 

The workplaces that make it nearly impossible for us to be there for our kids also kick and scream that the birthrate is too low, the economy is going to be in freefall and — once again — women better get to having more babies to help out. I would like to ask those corporations who refuse to accommodate parents in any way whatsoever, where they think their future employees will come from. Perhaps they think babies grow on trees and are reared by wolves in the wild? 

To the colleagues who will scoff at anyone stepping out sooner than them: Businesses can offer the same thing to employees without children: You are also welcome to leave the office early to go volunteer and then finish your workday at home, too. 

I am tired of being asked to celebrate AI — unless it does this 

Not only can businesses accommodate school pickups starting today, but I have been hearing about how AI is going to transform the workplace and save us loads of time every time I read the news. Tell me why I should care when all that’s happening now is businesses skimming more money off labor costs and into their profit columns. Stock prices are up, investors are clinking champagne glasses, and I could not be more tired of repeated headlines that really just celebrate rich people’s latest win. 

What about something for us? If AI saves so much time at work, then it can allow the work day to be reduced to six hours to match the school day. Imagine an additional 10 hours each week where kids can just be in the comfort of their homes with their parents. Imagine how easy it would be to fit in extracurriculars, to make dinner and eat it together, and so much more. Where are the family values folks? 

Businesses: If you want to see public support for your energy-sucking, climate-wrecking data centers, here’s a fantastic place to start. 

A 6-hour workday would save families at least 10 hours a week of child care expenses for school-aged kids and thousands of dollars during the 0–5 age range because we would need far fewer hours of care per week. I can’t think of a better political or public win than instituting a 6-hour workday. 

It’s time to admit what is really important, and this is corporate America’s biggest fear 

CEOs and widget-makers: You are replaceable and expendable. So end this bender of an ego trip you’ve all been on since the industrial revolution. We don’t need another metal rectangle which will be in the landfill in a few years. Thank you for the toys, but it’s time for something more important. We need healthy kids, and for that we need parents who aren’t strained to a breaking point every day. 

Humans lived and thrived for millions of years before the first business ever opened its doors and sold its wares. But the human race can’t last a single generation without children. So tell me why I should care about America’s holy quest to work every single minute we aren’t asleep, instead of raising a healthy, happy and intelligent generation of humans. 

Parents have accommodated the world and the world’s workplaces to the point of poverty, for many. The world owes us, and businesses with office workplaces can pay that debt to society overnight without losing a single dollar. We have done our part times a thousand. It’s their turn. 

Editor’s note: ParentMap publishes articles, op-eds and essays by people of all experiences and from all walks of life. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own and are not endorsed by ParentMap.