I have a question for any Americans : is working part-time a realistic option for parents in order to spend.more time with their childen? Would they still get healthcare? Can people afford to work reduced hours in general?
I think it depends on the job to be honest. The better your job, the more likely you are to have flexible options. I worked 30 hours a week for a good while when my kids were in school, including working from home. If I dropped below 27 hours a week my benefits would have stopped - although I know my employer made exceptions for this for key employees who needed to drop their hours and whom they really wanted to retain.
I was in a well-paid, professional job, and had put in years of performance full time. I knew loads of women at work who did the same - went part time after having children and then maybe ramped up again when they were older. I suspect it might be harder to do this if you worked in our facilities unit or Target etc.
I'm sure that those getting good holidays are more than likely upper management and CEO's the normal folk don't see those kinds of days off.
I agree with this. I remember sitting in a classroom watching the kids perform something and saying to a woman sitting next to me how I sometimes wonder if it was a bit unfair having these things during the work day as it was always the case that a few children (the same ones usually) didn't have someone there. She said "Oh I think you have to prioritise this kind of thing". Well she was a lawyer in the EPA and I was in a similar position - we could both do our work whenever and we both worked with people who would have smiled benignly when we said "will be in a little late Monday - it's a school thing". The kids whose parents weren't there had parents who worked shift work in places that wouldn't/couldn't allow that flexibility.
I was entitled to 6 weeks (unpaid) off after each birth. Luckily I worked for managers who were very understanding and allowed more time and allowed return part time but there was no actual policy in place. I got paid by taking out a short-term disability policy as part of my benefits package. Each of my children were in daycare by age 5 months.
Head of HR told me increasingly people are going part time because of elder care issues, not childrearing.
We are just back from 2 weeks vacation. dh gets a lot (very senior position) and most people at his level actually take their vacation. I once took 3 weeks in a row (that is fairly unheard of though).
Agree also with the 6pm dinner. No one would invite you for dinner here at 8 pm - that seems ridiculously late to everyone. We eat really late for the US (often 7.30 or 8). I called our local hipster restaurant at 8.50 on a Friday night recently and they said "oh we're closing early it is really quiet" But they would have been full of people eating dinner/drinking beer or wine at 5.30. When my kids were younger, if we invited their friends to stay over for dinner, I'd have had to move dinner closer to 5 which seems a really odd time to eat. I used to love one girl whose parents were Spanish - she was happy to eat any time at all.