I agree with you. I was thinking about remote work in the long, but this was hidden in the last paragraph.

> However, if this arrangement is to last, then childless employees should also get time for their personal obligations, whatever they might be.

I think if this arrangement were to continue for multiple years, the likely new deal would be for parents to shift to part-time work where possible, with accompanying cultural changes such that their new situation won't turn that into a complete career dead-end. It will mean lower pay, fewer raises, and longer stretches between promotions, but it won't mean being treated less seriously from a professional development perspective. Parents who would usually pay for child care will have extra money to help offset the wage cut. Parents who would usually rely on public services for child care will require additional effort to accommodate.

Meanwhile, non-parents will just work normal full-time jobs and get raises and promotions at their usual cadence, and it'll be more or less status quo.

The issue now is that we're not expecting this to go on for multiple years, and are hoping that things will go back to some semblance of normal sometime early- to mid-next year (whether that comes to pass or not is irrelevant; the expectation is what matters). With that thinking, you can expect solutions to problems to be blunt and short-term, not well-thought-out policy changes and cultural shifts that in the best of times can take years to work out and transition to. And because they're blunt and short-term, they are going to have rough edges, as we're seeing here.

I think you'd benefit by looking into the difference between "equality" and "equity".