my company secretly gives parents thousands of extra dollars in benefits

by Alison Green on August 13, 2024

A reader writes:

I work for an organization that prides itself on being generous and flexible to parents. I fully support that, despite the usual gripes among the childless employees you might imagine (e.g., we are asked to work more weekends and nights). A colleague of mine, a parent, is leaving the org and invited me to coffee. I thought it was just to have a farewell chat, but it turns out they feel that the difference in parent vs. non-parent benefits is so drastic they “don’t feel right” leaving without telling someone. They let me know how stark the difference is and … it’s way beyond anything I’ve seen before.

It turns out parents in my org are offered, when they are hired or become parents, are offered a special benefits package called “Family Benefits.” This is not in any paperwork I have access to (including my onboarding work and employee handbook) and those who partake are asked to not share information about it with non-parents, ostensibly to “avoid any tension” with childless employees. But the real reason is far more clear: it’s because they don’t want us to know how bad the difference is:

* The Family Package includes 10 extra days of PTO (three sick, two personal, five vacation).
* We have access to specific facilities (gym, pool, etc.) and the Family Benefits package gives free gym membership and swim lessons to you, your spouse, and your children; I can only get those at a 50% discount, and my spouse gets no discount at all.
* Officially, we’re a “one remote day a week” organization; those with children are allowed to be remote any time schools are out (this includes staff members whose kids aren’t school-age yet, and the entire summer).
* We have several weekend/evening events we volunteer for, where volunteering gives you comp time; if you’re a parent who volunteers and calls out day-of due to childcare, you still get your comp day (as you might imagine, every event usually has about 25-30 people call out due to childcare). If the special event is child-focused, parents are exempt from volunteering and can attend with their family as guests, and they still get comp time.
* There’s an affiliate discount program that includes discounts to major businesses not offered to child-free employees — not just child-specific businesses, but movie theaters, ride-sharing apps, and chain stores.
* We get a card we can add pre-tax commuting funds to, but parents in this program get a bonus $100 a month.
* We get retirement matching up to 2.5%, but parents get up to 5%.
* If you need to leave to pick up kids from school, you don’t have to work once you get home; as you might imagine, when given written permission to pass tasks off to others and log off at 2:30 pm, almost everyone does.

All told, my colleague estimates that as a parent of two children, they saved upwards of $18,000 worth a year in benefits that are not available to me, in addition to the non-monetary benefits (like time saved not having to commute any time schools are out, basically free comp time).

I’m all for flexibility for parents but knowing that my organization is secretly (SECRETLY) giving parents this volume of bonus benefits has me feeling disgusted at my org and disappointed in my colleagues who have kept it quiet. How do I approach this? Do I reach out to HR? Do I pretend it never happened and move forward? Is this even legal? I’m already planning to leave, and was considering telling my fellow child-free colleagues before I left, but right now I’m just feeling so lost.

Tell all your coworkers.

If your organization considers this defensible, they should have no problem with everyone knowing about it.

The reason they’ve tried to keep it secret is, of course, because they know people will have a problem with it.

So share the information.

It’s not uncommon to see parents granted some extra flexibility that non-parents don’t get,  even if they have a similar need for it. That’s a problem itself; when employers can offer flexibility, they should offer it across the board, not only to one class of people.

But this goes way beyond what’s typical. Higher retirement matching? Extra vacation days? Policies that formally transfer the burden of working at weekend and evening events to people without kids? Charging you for a gym membership while your coworker pays nothing simply because they have a child?  It’s pretty wild.

To be clear, there are ways to do some of this that wouldn’t grate. For example, if they offered extra “dependent care” days, they’d probably be used primarily by parents staying home with sick kids, but it would be great for morale that they’d also be available to someone who needed to, say, take care of an elderly relative.

Also, if you’re wondering about the law: In most states, discriminating on the basis of family status is not illegal. But a small number of jurisdictions do prohibit family status discrimination, so it’s worth checking to see if yours is one of them. Typically those laws are framed to prevent discrimination against employees with kids and I’m not sure that any have been tested in the other direction, but it would depend on the exact wording of the law.

Anyway. Share what you know, and then consider organizing with your coworkers to advocate for a broader array of benefits being available to all employees.

Since you mentioned you were already considering leaving, you might not want to take this on more directly, but if that’s the case you should still definitely share the info with your non-parent colleagues before you depart.

And kudos to the coworker who told you, and boo to all the rest of them who chose to stay quiet.

Read an update to this letter. 

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{ 797 comments }

{ 797 comments… read them below }

  1. KHB*

    I’m confused about how some of those things can be kept secret. Surely people must notice when some employees are working remotely more than one day a week, or disappearing at 2:30 and passing off their tasks to others?

    1. Lab Boss*

      The only way I could think for that to go unnoticed is if it’s a truly huge org (which sounds plausible just based on all the different types of benefits and options available even to non-parents) and not every parent is constantly abusing the system, so the pattern wasn’t obvious?

      1. Baela Targaryen*

        But a huge org means the department of labor, and the benefits disparity would have been caught a lot sooner.

      2. Clisby*

        And plenty of people start out at a company without children and sometime later have children – anybody in that category would realize what was going on.

    2. Nonsense*

      Oh, believe me, the childfree employees are fully aware of who’s always leaving at 2:30, who’s always calling out of the mandatory after work events, and who’s using more WFH for “childcare.” Who do you think are the ones always picking up the slack?

      2. Project Manager*

        Agreed! Our office has a 3 days in office policy, but we have several people who come in 1 day a week or almost never, and it doesn’t go unnoticed. Some of those may have some sort of arrangement (heck, I have one to be 2 days a week for medical reasons right now) so I mind my own business, but I also know there are those who don’t come in without a formal arrangement, and I figure if they want to jeopardize their jobs that’s on them, I just keep my head down and look out for myself. Now, I wouldn’t keep my head down about a free gym membership (extended to family no less), double freaking matching on retirement, 10 extra PTO days, and exception from voluntold events.

      3. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        They know, they just don’t know its a formal policy.

        This is why discussing benefits and wages is protected labor activity. Talk, talk, talk. Even if you because you are leaving OP, you don’t want to take this on, tell the one childless employee you know will take it on.

      4. mreasy*

        They perhaps just don’t know this is being done because a company policy explicitly permits it.

      6. Lisa Simpson*

        You don’t have to be “childfree” to be getting the raw deal in this. You just have to not currently have children.

        Someone who is planning to have children at some date in the future is still getting screwed in the present. Someone whose children are grown is still getting screwed in the present. And given how often people change jobs, there is no guarantee either group of people was/will be able to benefit from this policy. Maybe they’ll leave the company before they have a kid. Maybe they joined the company after their kid was out of college.

        1. Ethan*

          I don’t know of this makes it worse or not. But I feel like these benefits may well be permanent, at least in part. I feel like if people got them and just lost them when their kids turned 18 there’s no way it would still be secret.

        2. Coffee*

          How many kids would have been born earlier if parents had known that company was this generous?

      7. NurseThis*

        THIS. We notice. We’re just told not to complain or are told it makes us look petty. But we see it and often there is little we can do. All those Friday afternoons when we’re covering? Every day after 2 PM when the only people in the office are those without kids?

        I’ve also seen this unspooled to grandparents too. I’ve been told it was my role to be a team player, AKA doormat.

        1. CommanderBanana*

          I’m honestly glad to now be on a team where, for the first time, no one has kids (mostly because the rest of the team are pretty fresh out of college, and I and the director don’t have children). It’ll be nice to have a meeting where my boss isn’t constantly answering her phone / taking calls/texts from her teenagers.

      8. Ellie*

        Yeah… if I noticed that parents were always leaving at 2:30 to pick up their kids, I’d assume they were a part time worker. Unless they said otherwise, I’d assume they were being paid less for the extra leave. This is an insane level of benefits… I wonder how they manage to stay in business.

        OP, please don’t judge those parents who kept quiet about this too harshly. That one alone would be a real moral quandary for me. Staying quiet is unfair to every non-parent at the company, but speaking up means the benefit will almost certainly be taken away. That’s 3 extra hours you could be spending with your kids, helping with their homework, making memories… I can understand the temptation.

        1. No Longer Looking*

          I can certainly understand the temptation, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever not judge those who kept quiet even more harshly. That is the way Evil lies, and every one of them should feel nothing but a deep and abiding shame for abusing their fellows in this way.

    3. Spacewoman Spiff*

      Maybe people noticed but didn’t realize it was a company-wide policy rather than a few people who just took off early when they had the chance? I’ve worked for a couple orgs that are very decentralized, and it’s not hard to imagine that I would be annoyed at my one or two colleagues who signed off early, with no idea that this was happening across every team in the org and was explicitly allowed in a secret parents-only handbook.

      1. PotatoRock*

        Or I might assume it was a disability/medical accommodation my coworker had worked out & really wasn’t my business

          1. MyNameIsAPain*

            Agreed. As one of the people who gets in at 6am every day so that I can leave at 2:30pm I have never had anyone say anything to me about leaving at 2:30. But it’s pretty well knows who the “early shift” people are in my department. Everyone knows not to schedule meetings after 2:00 with the people who come in at 6 or 6:30am. Just like us early morning people would never schedule a 6:30am meeting with someone who comes in at 8am.

    4. blueberry muffin*

      The common advice given here and elsewhere is if it doesn’t affect you directly you shouldn’t say anything.

      If a (parent) co-worker is not present and/or not providing the specific reason, for their absence how would anyone else know? That’s what the company has successfully banked on.

      I know (too?) many people who do not like to share what salary and perks they get at work with co-workers because of fear of resentment, jealously or otherwise damaging work relationships. That is discuss on this website too.

      This is really not that uncommon.

      1. Be Gneiss*

        Giving parents more 401(k) matching than non-parents is common? Really? Just on that point alone it’s worth raising the issue.

        1. Danielle*

          That’s not what’s being said in this comment. They’re saying that it’s common to not ask for more information about other people’s benefits.

        2. Momma Bear*

          The matching and PTO differences are especially awful, IMO. I’m a parent and I don’t deserve more retirement matching just for having a kid. If they can give out that much extra leave, bump everyone up. This is terrible, and I hope OP spreads the word, frankly.

          1. Joana*

            Honestly, one would think that someone without a spouse/family would need more retirement savings because they don’t have the ‘safety net’ to fall back on of someone else having an income as well/kids who might be willing to let them move in if they need to when they retire. I have no spouse or kids and never will, and I’d be pretty mad to find out I’m getting less towards my retirement because of it.

            1. SleepyWolverine*

              100%. I’m soon to be 45, perpetually single, with low-income parents who have major health issues and little in the way of retirement savings. I’m also an only child and wildly underpaid in a depressed local job market.

              I have no idea what the hell I’m going to do if they need serious care, or when they eventually pass and I’m essentially alone in this world.

      2. Ann O'Nemity*

        Yes to this.

        This site and many others advises us to ignore coworkers’ hours unless it is directly affecting us. While this advice makes sense in cases like intermittent FMLA where health information is confidential, it can also obscure a secret (SECRET!) family policy of letting parents work way less.

        (Emphasis on “secret,” because I can’t get over how outrageous it is. Do parents swear secrecy in exchange for benefits? Is there a secret code or handshake?! I guess all employees are equal, but parents are more equal than others.)

          1. Name (Required)*

            This! Most of the childfree free people I work with are younger and have less-demanding roles; I (40F) am the only senior staff without kids, so I am often filling in for folks with sick children, no childcare or taking family vacations. I don’t mind because I want those kiddos to have present parents and those parents to have someone they can rely on at work, but I’m also helping to take care of elderly family members without a shred of the at-work support/policies extended to caretakers with younger dependents unless I’m visibly at my breaking point.

            1. Something looks Suspect*

              My “kids” are 19 & 24 and are fully independent humans (live on their own, have their own jobs / cars etc.)

              So am I entitled to all these benefits even though they don’t impact me at work ?

              Something smells fishy about this I would forward to your local EEOC

              1. Alex*

                Yeah, I’m wondering if people “age out” of these parent benefits when their kids are no longer minors. My guess, based on absolutely nothing, is that if you start work here while you have minor kids, you get these benefits for your entire tenure, even if your kids become adults, but if you start work while already having adult children, you don’t get the benefit.

                1. Humble Schoolmarm*

                  An age out system would lead to retirement matching being cut by 50% for people reaching retirement. I can’t imagine that secret would stay secret long.

                2. Summer*

                  I can guarantee that the parents never age out of these benefits – they would raise hell about having to give up their sweet perks and the secret would have spilled long before now. So I would bet once they are initiated into the secret society at work they remain there for their entire tenure. Hell it probably helps to retain them as employees because that is a seriously nice package of benefits.

      3. Toast King*

        Yeah, I definitely have co-workers who appear to have more than the standard level of flexibility afforded to them and I’ve never really asked why because a) it doesn’t really impact me, so isn’t my business, and b) I’ve seen it as a good sign that my company will be accommodating if I ever need it. But if I suddenly found out that only some people were eligible and I wouldn’t be given the same flexibility if I needed it, because I don’t have children, I’d probably feel very differently about it.

        1. Putting the Dys in Dysfunction*

          Joke/not joke, right?

          I wonder whether the extras afforded to parents at this company is more than just being sympathetic to their needs (and — at best — clueless to the downstream effects on everyone else), but whether it’s motivated by a belief that parents are more deserving because they’re bringing children into the world.

          And that in turn makes me curious about what other JD Vance-like currents may be swirling among management over there.

          2. Orv*

            I’d lay at least 80% odds that there’s a Quiverfull family somewhere high in the hierarchy. They believe it’s their job to outbreed the godless atheists.

            1. Retired editor*

              There are lots of possible backgrounds for people who might advocate for preferential policies for families other than Quiverfull adherents. There are fundamentalist/evangelical Roman Catholics, Latter-Day Saints, fundamentalist/evangelical Protestants, and probably some non-Christian groups. If the company is in a mostly white region, perhaps the secret support for child-bearing is based on political reasons.

              And, I don’t know, but this might be based on another culture’s attitudes if the company is immigrant-owned. Or not. I think within my lifetime (I was born in the 1950s) there have been employers who paid married men more than single men, women, and others because the married men were “supporting a family” — so the best raises did not necessarily go to the best performers. IBM was very patriarchal in the 1960s and probably before and after those years, although I don’t know if their benefits were different for parents.

              Unless the OP weighs in, guessing at the motives behind the policy is just speculation.

          4. zuzu*

            It’s one of those mordant laughter situations.

            We have a candidate for VP who is on the record advocating that parents should get extra votes and denigrating “childless cat ladies” as somehow pulling all the strings in the government because we’re not immediately put out on ice floes once we turn 30. The perception that single and childless people don’t contribute to “the future” when we’re taxed at higher rates and don’t use the services we pay for is not just rampant, it’s being used as a justification to outright advocate for us to not have any say at all in the way our tax dollars are spent or how our governments are run because we “don’t have any skin in the game.”

            I guess I’m not surprised that in this kind of environment, a corporation offers highly sketchy “family package” benefits that add up to five figures.

          5. Summer*

            Ding Ding Ding! I had the exact same thought! This reeks to me of a company doing everything they can to promote “traditional” (blech) families and doing everything in their power to propagate their belief that it is the superior and/or only way to have a family. I wonder if same sex families are also afforded these benefits and I would love to know which state this company is headquartered in. I could hazard some guesses.

        2. Sloanicota*

          Woof between this letter and the cat lady stuff – which did vocalize some unkind and pervasive stereotypes of single/childfree people (that they’re selfish, aren’t really part of society, are miserable etc etc) – I think I’m about done for the year.

          1. I Have RBF*

            I’m a senior childfree cat enby, and this would piss me off. My spouse is dying of cancer, and if my company was more accommodating of parents than someone like me doing caregiving, I’d be furious. (As it is, my company and boss have been wonderfully supportive.)

          2. MigraineMonth*

            It seems particularly weird to me, since I volunteer/give blood/give to charity a lot more than my peers that have young children. They have young children in a country with very few supports; they don’t have the time or money for anything else!

            1. CommanderBanana*

              ^^ DING DING DING

              I volunteer at two shelters in my neighborhood, a food bank, and do a lot of one-off volunteer things, plus donate a lot of money. Guess who my fellow volunteers are? Not people with children! They’re singles like me or retired people.

      5. Ready for the weekend*

        I respectfully disagree. These are company policies and these should be open to all employees. I’m a single person who has worked as salaried and among others who got more than me but were permitted arrangements that I wasn’t even though I did the same, if not more of, the workload.

    5. bamcheeks*

      yes, this and the 25-30 people calling out from the volunteer task day-of and all of them are parents, and people being remote for the entire summer when everyone else is in the office 4 days a week– how does this not get noticed?!

      1. Dawn*

        It gets noticed, rational people just don’t assume that it’s a Secret Company Policy because that’s so rarely a thing it doesn’t even come to mind.

        You just assume your managers are unfairly biased in favour of the employees who have kids and move on with your life.

        1. JB (not in Houston)*

          Yes, exactly. Especially as the OP said the company prides itself on being flexible to parents. The non-parents probably just assumed that’s what they were seeing and, like OP, didn’t realize the extent of it

        2. Jillian*

          Ok, but surely not all managers have kids and they KNOW about this policy. I would be pissed if my direct reports had more benefits and not just some extra flexibility.

          1. Prudence Snooter*

            Yeah this is a really good point. Anyone with direct reports would have to be aware of at least the flexibility parts of the policy, right? And wouldn’t ALL HR people need to be fully aware of this policy too?

            1. Boof*

              I just don’t see on what grounds because if this is in the USA, parents / non parents aren’t specifically protected classes. They’d have to prove it disproportionately impacted some protected class I think?
              i’m not saying it’s a good policy, mind; but what is strictly illegal and what is just not fully fair/right are different beasts.

                1. Runner up*

                  This isn’t my area, but giving people different 401(k) matching amounts is also not likely to be legal — there can be some differences in plans’ matching tiers, but one based on family status seems unlikely to be legally compliant…

          3. Krystle*

            Just thinking about these benefits, most of them could be managed through payroll without a local manager even knowing, especially if it didn’t come out of their specific budget.

            The tricky bit would be attendance management, but if the policy for leaving early that you write that on your timesheet and don’t claim the hours, but payroll will pay it anyway, and managers can only manage attendance on ‘claimed hours’ or something similar, then you’d have your work around.

                1. 1LFTW*

                  Maybe not, if the only people who get promoted to management roles are those that have kids. Or if the bureaucracy is big enough, maybe all they know is that HR approved it, and that’s all they need to know?

          4. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

            How would it even be enforced if there are non-parent managers? “Bob, I see you’ve been working from home every day and logging off at 2:30 and not logging back in later. Both are against written corporate policy. What’s going on?” Especially the WFH it is very obvious if someone is coming to the office or not. Plus their productivity is going to be below average. Does Bob simply say he has an arrangement with HR, or the CEO, or something? How hard would it be for a single manager with more than 4 direct reports, half of whom are parents on average and half not, to notice the pattern of these mysterious arrangements with HR?

            1. LynnP*

              It would be interesting to see what the turnover was for parents vs non-parents. Those benefits would be hard to match so I would guess that all long term employees had children. There’s probably also a secret promotion policy that favors parents and most likely male parents.

      2. I'm just here for the cats!!*

        I took the letter to mean that you sign up for some of the events, not that everyone has to do all the events. So if there are 20 events in a year and you do 3 your not going to know who is and is not working the other events.

        Also, we don’t know that EVERY parent is taking advantage of the remote policy. And those that are i can see their coworkers figuring they have set up some sort of accommodation or something.

        1. Venus*

          Some parents don’t like to work from home. We’re expected to be at our desks at least a day per week, yet my coworker is here every day because he has young kids and needs to escape them :) (he’s a great parent but values his time away from home)

          1. daffodil*

            it is very hard for me to be my work self and my parent self at the same time, or swap between them quickly. I learned this the hard way during covid.

            1. Elizabeth West*

              I just had a vision of a Zoom call and a coworker says “I have to jump off this call,” and you saying “Do you need to go potty?”

    6. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      eh, I could see not knowing. It really depends on the team and how many people you interact with. If you just do data entry and don’t work with others much you’re probably not noticing if others are in office or not. Or you figure they have some other accommodation and don’t ask.

      Same thing for the tasks, especially volunteering. There’d be no way to know that they used comp time instead of vacation. And if there are several events you wouldn’t know who is working what unless you are some how tracking it.

      1. MK*

        Also, while reading this as a laundry list sounds very obvious, it’s not a given that parents use these benefits constantly. E.g. leaving for the day at 2.30pm only applies when the school calls with some emergency; unless the parent is faking calls or has a particularly sickly/accident prone/troubled child, it willingly happen occasionally. And their coworkers can’t know if they worked from home the rest of the day or used pto.

        1. hugseverycat*

          I read that part as applying to picking your kids up from school, period. Not just in emergencies. So if your kid’s school lets out at 3, you can leave the office at 2:30 to give the kids a ride home and just be done for the day. Every single day that school happens.

          1. MK*

            The post says ” if you need to leave to pick kids from school”, which suggests an emergency to me. However child friendly the company is, I doubt they are essentially paying parents full-time salaries for working only till 2.30pm every single day.

            1. DisgruntledPelican*

              The post specifically says 2:30 which is normal pickup time for the end of the school day. They’re not talking emergencies.

            2. hugseverycat*

              Maybe I’m just reading into the wording too closely, but if she meant that if you have a kid emergency, you can take the rest of the day off, then doesn’t that sound kind of normal? Like obviously if your kid is sick or injured or troubled you should get them and take care of them the rest of the day.

