[AshArchangel]

What's interesting is that I have observed the opposite in my career. I have often seen that employees who have children are afforded more flexibility, shorter hours, and less work than those who do not have children. While I understand these are necessary if you have children, a disproportionate amount of work and higher expectations are given to those without children in my office. For example, if you have a child, that is a perfectly acceptable reason to work from home, but simply wanting to work remotely is not accepted. Do I need to have a child to work from home (especially because I can't have children...lol)? Anyway, this is obviously not a universal experience across companies (and trust me I'm happy that parents have these perks at my company), but I do find it frustrating when someone is expected to stay at the office until midnight because "what else would they do" if they don't have children lol. Basically, everyone should have less work, more flexible schedules, and realistic expectations given to them regardless of their personal life.

[apohn]

I suspect one big difference is that when you have young children is that you can't bend on "No, I can't work." When you don't have young children you can bend (even if you don't want to), and you say "No" but do "Maybe."

I've seen this with people before they have kids and after the kids are a little older. They occasionally bend and work a bit extra, check emails after hours, etc, and then before you know the it the manager expects this person is available since they did it before.

Sadly, at one company where I worked the young single person had to lie and say they were heavily involved with educational activities at their church and they couldn't work extended hours because of that. I know they were not 100% honest about the hours required for that, but management needed some mental excuse to say it's okay for them to just work normal hours. It's stupid, but sometimes that's the only way to do it.

[dcolkitt]

Along similar lines, people with kids are less likely to be fired.

Ask any manager who's had to do a big layoff. They'll bend over backwards to shield those who have families to feed. Often time single people will be laid off first despite being much more competent than the father of four.

This creates a secondary emergent effect where family men build up more impressive resumes than singles who are viewed as disposable and less likely to weather downturns.