been seeing this pop up in my tl today and have some passing thoughts.

I was raised by a mom who “had it all.” Without id’ing myslef, she was a top lobbyist in DC with all that entails and was always home to be mom too. But you just can’t do what she was able to 30 years ago. https://twitter.com/selentelechia/status/1274166064159453184

For starters, she only worked part time at until I was 3 years old.

when I was 3+ years old I spent a ton of time in her office, along with the chairman’s kid and the secretary’s kid.

Once she had to give a speach to Congress, but I caused mess in the car. Congress waited(!)

None of this is doable anymore. The culture around kids has devolved back into “you’d better pay enough money that we don’t have to see them.”

But hold on, child care sucks now too.

When I was put in preschool I was sent to what is now a hyper competitive preschool that’s at one of the smithsonian museums. Back then you just signed your kid up, no muss no fuss. Certainly no wait lists.

There were two ladies overseeing 30 4 year olds. That’s a 1:15 ratio.

Before I married her my wife worked in childcare near DC and they had 3 ladies overseeing 9 kids. 1:3 ratio.

So on labor alone you have to pay 5x as much due to child care regulations.

But more than that, my wife told me that if a kid so much as had a 99 degree fever the parents had to come get them. Which means they had to leave work immediately and come get their kid.

In the early 90s nobody was forced to go home unless they were capital-S-Sick

So you can’t take your kids to work, daycare is outrageously expensive, you frequently have to leave work anyway to pick up the kid during the day... We’ve made it so much harder on working moms all while putatively trying to make things better.

My wife doesn’t work now that we have kids, because it just isn’t worth it. If workplaces and regulations were as flexible as they were 30 years ago maybe she would..

.. but the strict codifying of rules, in the workplace and in childcare have made it too hard for sympathetic bosses to be flexible even if they wanted to.

forgot a comma here and it's killing me