              But that’s not what LW said, they said: “If you need to leave to pick up kids from school, you don’t have to work once you get home; as you might imagine, when given written permission to pass tasks off to others and log off at 2:30 pm, almost everyone does.”

              This sounds to me like leaving at 2:30 and giving all your tasks to someone else is a habitual thing that people are happy to do. And yeah, the choice of 2:30 strongly suggests to me that this is just picking up kids once school lets out since most schools I know of let out around 3 PM.

              I feel like if LW meant that parents don’t need to use PTO to take time off when there is an emergency with their kids, then they would have said it that way.

        2. Learn ALL the things*

          Right. Not every parent is going to use every benefit at every possible opportunity. So you might have two or three parents that you work with closely, but they take their benefit days at slightly different times and you just assume that they each have separate parenting emergencies that your manager is approving as they come up. Not a lot of people would take that as evidence that there’s a secret policy that allows parents tens of thousands of dollars in additional compensation and discounts.

        3. fhqwhgads*

          School lets out at 2:30 where I live. It does not at all read like an emergency to me. If they meant emergency it wouldn’t be a single specific time. It’d be whenever before 5p.

    7. Lacey*

      They know. It’s just that they think that’s the ONLY way they’re being treated poorly.

      And if they’re wanting to be supportive of parents in the workforce they might feel like this is doing their bit. I know I felt that way about moms I worked with especially. It WAS annoying, but I also felt like, it’s really hard to keep your career going once you have kids and I didn’t want to make it worse.

      That should really be on the employer, but it can be hard to parse that.

    8. Shenandoah*

      Yeah, I am also gobsmacked. I worked at my company before I had my child, and if I started getting all of these benefits after I got back from mat leave, I would have been running my mouth. (I’m particularly thinking of a work friend who is the sole caretaker for her ill mother and has been dealing with PTO limitations – it would have been “hey, you should ask for some of this flexibility too since they offer it to parents!”)

      1. Ama*

        That’s the thing that galls me — I could see people who were hired when they were already parents not fully realizing how much more they are getting than the non-parents, but surely at least some point in this company’s history someone had their first child while they were employed there, and none of those people said anything? (Although I suppose maybe that’s how the OP’s coworker found out.)

        I also really want to know how they’ve bought non-parent managers’ silence on this — or does this company also never hire/promote non-parents as managers?

        1. Laser99*

          “If it gets out, it will cause [insert consequence]. Then we might have to take it away.”

          1. Orv*

            Just knowing you get something special that other people don’t get to have is enough to keep some people quiet. If everyone has it, it’s not special anymore.

        2. Your Former Password Resetter*

          It sounds like they put pressure on the parents to keep silent.
          Especially knowing that the whole management chain is in on this and actively trying to keep it secret, I can imagine a lot of parents don’t want to paint a target on their back by being the first to go public with this.
          Especially since this obviously would cause a huge row when it inevitably gets out.

          Not a great justification, but I’d hesitate to broadcast this too.

        3. SpaceySteph*

          The managers may not know the full extent. Most of this is administered by HR. Its just some day-to-day flexibility the frontline managers need to know about so it might not look super egregious to them.

    9. Clisby*

      People probably notice this, but would not necessarily know about the higher retirement matching or even the extra PTO days. I never tracked my colleagues’ PTO days back when I was still working, so I don’t think I’d have noticed.

      Adding … this whole setup sounds bananas to me. It’s also nothing I’ve ever experienced (and at least during my 27 years at the job I retired from, I was both childless and childed, with no change in benefits.)

    10. lost academic*

      You usually do notice over time, but you assume all sorts of standard reasons – FMLA, intermittent FMLA, PTO, unpaid time off, additional remote flexibility.

    11. Beth*

      There can be a lot of plausible deniability around these things. Do we notice when a coworker disappears at 2:30, or is remote way more often than we’re officially allowed to be? Of course. But monitoring your coworkers’ work schedules and questioning them about it is usually pretty strongly discouraged!

      In OP’s shoes, if I noticed a coworker doing one of these things, I would probably have assumed that the coworker in question had a medical accommodation in place, or had negotiated a different wfh policy than me (and maybe given up other benefits to get it), or was starting much earlier than me or working from home in the evening to balance their childcare pickup time, or even was doing it unsanctioned and would probably get reprimanded eventually. I would absolutely NOT have jumped to an assumption that all parents are automatically given a significantly increased benefits package as soon as they have a child. That’s wild, and the company deserves the shitstorm that’s going to burst when it becomes widespread knowledge.

      1. Alyn*

        And it’s more complicated if you have a workplace with flexible schedules to start. One of my coworkers leaves every day around 3pm … but she comes in at 6am. Another on my team is fully remote, but has a formal plan approved by HR.

        Further complicating things in my workplace is that different departments can have different policies around how many days in the office are required for hybrid workers, etc. (and managers have some flexibility they can grant team members as well, such as working in the office in the morning and working from home in the afternoon).

        So you might know someone has a different schedule, but not *why*.

    12. Slaw*

      This is the part I’m not understanding, either. Obviously, there are huge bits of this that would be easy to conceal. But certain employees just conveniently working from home the entire summer, or shoving off early every afternoon and directly giving that work to others – I cannot conceive of how everyone else wouldn’t already know something is up.

      And I’ve seen a comment below saying everybody obviously knows and is getting the work shoved onto them – but LW is completely caught unawares by any of this, from the sounds of it.

      Taken at the way this is written – everybody *doesn’t* know. And I’m really lost as to how that’s possible. Even if it was a “huge organization”, because it’s not everyone from one department, this would be scattershot.

      1. a bright young reporter with a point of view*

        I would guess it’s the difference between “Ugh, John gets away with everything but management won’t do anything so I won’t pursue it” and “Management has explicitly told all parents they can work at home all summer” that’s tripping everyone up. It does seem wild, but I can see how it might happen. Obviously it was bound to blow up sooner or later.

      2. Kay*

        Because the conversations are probably more:

        Employee: Can I work remotely for the summer?
        Boss: I’m afraid I can’t authorize that.
        Employee: But I see other employees working remotely or with flex time, can we work something out?
        Boss: I can’t comment on other employee’s schedules, but I’m afraid the answer right now is no.

        and NOT:

        Employee: Edwina “works” remotely and Gianni leaves at 2 EVERY day! I demand to know why THEY can and I CAN’T!!
        Boss: Because we have a SECRET company policy that only rewards BREEDERS!!!!

    13. Looper*

      I think lots of people have noticed, have said things to they’re management, and were subsequently lied to/gaslit to keep them quiet. That a company would secretly provide all of these benefits to only parents despite how they would help all their employees says to me this is a dishonest company run by dishonest people. Maybe their hearts were in the right place (they were not, but let’s pretend) but the denial and secrecy required to get there should have been a big red flag to everyone involved.

    14. LL*

      I was wondering this too. I’m pretty sure I would have noticed that some people are remote the entire summer and would have asked for that benefit too.

    1. Felix*

      This may sound juvenile, but if you are concerned about retaliation, email everyone from a new, anonymous email account, and from an IP address that is not easily connected to you (ie, your home or office).

      1. CheesePlease*

        I would want to go full Regina George in Mean Girls

        Type it up. Print it out. Leave a copy on every desk, bathroom stall, window.

        Make them BRIGHT PINK

        I say this as a parent. We’re not the only ones with lives outside of work. WTF

        1. Puggles*

          But if they have cameras, and they probably do, it will show who left the copies on all the desks.

          1. CheesePlease*

            Dammit you’re right. Although – an amazing way to quit!! A story for the burning bridges AAM roundup!! (Honestly the person who told OP could have done this but I understand why they didn’t)

        2. Knitting As Foci*

          Depending on the cost and where the office was located, I would be tempted to get a billboard.

        3. Elly*

          I was hoping someone would reference Regina George. That’s what I immediately thought of for how to distribute the info.

    3. Ms. Eleanous*

      This is horrible plus.
      It is encouraging me to write my state and federal representatives a “there oughta be a law” letter.

      Because there ought to be a law.

      And what of someone who is infertile? Discrimination based on a medical condition, don’t we think.

      If someone has the link to Allison’s useful description of labor law protecting employees who band together to speak to management even if they are not in a formal union, please post.

      I also wonder if company has violated the law giving employees the right to discuss their salaries.
      SECRET stuff is often illegal.

      Nominate this company for worst boss.

  3. TracyXP*

    Wow.

    That’s absolutely insane. And I say that as a parent with 3 kids 10 and under. I can understand why none of the parents getting the benefits want to rock the boat and lose out an the amazing benefits, but this is too much.

    Most I’ve ever gotten is an extra $100 in my paycheck for the birth of a child. But it was known by the entire company that it would happen for any new parent.

    1. RIP Pillowfort*

      I’m a parent and my mind is blown. I couldn’t imagine not giving benefits to all employees. ESPECIALLY THE MATCHING holy crap.

      I’d have a problem with this.

      1. Hannah Lee*

        The 401(k) plan matching one is AAARRRGGGHHH!

        And it really makes me wonder what is going on with their retirement plan administration, because there is typically annual testing that looks at whether certain classes of employees are benefiting from the company sponsored plan in an unfair way. It’s a pretty safe bet that the management team who decided “hey, lets double matching for employees who are parents” is primarily made up of people who would benefit from that policy.

        Like, sure there are certain plan design things you can do to manipulate it a bit, but it seems like this would be a disparity that has nothing to do with job class … it’s simply based on family demographics.

        It might be worth it for LW or a group of employees to contact an employment law attorney, maybe one who specializes in ERISA law to get an opinion on what this company is doing. If I worked there, I would not only want this fixed ASAP, I would want this company to be hit for every possible violation of wage and hour law, ERISA law, etc etc and make them show their work, document who has benefited and who has not and how and have to make up for that.

        And I’d love to see Glass Door reviews that expose this two-tiered benefit program, so that childless people can opt out of even applying there. (have they looked at population, demographic trends lately? Do they really think that alienating 30-40% of the working population is a great idea?)

        And how does this work for people with older kids … do you suddenly get kicked back to the lousy benefit package when your youngest kid turns 18 or 26 or whatever? What if your children die … do they cut off your free gym membership, classes, discounts and bonus 401k matching? Or is it “once you’re in, you’re in for life!”

        1. Snow Globe*

          I had the same question about employees who have adult kids, how does that work? I guess once you are in on the secret, you get those benefits forever?

          1. Ashley*

            I think the parent with a kid that has aged out would be an interesting person to test the legality of this policy because presumably age discrimination could be argued. Someone over 40 with a kid in college that didn’t know about the benefits to me makes the ideal candidate to see how they respond.
            I also feel like this is a place where social media is useful if the company won’t change when it is brought up to recognize the difference. That said I am aware of American politics and comments that have been made by certain candidates on people’s choices about children. If you think people with dependents should have more votes, I could see this policy falling right in line.

        2. Learn ALL the things*

          I was coming to suggest an employment lawyer as well.

          I’m a compliance auditor and one of our recent audits found something similar to what OP describes, not anywhere near as extensive as this, but a situation where there was a secret set of benefits provided to one set of employees but not others. And while the excluded employees weren’t a legally protected group, there was still a state statute related to the industry that required all benefits to be included in publicly available policy documents and applied equally to all employees. The organization ended up in major trouble.

          I can’t say if there are any regulations in OP’s industry that would be applicable, but a lawyer could, so they should check with one of they can.

        3. Paint N Drip*

          I am party to the setting up of 401ks and similar accounts and I genuinely don’t know how they’re pulling this off without active deception. The plan would have to be setup at the higher match/contribution rate and then EVERYONE in HR/Benefits would need to bite their tongue and CONSISTENTLY lie when they discuss the rates non-parent employees AND process match forms/requests; presumably widely-distributed company documents reference the wrong/low match amount which would oppose their 401k setup. Methinks not only is the company suspect for this gross secret set of benefits, the company may also be at very real risk for the actual deception, favoritism, and possible fraud – glad OP is leaving!!

          1. Runner up*

            Or they’re ignoring the 401k plan documents, which is a different problem. OP, please talk to an ERISA attorney, and please ask for/ find a copy of the plan document – not just the summary (although that might be interesting too).

          2. Beth*

            This is the part that’s making me the most ??? about this letter. Parents getting more leeway on scheduling, WFH, and volunteer time? I can see how that could happen, and how it could fly under the radar. It’d create a vibe of “employees without kids always end up picking up the slack for parents,” but it’s easy to see how that wouldn’t rise to the level of exposing an official benefits-for-parents policy.

            But the 401k setup, with all the complications you raise? The airtight conspiracy, with not a single manager or extra-benefits-receiving employee letting the secret slip until now? The separate benefits documents for parents vs non-parents, with no HR officer ever confusing the two? That’s bizarre. There’s a part of me that wonders if OP’s coworker is lying to them for some reason, because it’s really hard to imagine how this company could have pulled this off.

          3. Shirley You're Joking*

            Thank you for writing this! I read 401(k) and 403(b) docs as part of my job and I can’t imagine the gymnastics they would need to go through to do this compliantly. Maybe a separate class of employee based on job title but that would be completely fake.

            The Department of Labor is the agency that oversees retirement plans. I think they’d love to hear about this. In fact, you can get an opinion free about how wrong this is. Look up “Ask EBSA” and Department of Labor.

            Can’t wait for this place to be audited. I hope this company is in a jurisdiction where discrimination based on family status is illegal. This is truly awful.

            And all those parents who were ok getting secret benefits that others weren’t getting and then leaving other people to do all the extra work? What the actual…?

        4. Sloanicota*

          My first thought was “OP post a glassdoor review.” Understanding there’s some hinky stuff at GD, hopefully you can use a throwaway account. Within your review it’s not hard to obscure who you are.

      2. ampersand*

        Same. I thought last Friday’s question in the open thread about giving parents more flexibility was bad (we should all have flexibility, not just parents)–this is beyond the pale.

        I’m a parent, and I would have to speak up and probably leave this company…as awesome as these benefits are, I couldn’t deal with the disparity. They need to be available to everyone or no one.

      1. KateM*

        I get one extra day off, too, but it’s government-mandated.

        Honestly, being allowed to WFH wheneven school is out and a couple extra sick days make sense to me. Possibly also coming to kid events with kids, if they are events of the sorts where the company really wants to have as many warm bodies to show off their attendance (I am just thinking back to when my company offered an activity day for kids during a regular workday, not allowed for non-employee to come in with kids instead of you, and you still had to work full 8h day – that did not make much sense for me).

        1. Sloanicota*

          I did wonder, because of that perk, if they were some kind of kid-adjascent business where having lots of employee’s kids using their products / attending their events was good for them in someway, and that’s why they incentivized it. I assume OP would have said so if that were the case though. My current theory is the one above: the leadership all have kids and so they gave themselves the perks they wanted, without having to give them to everyone else, on this basis.

        2. Lady Danbury*

          While I understand giving extra sick days, I don’t agree based solely on parenthood. Imo, it would be much more fair/reasonable to give everyone a certain number of sick days that they can use as a caregiver for others. Non-parents may have sick relatives, spouses, etc. I’m thinking of a cousin who had to travel out of the country with her husband 3 times last year for his medical treatments. He couldn’t travel alone, due to the nature of the treatment, which wasn’t available in our country. Insurance covered her travel, but she would have had to use a significant number of sick days if she didn’t have a flexible employer.

          1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

            Or even an extra n days sick leave per (named) dependant – could include spouse, partner, parent etc as well as minor children. Like, I get that if sick leave covers “caring for someone sick” (which it doesn’t in my country) then it does make sense that someone with more people to care for could well need more sick leave.

            In my country there is additional statutory leave for parents/carers of minor children and in some cases disabled adults, but although you’re entitled to the time off, your employer is not obliged to pay you.

            1. KateM*

              Yes, that would make most sense!

              Having school-aged children is different from other caregiver duties in the sense that you aren’t usually required to drive other cared-for people to and fro some place each day for years – you need to have an in-home solution for them anyway, while with school-aged children, the default is them not to need any permanent solution for mornings at the very least, so if that unexpectedly falls through (holidays are not really unexpected, though), parents may be in a problem.

    4. oops I rapped my pants*

      Same reaction here. If I were the OP, I’d have been shitting a brick during and after that conversation.

      Bless that outgoing colleague for their candidness!!!

    5. Ann O'Nemity*

      I’ve heard employees rage about family healthcare benefits, because the company pays more in premiums for the family plan than an individual plan. That seems like no big deal after hearing this!

    6. CowWhisperer*

      That’s absolutely nuts.

      Doubly ironic for me because I would have needed the extra income and perks far more when I was a single adult with no dependents (but in early career so broke) than as a married woman with one child.

      That’s seriously messed up.

      1. LL*

        That’s the thing! Single employees, regardless of parental status, need extra money and especially extra retirement benefits MORE than people who are partnered with two incomes!

        1. Thankfully no longer a manager*

          Right?! It’s so expensive to live on one income. I realize that’s a (sometimes hard) choice some families have to make. But it’s not a choice for singles, it just is.

    7. Cat Lady*

      Hard agree. I’m not a parent but I’d like to be one day, and I’d feel deeply uncomfortable if I was given a bunch of secret bonus benefits that my childfree colleagues didn’t know existed.

  4. Lab Boss*

    I have so many questions! How did this even happen? “We offer some extra flexibility to parents but nobody else” is pretty obviously a good impulse that isn’t being implemented perfectly. But how do you even get here? A series of leadership trying to buy more popularity than their predecessors by increasing the secret benefits? Someone with a ton of clout who’s a parent and wants to give themselves benefits hidden as “helping working parents?” A group of high-performing parents forming some kind of secret mini-union to collectively demand extra special treatment?

    1. bamcheeks*

      Yes, if it’s so secret that you can’t use it to attract employees, I’m confused how this works!

      And what about managers who are presumably administering all these extra PTO days and working-from-home days, but don’t have children? How do they feel about it?

      1. ursula*

        Would we be surprised if all the managers in this workplace have kids, or even that the only people who *happen* to get promoted to management positions *happen* to be parents?

      3. Spitfire Teapot*

        That’s what sticks out to me. If you have such amazing benefits, wouldn’t you want to use them to attract talent? As a parent, if I was a new hire and they told me of this super secret top-level benefits package and told me not to tell anyone, a whole parade of red flags would go up for me.

    2. Jake*

      It was probably like most things, started with a small innocuous benefit (like child membership to the gym being included in the discount), then added another small benefit (like, sure once in a while you can pick your kid up and just stay home, just don’t make a habit of it), then slowly started being referred to as a package, so then it had to be formalized and turned into a process.

      Once something like this is formalized, it quickly can spiral into what we see here. It isn’t hard to see the path from a couple of managers giving some flexibility to some high performing parents to it being a formal policy that screws over everybody without kids.

        1. 1LFTW*

          That’s where I’m really tripping, honestly. The rest of it is already way over the line, but if I squint I can see where it’s a super inflated “let’s support parents and families” mindset.

          But double matching for a 401k? Because parents deserve a more secure retirement than non-parents? That’s bananapants.

          1. My Useless Two Cents*

            The 401K thing is the one everybody is bringing up but I thought it most logical. Not right, but logical. My guess is the thinking goes…
            “Raising kids is expensive but we can’t pay them more just because they have kids. Since they have more expenses, they probably can’t/aren’t contributing as much to their retirement. I know! Let’s increase the employee match for parents!”

            (if it matters, single, don’t plan on ever having kids. I’d much rather the company give a little more to co-workers 401K than have to cover for the excessive extra time off parents seem to get at this company)

          2. Good Lord Ratty*

            If anything, the opposite is true – as a parent you can’t assume your kids will be there to care for you in your old age, but if you don’t have kids you can be pretty sure there won’t be anyone to care for you in your old age so arguably childless people could be said to need higher retirement allowances than those with offspring.

            Of course, I’m not exactly advocating for such a system. But the inverse is nuts.

      2. Hydrates all the flasks*

        That’s what I’m wondering, Jake, if it was like, one small thing that spiraled out of control over time, bit by bit.

        But whole aspect of the retirement contributions is where I really start to go, “wait what” because like that brings in a whole other element to this aka the federal government. And they don’t like it when you mess with their money. So how is the company getting away with unilaterally being like “all parents get X amount in contributions to their 401(k) but non-parents get X-a kajillion dollars” or whatever??

    3. KHB*

      I’m morbidly curious how this company treats empty-nesters. Do parents continue to accrue all these benefits forever, or do they go away when the children turn 18?

      1. irianamistifi*

        This is what I was wondering! Like, your kid goes to college, do you still get to have all those benefits? I think yes, they must, because who would be ok with their retirement matching halving all of a sudden? If you were getting all these benefits and suddenly you weren’t, wouldn’t you be salty about it and tell other non-parents?

          1. irianamistifi*

            I mean, surely there are parents who joined the company when their kids were already teens. Then you would get those benefits for only a few years. It would be awfully annoying to have that level of freedom taken away from you after only a year or two.

          1. Lightbourne Elite*

            That is so insane it rises to implausible or even impossible. The vast majority of workplaces that aren’t universities themselves would never do this.

            1. Pete*

              My father worked for a major US corporation in the 1980s that gave out a significant number of scholarships per year (500) to children of employees. It amounted to 1/3 of state school tuition. It was publicized in the employee newsletter.

              1. Black Horse*

                To be fair though, tuition in the 80s was astonishingly low. I started at a state university in 1988 and 1/3 of my tuition would have been like $800.

              2. Lightbourne Elite*

                Yes that is the same as a modern employer covering up to six digits for education now.

