Political Memes

Edit: Wayyy more rambly than I normally am, but I'm genuinely surprised how coherent I was writing this haha

I agree with you, but I'd also say that work should just be more lenient and flexible in general, regardless of if a person is a parent. I believe one of the reasons we're seeing less people have kids in the last two generations is because they have less time and ability to take care of themselves, date and find partners, and such little free time outside of their soul crushing underpaid existence that when the idea of having kids at all comes up it becomes an extremely daunting and undesirable prospect to sacrifice the tiny amount of time they have for themselves to a kid that doesn't exist yet. I'm speaking to a US experience, so mileage may vary outside the shit show that is my country, but it very much so feels like here that if you have a moment of free time that isn't in service of a corporate overlord then you are a lazy good for nothing piece of useless crap, and you should just figure out how to schedule your doctor's appointments during your time off, even if that means that doctors just aren't open when you're not at work.

All that said, I don't actually believe parents get that much more leeway from their employers than nonparents do. It's just that parents say "I have to do x because I have a child" when requesting time off, and nonparents say "can I have this time off work because if x".

Parents tell their employers "I have to have this time off. I will not be here after 3pm on Tuesday" and nonparents tend to phrase as a request because that's how we're taught to ask for time off. In my anecdotal experience, anyway. My brother was the first person to point out to me the difference in phrasing, and since then, basically my entire working life, whenever I request time off I effectively approach it as telling them I just won't be here. Out of my hands. And fuck, it works. Employers find all kinds of ways to handle that, and that's normally by denying the requests made by people who phrase it as "pretty pretty please can I have a personal life for just a few hours in the 7th of March 2032?"

We need more militantly angry employees lol

Was about to hit submit when I saw how long this comment is, and realized I don't remember most of what I wrote. I'm recovering from a seizure I had a few hours ago (first one! Yay! Let's hope no more), and I'm too tired to reread it. Gonna leave it up for posterity to read tomorrow when I'm feeling better lol