We still suck, and we still have this weird attitude that work and home must NEVER touch, like matter and antimatter, that there’s something shameful in having a personal life that affects your work life. If not for this attitude, we’d have smartened up long ago and gotten decent maternity leave, subsidies that allowed daycare centers to partner with businesses to provide onsite care to employees, and many more work at home jobs.

It’s also very wasteful, this idea that you must be in your office whether you’re productive or not. Many days I could get my work done in 3-4 hours, and then go home and see my family, but productivity doesn’t matter as much as chaining me to my desk and having me look busy.

Most companies seem to pay lip service to “family” but when push comes to shove seem to do everything in their power to not only discourage it, but “punish” you for it.

There are exceptions, but they are just that… exceptions. There is more than a few examples (and court cases) where people have been penalized by corporations for being “breeders.”

And to top it off (for me), this is the one place in the corporate world where men are actually treated worse than women. Even in some companies that tend to be “flexible” when women need to tend to the needs of the family (sick child, sick family member, etc.) are less that accommodating men in the same circumstances.

If I had to guess, I think some corporations try to give the impression that they are “family friendly” so as to provide “proof” that no new legislation gets rammed down their throats. (Such as the Family Medical Leave Act in 1993, which took us from being the only country in the world without any paid maternity leave, to matching the absolute bottom). By “freely” giving something, they hope to avoid any new legislation that might cost them a penny per share in their stock earnings.