      2. That Crazy Cat Lady*

        I’m guessing, since OP said that parents can still work remotely during summers and such even if their kid is not school age yet, that empty-nesters still enjoy all the benefits because they are still parents. A “lifetime membership” sort of deal.

        1. KHB*

          I took that line to mean that parents whose kids are not school-age yet can work remotely as much as they want to, all the time (where as those with school-age kids are limited to just the summer and school holidays).

        2. Guacamole Bob*

          I read it as saying that OP understands that WFH with school-age kids can be possible, where you need an adult around but the kids are largely able to occupy themselves independently, but that this benefit allows people to WFH even if their kids are young enough to need hands-on care, without other child care lined up (which pretty much guarantees they aren’t working effectively).

      4. Presea*

        And what about parents with adult children still living at home/still financially dependent on the parents?

    4. Crencestre*

      How do you even get here? Well, how about a company run by people who believe that “childless cat ladies” are vastly inferior to people who reproduce?

      1. Radioactive cyborg llama*

        I was wondering if the people making these policies have some religious pro-natalist leanings.

        1. Cat Tree*

          I feel like those people wouldn’t want mothers to work in the first place, and wouldn’t give fathers more benefits because they expect the mothers to do the bulk of the childcare.

        2. Box of Kittens*

          This is what I was wondering as my eyes got wider and wider with each bullet point. There’s so many insane discrepancies here there’s no way someone isn’t using this as their own little birther movement. I wonder what the company demographics are like.

          1. Ganymede II*

            But if the goal is to be natalist, wouldn’t they disclose this to people who don’t have children yet as a way to encourage them, like “hey, you can do this, things will work out great for you”? If someone who does want children doesn’t know about these benefits, they might wait until they have more money saved to start trying.

            This is really bonkers.

        3. Learn ALL the things*

          It’s more likely that the people who started the policies are parents themselves and they wanted all of these things, and eventually ended up offering them to other parents.

      2. Hroethvitnir*

        I think that’s less likely if only because those people want women doing 99% of childrearing and *not* working, so they’re not known for being accommodating to parents (a man? A full parent? *scoffs* /s)

    6. GrooveBat*

      How is offering “extra flexibility to parents but nobody else” an “obviously good impulse”?

      Unless you believe that parents are inherently superior to those with non-traditional family obligations.

      Offering extra flexibility to *all* employees, regardless of family status, is a good impulse. Limiting that to parents is not.

      1. Lab Boss*

        “Parents have additional demands on their time and we should accomodate that” is a good impulse. Offering benefits to parents and not others is a failure in implementing that impulse. Please don’t put words in my mouth.

        1. Hannah Lee*

          As someone who has over the years provided long term care, logistic support (shopping, housekeeping, transport, managing medical and legal stuff) and financial assistance to an elderly parent and a disabled adult relative, the “only *certain* people with *certain* kinds of additional family demands on their time” benefiting from that “good impulse” really undercuts the “good impulse” label.

          Probably the most blatant was the time the director of my department was communicating how raises were being allocated across the department so I could communicate it to my direct reports, and was told that I (a single woman who had received “exceeds expectations” on my annual review) was getting a lower (in % AND dollar amount) raise than man who worked for me who received “needs improvement” because “he has kids and his wife doesn’t work” and needed it more. And when I pushed back on that ‘logic’ he (a married man with 2 kids and a stay at home wife) was like, oh, yeah, I kind of see your point … maybe we can level things out for you next year.

          Meanwhile all kinds of other benefits keyed off of current salary, such as bonus and stock option calculations, employer 401k elective contributions, ST and LT disability benefits, life insurance and oh, yeah, next year’s raises. (and Social Security earnings, which impact benefits in retirement) So if by chance they DID follow through with an adjustment the next year (narrator: they didn’t) I STILL would have been in the whole in multiple ways.

        2. GrooveBat*

          You’re saying the exact same thing two different ways. And I quoted you directly, so no one is putting words in your mouth.

          1. Boof*

            Pretty sure they mean the start of the impulse “here’s a pretty common challenge many of our employees face we’d like to help with” is the good part. Pretty sure the “and we will ONLY care about that specific need, and lavish benefits to the point that we’d better hide it from everyone else” gets to the imperfect/not good part.

            2. Lab Boss*

              Exactly, thank you. A few other commenters are focusing on the first half of what I said and ignoring the “But here’s why they’re doing it wrong” part.

        3. Good Lord Ratty*

          Parents of minor children are far from the only people who have additional demands on their time. They’re not even the only people who have additional demands on their time because of family caregiving obligations. People need to remember that.

          1. Good Lord Ratty*

            Non-parents who have elderly parents themselves who need daily help? People with adult children with serious disabilities requiring daily help? People with siblings with such needs? A seriously ill or disabled spouse?

            All of those people are non-minor children who are family, requiring and deserving help and presenting “additional demands” on the employee’s time.

            Or do these caregiving obligations matter less than people who minor children?

        4. Hroethvitnir*

          My sympathies for the inevitable bad faith takes here. I don’t think wanting to offer parents extra flexibility inherently means unwillingness to be flexible for other caregiving (even if this is common and shitty), and I get frustrated at other childfree people not recognising the difference between equality and equity here.

          Well-meaning people not having experience with non-parents needing extra help only thinking to offer it to parents is, in fact, potentially coming from a good place but with poor execution. Understanding something isn’t the same as agreeing with it.

    7. Slightly Less Evil Bunny (and a Childless Cat Lady)*

      ““We offer some extra flexibility to parents but nobody else” is pretty obviously a good impulse”

      No, it’s not a good impulse at all. Give flexibility to everyone or no one, but definitely don’t base it on their reproductive status.

      1. Lab Boss*

        A good impulse *that isn’t being implemented perfectly.* If you cut that last part off my sentence, you’re ignoring the meaning of what I said. I think wanting to help out parents is a perfectly noble impulse, but a functional company should realize they can’t offer benefits to only one class of people.

        1. Learn ALL the things*

          No one is putting words in your mouth. You worded your statement in a way that did not get your point across the way you intended it to.

          1. GrooveBat*

            Yeah, a clearer way to convey the intended meaning would have been, “Offering extra flexibility to parents is a good impulse. Offering it to parents but nobody else is a failure of implementation.”

        2. Tally miss*

          Helping people is a good impulse. Helping parents is biased and you should try to be better

    8. Antilles*

      Personally, I’ve got so many questions about the logistics of this. How the heck does this even work?
      1.) Are there really zero managers who don’t have kids? Because even a single manager who doesn’t have kids would quickly unravel this entire scheme when managing their team’s annual PTO allowance or comp time. Or, you know, casually wondering at 2:35 pm where the hell your subordinate is at.
      2.) How do normal employees not realize the remote work part of it? I can get a regular employee not realizing the financial stuff if it’s kept under wraps, but whether or not someone is in the office is pretty blatantly obvious. Especially when it applies to the entire summer. Nobody noticed that half the company isn’t in the building for three solid months?
      3.) How does the volunteering work? If it’s one of the child events where parents can just show up and not work, nobody notices or asks about the fact Jimmy isn’t doing jack squat?

      1. Kat*

        Are there really zero managers who don’t have kids?

        And on the flip side, every member of the benefits and payroll departments must be parents and know about the disparities and be working together to keep all of the financial logistics under wraps. The company must also ensure that they only hire parents into these departments to keep it going.

        1. Beezus*

          they could potentially have HR and Payroll outsourced and just send them new hire info and how to set the person’s profile up. :/

    10. History Nerd*

      I’m wondering how they even end up offering these benefits in the first place. Having children isn’t exactly something that comes up in interviews or something typically discussed during onboarding. Do they just flat-out ask the person if they have kids before benefits are discussed? How does the company know??

    11. The Unionizer Bunny*

      A group of high-performing parents forming some kind of secret mini-union to collectively demand extra special treatment?

      If any of them were in management, they’d be courting an 8(a)(2) charge – well, hmm. They can technically have a union that doesn’t fit the NLRA’s definition, they just wouldn’t be able to enjoy the NLRA’s protections. (Unions aren’t actually illegal outside of the NLRA, and even if the NLRB is declared unconstitutional the mass-murder of organizers won’t become legalized again.) If non-managerial employees wanted to form a different union, though, and the existence of a secret union discouraged them (or the managers involved rerouted their energy towards forming the secret union instead), there would be problems.

    12. Hroethvitnir*

      Yes! As a childfree person I actually think giving parents extra flexibility and even time off is fine – so long as they’re good with people having other equivalent needs like caregiving parents.

      This… is nuts.

  5. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    Wow!! I have no words. You know they are doing something wrong when they tell the parents not to tell others. This is just so odd.

    1. Hannah Lee*

      Exactly!

      And how do they handle it for a childless employee who at some point becomes a parent.
      Do they just keep them on the lower tier benefits package so they don’t realize they were being screwed for years?
      Or do they bring them into a secret special benefits room, swear them to secrecy and induct them in to the parent-class benefits tier?

      1. mreasy*

        I wonder if the parents are so scared of losing these benefits that they’ve never had anyone tell… especially if salaries aren’t great at the company or in the region, maybe they’re relying on parents’ loyalty to their family being greater than to colleages (which is absolutely reasonable).

  6. Jeanine*

    I don’t think it’s great to keep it secret BUT I don’t see the problem in offering other benefits to parents. They need things like extra time, and more work/life balance than someone who isn’t a parent, sorry. In my opinion all workplaces should provide free daycare, it would solve so many problems.

      1. hohumdrum*

        No, they didn’t say they agree with “THE other benefits” as in what this company is doing, they said they agree with “other benefits”, meaning that it makes sense to offer parents things like what they listed- more flexible schedule, free daycare.

        I agree 100%, and also I think all workplaces should think about how to support all individuals in their specific needs. You should get free daycare if you’re a parent, full stop. You should get flexible schedules if you’re a caretaker- be it for kids, parents, other members of your community. You should get ample sick time, and vacation time, for when you need it. Your workplace should have benefits that actually benefit *you*.

        I am childfree and committed to staying that way. I think parents deserve to be supported in the workforce, because kids are a lot. It baffles me in this fight the answer is always “they don’t deserve anything extra because they have kids!!” and never “they deserve extra for having kids, just as I deserve recognition and support for the things going on in my life that are a lot”. Want better for everyone, not less for others.

        1. Dawn*

          This is a weirdly hostile take that seems to assume that the OP said all sorts of things that they actually didn’t.

          1. hohumdrum*

            Wait, what is hostile about saying workplaces need to support us all more?

            The person I responded to asked if Jeanine was saying they agree with the retirement matching, so I offered clarification based on what I understood from Jeanine’s post, and then added my own seperate thoughts on how companies need to help us all out more, and when we get caught up fighting about who deserves it more they get away with shortchanging us. I genuinely do not understand how that reads as attacking the person I’m responding to?

            1. GrooveBat*

              Your interpretation went beyond what Jeanine had said, because the only thing Jeanine disagreed with was the secrecy.

              1. hohumdrum*

                But that’s not what the comment says? I’m confused.

                “I don’t think it’s great to keep it secret BUT I don’t see the problem in offering other benefits to parents”
                If it said “I don’t see the problem in offering THE other benefits to parents” then yes, Jeanine is agreeing with everything the company is offering.

                But saying just “offering other benefits” then specifically listing, “extra time, and more work/life balance…free daycare” reads to me like Jeanine is saying they specifically don’t have a problem with offering benefits like extra time, daycare, more work/life balance.

                Jeanine did *not* mention the retirement matching or other things, seemed like they were only referring to the specific things they mentioned.

                1. GrooveBat*

                  Without knowing specifically what “other benefits” Jeanine was referring to, you can’t make that leap.

                  And it doesn’t matter anyway. Extra time and more work/life balance for parents and no one else is discriminatory and unfair.

                2. hohumdrum*

                  I’m still confused why assuming that the specific benefits Jeanine lists in their comments are what they’re talking about is a leap? They say they think parents should get some benefits, then lists those benefits. I’m confused how that’s a jump to assume what they typed out is what they’re talking about. Like I am very genuinely asking this, I have never been this misunderstood in a comment on here before and it’s not clicking for me.

                  Agreed! Which is why the rest of my comment details specifically that everyone should get flexibility and understanding tailored to their needs, not just parents.

                3. Dawn*

                  The “leap” is that she said she indicated that her only problem with everything the OP listed is “the secrecy” and you appear to be taking her side in that. The missing “the” is not relevant here; when she says she agrees without caveats, we have to assume that she is saying she agrees without caveats.

                  Your take assumes something she didn’t say: that actually she only agrees with some of it. That’s nowhere in her statement, and she has not subsequently chosen to refute that assumption. You’re reading things into her statement that aren’t there.

                4. Dawn*

                  Oh, and as for what’s hostile about it, it’s the three paragraphs of “how dare you” and making a lot of assumptions about the responder’s position in response to a single sentence.

                5. hohumdrum*

                  “three paragraphs of “how dare you” and making a lot of assumptions about the responder’s position in response to a single sentence.”

                  what?? Nothing I said was “how dare you”?? The second and third paragraphs were focused entirely on my own beliefs about workplaces needing to offer more to everyone and how we should advocate for that, and did not mention or refer to the person I replied to at all?? I did not include any assumptions about the person I replied to, I have no idea what you mean by that, I did not mention anything about the poster at all.

                  Jeanine did not say “the *only* thing I have an issue with is the secrecy,” but I understand more now why you read it that way, I think that’s a valid interpretation. I think the post is not entirely clear, I don’t think mine is a wild leap.

                  It kind of feels like maybe you read something in my post that wasn’t there, I said exactly what I meant: I didn’t read Jeanine’s post as saying the retirement thing was fine, and also I personally think everyone deserves understanding and flexibility. I think when workers argue with each other about who is most deserving we *all* lose and companies win.

                6. Dawn*

                  Ok, this’ll be my last comment, but I think maybe what you’re not seeing from your own behaviour is this:

                  The person you actually responded to said, in its entirety: “You agree people who have children should get higher retirement matches?”

                  Your response, which I won’t reproduce in full, was a lengthy rant which ended with, “Want better for everyone, not less for others.”

                  It’s fine to say that was unrelated, but because it was a response to someone, it reads as if it was specifically a criticism of them, and if it was entirely about your own beliefs, probably should have been their own post and not (apparently) pointed at the person you were replying to.

        2. Blue Pen*

          I don’t think anyone is saying that parents shouldn’t be accommodated in the workforce here, though. Rather, what is being communicated is that everyone—kids or not, yellow or green, up or down—should benefit from a more supportive, flexible, and inclusive workforce with equal benefits and protections.

        3. carrot cake*

          So in your world, caring for elderly parents, for example, doesn’t deserve extra flexibility or benefits.

          Good lord…

          1. hohumdrum*

            I literally wrote that people should get extra flexibility and benefits for caring for parents in my comment though?

            “You should get flexible schedules if you’re a caretaker- be it for kids, parents, other members of your community.”

            I think all workplaces should be maximally flexible for everyone, which is what I wrote, specifically.

    3. Lab Boss*

      Parents don’t need “more work/life balance” than non-parents. They may have more rigid demands on their time, but that’s on the company to work out and not just demand childless employees have less work/life balance.

      1. Lurker*

        Say it again, louder, for the people in the back (who can’t hear over their screaming children)!

        This.policy.enrages.me. I’m so tired of people thinking having a child means you deserve special treatment, particularly when it comes at the literal expense of those who don’t have children.

      2. Jules the 3rd*

        I’m a parent. I do not need more work/life balance than anyone else. I appreciate that flexibility makes it possible for me to attend teacher conferences, but I know that others may need flexibility for doctor appointments or similar errands.

        If parents can handle the flexibility, then so could everyone else.

      3. Good Lord Ratty*

        It’s also a choice people who have children made.* They should be accommodated, of course, but they presumably made the choice to have kids knowing that it would be a nearly two decade-long commitment that would infringe on their time and make them less flexible. People who chose not to have kids, or who cannot have kids even if they want to desperately, shouldn’t be shafted just because parents are hamstrung by the demands of their choices. Parents should be accommodated, but not at the expense of everyone else.

        *Except in cases of abuse and coercion, which are far outside the scope of what we’re talking about here.

    4. Dust Bunny*

      Yet again: Parents do not automatically need more work/life balance. I would have loved more work/life balance when my single a** was driving my mother around for her pre-transplant appointments because neither of us had a spouse around to do it. I can’t foist business-hours things off on my SO since I don’t have one–I have to take time off to handle everything myself. I would love to have an extra $100 transit allowance since I can only earn one income and can’t share rides. And, sorry, but if you attend an event voluntarily as a guest you bloody well don’t also need comp time.

      1. MsM*

        Exactly. Employees without kids can still have caretaking obligations to their extended families, or their own need for accommodations. And discounts and extra retirement matching are also helpful if you don’t have two incomes to depend on.

      2. I'm just here for the cats!!*

        I couldn’t have said this any better. As a single only child as my mom gets older I’m going to have to take on more. We moved in together about 10 years ago after I graduated college. First it was economic. But since 2020 its become a necessity on her part. I take care of all of the household stuff because she is physically limited. It would be nice if I could work at home or have extra time off in order to do stuff around the house.

        Also, why would parents need more retirement savings than non parents. Wouldn’t they need less because they would be able to theoretically rely on their children to care for them in old age when childless people will need to move into assisted living or hire care workers.

        2. WellRed*

          The retirement one is insane to
          Me but also, the gym memberships which I found downright…offensive.

      3. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        It’s now, in my 40’s and my parents are in their 70’s, when I’m an only child, am single, child free, and without extended family to count on that I’m going, “Well…I painted myself into a corner on this one.” To be clear: I don’t want close relationships (spouse, children, family, etc) JUST for the potential to mooch off of them physically and emotionally- which is why I don’t pursue those things, since I am happy otherwise. I just can acknowledge the benefits of those relationships. If I found out that my company was giving extra, tangible benefits that I didn’t get because I don’t have a spouse and children, I’d feel so incredibly hurt and demoralized.

        1. Humble Schoolmarm*

          I’m in a similar boat (except my mom, who needs care, has three very enthusiastic sisters to help my dad and I). I always enjoyed being an only child until the past 7 years or so when I’ve spent a lot of time reminding myself that a lot of the siblings I know don’t share the parent care load equally.
          Back to work: My job has a family medical leave that covers both parents AND children. It’s been great for both my morale and for being able to jump in last minute to support my parents without using sick time. Sure, I use it less than my parent co-workers with unexpected broken limbs and tummy aches, but that’s okay. Knowing it’s there is a great piece of mind.

      4. Alex*

        Totally agree – being a parent absolutely has its own challenges, but being single does too. My cost of living is way higher than someone who’s married, why don’t I get perks for that?

        1. anon24*

          Right? I’m single, live alone. I have to work at least 50-60 hours a week just to pay for rent, food, and utilities. And I’m a college student on top of that. I work 12-16 hour shifts 5 days a week and then go to school. I got 4 hours of sleep Sunday and 2 hours of sleep yesterday. I’d love extra perks. I don’t even get financial aid for college because my “income is too high” but my income is too high because I have to work so much overtime to pay for rent by myself.

      1. pope suburban*

        Right? I want flex for all people. I want assistance during hard times for all people. I want perks available to everyone who would like to use them. I’m not opposed to giving parents flex, I’m opposed to withholding that from everyone else, who also has household emergencies or health events or the need to make appointments during the business day.

      2. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

        I’m childfree but reproductive labor is labor. Parents and other caretakers are special in the sense that they’re doing a second full-time job that’s necessary in some form or fashion for society to continue, so they should be compensated and supported by society for doing it. The way that should happen, in my opinion, should look VERY different than this (I’m a nuclear family abolitionist for one thing) but that it should happen is clear.

        1. Katie A*

          Agreed (and agreed about family abolition, too!). All else equal, people with caretaking responsibilities do need more support than people without them. This isn’t the right way to go about providing that additional support.

        2. Hannah Lee*

          “I’m childfree but reproductive labor is labor.”

          But you must realize that:
          Elder care is labor (people caring for aging parents)
          Caring for a disabled relative is labor (people caring for a sibling or other family member who cannot live independently without some support)
          People who do *those* things *also* have a second job that is necessary in some form or fashion for society to continue (even if some people thinks seniors and disabled people should just die already … not you, but sadly certain loud obnoxious bullies)
          They should be compensated and supported by society for doing it.

          Yes, parents are parents, and have lots of responsibilities to care for their children. But they are not the only people in society who have lots of responsibilities of care for other humans.

          Society should find some way to provide support for ALL of these people.
          An organization piling on preferential support for – parents only – at the expense of people without children is egregious.

          1. Blue Pen*

            Agreed — I’m not sure if the LW is located in the US, but I can’t help but think that a robust social safety net would alleviate or at least minimize many of the unpaid labor inequities people face when balancing their paid professions. If such a safety net existed, one that was not rooted in a heteronormative 1950s patriarchal society where the man goes to work and the woman stays home and deals with everything (and everyone) else, I think things for many would be a lot different.

        3. GrooveBat*

          All caretaking is labor. Society benefits as a whole from all forms of caretaking, whether that’s elder care, volunteering, looking after a sick friend, etc.

          Singling out parents as somehow more “special” than others is what’s wrong here.

        5. KC*

          But it shouldn’t get preferential treatment over other kind of caretaking labor.

          You shouldn’t get better treatment because you birthed or adopted your family and I didn’t.

