But literally nobody in this discussion is saying that! I’m certainly not. You’re trying to broaden a very specific point that Petra Guglielmetti was making into something nobody is saying.

My childcare is not my co-workers’ problem (and indeed, that’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen to be self-employed). But if you have to leave at 4.50pm to pick up your child from nursery, that’s a hard and unavoidable deadline. So you need to get the work done before you go, or make it up afterwards.

A parent who expects others to pick up the slack is not being a responsible parent or a responsible co-worker. And I’m sorry if you’ve had that problem with your co-wrokers — but that’s because they’re a bit crap, not because they’re parents. As I said, you are arguing against a point that nobody has made.

It’s probably worth remembering that many parents spent a while as non-parent adult before they took the plunge — 20 years in my case…