> You can eat a snack while your kids eat their meal
No, you can't, if you are not present at meal times. Kids don't eat when Dad gets home. Kids eat at normal times, and if Dad is eating three meals at the office, Kids eat without Dad. For several early years, they then go to bed shortly after eating, and so they do not see Dad at all that day. s/Dad/Mom/g or whatever, of course.
> Plenty of parents leave for work before breakfast and get home after dinner.
Absent parents are not parenting. Providing maybe, and that's important, but not parenting.
If the other parent is doing all the parenting work, it is almost certainly not happily so. And if the parenting work is done by hired help because both "parents" are working during all weekday hours of child wakefulness, then these people have made compromises that are not compatible with parenting.
Some families have no other choices and that is unfortunate. But for those of us who do, if we choose to become parents at all, we should try to do a good job of it.
> But the idea that a 30-minute commute to a cushy tech job office that provides 3 meals a day is somehow incompatible with family life is a bananas take IMO
The job providing meals is fine. The employee eating three meals a day at work for extended periods, is incompatible with maintaining active participation in a family life. Being present is a big part of it, and you can't phone it in.
Anecdotally, I've only ever seen three types of people who tried to consistently mix 12+ hour office work days and parenthood: people in bad marriages who were hiding from their family, selfishly-deluded wantrepreneur overachievers, and addicts. All hetero men obviously. Sometimes more than one trait in a single person, and leading to divorce in most cases, which I'll argue is not necessarily a bad thing since at least one partner didn't want to be present in the family anyway.
No, you can't, if you are not present at meal times. Kids don't eat when Dad gets home. Kids eat at normal times, and if Dad is eating three meals at the office, Kids eat without Dad. For several early years, they then go to bed shortly after eating, and so they do not see Dad at all that day. s/Dad/Mom/g or whatever, of course.
> Plenty of parents leave for work before breakfast and get home after dinner.
Absent parents are not parenting. Providing maybe, and that's important, but not parenting.
If the other parent is doing all the parenting work, it is almost certainly not happily so. And if the parenting work is done by hired help because both "parents" are working during all weekday hours of child wakefulness, then these people have made compromises that are not compatible with parenting.
Some families have no other choices and that is unfortunate. But for those of us who do, if we choose to become parents at all, we should try to do a good job of it.
> But the idea that a 30-minute commute to a cushy tech job office that provides 3 meals a day is somehow incompatible with family life is a bananas take IMO
The job providing meals is fine. The employee eating three meals a day at work for extended periods, is incompatible with maintaining active participation in a family life. Being present is a big part of it, and you can't phone it in.
Anecdotally, I've only ever seen three types of people who tried to consistently mix 12+ hour office work days and parenthood: people in bad marriages who were hiding from their family, selfishly-deluded wantrepreneur overachievers, and addicts. All hetero men obviously. Sometimes more than one trait in a single person, and leading to divorce in most cases, which I'll argue is not necessarily a bad thing since at least one partner didn't want to be present in the family anyway.