          1. hohumdrum*

            Can’t speak for Alpacas, but the nuclear family is a modern construct of what ideal family structure is. Historically, and still today in many cultures, there has been more of a community aspect to what constitutes family and how folk help each other survive. Focusing on nuclear family as the only/correct way to build family encourages isolation and pitting resourceless folks against each other. It reinforces a lot of patriarchal, heterosexist, abelist ideals, and also tends to hold up white supremacy in the way it disregards other cultural ways of understanding family.

            My experience with nuclear family abolition is about tearing down those baked in assumptions and values about what family is meant to be, and re-defining family in more radically accepting and expansive ways.

            1. Fluff*

              It took me way too long to figure out that Alpacas is a user name and not commenting about alpaca family units. And yes, this dork googled alpaca family units.

          2. Beth*

            This is a guess, but my assumption would be that it’s a person who believes in family as a network that may include parents, spouse, siblings, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, close friends, etc, without placing higher or lower importance on any of them. That’s in contrast to the structure of the nuclear family, which centers on a household made up of mom/dad/kids, and typically frames anyone outside that household as ‘extended family’ rather than your nearest-and-dearest.

        7. Nonsense*

          Ah, but see, you prove my point. “Parents and other caretakers…” Parents aren’t special; they are just another form of caretaker. But, ~somehow~, Parents are the ones getting all the benefits.

        8. The Unionizer Bunny*

          I’m childfree but reproductive labor is labor.

          Yes, and people who are getting paid for it should enjoy the same rights as other employeess.

          Child-raising is also labor, but as you point out with the nuclear families, it often involves only a very small group. There are other forms of labor, often with a broader and more immediate benefit to the community, that require more of an investment in time than people who work a full-time job and raise children have available . . . but childfree people would have that time, if not for short-sighted managers deciding “we can’t allow anyone but us to have leisure time, they’d only abuse it by starting a union or something”.

          Not everything people do with their leisure time will be a benefit to society – but even so, does that really compare poorly? Ask anyone about their neighborhood’s “young hooligans”. Are “children” really a benefit to society? Don’t call them “the future workforce” – remember, “nobody wants to work anymore”.

          Let’s back this up a bit: why do we call something “labor”? Why do we expect it to be compensated by society? Where does that money come from? Other laborers. Who are working either for the benefit of their community or for the benefit of themselves. Either benefit requires “leisure” time to enjoy, even if they spend their own time on something other people see as beneficial to the community.)

        9. Dawn*

          That would be why they get tax breaks for it.

          I’m not here to argue about whether they’re sufficient in the place that you are at, but if they should be specially supported by society, it should be happening at the societal level and not up to individual employers to decide.

            1. Dawn*

              Yes, that too. I’m not even American, but we have a very similar insurance system here and it never fails to boggle my mind that either you have employer-provided health insurance or you have none. When I was laid off recently, I wouldn’t even have been eligible for benefits if I’d needed to apply on my own (because I’m diabetic,) and the “follow me” benefits I do have right now cost 25x what my employer-provided benefits do and cover almost nothing, it’s frankly a joke.

        10. louvella*

          “Parents and other caretakers are special in the sense that they’re doing a second full-time job that’s necessary in some form or fashion for society to continue, so they should be compensated and supported by society for doing it.”

          A lot of people spend their time outside of work going things that I think fall under this. Like creating art. Or community organizing.

    7. Stella70*

      Just to make sure I understand your point: If you and I have the exact same job – same duties, title, responsibilities, same desk/chair/coffee cup – you should receive more cash/benefits solely because you have children? Who – I assume – do not contribute to your output?
      Would your answer change if you knew that I desperately wanted children, but couldn’t have any?

      1. BethRA*

        Not the same duties and responsibilities, fewer, because as a parent they think they should have more flexibility and “work life balance.”

        1. Flabbers are Gasted*

          This is what I was wondering, cause that seems like the only reason to hide any of it. Even if everyone they hire has kids, they don’t all need cover at the same time presumably (except maybe for school closings in the area, which are usually scheduled and could be planned for) so they could be helping each other out when needed. Why the secrecy if not to guarantee a steady “underclass” of non-parents to always be there to do extra work? If child free people knew the deal from the get go, I don’t think most would take jobs there whether they plan to have kids in the future or not.

          And that’s just the scheduling stuff. Couple that with the compensation and benefits OP outlined, seem to mean the parents get more money for doing less work in the same positions as non-parents.

    8. kanada*

      Sorry, but I don’t want my company making judgments about whose out of work time is worth more.

      1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        THIS. I used to get this in Girl Scouts all the time because I had no kids. The parents thought that meant I could do more. I was all, I might not have to wrangle kids, but I also have to go grocery shopping, clean the house, take out the trash, etc. All by myself.

        Childless does not mean obligation free. Everyone is entitled to a healthy work life balance.

        Once this gets out this company is in for a world of hurt. It will not be pretty.

        1. Emotional support capybara (he/him)*

          YES. I get dumped on by people who think “no spouse or kids” = “endless free time” and… no? I don’t have anyone else to go grocery shopping or cook or clean or do my laundry, and that crap still has to get done after that 14-hour day I had to work because all the parents bailed at 2:30!

              1. Freya*

                And when they’re enjoying being scritched, their hair stands up where you’re scritching so you can get in there and scritch that spot so good!

                (trips for a dance events with my husband include some kind of sightseeing if we have time, and that sightseeing is most frequently a wildlife sanctuary of some kind – husband seems to like how much I enjoy it. Earlier this year, one of those trip-adjacent wildlife visitations included a small group Meet The Baby Capybaras)

      1. Annie*

        Came here to say this. My family responsibilities revolve around my aging parents. When either of them was in the hospital, I was offered flexibility just as I would have been with a child in the hospital. Families are families and they don’t all involve children. I would be so infuriated by this that it would lead me to look at the job market.

        1. soontoberetired*

          I had to explain that to one of my bosses once – who wanted me to do coverage for all the holidays so my coworkers with children could be at home with them. I looked at her and said So should I tell my elderly parents I can’t see them at Christmas and that we aren’t family? There was much backing down. I am lucky she realized how wrong she was. It wasn’t the first time someone prioritized a person with kids work life balance against mine but I’ve got a lot more vocal about the unfairness. Now nearly everyone I work with is an empty nester.

          2. H3llifIknow*

            My daughter and SIL have no children, by choice, and they don’t make a big deal out of holidays with just the 2 of them (they live too far away to visit). So, she always volunteers to let those with kids take Xmas, etc.. off. She has the place to herself, gets lots done AND gets triple time. Win Win Win. They celebrate that night or the next opportunity. The difference here is SHE makes that choice to volunteer. She isn’t being TOLD she’s “less worthy of having a holiday/weekend off.”

            1. 1LFTW*

              AND, importantly, she’s getting well compensated for working on days when nobody else wants to work. Also, triple time on holidays is probably not a giant secret in her workplace.

      2. The Original K.*

        Exactly this. I have caregiving responsibilities; I just don’t have kids. (I also dislike the idea that the only out of work pursuit worthy of consideration is caregiving, even as someone who helps an aging parent.)

      3. Lady Danbury*

        I’m not a parent but I still have a family that includes children. I’m an extremely involved auntie (hello, 3 scheduled camp pickup/dropoffs this week) and my job’s flexibility benefits my niblings because my company doesn’t discriminate on who deserves flexibility based on whether or not you’re a parent.

      1. GrooveBat*

        Well, and what about elder care? Why should daycare be subsidized for one class of employees but if someone is caring for an aging parent they’re on their own?

        2. Silver Robin*

          in theory (theory!!) elder care is something folks save up for over the course of their life. that is what social security and retirement accounts are for. They do not do enough, absolutely, but it is a bit disingenuous to say that elder care is not subsidized.

          the fact that any of this is falling on employers is honestly the weird part. My job is not responsible for my choices posted of work and then getting involved just leads to nonsense like the letter. The government should be providing care for all members of its society for free. Then we do not have these arguments in Alison’s comment section

            1. Not Totally Subclinical*

              In a perfect world with complete respect for a woman’s “no, not tonight”, birth control that has no side effects and never fails, and jobs that pay enough for couples to save up for childcare before they need fertility treatment to have those children, sure.

              This ain’t that world.

              1. Hannah Lee*

                And in a perfect world, people who save up for retirement don’t get hit by inflation, failing pension funds, shaky investments that wind up not providing enough for them to live on as housing and other expenses skyrocket.

                And in a perfect world, people who are on track to earn enough for retirement by working in their 50’s and 60’s don’t get laid off by employers who prefer younger, lower compensated employees, and don’t get injured or develop an illness that impacts their earning power, or uses up their retirement savings because of the ridiculous state of for-profit health care / health insurance in the US

                And in a perfect world, women who were married and had children and worked just like their husbands did to support the family wouldn’t have been paid less than men for the same labor, or relegated to lower paying fields simply because they were women, or expected to work only “mother’s hours” so they could be the primary caregiving parent, accruing less in retirement benefits and savings, or wouldn’t have found themselves divorced (with an ex who manipulated things keep most of the family’s assets) or widowed and struggling to make ends meet.

                And in a perfect world, long term care insurance and support services for seniors would be available, affordable, reliable so that a 70 year old person can have a roof over their head, be able to provide for their basic needs, be able to get transport, advocacy for medical care, legal services, etc etc. and afford to live on the retirement savings they do have.

                You’re right … this ain’t that world.

                2. hohumdrum*

                  These are such great reasons why day care, schooling, elder care, disabled care, retirement care, etc should all be free and available to everyone, I love it!

            2. Silver Robin*

              not really; people do not save up for 18 (at minimum) years of childcare before having kids. They get careers that they expect to be able to support their plan of having children. They make cash flow plans, not savings plans.

              Retirement and elder care is also cash flow, but the assumption is more often that the cash flow comes from the previous decades of saving + a government stipend. Perhaps also family support as many others have mentioned.

              And just to reiterate, I do not think the current system is a good one! I think it fails everyone and few of us get to live out retirement and end of life in dignity. I was only pointing out that elder care is subsidized via government programs and that society just kind of expects adults to make enough money ahead of time to float themselves till death; the same expectation are not there for childcare.

          2. NerdyLibraryClerk*

            Elder care is more than money. It’s also having someone who can manage their affairs, make sure bills are paid, find assisted living facilities, etc. Unless you mean that they should have planned to hire someone for that, but many people think they’ll be able to handle it themselves or don’t expect to become unwell at the same time as their spouse.

            (I had no idea what went into elder care either until this year. Honestly, after the year I’ve been having I think both childcare and elder care should be something the government provides. Along with healthcare, UBI, etc, etc. If only… *sigh*)

            1. Chirpy*

              Elder care is also elders who don’t want to let a paid stranger help them, either out of shyness, a lack of understanding of exactly how much care they actually need, or an idea that it’s their children’s job.

              And it was super frustrating to me that all that got dumped on me as the single, childless one when I lost my job, so on top of the stress of taking care of my grandparents I also was extremely broke, used up all my savings, and was shamed by family for looking for a job at all. It’s been 10 years, and I still haven’t been able to do more than break even, because I got stuck in retail. And I’m pretty sure I’m expected to do it again for my parents.

              1. TheOtherKaye*

                This was me too, prior to my father’s passing (mum had already passed on). I was the daughter/cook and cleaner/carer, and also working full-time to help provide (and I am on only child). In dad’s last year he had incurable cancer, and we had a visiting nurse in for about an hour a day to help him get up, showered, and dressed for the day. She asked him at one point “what would you do if TheOtherKaye was married and not living here?” His answer: “I’d live in a self-contained bungalow with them and she’d have to look after me -she’s my daughter and it’s her job to do that..” Next question from the nurse: “What if her husband wasn’t happy with that?” Answer: “He wouldn’t have a say..”

                1. Chirpy*

                  Yeah, sometimes there’s just no way to win. Like, I love my family, but America just isn’t set up to take care of any of the caretakers it relies on.

            2. Silver Robin*

              I meant nothing; I stated the theory of the expectations society has, which are, yes, all of that should have been planned and saved for.

              I also specifically said the system we have is not enough. And that all of this should be provided by the government at no cost (taxes, obviously, but like no payment for services from the users of said service).

          3. Hydrates all the flasks*

            Social Security was never intended to be the sole source of retirement/elder care funding though. It was literally a “better than nothing” invention. Our grandparents (and some of our parents) got pensions if they stayed with one company for 40 years but then companies started gutting pensions AND the idea of a company’s loyalty to its employees. 401(k) and 403(b)* plans are a very poor substitute for old-school pensions, ask your grandparents (and parents if you’re an elder millennial with a parent lucky enough to have had a pension).

            So yeah, in theory, eldercare support is something that one should have been saving up for their whole life in the same way that “3-6 months of emergency savings” is also something one should do. In reality…well there but for the grace of God.

            *403(b) plans are just the non-profit version of 401(k) plans, pass it on.

            1. 1LFTW*

              Right? Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, because that’s just how much rent and food cost. Retirement savings are a pipe dream for a lot of the workforce.

        3. hohumdrum*

          They shouldn’t! The government should absolutely do more to subsidize and support the groups that provide elder care, community care, special needs care, etc.

          Most essentials in life should be made accessible to all.

      2. not nice, don't care*

        Daycare should not be subsidized as long as reproduction is a choice, but daycare workers should definitely be paid much much higher.

            1. Silver Robin*

              they are childcare, pretty obviously. and if you are not sending your kids to school, you cannot just leave them at home alone so it fulfills the same purpose as day care along with other purposes. and only people who choose to have kids need them.

              so my question stands: if we should not subsidize daycare, why should we subsidize public schools? (btw I think our governments should be providing the daycare, not companies)

              1. GrooveBat*

                I don’t have a problem with subsidizing daycare. I do have a problem with subsidizing it at the expense of other types of care that are equally beneficial to society.

                1. kjinsea*

                  I’d argue that having well-educated children who grow into well-educated adults capable of voting well and being part of society in meaningful ways does benefit society more than other types of care. That isn’t to say other forms of care are not valuable, but let’s not pretend that child care/education for kids doesn’t have unique long-term benefits to society that other forms of care do not. Look at the stats for how investing in early childhood ed saves massive tex dollars over time.

                2. GrooveBat*

                  I completely disagree that childcare is more beneficial to society than other types of care. The long-term benefits might be *different*, but I don’t think they are intrinsically more valuable than, say, treating disabilities, addictions, chronic illnesses – all of which, if not addressed, also consume massive tax dollars.

              2. Jeanine*

                Actually I agree with that the government should be providing daycare and any other care you need to be honest. But let’s be real the US is never going to do that. They aren’t supporting public schools either they are always getting their budgets cut.

                I don’t even know where to nest the rest of this so I’m dumping it here. No I don’t believe and did not say that THE other benefits provided by THIS company were fair or right at all, in terms of retirement and all that. But I DID say that parents (and this can include the opposite where parent care is involved) need to have flexibility in their lives that includes work life balance and some kind of subsidized daycare, elder care or whatever. It would be ideal if the government did that since they are supposed to take care of us to a good degree and don’t, but that won’t happen so it falls on the employer just like with health insurance. If someone else has special needs that aren’t apparent then they need to bring that up for themselves.

                1. GrooveBat*

                  We understood what you said the first time, and we’re disagreeing with you strenuously.

                  It’s wrong to elevate one category of employee over another just because of their personal circumstances and reproductive choices. EVERYONE needs flexibility in their lives, including a health work/life balance. It’s not “special needs” to expect equitable treatment in the workplace.

            2. Hydrates all the flasks*

              “Public schools aren’t day care”

              LOL, the entirety of March 2020 to like, January 2021 (or whenever schools started moving back to at least hybrid sessions after much parental begging) really begs to differ there.

              In some school districts, depending on funding, staffing, available educational materials, the ratio of hired security to students (because of fights and overall safety), etc, it seems like the school is literally nothing but a taxpayer-supported daycare building.

              1. Humble Schoolmarm*

                I see your point but them’s fighting words in pretty much the entirety of k-12 education. Clearly, we saw in the pandemic that schools basically are the safety net for school-aged kids (and, arguably, their families) but schools as they’re structured now can’t handle it. It’s leading to a ton of teacher burn-out as teachers feel both devalued (you’re ‘just’ daycare) and overburdened (hey, can you solve systemic inequality and get 100% pass on the literacy assessments?)

        3. Nobby Nobbs*

          What country do you live in where reproduction is always a choice, then? Not the one I live in, obviously.

          1. Nobby Nobbs*

            FTR government-subsidized childcare is one of many social safety nets I support, this is not a comment advocating prioritizing parents over non-parents.

        4. K in Boston*

          Things like subsidizing childcare are absolutely part of the equation of whether or not people have, or keep, their children, and therefore inextricable from reproductive choice. I know plenty of people who disagree that poor people should be allowed to have children or that their children shouldn’t suffer to some degree because their parents didn’t “work hard enough” to give them a good life. These people are wrong.

          1. Silver Robin*

            yes, thank you! The undercurrent of “how dare the poors want to have a family?” is vile. The best parts of civilization is about our ability to communally care for one another on increasingly large scales so folks can make decisions that work for them without that throwing them into poverty.

            I get the idea behind “kids are a huge commitment, do not take that lightly” but that should not translate into “you are poor and therefore cannot/should not have children”. That is classism and eugenics, my friends. Bad look.

    11. Higher Ed Admin*

      This is so wildly, wildly incorrect. We 100% should have greater access to free daycare as a society, but the very idea that parents deserve things like free gym memberships, TWICE the retirement match, and extra time off is insane. People without children are not inherently less valuable because they don’t have children. Their lives and health should be valued equally with their co-workers.

      1. Tuckerman*

        The extra time off makes sense to me if it’s in the framework of, you are only permitted to use sick time for your own illness so here’s a separate bucket of time for when you need off for caregiving (not just parents home with sick kids).

        But the 401 k match and many of these seem excessive. It makes me wonder if at one point their benefits/working environment were so bad they had a huge issue hiring/retaining parents or women, and they just sort of overcorrected. Maybe they had bad press for something.

      2. Not Another Username*

        Yeah, this organization probably should have just limited the parent perks to free or reduced daycare. That retirement match discrepancy is OUT OF THIS WORLD.

        I’m looking forward to the follow up letter because I cannot imagine how the employer is going to react to the reveal and justify their actions. Also, what other weird, borderline illegal policies are being kept secret?

        1. Jeanine*

          I do agree BY THE WAY that the extra retirement match is insane. Just so it’s out there and people can stop attacking me.

          1. GrooveBat*

            That’s not why we’re disagreeing with you. We are disagreeing with your singling out of parents as being more deserving of a healthy work/life balance than other employees.

      3. Lily Rowan*

        Right — there are things parents (and other caregivers!) need that are directly related to the caregiving and seriously impact their ability to be successful at work. Gym membership is not that! And as someone said above, they theoretically need the retirement funds LESS because they’ll have their kids to take care of them!

        But I don’t begrudge, say, having extra sick time to take care of sick kids.

        1. GrooveBat*

          What about sick parents you’re taking care of? What about other members of your support system? How about we just give people the flexibility to manage their personal time like responsible adults, versus setting up judgmental policies that only benefit one specific type of employee?

    12. MsJayTee*

      It assumes the only responsibilities people have are their children, and that all parents take responsibility for their children.

      A childless person caring for a sibling or parent would not get those benefits. A parent who leaves most of the parenting to the other parent would get most of them.

      1. GrooveBat*

        Yeah, I’m thinking in particular of how difficult it was for me to get a colonoscopy scheduled. They wouldn’t even put me on the calendar until I could prove I had someone who could pick me up after the procedure and also be on call during the appointment “just in case.” That put me in the unpleasant position of having to ask my friend to sacrifice a vacation day to help me out.

        1. Beany*

          I went through that rite of passage for the first time last year, and it never occurred to me how much more difficult that would be if I didn’t have a guaranteed temporary ride/caretaker (with a flexible schedule).

          1. GrooveBat*

            The infuriating part was the attitude of the scheduler when I explained my predicament. She was like, “Can’t you just ask a neighbor?” and I was like, dude, I’m new to the community and I don’t even KNOW most of my neighbors!

        2. Florence Reece*

          Yeah, I ended up taking a day of PTO to take my own employee to his colonoscopy. He was older and single, all his buddies were also older and mostly single and had health issues, and the person he relied on when he booked the appointment months in advance was hospitalized a week before.

          I had no problem using my own time for him, because he was a person in need (and one I liked, to boot). But it was *so weird* that not only did my bosses not offer me some kind of comp time for helping their own staff member in need, they resisted the idea that we’d both be out the same day. “What do you suggest he does instead?” was met with shrugs and a reluctant agreement that I could take the day.

          That employee literally *never* called out, booked his PTO months and months in advance, was a total rockstar in every way. I later had to go to bat for him taking time to care for his sister who was undergoing breast cancer treatment. Meanwhile, my director had two teenage sons and a tween daughter and routinely blew off her commitments because things with her kids came up. It’s such a ridiculous double standard.

    13. NerdyLibraryClerk*

      Why do parents “need” a free gym membership and non-parents not? Why do parents “need” higher retirement matching and non-parents not? (I could see an argument for the reverse. But I’m still not sure it would be right.) Why would parents need more work/life balance? (What does that even mean? How do single or childless people need *less* work/life balance? Everyone needs work/life balance!)

      I agree that workplaces should offer free daycare and flexibility around caring for dependents/family/equivalents of any age and relationship. (Including situations like queerplatonic partnerships, or even very close friends.) But people aren’t worth less consideration because they don’t (or can’t) have children.

      1. bamcheeks*

        Sidenote, but I personally wouldn’t want daycare provided by my employer. High quality free and well-subsidised childcare, absolutely, but the less of my life which is tied to my employer the better.

