The employees domestic arrangements aren’t the concern of the employer - in terms of whether someone has a partner or is a single parent. It cannot be expected that every worker has a partner who can pick up significant slack, because they simply don’t. It also can’t be assumed that every worker is child free or has no other commitments in their life.
I think that when a long trip comes up like this one, having a conversation as OP has is the right approach. Asking for child cost repayments explicitly isn’t probably the best way. As others said, stating that the long trip away would incur significant expenses so you’d like an additional rate of pay for that period in acknowledgement of them is reasonable..and something firms can swallow more easily without setting a orecedent for covering childcare costs.
I think firms are also more likely to be willing to do this if the worker rarely travels for work, isn’t extremely well paid and if the trip is long. They might expect the extremely well paid worker who travels a lot and goes in short trips to have essentially built such childcare into their ‘normal’ routine. For me, this trip is outside of the OP’s normal routine and it’s length would have imposed significant costs.
Glad a sensible solution has been found. And I think that those who are sure such an arrangement wouldn’t be considered at their work, it would be worth having a conversation about if something similar arose. Her ask wasn’t unreasonable. Expectations to travel might be part of the job, but some travelling is much more onerous and costly than others, and there’s no reason why firms shouldn’t be considering the full costs an employee faces. Unfortunatley, it will tend to be women who ask for this kind of thing,as it’s more likely to be they who don’t have access to free childcare. Men asked to travel like this on one long and unusual trip, somehow don’t seem to have to use £300 of childcare to cover wraparound. Somehow they seem o have someone who will step up and cover the childcare, possibly at financial cost to themselves. Perhaos it would be good if more men started to make employers aware of these costs too and ask for something similar to Op has. But unfortunately, this seems unlikely to happen. Instead, we get the situation where a woman asking for something not unreasonable is seen to be reflective of women employees being more demanding or less flexible or more costly than men. And this is amongst a forum of mostly women. So many told her to just suck it up.
I agree that it’s disappointing if a DH can’t pick up some of the slack. Women in this thread were disappointed because they know that in similar situations reversed, they do pick up the slack, even whilst working. But I actually don’t think it’s the key point. OP could have been a single parent with no-one around to help. Why should an extra work demand (which potentially could be fulfilled by another worker anyway) impose a financial cost on the worker of several hundred pounds? Quite simply, firms wanting people to engage in long travel, or that which isn’t typical for their work need a system for employees to identify and claim for costs - these could be a range of things - and if this is a general claiming thing, it doesn’t just have to be about childcare.
Families where the woman is picking up the slack for men’s travel, especially where there is a financial cost (could be taking holiday from work to cover their travel, worsening their own career prospects by leaving early to over the childcare etc) need to be more prepared to ask the employer to pay up for the extra time and costs incurred. Few people have a career so well paid that one adult is a SAHP and is entirely free to pick-up slack and accommodate lots of travelling without any financial impact on the family. Those workers who earn enough to support themselves and their kids and a SAHP are very well paid,so perhaps extra won’t be forthcoming at that level. But what is that level? Far more workers are well paid but still need 2 people to work full time. Why should the occasional demands of work result in huge financial costs upon the family? Work should be paying. Employees should be asking for that payment so it’s not seen as something whiny women do.