> anger over teammates who are parents.

I recognise my younger self in that. How stupid I was!

Bringing up kids is the most important job in the world, and employers have zero loyalty.

Do your eight hours, or however much you need to support your outgoings, and then focus on the important stuff.

Edit: This applies whether or not you have kids. Your employer being understaffed or having unrealistic goals is not your problem.

Here’s what I don’t understand (childless person); How did parents get by for thousands of years always having children by their sides?

What is it about the modern world that makes children act like starving cats all the time? Is it the sugary diets? Is it the overstimulation from media? What the heck changed in the last hundred years or so?

In many respects, it's "modern" parenting behavior.

Example, if you let a baby cry at night it will usually stop crying after a few weeks.

Once kids hit ~7 years old it used to be normal to let them wander around the house and neighborhood unsupervised. In most unwesternized countries it still is.

That's how the average family has 6+ kids in some countries. They're only actively caring for a few at a time.

Taking such a relaxed view to parenting in the west would get your kids taken away

letting babies sleep alone is a modern parenting behavior. kids mostly used to sleep together with their parents before.

aside from that, older kids took care of younger kids, neighborhood groups took care of children together, older relatives who could no longer do hard work supervised the children...

And women were typically in or around the home.

Not a historian, but I'm guessing the primary reason is because for much of human history, two-parent families had one parent dedicated to raising children.

Also some other reasons:

1. Probably there was more general family help with children - grandparents/town/etc was more involved.

2. For kids that were a bit older, they were effectively part of the workforce - apprenticeships, farmhands, etc.

3. Probably, it was more safe to let kids wander around in many cases - cities are particularly complicated, what with streets full of cars and just generally unsafe areas for kids. In a small town, or a family farm, you could let toddlers run around a lot more.

manual labor like field work, house work, baking, tailoring, keeping a shop, etc are things you can do while watching kids. you take the kids to work, and let them play alongside you. when they are old enough they can help, or pretend to help.

if your work requires focus like writing or programming, then kids are a disruption and you can't do it.

also once factory work was developed, schools for everyone were built too, those developments happened at around the same time.

Another modern effect is that a lot of people don't live around extended family anymore which ends up affecting childcare options, especially with daycares in the state they are.

Cool, except people choose to be parents, and when you do that you accept the additional work involved in that.

It is unfair to offer arbitrary benefits to people with children, and then compensate them the same amount as people who are doing more work.

That’s a “I chose to to do something I knew would take up a lot of time, I want work to give me time off to do that, but I also want work to continue to pay me as much as anyone else, including those people who are doing more work”.

P/maternity leave is one thing, arbitrary benefits from that point on is clearly unfair.

If I choose to sign up for 40 hours a week of volunteer work on top of my normal work hours I don’t get to ask for additional time off benefits from my employer, even though my volunteer work is likely to benefit far more people than just my immediate family.

> Cool, except people choose to be parents, and when you do that you accept the additional work involved in that.

Yes. That's why parents will get before and afterschool child care, daycare, find a relative, or hire a babysitter to take care of the child(ren), etc. so that they can work. When most if not all of that is taken away, then what do you expect?

Also, keep in mind that other than a relative or public school, you usually have to pay quite a bit of money for these services, but I don't see parents arguing that they should be paid more to compensate for those additional expenses so that their income after expenses is comparable to those who don't have children.

All that is true. I have someone on my team who is at 25% of normal due to their children.

However, what about the person who is caring for someone (perhaps an unwed partner friend) with mental illness worsened by the pandemic? Taking care of someone with severe mental illness (e.g. suicidality) can also be extremely draining and time consuming, yet there are almost always 0 official leave benefits for those sorts of situations. And even caring for an elderly parent or sick non-immediate family member tends to receive less support compared to many parental leave policies.

I fully agree with and respect everything you said. But for every life difficulty, time management issue, or resource problem that you have as a result of having a child, I can give you an equivalent and equally important and difficult issue in my own life, even though I don't have children (yet).

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm assuming this is a specific situation that you are in - most people without kids are not in the same boat. I hope that you are able to also receive benefits from your employer / government to help with whatever situation you are in.

I think you misunderstood me as having special needs, however that's defined. I'm talking about normal difficulties that life throws at you. Things like needing exercise, adequate sleep, good nutrition, friends, or having the time and resources to meet my future life partner, all of which is difficult to juggle with an extremely demanding job working at Facebook or Netflix for example. In the same way parents struggle taking care of kids while working in those careers, people without kids struggle similarly, just with different, though no less important, aspects of their lives.

I'm sure this is unpopular opinion. My kids are grown up now and I can relate to both sides. But what's wrong is that companies focus on benefits that only help in their talent branding and being politically correct. Me having kids was a choice and it's a commitment same as starting a business. So not providing fair and equal benefits to all is an issue. As a parent to teenagers I still get the same paid time off as parents with newborns or toddlers which is unfair.