        1. NerdyLibraryClerk*

          Good point. That goes in the category of things civilization should have, along with universal healthcare.

        2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

          Yeah, it sounds good until you see someone using the company daycare get laid off and simultaneously lose their job and their childcare.

          1. Elle*

            I mean, if someone is relying on you for both, you can probably treat them pretty terribly before they snap.

    14. bamcheeks*

      more work/life balance

      apart from everything else, this is such a weird way to use “work/life balance”. I mean, a balance is a A BALANCE, you can’t have more of it. I find it really weird the way “work/life balance” is always used one-sidedly to only mean clawing back personal time from work.

      1. Audrey Puffins*

        During the working week, I spend more of my awake hours at work than at home. I expect I’m not the only full time worker who finds this. When there’s closer parity there, then maybe work/life balance can go in two directions. But right now, the imbalance is already pretty heftily there.

        1. bamcheeks*

          Right, but then it’s not balance. I just think it’s a weird euphemistic term for “the amount of time we are expected to spend at work is unacceptable”.

    15. Angstrom*

      You’re right, I don’t need flexibility to care for a parent with Alzheimer’s. How silly of me.

    16. Almost Empty Nester*

      I could maybe see flexibility in working from home if you have a sick child (because I’ve been grateful for similar flexibility when mine were little), but discounts to businesses? Higher retirement matching? You’re getting into discriminatory behavior there and that is wrong on quite a few levels.

      1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        More flexibility for anyone to work from home. So when someone is sick they don’t come in and infect the whole office.

        If they can offer parents this much time off, they can consider it for everyone. If the world didn’t come crashing down with WFH flexibility for parents, it won’t end if everyone has that flexibility.

        1. H3llifIknow*

          I’d love to see a movie of this where every childfree person at the company puts in their resignation one by one in a long line, effective immediately, and then Erin Brokovich sues the company for all that back 401K contribution matching and gym memberships. Won’t happen, but it’s a nice thought!

    17. HonorBox*

      Other benefits might include something like a publicized childcare stipend or “family care” days in addition to PTO. My kids are beyond childcare age, and I’d have zero problem with a coworker who got a stipend for childcare costs. And family care days could be used for any age of family member. Giving extra money for commuting? Giving additional retirement contributions? Providing the same gym membership at no cost just because someone has kids? Nope. Nope. Nope.

      Everyone could use better work/life balance. But balance means that you get your time away and you’re not expected to work 60 hours each week when you’re paid for 40. How you choose (or need) to use those hours outside of the office is up to you. The company doesn’t get to say that because someone has kids, they get more time away from work.

      1. amoeba*

        Yup, this.

        Here in Germany you actually get “child-sick days” from your health insurance, by law – so an extra 10 days of care leave per parent, basically. Because children are sick A LOT. This is absolutely fine for me as a non-parent because, well, I don’t actually need that! (However, we also have basically unlimited sick leave for ourselves, but that can only be used when you’re actually sick, not to care for somebody else. If I had only 5 days of sick leave or whatever, I’d probably be pretty annoyed if my coworker suddenly had 20.)

        More flexible WFH policies, consideration of school holidays when doing holiday planning, all fine with me. But what’s described here has nothing to do with that, it’s just blatantly preferential treatment.

        1. Freya*

          Yeah, the Australian equivalent to sick leave is personal leave, and that explicitly includes looking after an immediate family member or household member who is sick, injured, or affected by an unexpected emergency. The law explicitly says ‘immediate family member’ includes not only spouses (and de facto spouses) and kids but also parents, grandparents, siblings, former spouses, and the immediate family members of your spouse or former spouse (or de facto spouse). It explicitly includes step-relations and adoptive relations.

          Employers can offer more than that, but that’s the bare minimum for us here.

      2. Clisby*

        Yes, the place I retired from gave everyone a week of family leave. You could use it for sick children, to care for a spouse, parents, etc. (At this job, your own sick leave was not supposed to be used for sick children. I’m sure plenty of parents lied and said they were sick when really it was a child, but whatever. When the family leave policy went into effect, they could just charge it to family leave.)

    18. HSE Compliance*

      People should not be worth less to companies because of choices they make for their families, whether that’s having children, not having children, caring for sick parents, being married, being single, etc. Those without children are not less deserving of time off and a solid work/life balance.

      That is the problem with offering benefits like this. Your attitude is, frankly, horrific.

      2. What_the_What?*

        Yes! And many of those childfree people may WANT to have children and cannot so this is yet another slap in the face!

        1. Raktajino*

          Has “childfree” started meaning “doesn’t have kids” full stop? I thought it meant “chose not to have children,” and “childless” was more ambiguous. Maybe “childless” has more baggage, like it could indicate loss?

          1. What_the_What?*

            I dunno. I was probably just repeating the above language without parsing it, so may have used it inaccurately. But, I eck if I knowthink the meaning is still there.

          2. HSE Compliance*

            In the childfree circles I’m in, you are correct. Childfree is someone who has decided no kiddos, childless is someone that wanted it but couldn’t/haven’t.

            (I am both childfree and unable to have kids.)

    19. Tippy*

      What? Free daycare does not equal free gym memberships for the whole family, movie ticket discounts, higher retirement compensation, not covering your own work responsibilities, extra cash for commuting, etc.

    20. Emotional support capybara (he/him)*

      Nope. Your time isn’t more valuable than mine just because you chose to reproduce.

    21. sofar*

      The only benefits I’ve seen specifically for parents that make sense are:

      – Pat/mat leave (OBVIOUSLY)
      – Discounts on emergency childcare services (parents get X free days of services that arrange same-day childcare when the nanny is sick/daycare is closed).
      – WFH and understanding if school is closed unexpectedly (ie, snow day)
      -On-site day care (I agree, it should be universal)

      Most (if not all) other special childcare benefits can and should be offered as “caregiver” benefits to anyone who has dependents/is caring for a family member. Not just to parents.

      Flexibility (extra PTO days) should be for all.

      1. madhatter360*

        I have no idea how such a thing would be implemented, but a program that matches x% of 529 plan contributions seems like it could also be a reasonable parent only benefit. It certainly makes more sense than double 401k matching.

    22. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

      Parents need “more” work/life balance? What does that even mean?

      1. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

        And the corollary that non-parents need “less” work/life balance? What?

      3. Fluffy Orange Menace*

        I believe he/she means, “I chose to have a child. Now you must suffer the consequences of MY actions because…. child.”

    23. Irish Teacher.*

      I can see an argument for some of the things. In my country, in addition to maternity leave, all parents are entitled to “parents’ leave,” which is 9 fully paid weeks in the first 2 years of a child’s life, so in those two years, parenss get a lot of additional PTO and I think that is reasonable. Parents have additional reasons to take time off.

      However, this goes way beyond giving parents some extra PTO specifically for caretaking duties or having a daycare attached to the workplace. The retirement thing is utterly ridiculous, in my opinion, as by the time people retire, their kids are usually grown up, so one can’t even argue that families need more money (not that giving people financial benefits based on perceived need is really fair anyway). And letting parents just take a halfday and pass the work to others if they need to collect their kids rather than being allowed to work from home or make up the time another day is way too much.

      And the stuff like the discounts are also completely unfair.

      1. NerdyLibraryClerk*

        Parents do have additional reasons to take time off, but so might someone with an ill or disabled family member or partner. (I’ve blown through almost all of my leave this trying to help my aging parents, both of whom are now on hospice. I wish there was special leave for that. I need a vacation from my *life*.)

      2. Angstrom*

        Totally agree on the value of extended leave for new parents. No argument there. I wish we had something similar.
        A key difference is that it’s a national policy, not a secret company perk.

      3. Raktajino*

        My husband went through all his PTO to take care of his father on hospice, and then had to go on medical leave himself after an injury. Meanwhile, I work for a company with better work life balance and a more generous PTO policy, which didn’t blink twice at my two weeks off for the hospice and my frequent half days for all his medical appointments.

        My work manages to win awards for being a best place for parents (moms) by offering specific additional benefits for child specific stuff (eg daycare savings account) and a flexible, clear policy for *everyone*.

        1. Bird names*

          And that’s how you do it. I’m glad your current employer understands that everybody might need flexibility for a wide variety of issues.

    24. That Crazy Cat Lady*

      Yeah, no. I don’t have an issue with free daycare (as long as it’s not located in a place that will be disruptive to working employees), but working parents are not entitled to more work/life balance or more time than childfree workers.

      I really don’t understand the assumption/expectation that childfree people devote every waking hour to work.

      1. not nice, don't care*

        I get the vibe that some parents, perhaps less than thrilled with the reality of parenting, want childfree folks to feel their pain.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          I get the vibe that now that they have kids they have a Higher Purpose and we should all defer to that.

          I mean, they’re free to make that their priority, but not at my expense.

      2. Fluffy Orange Menace*

        100%. I work and I work HARD. So, I too deserve some downtime! I deserve to have weekends and PTO where I can completely disconnect and not have to fill in for parents who volunteer for events and then call off that day WITH pay leaving me and other cat ladies to fill in for them while they laugh all the way to the bank. I don’t have a lot of heartburn about extra days off to take care of family, but that should be available to EVERYONE who has a family member (note, NOT NECESSARILY A CHILD) that needs care. But the 401K! Holy Banana Ensemble.

    26. GrooveBat*

      Thanks for denigrating the existence of all us childless cat ladies.

      I guess the agony of caring for my mom when she was dying of cancer or my dad during his seven year battle with dementia pales in comparison to the struggle of sitting through the school play or doling out orange slices at soccer games.

      1. NancyDrew*

        Why do you keep acting like parents don’t also take care of their own parents? It’s very bizarre. Ever hear of the sandwich generation?

    27. Sylvia*

      I disagree. I’ve known many parents who relied heavily on their own retired parents (their childrens’ grandparents) to help out–taking care of the kids every day (including weekends), cleaning the house, laundry, cooking dinner, taking the cars to be serviced, and sometimes even doing the grocery shopping. Nothing wrong with that, but they had plenty of work/life balance–probably more than childless people.

    28. Museum Conservator*

      You’re right, non-parents don’t need work/life balance. Makes sense. Good thinking. Hope you aren’t a manager.

    29. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      Don’t lie. You’re not sorry.

      Listen to yourself. Parents don’t matter. Siblings don’t matter. Only children matter. If I needed to care for my elderly mother, too bad, F off. Parents “need” more time off than non-parents. What bigoted garbage. You don’t know my life. I guess they also “need” free gym memberships, discounts to all local businesses and a bigger retirement fund.

      Government should provide free daycare. But that’s not relevant to this conversation at all.

    30. What_the_What?*

      If I’m picking up YOUR slack because you’re logging off at 230 everyday and expecting someone to do YOUR work because you happened to procreate, then YOUR *need* for work life balance has now negatively impacted THEIR work life balance and that is unacceptable. I have 3 kids, now adults. I worked full time and made it work without whining that I needed special accomodations. You want to be a parent? Go for it! You want to have a career? Go for it! You want to make someone else do 1/3 of your work for you and thumb your nose laughing at them while you slack off? Nope. If you can’t do both, then don’t do both because expecting someone else to subsidize your decision to have children is not cool. I guarantee those parents are taking full advantage of WFH and NOT actually WORKING from home because the company has made it clear they’re “special” and don’t have to. This entire scheme is revolting.

      1. EdStein*

        Society should absolutely subsidize the decision to have children. Childrearing has tons of positive externalities and public benefits, so the costs shouldn’t be privatized.

        I’m sorry you weren’t supported in your childrearing, but there’s a better way.

        I personally would like Social Security to be solvent and nurse’s to be available when I’m old, so I’ll do anything to support the shrinking number of people who are raising the next generation in the US

        1. H3llifIknow*

          Expecting a COWORKER to subsidize your decision is not the same as expecting society to do so by offering social security, daycare subsidies, etc… which should be available to everyone who works. But no, I agree with What_the_What that parents should NOT expect other PEOPLE they work with to subsidize their choices.

        3. Head Sheep Counter*

          I like your cheerful assumption that childrearing is a net positive in a over populated war like planet that is fast approaching a temperature that it cannot support.

        4. The Prettiest Curse*

          If you would like social security and nurses to be available when you’re old – guess what, you can also support increased levels of legal immigration! Also, your country has 300 million people, you aren’t going to run out of them any time soon. Coming from a country of 60 million (which is also not running out of people), it’s frankly quite strange to me that some Americans think that this is a genuine possibility.

          2. Bird names*

            Probably not so surprising once you consider which segment most vocally tends to bellyache about it. Probably also a good deal of overlap with folks who tend to complain about immigrants, but would hate to do the kind of jobs that are most heavily dependent on an immigrant workforce.

            1. The Prettiest Curse*

              Exactly, and I should also add that I started paying into Social Security 13 months after moving to the US. (The delay was due to visa processing and applying for an SSN.) So encouraging immigration will prop up Social Security much faster than encouraging new babies – though given the way that child labour laws are being rolled back of late, the gap may eventually go down a bit.

              1. Lady Danbury*

                I paid into social security the entire time I worked in the US as a legal immigrant. As I have now moved back to my home country, I have never been eligible for SS and never will be. You’re welcome!

    31. CheesePlease*

      You’re getting ratio’ed because you’re fundamentally wrong about how workplaces should work.

      Certain things like allowing dependents to get free gym membership isn’t a huge deal. Whatever, it’s a gym.

      But 10 (!!) extra PTO days a year simply for making a baby? Just give that to everyone!! or offer paid parental leave for longer than FMLA. But this is just very poor business management. Coworkers may have a sick spouse, an elderly parent, their own health issues! They all deserve PTO, flexible WFH options etc.

      And the retirement matching makes ZERO sense to me. ZERO. an extra 2,5% every year is an insane amount if you’re high earning and working at the company for a long time. It’s essentially a raise given for being a parent.

      What OP described is ridiculous. I have two young kids in daycare. It’s stressful and messy and yet I want ALL WORKERS to get guaranteed paid sick leave! Rising tides lift all boats! I’m not special!!

      1. Raktajino*

        > And the retirement matching makes ZERO sense to me.

        I can see them rationalizing the extra 2.5% by “parents have less spending money to save for retirement.” Maybe? It’s a terrible rationale but their terrible judgment is already obvious.

        1. Zahra*

          But it’s *matching*! How it usually works over here is “we’ll match your contribution up to X% of your salary”. If parents have less spending money to save, they’ll be less likely to save up to that percentage, no? Unless the norm is to contribute a lot more than I’m used to seeing.

          1. Raktajino*

            I thought the general advice was “contribute at least your company’s matching,” and bumping it up annually until you’re at least at 10%. At least, that’s what the resources at my work retirement fund, the employee portal recommend, and a quick google agrees.

            I think their logic would be “all our employees can afford to put aside at least 5% but our employees who are parents can’t afford to contribute the 10% that is ideal.”

      2. Beany*

        Why allow Employee A (with partner + children) to have free gym membership, but not give free gym membership to Employee B (with partner, but no children)? How does that make sense?

    32. EdStein*

      I agree. I think maybe the company realized this is what it takes to get parents (read: mostly mothers) not to quit.

      I support similar benefits for those doing full-time caretaking of an adult family member. But I don’t think other time commitments are equal. People raising children or taking care of the elderly are doing a service to society that makes participation in the workforce harder. A travel hobby or running club just…doesn’t.

      1. CheesePlease*

        but if all employees were given these benefits then all employees would benefit, including parents? Or do you believe (as OP’s company believes) that regardless of company benefits parents deserve MORE? (also where does it end? if you’re 60 and your kids are 35 do you still get more PTO? it’s fundamentally bad management)

        1. allathian*

          No, if there are any preferential benefits to parents, they should end when the child becomes a legal adult or moves out (like goes to college), whichever happens first. If not earlier. A sick 15 year old can be left home alone unless they’re sick enough to need constant supervision or are disabled and unable to deal with life like abled kids that age.

      2. carrot cake*

        Volunteering at soup kitchens, Big Brother/Big Sister, picking up trash at a park, etc. DOES “a service to society.” As such, why are you reducing the time commitments of non-parents to “a travel hobby” or “running club”?

        Is anyone really that simple?

        I’ve just answered my own question: “I think maybe the company realized this is what it takes to get parents (read: mostly mothers) not to quit.” Mostly mothers? Hoo boy…

        1. Chirpy*

          Right? ALL of my ability to volunteer is because I don’t have my own kids taking up my time. I spend my volunteer time on other people’s kids, the least those parents can do is make sure we live in a society where I’m not treated like a second-class citizen because of my lack of biological children.

      3. Katie A*

        I don’t agree with the OP of this thread, but I do agree that caretaking and other time commitments aren’t equal.

        People who need caretakers have needs that mean non-caretakers will have to do more sometimes. It’s not about the caretakers themselves, it’s about the people who need the help.

        I might need to give up dinner plans if someone needs to work late and the options are me or my coworker who needs to get home to their aging parent because the home health aide only stays until 5:30. I might hope they’d be able to pick up some more work elsewhere to even things out, but my dinner plans are less important than taking care of someone because, all else equal, nothing bad happens if I miss out on that, while something horrible could happen if they don’t get home.

        1. Bird names*

          Sure, and if that is an occasional thing and also communicated openly, I don’t see the issue.

      4. Bird names*

        Cool story, if only it were that simple. I’m certainly glad no one ever had to figure out a new health issue for example or had to deal with a stigmatized or invisible illness that they are reluctant to be open about at work (many such letters here).

    33. Head Sheep Counter*

      No. You don’t get more rights by having offspring. Its a slippery slope. The more you claim because of your fecundity the more people will push back and not necessarily just because we are women with cats who vote. You have a right to create the family you desire (or if you are lucky to live where there’s still choice… to not create said family). But I have a right to a fair and equal workplace. This means that the benefits for one should be for all.

      Families come in all kinds of packages and all kinds of people need extra time and balance in their lives.

      I’d also suggest you think about what the consequences of tying work to insurance have meant in the US and whether or not your really think that model should be extended to other aspects of your life.

    34. Childfree and sick of selfish parents*

      No, Jeanine, parents do NOT need “extra time, and more work/life balance than someone who isn’t a parent” and I’m NOT sorry to say it. That’s selfish and inhumane of you.

      You remind me of the parents I had as bosses long ago who threw massive fits over me having to take leave I had earned to go out of state to tend to a sibling with severe mental disabilities when my parent (the caretaker) was unexpectedly hospitalized.

      They tried to deny my leave with “But WE have CHILDREN! We need to BE HOME ON TIME! Can’t you just get SOMEONE ELSE to do it?”

      It took me saying, “What, should I let my sibling with the mental age of a four year old in a grown human’s body wander the streets alone and be harmed so YOU can GO HOME on TIME? Do you understand that my parent is IN THE HOSPITAL?” before one of them felt shamed enough to approve the leave.

      And they bitched and moaned for weeks that ohhh, they had to work ONE evening shift to cover for me. The other non-parents and I worked all the evening shifts because of THE CHILDREN.

      (I am capping because they were using those sanctimonious tonalities.)

      People without children have the right to equal work/life balance and equal benefits. The policy the LW described is bullshit and should be named and shamed.

      And attitudes like yours are why I don’t do parents at work favors until I make sure I will get the same favors back. I’m tired of being screwed over by selfish, entitled parents.

    35. Green great dragon*

      As a single parent of two young children, and a demographer, nope. No-one should be having children out of “altruism” – there’s no shortage of people in the world, and plenty of people who want children, we don’t need to offer bribes to encourage people to have kids. Instead, offer flexibility to everyone, as much as you can. Normalise part-time working (for part time pay), jobshare etc wherever possible, even for high-level jobs. Have better ways to accommodate parents taking a few years out the labour market and coming back in. Randomly offering extra time or money just to parents is not necessary.

      1. Chirpy*

        It’s not even a bribe! It’s a secret bonus level nobody knows about until they actually have a kid!

      2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        APPLAUSE
        Heck yes. We’re all humans, with various demands on our time. Let’s make work more humane for all of us.

    36. Hydrates all the flasks*

      Free daycare would solve a lot of problems but what this company is doing is not actually that, and is pretty irrelevant to the “how do we make life better for both working parents AND EVERYONE ELSE” discussion.

      Non-parents have demands on their time too. I’m childless and not partnered up but I live with my retired, elderly parents who are starting to have more health issues. That has affected my availability at work sometimes and I’ve been lucky to have an understanding boss who has allowed me to work from home or hasn’t complained about me even taking PTO if needed. And we’re not even getting into my own health issues, or stupid stuff like the car broke down, someone has to be home to let the cable guy in (my parents are retired but still fairly active), no doctor’s office ever has hours outside of 9-5 Monday to Friday, etc.

      So yeah, I could also benefit from more remote work flexibility, or more PTO, more money or even just more random bonuses, more discounts on lyft/uber/the gym, “go ahead and sign off at 2:30 who cares,” a higher 401k contribution, and whatever else this letter dreamed up.

      So your argument that “[parents] need things like extra time, and more work/life balance than someone who isn’t a parent, sorry” is extremely false and honestly just gives militant whackjobs like the r/childfree group more ammunition to go off (which makes the rest of us normal childfree people look like lunatics. And that in turns gives lunatics like JD Vance Power and Associates ammunition to keep attacking us as “childless cat ladies” who don’t deserve a place in the Gilead he’s trying to push through if he and his boss are elected).

    37. AC36*

      Not necessarily. You don’t know what someone else is dealing with. They may be helping to care for aging parents or have health issues they are managing. You’re assuming a lot just because someone doesn’t have children.

    38. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      Sorry, why do I need less work / life balance because I’m not a parent? Like, I get that being a parent is difficult and demanding – I have a bunch of friends with kids – but why does that mean that I shouldn’t *also* get work / life balance?

