Thread by @opinion

When we talk about workers going back to their offices, the goal for most is to return to the normal routines of life.

🍼 But for parents who had their first child during the past 18 months, the return is uncharted territory trib.al/a3jKClJ

New parents are figuring out for the first time how to manage:

🚍 Commuting
⏰ Long hours away from home
🍼 Parenting small children

All their experience thus far has been in a work-from-home pandemic world trib.al/Rnd0dVG

Data serves mostly to confirm that American work culture isn't particularly family-friendly, generally leaving mothers as the caretakers-of-last-resort in times of need trib.al/Rnd0dVG

For new fathers, the Covid pandemic might have spawned a long-overdue cultural shift in how to balance workplace and family life.

In a June 2020 study, @hgse found that 68% of fathers felt closer or much closer to their children since the start of Covid trib.al/Rnd0dVG

If fathers, especially ones who worked remotely, were always around for mealtime, bathtime and bedtime, they are likely going to feel closer to their kids.

It’s understandable if that formative experience produced a different outlook on their working life trib.al/Rnd0dVG

Using a survey, @Upwork economist @ModeledBehavior reported that the group with the highest share of people saying they would consider becoming a freelancer or self-employed to continue working remotely were men between the ages of 35-44 trib.al/Rnd0dVG

There’s a contingent of younger couples who only know a world where dad is always around because he's been working from home.

It's understandable when companies begin calling workers back into the office, many new parents start to look for alternatives trib.al/Rnd0dVG

Perhaps some companies will adopt a different approach, where in-office meetings take place during family-friendly hours of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

This would allow parents to be at home for morning and evening family logistics trib.al/Rnd0dVG

Having a workplace that's truly family-friendly requires fathers buying into the idea that the pandemic — and the additional time it gave them at home — might have been the catalyst for a long-overdue epiphany about their options trib.al/Rnd0dVG