

How to Hack It as a Working Parent - zeroonetwothree
http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/10409

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pnathan
> Ultimately, a flexible environment that reflects the needs of parents will
> help create a better workplace culture for everyone, kids or no kids.

I keep seeing this idea float around. Citation needed, please. :-) Is it true?
How do we know it's true?

~~~
jefurii
Seriously, speaking as a parent, I can tell you that life gets a lot more
complicated when a child is in the picture. I want to be a good parent to my
child, and because my spouse also works this sometimes requires that I
occasionaly attend functions at my kid's school or take my kid to a doctor's
appointment.

From the point of view of a young twentysomething single programmer I probably
seem less committed. It's certainly true that I now have additional
commitments that I did not have before. Yet I want to keep working, both
because I enjoy it and because I want to provide for my family.

Do you want to deny me that? Do you want to deny yourself a job if you decide
to have kids down the road? As a child, would you have wanted your parents to
have to change careers and start over when they had you because they "weren't
committed enough"? Or would you have wanted your parents to be so committed to
their job that they had no time for you? If that was your situation, take a
deep look inside and ask yourself how you _really_ feel about that.

If you're a young programmer, do you want to benefit from the experience and
perspective of older colleagues, or do you want to spend your career figuring
everything out for yourself? If you're a responsible business owner, do you
want to lose the benefit of your workers' experience just because they start
families? To widen the perspective, do you want to live in a Logan's Run
future where nobody can hold a programming job after the age of thirty and
twentysomething brogrammers have to support a large pool of out-of-work
seniors?

All of this is the basis for the assertion that "a flexible environment that
reflects the needs of parents will help create a better workplace culture for
everyone, kids or no kids".