      Why shouldn’t we *all* get caregiving benefits? I ask this as a person who recently flew across the country for a few weeks to take care of my mother after hip replacement surgery. I’m fortunate that my employer was very willing to work with me to make that happen (I worked part days while I was away because we were on deadline and used PTO for the rest of the hours). Another colleague is caring for her mother, who has a life-threatening illness. I’d rather see all of us get grace and flexibility, including parents.

    39. Orv*

      My only problem with it is it tends to come at the expense of people who aren’t parents. They’re the ones who end up picking up slack, working nights and weekends, etc., so parents don’t have to. More flexibility for parents almost always means less for everyone else.

      I agree with you about daycare, though, at least as long as there’s staff hired for it and it’s not just everyone else having to supervise people’s kids on top of their other jobs.

    40. SayHey*

      Uh, no. Your narrow definition of family is a huge problem. Who are you to tell others how much work/life balance someone needs or deserves?

    41. Rufus Bumblesplat*

      No. My non working time is not less valuable just because I chose to be child free.

    42. Beth*

      This isn’t true.

      It is true that some people have life circumstances that require more flexibility and work/life balance than others. It is true that some parents fall in that bucket.

      But people who are managing a chronic illness, or treatment for an acute illness, also fall in that bucket. So do people with elderly or sick family members who aren’t their kids. Many people have responsibilities and needs that they need to balance with work–parents aren’t unique in that.

      And, inversely, not all parents need extra flexibility! The classic case is a dad who brings home the household’s income while mom handles the household and kids–he might enjoy the chance for more family time, but let’s be real, he doesn’t NEED it. But even in households without a stay-at-home parent, many parents are able to work a standard work week without needing any kind of accommodation.

      Employers should accommodate employees who need flexibility, to the extent they reasonably can, regardless of why the flexibility is needed. They should not single out parents as a class.

    43. TheBunny*

      No. No. No.

      Parents are no more important than any other employee. It’s ridiculous to even say this. I don’t have children, but I have out of work commitments, and a family, and pets, and appointments… why are these less important than things that involve a child?

      I promise my elderly cat’s Cardiologist appt is more important to me than your child’s dance recital.

      I’m guessing the bulk of the replies to this are similar…I hope.

  8. roann*

    HIGHER RETIREMENT MATCHING! I would lose my ding dang mind over that! My mouth just fell further and further open reading this list, I don’t have anything constructive to add.

    1. Project Manager*

      same! I would want backpay matching for this once I found out about it, it’s just wild and has nothing to do with being a parent!

      1. Happy Camper*

        Obviously rage is deserved!! But a lot of commenters are assuming parents are all dual income. I’m a single parent. So the rage is warranted, just wanted to note that being a parent does not automatically mean you have dual incomes.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          If you’re a single parent then by definition you don’t really have the option of dual incomes, either, do you? Even if you get alimony and child support I assume it doesn’t make up the difference. So this comment wouldn’t factor in for you.

      2. Cthulhu's Librarian*

        As a single person with a single income, One of the nicest and most equitable things an employer has ever done for me was when they changed from a matching system for retirement to just flat contributions for everyone – 8% of our salary each month, regardless of what we could afford to set aside.

        On a single income, trying to reduce my salary by enough to max out my match was borderline impossible.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          This is what mine does–up to 8% for everyone (less if the employee chooses but not based on income or level of employment).

          1. Happy Camper*

            I’m just seeing a lot of comments about how parents have two incomes, a spouse to split home labour with, etc. Which isn’t true for many parents. It might just be me splitting hairs but it struck a nerve for some reason.

            1. Cthulhu's Librarian*

              I can understand the nerve, and I worded what I was saying poorly.

              As a single income household, whatever the size of the household, it is difficult to max out retirement contributions. My employer was alerted to this as part of an equity audit, and responded by no longer requiring a matching contribution from any employee to receive our employer’s contribution to our retirement funds.

        2. Cthulhu's Librarian*

          I realize I may need to clarify this; my take home pay was not decreased, nor was any employee’s. One of our equity surveys highlighted that the money to make these contributions already existed on the corporate balance sheet, and that single income households, especially of lowering earning positions, were the ones least likely to be able to contribute enough to max out their corporate match.

          The change to make things more equitable was for the employer to simply contribute their portion of the funds, regardless of what an employee could afford to contribute. If I add nothing, I get that 8% into my account. If I can afford to contribute 2% of my take home, I can; similarly, if I could contribute 10% of my take-home, I may. Regardless of my contribution, my employer will contribute 8% of my current salary, which does not come from my paycheck.

          It was a remarkably pleasant surprise when they announced the change (and was announced very lowkey as well, which was surprising).

    3. Jake*

      To me that’s the one that is so blatantly over the line that I have a hard time seeing how it got there.

      The rest I can see as a snowball effect. That one though is just crazy.

      1. roann*

        I’d be willing to bet the thinking was something like, “Well parents have to put kids through school, so they have less to save for retirement and could use a higher match” but that’s such a walnut-brained take. It’s not materially different from “We need to pay this married man a higher salary for the same work because he is the provider for his family.”

        1. Chirpy*

          Sure, but the frustrating flip side of that sexism is we never see employers saying “we need to pay this single woman more because she doesn’t have a man to provide for her.”

          I too would be demanding back pay on the retirement matching *at minimum* because there’s absolutely no excuse for that. This is insane.

    4. Sedna*

      Yeah, that’s exactly where I blew up too. There’s no fig leaf about job flexibility or improving the community (a lot of which I’d be supporting if it was offered more equitably!) Just straight “parents deserve more money than you pathetic childless people do”. Get bent.

    6. Tempest*

      Honestly it doesn’t sound legal. I don’t know how they would get that through a 401K audit, unless they are misrepresenting what it is.

      2. Paint N Drip*

        I totally agree! I typed out a longer comment that got eaten, but generally knowing how retirement plans are set up… I think there is some active deception going on in the company so they can offer these secret benefits. I’m glad OP is leaving, because I believe there is some serious trouble to be found during an audit/investigation

    8. All het up about it*

      This is the one that made GASP out loud.
      It literally has NOTHING to do with flexibility and is just straight favoritism that could cost employees a great deal of money.

  9. Stella70*

    All my kids have fur or scales, but they can be extremely costly, too. (I have spent close to $11,000 this year on my dog.) I know that doesn’t equate to children, but this is so far imbalanced, it’s fairly shocking. I would talk to everyone I worked with….particularly, those with kids. Watch ’em squirm, I say. ;)

    1. RCB*

      Exactly! My furkids are incredibly expensive, especially when they get older and need lots of medical care, and employers do not provide leniency for this.

    2. COHikerGirl*

      My daughter is 18. I currently have two furry children. The furry ones are more work. And they can definitely be expensive! Our boy had some seizures and none of that is cheap. Or easy (meds every 8 hours). (But he’s taking after Mom and now we both have our own neurologists!)

    3. not nice, don't care*

      It equates to children in that pets are a choice, as are children for most parents.

    4. Ask a Manager* Post author

      I mean, the argument is that raising kids benefits society and raising cats doesn’t. I say this as a childless person with 9 cats (and those 9 cats are unquestionably less work and expense than a single human child would be). I think what this company is doing is bullshit, particularly the secrecy, but I don’t think the “pets are expensive” argument works well against it!

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        The secrecy is the telltale sign and clincher, at least IMWO. The biggest reasons to keep it secret are because it’s a very bad look and to keep those who are being excluded from demanding (and applying leverage to achieve) inclusion.

      2. Head Sheep Counter*

        The old saw about raising children benefiting society would ignore the ways in which it doesn’t. For example, I have no say (nor should I) in the fitness of someone to be a parent. However, if you are going to whip out the society benefit argument… I want proof. How can you prove that your child and child-rearing will produce a productive member of society? How will you not be adding to the overpopulation problem and the warming planet? Oh you don’t want to prove these things??? then please tell me… what qualifies as a societal benefit?

        I think rescuing animals is a verifiable society benefit.

        2. Raktajino*

          > How can you prove that your child and child-rearing will produce a productive member of society?

          It’s like student loan forgiveness: Your child spends 10-20 years as a teacher in a low income school, a medical professional in an at-need region, or working in a non-profit, or you have to pay it all back out of your retirement fund.

          (If only)

          1. Head Sheep Counter*

            Right? Because if you waive that society benefit flag up in my business… then… its only reasonable to go down this exact path.

            FWIW I don’t want to go down this path – largely because the related path of forced maternity is so deeply disturbing. I do wish we had mandatory parenting classes/licenses and more options for children in homes that do not provide a safe environment.

        3. Can’t believe it*

          The survival of the species is an a priori benefit in the way it is being used.

          If everyone stopped having kids the human species will go extinct in around 100 years. Unless your a misanthrope of the highest order that is generally considered a bad thing.

          1. Head Sheep Counter*

            There’s no way that everyone will stop breeding. That’s bonkers. The population growth outside the US alone will sustain “humanity”. We do not need to incentivize… unless its one specific (white) group one is trying to “protect”.

            But actually… I don’t know… I might be the misanthrope. Animals typically do not go to war and abuse each other the way we do. This moment in history is not making a compelling Humanity is GREAT argument (looks at… all of it…)

            1. Hannah Lee*

              Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, have been known to “go to war” with other chimp groups, including repeated attacks over extended periods of time.

          1. Head Sheep Counter*

            No… its very crap to claim a benefit that is not verifiable. And to use that as your cudgel to make everyone else have less than you. I believe the Margaret Atwood book painted the future where women are only good for their wombs… fairly accurately.

            Painting the argument as it benefits society begs the “how?” portion of the question. And I don’t think that’s a good direction to go in frankly. Use a different argument or better yet don’t set benefit policies that harm one class of employees. We should get the same benefits regardless of our fecundity.

        5. Anon for This*

          I am the parent of a severely disabled child who, indeed, is not a productive member of society, at least by capitalist measures of productive. He is going to live out his life in an institution, supported by taxpayers. He is probably never going to do income-generating activity, or if he does it will be very limited token activity.

          Head Sheep Counter, no, no one can prove in advance that their child will be a productive member of society. Thank you for rubbing it in that my child is worth less to society than a stray dog or cat.

          1. Eria*

            Did you “whip out the society benefit argument” to argue in favor of all the extras (some of which aren’t particularly closely related to raising children at all) parents get in LW’s letter that non-parents don’t get? If you didn’t, then you’re just taking a snippet of Head Sheep Counter’s comment out of context.

          2. Head Sheep Counter*

            I appreciate that children come out into the world with a whole host of abilities and disabilities. I don’t personally advocate for setting a value on a child or on parenting skills.

            I do take strong offense at the idea that having a child makes a person more valuable because it “benefits society”. That argument is gross and begs the corollary question of how? How does it benefit society. Please don’t use that argument. We all have value (even horrible criminals have potential for value).

            I believe the argument begs from distant moldy days of needing workers for factories and needing certain types of folk to “combat” the impacts of immigration. These arguments… don’t apply in an over populated planet that cannot continue with the massive climate changes that are occurring.

      3. louvella*

        I would argue that rescuing animals from shelters benefits society. Purchasing them from breeders doesn’t.

    5. Grayson*

      I frigging get it. In the past year (June 2023 to present), my partner and I have jointly spent… $26,552.36 for our 3 cats which included end-of-life care, emergency hospitalization, vet visits and routine grooming. And that’s just the ones I could find offhand.

  10. Problem!*

    And here I was thinking management at my old job telling the schedulers to put non-parents on mandatory OT (unpaid because exempt) because we “had nothing to go home to” was bad. Yikes.

    2. Contracts Killer*

      Still bad. I think this falls under – just because someone has it worse doesn’t mean you don’t have it bad.

      1. Paint N Drip*

        +1
        That’s a horrible work environment (with cruel management, I hope that ‘reasoning’ was surmised instead of said aloud). OP’s is too but in a different way.

      2. Hroethvitnir*

        +1 That’s awful, and I feel like the people most enthusiastically told “it could be worse” are not those who need to hear it.

  11. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

    Probably also worth noting that if the company retaliates against employees for talking about this, that would be illegal.

  12. Viki*

    I suppose the logical question is, does your former coworker have tangible written proof or is this just a piecemeal hearsay?

    If this is real, than it’s horrible. But some of this sounds like it could very well be negotiable at signing (ie the days off, and the flexibility), or grandfathered in (gym memberships–at my company, there was a very cheap gym membership in an old building. When we switched buildings, we lost that amenity, but those with memberships already could keep it).

    I’d just make sure you gather real concrete evidence before you make big moves, rather than just what your coworker says.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Yeah, it would be helpful if the ex coworker could forward the document they received with all the parental benefits. A lot of this sounds egregious, but it seems like if all the parents are currently keeping it secret, it’s really easy for them to deny it without additional proof.

    2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      The coworker received the benefits so its not just piecemeal hearsay. Its from their own personal knowledge.

      And honestly, the OP doesn’t need to become Columbo and prove anything. It can literally be presented as this is what I heard. Then let others take it. There’s proof somewhere. But OP doesn’t need to find it if every organizes to pushback.

    3. Claire*

      This 1000%. I’d ask for a lot of proof before doing anything drastic. I’d also try to verify with another parent coworker.

    4. Kyrielle*

      I was going to ask if this coworker is known for stirring stuff up for the fun of it, because this is so beyond the pale I wonder if they were exaggerating or messing with the OP. But OP is leaving, so still doesn’t have a lot to lose if that’s the case, probably.

    5. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      What a weird response. The coworker received these benefits. That is proof. Then they told the LW. The LW can now share this with all their coworkers. They need no further evidence. This isn’t a trial.

      Also… you’re going against commenting rules by refusing to accept the facts in the letter. Nobody asked you to come up with “plausible” secondary reasons these benefits might exist and that the LW totally misunderstood everything.

      1. Kyrielle*

        I think Viki, like me, is questioning not the LW but the former coworker who spoke to the LW. I would hate for the LW to take this on only to find out the former coworker was stirring stuff up or exaggerating. Which is partially down to ‘do you have proof’ and partially down to ‘do you know this person well and do you think there is a potential they mislead you?’

        If LW trusts their word, then yes, no reason not to go forth. And since LW is leaving, it’s safer than when staying. But if it’s not true, it could still mess with LW’s rep with coworkers and managers at the job.

        1. AndersonDarling*

          I worry that the former coworker received these benefits and was told that they were for parents only, but there may have been another reason. Like the CEO dishes these benefits out to their buddies to keep secrets. Or maybe the benefits are only for dads, or people who have mustaches. All we know is that this coworker got special benefits and they were told it was for being a parent. We don’t know who else, if anyone, is in the special benefits club.

      2. Kara*

        My first thought was ‘what does the OP know about this coworker?’ This is outrageous if true, BUT it seems as though OP would have observed some of these benefits in the wild (unless parents are so rare on the ground here that OP wouldn’t have noticed a correlation). That the OP says nothing about observing anything and talks only about the information given by the coworker makes me nervous. Does this coworker have a reputation of stirring the pot? Have a known grudge against upper management? It might well all be true! But my advice would be to dig into this a little more before doing anything irreversible.

    6. Polaris*

      This right here, is the way. You need to see this documented somewhere before taking on the behemoth. If not “documented”, can you get a pattern documented by observation?

      If it weren’t for the retirement matching and ERISA violations that I didn’t even know where a thing til I saw them – I’d say “go forth and raise hell”….but those give me pause. How exactly is a firm getting around THIS?

    7. The Unionizer Bunny*

      I suppose the logical question is, does your former coworker have tangible written proof or is this just a piecemeal hearsay?

      Not sure what “piecemeal” means here. If you hear a few details here, and a few details there, you’re allowed to reassemble them into something that might not be true. If management wants this to not happen, tough. They can’t shut down speculation just because they’ve controlled their own leaks well enough to avoid any “tangible written proof” being available to anyone. Workers don’t have any duty to only talk about things that management has confirmed as fact through official communications.

      There is a reason to hesitate before you repeat rumors, but it’s not about the size of the moves you are making – it’s about the nature of the rumors. Some allegations lose the protection of the law, and should be avoided; if you knew (or if you reasonably should have doubted, aka the “reckless disregard for truth” element) that it was false, but said it anyway, that’s liability. In this case, if OP found the information credible, there’s no need to verify it any further – but that’s probably exactly what a reporter would try to do, if OP contacted one as GrooveBat recommends below. In the meantime, though, OP can repeat this rumor, even if it has the effect of damaging the company.

    8. WellRed*

      The LW provided a very detailed list so let’s take her at her word. I won’t even address the silliness of asking if this coworker is a trouble maker. #eyeroll

      1. Mary*

        One can take the OP at her word that her coworker told her these things and still question if the coworker is trustworthy.

  13. Lightbourne Elite*

    Love the idea that you only have a family once you have children. Guess my parents, my in-laws, and aunts and uncles don’t count as “family” and never need any care or additional support of any kind.

    1. Cmdrshprd*

      In some places they are but not as close.
      My company offers tiered bereavement leave 5 days for “immediate family” and 3 days for “extended family” but their definitions are a bit suspect but likely common?

      I mostly get the tier but my biggest disagreement is in not counting a direct sibling as immediate family and allowing 5 days versus the 3 under the policy.

      5 day leave counts for parents (direct not inlaws), spouse, and children.

      3 days leave counts for parent in-laws, siblings (direct and in-law), grandparent, grandchild.

      1 day leave count for uncles/aunts, nieces/nephews.

      1. Hannah Lee*

        My employer also has tiered bereavement benefits.

        But they also have right in the policy that the benefits apply not just to sibling, parent etc, but to any person who has a similar relationship to the one described. So, raised by a grandparent? The leave for parents applies.
        Super close to a cousin who is like a beloved sibling to you? Sibling leave applies.
        Friend of the family who was like a grandparent or aunt/uncle, that leave applies.

        Basically, an employee is grieving over the death of someone the loved, it’s not the time to rules lawyer them over which grief counts and which doesn’t.

        The number of people who are going to abuse that flexibility, and the # of work hours it could cost aren’t worth hassling people who are grieving to quibble about it. (and if someone is going to abuse bereavement leave, there is a pretty good chance they’ve got other performance issues that need attention anyway)

        1. ScruffyInternHerder*

          I wish there were a little more flexibility offered.

          I took PTO for a dear friend’s father’s services. He was a beloved extra dad to me and to my own family.

          I would receive five days bereavement leave for my sibling, with whom I might talk to five times in a calendar year, maybe see every other year, and with whom I am not particularly close.

          1. Cmdrshprd*

            Not sure if you are talking about your specific policy or the one @Hanah lee above mentioned.

            My understanding is that @Hanah lee’s policy is flexible and that your extra dad would count as a parental.

    2. Fluffy Orange Menace*

      My 60 something year old colleague once said her daughter claimed she wanted to “have a family” as a way of saying she wanted a baby. My colleague immediately asked if the daughter wanted to be disowned if she wasn’t deemed a family. I found it hilarious how she told this story.

    3. star_lb*

      I was coming here to say that! I actually had an interaction WITH one of our HR staff members last week where she eluded to the idea that the only reason my husband and I can claim to have a ‘strong relationship’ was because we don’t have kids, and that a TRULY strong relationship can only be defined as such if you are able to weather having children together. Like, yikes, sorry I’m in a fake marriage!

  14. Guest*

    It sucks that this sort of thing isn’t illegal everywhere. I hope LW does spread the word and the org starts losing staff.

    2. Ama*

      They’re going to have fun staffing their evening and weekend events when all the non-parents quit and the parents won’t volunteer because they’ve never been expected to before.

      1. Silver Robin*

        can you imagine the follow up letter from one of those parents?? I would pay to see how that goes down

  15. sofar*

    Bonkers. The only thing I can see being reasonable is that parents can work from home when schools are unexpectedly closed during the school year. But also … if it’s a weather closure, make that for ALL employees.

    1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      Extra sick days make sense but should be for anyone with caregiving responsibilities, not just parents. If you’re caring for an aging parent or a disabled spouse you’ll need more sick days than someone using them just for your own needs too.

      1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        Or just give everyone a reasonable number of sick days :) The ones who need the extras will take them. And you can deal with instances where you suspect people are using sick days when they shouldn’t.

    2. Guacamole Bob*

      In my city, there are a bunch of different suburban school districts and sometimes a couple of them will close schools because roads are very icy in outlying areas even though the areas where most of my colleagues live just get rain.

      So I wouldn’t suggest that anyone tie WFH directly to the schools, but instead to allow general flexibility for things like school closures, bad weather, needing to meet a repairperson (especially to handle an emergency), taking a sick pet to the vet, etc.

  16. Tree*

    I’m confused by the different matching for the retirement plan. Assuming the letter writer is US-based, I’m not sure how this is permitted under ERISA.

    1. Kat*

      How would that even be administered? Retirement matches aren’t processed by a benefits person manually calculating everyone’s percentages and then transferring $100 into Casey’s account but only $50 into Taylor’s account.

      1. Angstrom*

        Easy enough. People would see a maximum available match of 2.5% or 5% when they logged in to their 401k account to set their contribution percentage.

        1. Beezus*

          yeah but a different match level is almost always tied to a job tier ie staff vs executive. there’s a lot of legal rules around not just offering everyone the same thing. and there’s annual discrimination testing and IRS 5500 filing for 403b and 401ks.

          1. Lurker*

            Yes, I was thinking this too! How are they passing their compliance testing? (Unless they have a safe harbor plan, which I don’t know enough about. Maybe those can have different match levels?)

            And the payroll person/people would have to know/see the discrepancy in match limits. This whole thing is bananas — so many employees have to be in on it to administer the parents-only benefits that I’m surprised no one has let it slip yet. Either they’re all parents, too; OR maybe they also get the benefits in exchange for their complicity?!

            1. Hydrates all the flasks*

              Yeah that is where I (if I were the OP) would maybe have wanted to see the documents from the friend/coworker because like how does that even work then??

              And how is no one noticing that at every company event, a good 30 people are skipping the volunteer duties to instead show up with their families as guests? Or that they’re logging like every day and being unavailable after 3 PM?

              *Every single employee with kids* at this organization has somehow kept their trap shut all the time about this for this long?

              It’s like with moon landing conspiracies—you’re telling me that *every single person* involved in that “TV production” could keep that big a secret for that many years??? “People” as a rule are not nearly that smart or that reticent. Especially Americans (sorry not sorry my fellow Americans).

        2. Kat*

          It’s not about the employees selecting the match they want—yes, that part would obviously not difficult. It’s about how it would be administered on the back end and pass the IRS testing and filing requirements.

          1. Hannah Lee*

            I also wonder what this looks like in their retirement plan documents, which have to be provided to ALL participants.

            Those spell out exactly how the plan operates and I believe include participant classes, vesting schedules, loan rules, withdrawal rules and employer contribution guidelines (elective contributions, matching, corrective contributions) Does this company issue those (as they are legally required to do)? Are the documents edited or fudged to obscure the different tiers of matching? (which would not be legal)

      2. Indolent Libertine*

        I’m sure there’s a field for “company 401(k) match” in whatever database the payroll administrator uses. All that has to happen is that someone directs that Jane Doe’s match is now 5% rather than 2.5, and it will stay that way until it’s changed. Even if payroll is processed by an outside vendor, this would be easily communicated and managed. But I’m with Tree that it really seems not legal to offer different match percentages to different employees at all; I was under the impression from talking with our tax guy that whatever match a compay offers has to be equally offered to all employees.

        1. Sled dog mama*

          I worked in a place where the maximum match was tied to years of service (worst place I’ve ever worked).
          So there it was something like match up to 3% for under 5 years, up to 5% for 5-10, etc. maybe they have something setup like that and are lying to whoever administers the plan

          1. Indolent Libertine*

            Ah, OK, interesting, thanks for clarifying that. At least under that system, all employees with the same length of service get the same match regardless of anything else. I seriously can’t imagine that it’s legal to offer a higher match based on family status, though.

    2. Radioactive cyborg llama*

      +1. this might be worth talking to an employment lawyer about. Or EBSA (part of the department of labor).

    3. Beezus*

      It’s not but if the company is a small business with a SIMPLE, they could potentially run an off-cycle payroll just deferring taxes and a contribution for specific people. :/

  17. tabloidtained*

    “If you need to leave to pick up kids from school, you don’t have to work once you get home; as you might imagine, when given written permission to pass tasks off to others and log off at 2:30 pm, almost everyone does.”

    Is this enforced as official “secret” policy or is it something that all the parents…just do? Does a manager say, “Hey, now that your kid is headed to school, you can just cut out at 2:30pm everyday to pick them up and you don’t need to log back in!”

    1. Jake*

      Yeah, I don’t understand how this is all a secret, yet there is obviously a bunch of people taking off early and taking advantage of the cancelling day of due to child care.

      I guess the overall package is a secret, but the favoritism isn’t.

      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        I think that’s it. If you don’t have kids, you probably just think your teammates are slacking off or getting a lot of leeway, but not that there’s a formal program in place that allows them to do that.

        1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

          I think it really also depends on your role, department and how big the company is. You might figure that your coworker came in early or is working later at home. Or that they are using PTO or something.

        2. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

          I wonder how that would work when people ask managers about that? I know on here, the advice is usually ‘eyes on your own paper’, but there are plenty of people who won’t follow that and instead would go to management about “Soo is slacking off, they left at 2.30 4 times this month and didn’t log back in from home or anything” – and what would management say in response to that?

      2. BethRA*

        People might be aware of that as a practice, but not that it’s actual, formal policy. And they definitely wouldn’t see the other (very substantial) financial benefits being provided.

      3. Dust Bunny*

        If there are different departments they might not realize it. My employer is only about 35 people but since we’re in different parts of a large-ish building, and one department is off-site, I have absolutely no idea what hours most of my coworkers work. They might not even be full-time, for all I know. A lot of them can do more of their jobs from home than I can so if they aren’t in this afternoon I don’t think it’s odd. It’s also not my job/place to track their hours, and I’m busy with my own stuff.

      4. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

        Coworkers might assume that they are leaving early because they came in early – it’s not outrageous to have agreed different starting hours to e.g. enable daycare dropoff.

      5. Lenora Rose*

        Or they assume that the parents are logging back on later to make up those hours with work -from-home that can be done after formal office hours, as they would be doing with many other businesses with flex time. They might envy the flexibility without realising that the parents don’t actually log on again.

        I mean, we’ve seen letters from parents saying “my coworkers keep telling me ‘it must be nice to be able to leave early every day’, but they don’t get that I log on from 8-11PM every night to catch up.”

        So if I saw all the parents leave early, I’d remember those letters and assume it was more of the same.

        The worst of these are the ones that are totally invisible, like the retirement matching or the free memberships or the comp time for events attended as a guest.

  18. Bookworm*

    As a “childless cat lady” (but without the cats), I’d spread this far and wide, that childless people are discriminated against like this by this company. Every single professional full time I’ve worked since the early 90s has given parents free rein and the childless get dumped on. The parents never have to make up any time when they leave early/come in late. Childless person has a doctor appt? You have to make up the hours that week. I’m done with it.

  19. Typity*

    I am childless myself, but I like kids and am delighted by babies — no anti-parent or anti-child animus here. But this is horrifying.

    I wonder, does this company only hire the childless people so they can subsidize all the goodies for the parents?

    1. mreasy*

      This is a good point like… is it that the leadership is super-entrenched and wants all this stuff for themselves, so they make it the parents policy?

      1. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

        Leadership doesn’t need a secret policy for most of this. They can give leadership WFH privileges, gym memberships, and extra PTO without a secret parent-favoring policy. An equivalent to the 401k match could be enacted just by paying the leadership 2.5% (or 4% or 5% to account for taxes) more in base pay.

    2. Paint N Drip*

      Interesting. I wonder if you look at the breakdown of ‘parents’ vs. ‘childfree’ employees, if the groups mostly broke down the leadership line.

  20. Baela Targaryen*

    None of this seems plausible, particularly the difference in benefits (if this letter takes place in the US…. the DOL would like a word)

    1. mreasy*

      Yeah it’s not legal but it is extremely plausible. I have worked for large companies who had illegal labor policies and practices. If nobody reports it they don’t get in trouble.

      1. Hannah Lee*

        Hence the cloak of secrecy the co-worker described.

        I’d like to think I’d be dropping a dime to my state AND federal wage and hours, labor, employment law hotline SO fast if I were LW.
        Maybe, maybe take a moment to see if there were some co-worker who could confirm these policies exist? Or ask HR, hey, if I became a parent, what would be available for childcare, insurance, other benefits to see if they could get some corroborating info first. But yeah someone outside this company who enforces employment, labor law needs to hear about this.

  21. Not One of the Bronte Sisters*

    I wonder if this organization is affiliated with or run by Republican Evangelicals. Maybe they think they are encouraging people to have children. Does anybody remember the Tom Cruise movie “The Firm?” One of the associates’ wife says to Tom Cruise’s wife (played by Jeanne Tripplehorne), “The firm encourages children.” Jeanne Tripplehorne takes a moment, then looks her straight in the face and says, “How does the firm do THAT?”

    1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      But if that were true, they’d have to make the benefits public, or how would people know they’re available?

      1. Hannah Lee*

        Plus, even if it were public, it wouldn’t encourage procreation, it would just keep people without children from ever wanting to work there, unless they were already planning to become parents.

        Childfree workers, those who don’t plan to have children (and any person with or without offspring who believe employers should not be in the family planning, societal engineering business) would just avoid applying to this place.

    1. Speaker of the Childless Cat Ladies*

      He wants to give extra votes to people with children, so maybe?

      “Hillbilly ERISA Violation” coming in 2025.

    5. TMarin*

      aaaand someone had to bring partisan politics into it…………… This has to do with one company, not an entire political party or two.

      1. wes*

        You talk like partisan politics exists completely independently of the life real people live everyday, but it doesn’t. There is a relationship between the two, so people made mention of it when it was relevant to the situation at hand.

  23. hohumdrum*

    this is so wild it reads like something made up on r/childfree

    LW, is this like a religious affiliated org in some way? Or a tech place run by one of the billionaires into white supremacy and pretending it’s just about low birth rate, like Elon Musk?

    Those are really the only scenarios where I can imagine this much strangeness around promoting having kids.

    1. Excel Gardener*

      Yeah it’s so wild I admit I’m doubting if this letter is describing a real situation. The part about keeping all this secret is really hard to believe for me, the kinds of organizations that would do something like this would proudly do so. Why go to the trouble if it’s all a secret. Apologies to LW if this is real, but it just smells fishy to me.

      1. Flax Dancer*

        The parents who benefit from this definitely have a vested interest in keeping it secret; if it got out, the company could be pressured into either (A) giving those benefits to childfree employees as well or (B) NOT giving those benefits to parents anymore. Which would be cheaper for the company? That’s right – option B! Who’d want to risk losing benefits like that? Frankly, most of us would keep quiet about that situation too if spilling the beans meant losing those incredibly generous benefits!

        1. Phony Genius*

          Which is why I disagree with the very end of Alison’s advice: “boo to all the rest of them who chose to stay quiet.” It is not their responsibility to risk benefits that their employer is providing, unless those benefits somehow break the law.

          Whether employers should be allowed to keep salaries/benefits secret is a different conversation.

        2. urguncle*

          The only company the seemingly could afford to do this, both on a scale where they are losing that much work time AND paying out more in benefits AND coordinating all of this is large enough that this would have leaked out years ago. Not to mention, them doing all of this for parents, but not advertising it to prospective employees doesn’t fit the cost/benefit analysis.
          The only plausible explanation to this is that these benefits were for very high level management: few enough people that they could do this sort of thing and keep it quiet.

          1. mreasy*

            We didn’t hear about Boeing’s internal policies of cutting corners until deadly plane crashes brought it to the fore. It’s incredibly easy for me to believe that this is happening at a company without anyone external finding out, unfortunately. Tons of companies in my industry illegally hire independent contractors when the law requires them to be on salary, for example. It’s incredibly common when people dont’ know their rights or are afraid of being fired for saying anything, even anonymously.

      3. Binky*

        I think the problem I’m having is that it can’t be that secret. Unless all of HR/payroll/managers/audit are parents, some non-parents have to be administering at least some of the benefits.

        1. Paint N Drip*

          YES. I was thinking this is well. There is some concerted effort to keeping this secret. Maybe it’s a benefit for parents… and also anyone who knows about it (HR). Maybe OP should go to HR and tell them she would like the upgraded bene package please :)

        2. The Unionizer Bunny*

          Unless all of HR/payroll/managers/audit are parents,

          Companies already manage to preferentially hire/promote only employees who are going to support their abusive habits, it’s not a stretch to assume they’d be selective about only allowing parents with agreeable attitudes around favoritism into the higher ranks.

      4. Baela Targaryen*

        I’m having trouble believing that THAT many people kept a secret of this size for years, and that the DOL never found out about the benefits disparity.

      1. Brain the Brian*

        Sorry — hit post too soon. The only workplaces I can see this happening are religious orgs and an Musk-esque company. What other organization would willingly give up this much money and productivity to everyone with kids? It’s truly bizarre.

        1. Olive*

          I went to a religious school that had previously lost a lawsuit in which they had paid male head of households more than any other employees. (I was a child, going there wasn’t my choice). And that was a very small organization, only about 100 people employed and they still weren’t able to keep it secret. Like other people in this thread, I also am having a really hard time believing that a large company had this as a formal policy and kept it secret all this time.

        2. lost academic*

          Musk would never give anyone anything that meant they weren’t in the office working.

        3. Hannah Lee*

          I worked at a company with 10s of thousands of employees and while I never heard of anything quite like this, there were a LOT of preferential programs for certain employees that were just not wildly publicized.

          Though it was a publicly held company, key C-suite and board positions were held by members of one family and their allies. The key execs were all bigoted bullies, and they would openly penalize anyone who challenged them … not just by simply firing them, but with demotions, very publicly chewing people out, putting them in impossible to succeed situations and holding them responsible. Sometimes it was petty and cruel just for the sake of it (for example, a manager showing up for a scheduled meeting with an EVP, the EVP coolly stating he wasn’t available at that time, but would be the next day at 7 am, and he wanted the guy there for a 3 hr meeting. The guy explained …”tomorrow’s Saturday, and I coaching my kid’s soccer team tomorrow morning, can we do it next week?” Nope, Saturday at 7 or never.)

          Those who were “in” wouldn’t dare speak out because they’d immediately be “out”
          And those who weren’t “in” often didn’t realize what they were missing out on or just assumed what they did know about was simply out of reach to them. There was a lot of stuff that went on, a lot of payouts and extra perks and at least some of it that I was aware of was if not illegal, really in a grey area (like ‘suggesting’ employees make political contributions to Republican candidates … with an implied “or else”)
          The leadership was arrogant enough that they just did not care.

          1. Brain the Brian*

            This is awful leadership, but it’s still not as ridiculous as this letter. There’s a difference between individual perks (and perks afforded only to execs, which are actually quite common) and giving out an entirely different — and better — benefits packages to employees with children than those who are childless. My parents, who spent a decade and went through a loooooot of medicine trying to have me, would have been fine with the former and livid at the latter.

            1. Hannah Lee*

              My point wasn’t that this was worse, I agree with you on that.

              Just that there can be really big compensation, benefits differences, preferential programs for certain employees (not just execs) and it isn’t necessarily broadly known, or if known, ever really questioned or challenged. Even in big companies.
              In my former employer’s case, the authoritarian, bullying style of executive management contributed to that culture of secrecy ie “Those who were “in” wouldn’t dare speak out because they’d immediately be “out” ”

              Which could be how this has flown under the radar at LW’s company.
              (may have been a nesting fail with where my comment showed up)

    3. Tammy 2*

      It’s weird because they aren’t really “promoting” having kids if no one knows they get these benefits until they have kids and gets initiated into the special benefits. Like the illuminati for procreators.

      However, it doesn’t seem that wild to me–it’s the most extreme preferential treatment for parents I’ve ever heard of, but not by so much that it sounds implausible.

      1. HSE Compliance*

        I really should not have laughed as hard as I did at “illuminati for procreators”.

        Honestly, I’ve heard enough people be *incredibly* vocal about All the Benefits Parents Need that the Childfree/less Do Not Deserve that the entire situation doesn’t surprise me that much. For sure the most extreme I’ve ever read, but agreed, not implausible.

      2. Beezus*

        I wonder if it’s some holdover for certain employees from long ago they still want to provide so were advised they have to now offer to anyone meeting XYZ status by legal at some point and just twisted it up weirdly.

    5. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      I’m picturing a chain fast food restaurant that serves chicken, except on Sunday, and a giant chain craft store.

      1. Bella Ridley*

        Chik Fil A employs like 40,000 people. In no universe is it plausible that they have this kind of insane policy and every single parent keeps it secret.

        1. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

          I’m thinking the corporate offices, rather than each restaurant.

            1. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

              It’s amazing how many open “secrets” are just accepted and ignored in society, so I doubt it’s an actual secret, it’s just suddenly news to the OP and not written in the employee handbook. As so many have speculated, certainly the child-free employees would have noticed some or all of this behavior. When a company is blatantly getting away with other forms of discrimination, it’s certainly plausible to assume that they are also offering extra PTO or discounts to their preferred employees too.

            2. Ms. Eleanous*

              Employees who don’t rock the boat?
              This company might hire with that in mind. (they would never hire me.)

      1. urguncle*

        An absolute wild claim when daycare, when you can even get it, rivals most mortgage payments. Believe me, they’re a lot more interested in forcing someone to give birth than they are about having children.

        1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

          I would say it’s cultural rather than policy-based. The politicians certainly give lip service to everyone having children even though they don’t always enact policies. But think about tax breaks for families. The more children, the bigger the tax break.

          2 of the biggest non-policy policies in the US are everyone should have children and everyone should own a house. Many laws and cultural norms revolve around the belief that both of these are right and good and natural and self-evident.

      2. Prudence Snooter*

        Except for laws/policies that would actually prioritize kids’ well being, like free preschool, affordable childcare, and any kind of paid parental leave.

    7. Cat Tree*

      I mentioned it above, but I doubt it’s motivated by religion. Religious conservatives generally don’t want to encourage working mothers. They want women to have a bunch of kids and stop working.

    8. Jay*

      That was my first thought.
      I could absolutely see Musk trying something like this, knowing it would get thrown out for legal reasons, so he wouldn’t really need to fund it for long. Then touting that as a “vast left-wing conspiracy against parents” for the next couple of decades, until he launches his ass on a one way ticket to Mars.
      I would want to know if these policies are universal to ALL people with children, or, if it turns out that only specific GROUPS get them. It changes a lot of things and how you would handle them, if only the white, Christian, married, parents get the full “secret benefits menu”.
      I would also want to know if this is a long term thing, or if it only showed up a few months ago, once the CEO started spending too much time on the worst 4-Chan message boards.

  24. Lex Talionis*

    When you share the info don’t forget about Glass Door. And my all time favorite Reddit, it has quite a reach.

  25. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

    Alison, do you think this also might run afoul of state antidiscrimination laws related to discrimination against family structure? (not sure this applies in OP’s case)

    Normal things I’ve seen that benefit parents: Health insurance terms re: dependents, tuition remission or stipends, etc. OP’s employer’s set up is wild. I agree — tell everyone. They have no right to ask people not to disclose this information, and if they believe it’s the right thing to do, they should be able to defend it publicly.

    1. QED*

      Depends on the state law. For example, NY defines familial status as being a parent, legal guardian or designee of a parent for someone under 18 that you live with or being a pregnant person, parent, or in the process of gaining legal custody of a child. So unlike affirmative action, in NY you can’t “reverse discriminate” against people without children.

      1. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

        Yes, that’s why I asked if the employer’s policies may run afoul of states with familial status antidiscrimination laws where favoring people with children over people without children would be unlawful. I understand that these laws vary by state and that some protect parenthood, while others protect other familial relationships or responsibilities (e.g., California does not protect parenthood but protects caretaking/familial responsibilities discrimination).

    2. Academic Librarian*

      What about people who have adult children? Do they still get these extra benefits or is that limited to people with minor children?

  26. HonorBox*

    LW, this was stated above, and I’d second it: Is this in writing anywhere? The departing coworker who shared this with you was awesome for doing so. I’m curious about any written guidance they might have received at any point outlining any of this. Or if they’d be willing to put in writing all the benefits they’ve received as a parent. Because if it is written down, holy hell will there be larger problems than they’ll have as this trickles out.

    I have to imagine you won’t be the only one looking to leave. If the company doubles down somehow and tries to justify this because it “isn’t illegal” or is somehow more “fair” to parents, non-parents will probably start to look elsewhere. If they stop providing these benefits because word got out, parents may look to leave. This is going to be a huge mess, and I can’t wait to read an update.

  27. H.Regalis*

    Fuckity hell damn, that is A LOT of extra benefits. This is just wild. Tell everyone. Hell, call a local reporter if you can.

  28. Someone Else's Boss*

    I can’t understand why they even want to limit this to “parents.” Sure, maybe giving “dependent care days” as an extra for people with kids makes sense, but why not extend the 401K match to everyone? How much does the owner of this company hate childless people (including those who are infertile, I assume) that they want this policy? My guess is they wanted to offer this perk to a few people and couldn’t keep it a secret from other parents. How did they keep it a secret from everyone else for so long?

    I would find a new job and send a mass email on my last day. But that is a dramatic fantasy and not a recommendation :)

    1. GrooveBat*

      Because if this is accurate the company clearly is driven by a pro-natalist agenda. Extending those benefits beyond the so-called “traditional family unit” employees conveys a stamp of approval on the non-traditional employees, which the company clearly frowns on.

      1. The Unionizer Bunny*

        There may be a similar (yet discriminatory in an actually-unlawful sense) agenda in play here.

        Comparisons with other employees is the best way to get at this – in a large enough organization, there must be some people who have adopted. Is there a difference in treatment between natural-birth employees and adoption-only employees? Between adopting couples of “one man / one woman” and “two women”? Between two women and two men? What about marrying someone who has an existing child by another parent?

  29. Abogado Avocado*

    This is worth consulting a lawyer about. In particular, the differing retirement contributions seem as if they would be violative of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

    1. Beezus*

      yeah I missed that–I have done a lot of non-discrimination testing and 5500 work and that seems like a red flag that even if not explicitly illegal, that your provider and wealth management 3rd party should be aware of as a risk.

  30. Beezus*

    It could potentially be a pay equity discrimination issue if they’re in a state that considers PTO “accrued wages” and a large enough company. Depending on how the PTO is structured, as people get raises, accrued old PTO hours become more valuable etc etc.

    I previously worked with European businesses opening a US branch and did have to explain how “baby bonuses” aren’t really done and can be unfair even if not illegal which usually they understood even if they still wanted to do it. I also had to explain if they ever wanted to M&A or something, these practices had to be disclosures.

    But either way, it smacks of poor company culture AND as a senior HR person, a lack of consideration how this potentially impacts the business by both HR, inside/outside counsel, and C-Suite management. tell everyone and get out of there.

  31. Alex*

    What kind of proof of having a child do they require to receive these benefits???

    I’d be so tempted to lie. This is “Bobby” my “child”. Yeah. That’s it. No I definitely didn’t get this pic from the internet somewhere…I swear.

    Jokes aside, this is WILD. RETIREMENT MATCHING??? WTF?

    1. Space Needlepoint*

      I would like to hear from someone versed in employment law regarding whether the gap in retirement matching is grounds for a lawsuit. That’s the most egregious on the list, IMO.

      1. pally*

        I don’t know about 401K plans, but we had a pension plan for all employees (management and workers). The employer contributions consisted of a percent of one’s annual salary. By law that percent had to be the same figure for every employee in the company. In one sense that is fair, but in another sense it isn’t. That 8% of $100K salary was larger than 8% of $50K salary. Managers got more. But that was the law.

        1. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

          401(k) plan matches are typically the same, a percentage of the employee’s income.

    2. Prudence Snooter*

      I was thinking the same thing! Like how does this actually work? Do they require birth certificates? Do you get the same benefits if your kids are grown adults no longer living with you or do you have to accept dramatically worse benefits once your children age out? What if, god forbid, your child dies? Would HR pull you into a meeting to let you know your benefits are getting cut or would you just figure it out when you get turned away at the gym?

    3. Peanut Hamper*

      I would just use one of my own childhood pictures. “Here’s a picture of Peanut Jr. Why, yes, he does like to wear 80s clothes. He’s a huge fan of The Goldbergs, in fact. No, sorry, I can’t bring him to work because he attends boarding school in another country.”

    4. Coverage Associate*

      Yeah. Like, I am open at work about being married and not having kids. I am less open about my spouse being disabled. But it’s possible even HR wouldn’t have this information, if I didn’t put family members on my employer sponsored health insurance and just provided the completed tax withholding paperwork rather than any worksheets.
      It’s obviously unusual for someone to be secretive about family status when signing up for benefits, but I could see some parents waving away benefits information about kids if their co parent had really good family benefits. For example, it’s common for divorce decrees to require the children to be on one parent’s health insurance. The other parent could ignore all information about insurance for children in that case.

  32. nnn*

    The weirdest thing about this is things like the affiliate discount program that are unrelated to having kids and would be trivial to make available to all employees!

    Also, I’m idly wondering how easy or hard it would be for someone to just say they have kids without providing proof…

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      They would probably require the SSN of the children. Typically parents have their kids on their health insurance and are listed for next of kin for life insurance.

  33. pally*

    What about the salary paid to the parents vs. non-parents – is that comparable or not?

    Given benefits are considered part of compensation, couldn’t this be viewed as unequal compensation for the same work?

    I didn’t see any mention of salary comparisons. Just had the wild thought that maybe…just maybe…they paid the non-parents more in salary. Probably very low odds of that being the actuality.

    Do these special parent benefits go away after all the kids leave home? Or are they retained for when the grandkids show up?

    Still, why do this?

    It would be interesting to hear the management’s justification for this.

    1. HonorBox*

      It would be interesting for sure. And I’d be really curious to hear how the additional costs are justified to a board of directors, investors, etc. too.

      1. pally*

        Good point re: BoD and investors

        Maybe they can be persuaded that it’s a cost saving measure- we only have to provide SOME of the employees these parent benefits.

    2. Beezus*

      what you’re talking about is a total compensation package which isn’t part of non discrimination testing RE the benefits–I don’t think it’s bad to offer to pay spouse/dependent premiums for employees along with the employee for insurance; it’s a good IMO. But you’re right that depending on the state, the extra PTO is considered accrued wages along with base salary AND the retirement is particularly egregious bc it could be violating the law for disparate matching practices.

  34. Anonforthisq*

    This is crazy. I also wonder the level the person was who told you this information. I worked at a previous organizations where certain levels or if you did certain work you got more benefits. Most organizations were not open about it but people knew generally the benefits.

    When I worked in a war zone I got danger pay, R&R, free housing (or $ for housing), per diem, driver, security, etc so my take home pay was a lot more than people sitting in the US or Europe. I got extra 5 days off every 6 weeks for R&R in addition to any vacation and sick leave I accrued. I also got 1-2 weeks of home leave they paid for every year again in addition to any vacation I accrued so I could be at home for 3 weeks if I wanted. We basically worked 24/7 when we were on site and it was dangerous and we could be hurt or killed. We had better medical insurance and we also had higher life insurance policies paid for by the employer.

    I also have worked places where retirement matching is different depending on level. I find more senior people get more benefits because they are meant to work longer hours/ might be more vital. Not always the case though!

    I also wonder if some of this happens at signing. I know someone who is up for tenure at a major university. They told me when they sign tenure they will shop it around and ask to have their children be admitted to the university and when admitted get free tuition (the university pays partial for everyone who works a certain number of years) and ask for a special mortgage rate and down payment paid by the university (again university has special mortgages to faculty and executive leadership but not regular staff). This is on top of a ton of extra things they get that staff would never get. You’d never be able to ask for your child to automatically be admitted when they haven’t even reached the age of 10 (from what this person said their kids couldn’t get in with a bad GPA and I don’t know if it’s true or just gossip but I was shocked when I heard it). They also get insane sabbaticals and they wanted to ask for sabbaticals for less time worked. Administrators or staff don’t get sabbaticals. This stuff happens and usually it’s the people who they view as more valuable get those benefits. Not saying it’s right just stating what u have heard.

    I think it’s good you bring it up as a group but I would do a little more digging so you actually know what’s going on. I wonder if your organization will just pull benefits like this all together if it causes such a ruckus.

    Was this person hired by a head hunter who got it for them or they were hired as a VP and you’re a manager? A colleague was hired by a head hunter (at same level as me) and got way more benefits and $90k more salary ! I only found out because the head of finance of my department was disgusted,HR and the top person allowed that to happen , but the search firm did it all, they knew what to get for the person. I had no idea and the head hunted person ended up doing no work and mismanaging money!

    Good luck it does stink if true but I would do a little more digging. I have also seen people leave organizations and say things that are not true so make sure you have facts not opinions or a grudge by someone.

    1. The Dude Abides*

      Seconding the sliding scale re: retirement match

      At a prior job, you had to work 2 years to be eligible for the company 403b. The employee contribution was a flat 2%, and the employer match was based on years in
      2-4 years – 4%
      5-9 years – 6%
      10-14 years – 8%
      15+ years – 10%

      There was also a separate 401k that had zero matching, but people could contribute to.

    2. mreasy*

      We should take the OP at face value given they received this information from an employee who was a parent and presented it as a total package. Especially in the US, it’s incredibly easy for me to imagine that a company run by people who are obsessed with kids/repopulation/big families/etc. would do this and not care about the law.

      1. Mary*

        I am taking the OP at their word that they were told this. But it’s now third hand information, and I have no reason to trust the OP’s coworker. even if I trust the OP.

  35. Childless Plant Lady*

    I wanted kids but for many reasons haven’t been able to have them. This would just be an incredibly painful reminder of that. Not that it isn’t unfair to purposefully childfree people–it is unfair to everyone who doesn’t receive these benefits!–but ouch, what a gut punch for people like me.

    2. Paint N Drip*

      Totally agree, and commiserate. My biggest family planning hurdle is finances – if my company was paying parents MORE (in benefits, if not wages – based on the info we got, I wouldn’t be surprised if parents did get paid more) but ~secretly~, I’d be incandescent multiple times over.

  36. ElleBell*

    OP, I would love to see an update to this if you end up having one. This is so far beyond the pale of any childless vs parent benefits. I would devastated if I were struggling with infertility and learned of this extreme benefits difference.

  37. GythaOgden*

    This is tangential, but in addition to being excessive and biased, it also sounds paternalistic towards the parents — along the lines not necessarily of the ‘company towns’ but of places like Bourneville and Saltaire in the UK or Disney’s original plan for Epcot — where the corporation not only provides a job but also expects people to use its facilities off the clock as well. The obvious analogy is to the FAANG tech companies providing ping-pong tables etc so their employees stay at work longer or don’t feel they have to go home to chill out, but without the assumption that you even have to stay at work to benefit from those perks.

    I get some quite nice benefits at work in the public sector, such as participation in a discount club for people who work in the emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) and health service that is primarily useful to me when I go to one of the Merlin theme parks. (That actually feels like a nice gesture from private businesses towards the key workers who keep society safe and it only costs £5 every two years, making it dead easy to earn back that fiver in a few purchases.) But the benefit package in the OP feels like it oversteps boundaries between corporate and personal/family life that feels just a little bit creepy.

    I totally agree this is bonkers. Companies should be family-friendly rather than family-obsessed.

    1. Ann O'Nemity*

      It actually reminded me of some international employment policies that benefit parents to increase the birth rate. Some of these countries are facing real demographic challenges with an aging population and generations of young adults who chose not to have kids. The benefits were given by the government and/or companies (who received tax cuts) to encourage young people to have babies. From a societal level, the demographic cliff is terrifying, as our economies are based on the assumption that consumption will rise or at least stay stable.

      However, an important difference is that these unequal benefits are communicated loudly and clearly. It’s not a secret benefits plan for parents.

    2. UKDancer*

      I think the difference with Saltaire and Bourneville is that they were built in a time when people didn’t have a safety net of benefits or free education and what they offered was better than the alternatives. I had great uncles in the 1930s who worked for Bourneville and people queued up for those jobs because the conditions were so good and you got access to housing. So essentially they were offering something that wasn’t available elsewhere. Also it wasn’t a secret.

      My company offers various benefits and some of them are for spouses (e.g. you can buy a reduced price gym membership including a partner / spouse and I think National Trust membership but I might be wrong about that one) and one of them is childcare vouchers but they’re not a secret. You can look on the intranet and see what benefit options there are and decide which ones work. I don’t use the childcare vouchers but do sometimes use some of the other benefits.

      I think the key thing is to be open about the available benefits and not treat it like a secret that isn’t shared.

    3. 1LFTW*

      Companies should be family-friendly rather than family-obsessed.

      This is a perfect way of putting it.

  38. Apex Mountain*

    Maybe I’m naive but how could it go unnoticed that all the parents work from home the whole summer? And nobody before this ever spilled the beans, even unintentionally?

    If nothing else you’ve got good secret keepers there.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      I don’t think it’s unnoticed so much as either parents don’t actually WFH all the time, all summer, so it’s less obvious; or non-parents assume that there is another arrangement; or non-parents know to shut up if they want to keep their jobs.

      I would not be surprised if someone negotiated extra WFH during the summer. I would be outraged, though, about all the other perks they get that are more easily hidden.

  39. Velawciraptor*

    LW, when you are figuring out if this violates civil rights protections in your state, the key terms to google are “protected class” and “family status” or “familial status.”

    I’m in a state where family status is protected at let me tell you, in your shoes, I’d be on the phone to my employment attorney so fast it would make your head spin.

    Good luck.

  40. slr*

    OP, do you have any company-wide meetings or townhalls? This is the kind of question that needs to be asked publicly so HR can’t hide it anymore. I can’t get over the retirement matching, that’s so egregious.

  41. JD Vance*

    Of course the childless cat ladies have a problem with supporting hardworking parents.

    (THIS IS A JOKE–JD Vance does not read AskaManager)

    3. The Prettiest Curse*

      He doesn’t read this site because he’s too busy enjoying himself with his furniture!

      1. Hannah Lee*

        And coveting taxpayer property, like Air Force 2, hoping one day it will be HIS.

        (along with its leather sofas and seats)

  42. CV*

    If you can get it in writing, send it to the nearest large newspaper.

    If it is really such a great thing, as Alison says, the company will be happy to have it be public.

    2. CV*

      I forgot that many broadcast news stations have a desk/ segment where staff publicize a problem and work towards a solution. They are called different things depending on the network.

      Something like that might work also.

  44. Friday Hopeful*

    Wow I’m shocked and angry for you. Besides the obvious favoritism with special discount benefits and working from home, more PTO etc. I can’t see how giving more retirement money to some employees and not others in the same positions as them can be legal.
    I personally would write it all up, make copies and post it in the lunch room and all the restrooms for everyone to see.

  45. Cathy*

    I think the higher retirement matching may very well be illegal. Retirement savings plans like 401(k)s, 403(b)s, SIMPLE IRAs, and other tax deferred savings plans are governed by their plan documents which have to be approved by the IRS and have to comply with the tax code. You can’t give people different matching percentages based on family status or have a special plan that’s only for parents. The law specifies who’s allowed to participate in any given retirement plan, and none of the criteria include parenthood.

    Maybe they’re giving the money as a taxable bonus rather than a match in a tax deferred account, but either way I think it’s worth reporting this to the IRS for a fraud investigation. Fill out IRS Form 3949-A. You can also call the Dept of Labor at 1-866-444-3272.

    2. Dry Cleaning Enthusiast*

      You know it’s a good AAM post when you’re giving out specific IRS forms to fill out in the comments.

    3. The Unionizer Bunny*

      OP, pay attention to Form 3949-A’s instructions: you might want to instead fill out Form 211, which entitles you to a reward if you can obtain evidence of such fraud. Try checking SEC filings for their publicly-registered ERISA plans – or see if any third-party websites have a copy. (Financial-transparency groups often file FOIA requests and publish the results.) If you can show that their public filings are different than what was mailed to you, that’s evidence.

      If you can’t, though, not all is lost – if you can still contact the coworker who told you about this, well, they can prove it to the IRS even if they’re not willing to share their financials with you. (That they came to you probably means they wanted it handled by coworkers, not by the feds, but the chance of a qui tam action under the False Claims Act may change their mind – read up on it and run the numbers based on average salary for the people you know about, so you can show them a graph with “here’s how much money is probably involved at each year it could have started, and here’s what your share would be”. You already weren’t going to see any money from this, so the incentive on your end is that justice will be served.)

  46. Sparkles McFadden*

    So what happens if you don’t have kids when you start working there and have a kid later? Do they call you in and say “Surprise! Here are the benefits we’ve been hiding from you until now”? Do they keep such people at the “childless” benefit level to protect the secret?

    I’m really surprised this HAS been kept secret for so long because it’s completely insane.

        1. NerdyLibraryClerk*

          Oh, that’s a nightmare waiting to happen. Let’s compound your grief over losing a child by taking away or reducing your benefits.

    2. HSE Compliance*

      I would hazard a guess that it’s partially through the grapevine or when a new parent signs their kid up for insurance that the company finds out and then sneaks the info over, potentially even just under the guise of “hey, now that you’re a parent, congraaaaaats, we want to make sure you understand the benefits as they apply to children” which anyone would generally assume to mean “hey this is how you list them on insurance and the info you need, how coverage works”, not “hey here’s a crap ton of benefits we don’t list anywhere LOL”.

      Then, if parents are being perceived to take off more or WFH more – those of us without children aren’t going to necessarily blink an eye. That happens in a lot of places. Probably less in other places, but someone could honestly assume that it’s just more taken advantage of at that office without thinking that there’s clearly some benefit structure shenanigans.

  47. toolegittoresign*

    This is so wild it makes me wonder what the ratio of kids:no kids is for this company. I also wonder over the years how many people left the company after having kids because they needed some of these things. I can see the schedule flexibility but the retirement matching and gym membership are truly over-the-top.

  48. Sunshine Gal*

    This is gross, the secrecy just proves that the company knows what they are doing is wrong. I am 100% on board with offering ALL employees flexibility for whatever their life brings their way.

    For me, I have complex health care needs with one diagnosis that is fatal if not managed and treated every second of the day. I also work full time, and I am single without children of my own. Also, I am the sole caregiver for my elderly mother who has vision loss due to cataracts (unable to be treated surgically), she also has limited mobility even with mobility aids, she has cancer, and she has early stages of dementia. I do all the cooking, cleaning, household errands and administrative work (i.e. bill paying), running to appoints for my mother and myself, and have to worry all day long that my mother may have turned the stove on to make lunch and then has forgotten to turn the stove off.

    I would love to have any of the additional perks offered to parents, and so should every other employee regardless of their family structure. Talk about a surefire way to kill moral.

  51. nnn*

    The other weird thing is that parents who stop working when school’s out pass their tasks to others rather than just getting assigned fewer tasks.

    I work for a large organization with a number of different flexibility options, so if someone said simply “I leave at 2:30” and structured their calendar accordingly, no one would think twice. Maybe they’re part-time, maybe they have some kind of flexed schedule, whatever.

    But if, every single day, they were like “I leave at 2:30, so I need you to take this task,” that would quickly attract notice.

  52. Hydrates all the flasks*

    Oh my god. Wow.

    So I’m going to be the morbid freak here and say:
    1. Imagine being an employee who is child-free NOT by choice (i.e. infertility) and finds out about this.
    2. Imagine being an employee who did have a child and then that child *died*. What then??? AND what if they were a single parent too and the other parent is just not in the picture at all??? Because I doubt the company is recognizing childless *couples* as **family** units, you know?

    Does the employee in scenario 2 get kicked off this super secret benefits package before their child’s death certificate has even been signed? Or does HR wait until after the funeral? What if the employee has more than one kid, are they still able to access all their special discounts and perks???

    If a previously child-free employee gets pregnant while working there and announces it, how soon do they hear about the Pretty Damn Discriminatory Even if the Law Disagrees Benefits “Package” setup? After they tell their boss that they’re pregnant? After they ask HR about maternity leave details? When the birth announcement goes out to the rest of the office? What kind of a mind-bleep must that be if you start working there when you don’t have kids, then you do acquire kids and find out about all this?

    God forbid you hear about these extra perks, and maybe even can start taking advantage of them during pregnancy (the extra PTO and schedule allowances would be great for all those doctor appointments after all!)–and then you lose the baby at any point. Especially if the baby passes away after delivery. What, you come back from your combination maternity/bereavement leave and it’s bye-bye extra PTO, bye bye extra-fancy discounts, etc?

    ALSO, can you take advantage of this tomfoolery if your kids are adopted? If you’ve adopted them while working at Psychos ‘R Us? Or you’re always fostering kids but don’t necessarily adopt? (I worked with a guy who had 3 or 4 adopted kids but also sometimes fostered kids on a short-term, emergency basis). Do you get bumped back to the Worthless Child-free Losers Benefits Tier during the weeks or months you might have no foster placements in your home?

    IDK, I just feel like a company that would go to all this trouble to be Like This would probably be super wedded to very strict ideas of nuclear family setups to the point of not even considering things like adoption, IVF, surrogacy, egg donation, etc.
    I mean, what if you adopted a kid or were fostering-to-adopt and then suddenly, the birth parent(s) reneged and took the kid back at the last minute? Bye bye, extra benefits???

    What if you’re employed there, you have kids, your whole family is living it up on this Midas-level meal ticket…and you and your partner divorce and you do NOT wind up with primary custody. You maybe wind up with no custody at all for whatever reason (or limited custody at best). Hell, your partner moves clear across the country with the kids and puts them on their job’s insurance plan if they weren’t already. No more “signing off at 2:30 PM because I gotta pick up the kids from school” for you, buddy, right? In theory? Unless you just maybe don’t tell anyone at work that you messed up your marriage that bad, I guess.
    Am I being a little facetious? Yes, kind of. But is it hopefully showing just how incredibly [redacted]-up this whole situation is? I hope so. Because WTF. Like maybe it started small, as a totally different thing, from good intentions, and has just spiraled out of control to…whatever the heck this all is. Like, what, people without kids can’t benefit from Lyft/Uber discounts too??? What even is that?!?!

    The petty, spiteful side of me says that ALL the childfree employees should just quit en masse one day with one email resignation laying out the differences between the Family Benefits package and the other “benefits” plan. CC it to any of your employer’s competitors if feasible. *And* BCC it to all the local news organizations. (I told you I was petty).

  53. Smallbusiness*

    My first thought was that the company leadership want to promote people having children. But the promotion only works if employees know about it, which here, they don’t. I would really love to hear a candid explanation from whoever is behind this justifying the substantial additional benefits.

    1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      You’ve got people in the comment already defending it. It’s always pretty easy to justify discrimination, I find.

    2. mreasy*

      I can’t imagine there is a reasoning behind this outside of something religious or otherwise… political? Or maybe the owners of the company just think people without kids aren’t worth a damn. There’s certainly no business case for offering these benefits to parents. I wonder if they have had a hard time in the past with retention for parents and they’re doing this as a (not smart or legal) response, but they don’t want to offer to everyone due to the cost?

      1. Smallbusiness*

        I spent the last 20 minutes thinking about it and here are the farfetched ideas I came up with:
        1. Someone in leadership felt they were not supported when they had kids and now that they have power, want something better for the parents in their organization. Also a cats cradle guilt situation.
        2. Someone in leadership was hurt by a person who did not want kids/did not like kids and sees this as revenge.
        3. Someone in leadership lost their own kids and doing this makes them feel better.
        4. HR is doing this without leadership knowing because it benefits them.

        1. Coffee Protein Drink*

          The one that occurred to me was someone in leadership forced a pregnant person to quit and this is overcorrection.

  54. Hydrates all the flasks*

    And look, I am sorry for the novel I wrote but hot damn, of all the crazy letters Alison has run over the years, this is definitely one of the crazier because it’s so…banal in a way? It’s not a boss wanting an underling to donate an organ. It’s not even someone demanding that a work-related letter be left at a gravesite. It’s different levels of perks–so many perks!– for different groups of people and while it might not be discriminatory in all localities, it’s just still messed up enough in its banality that I’m like, “….A lot of people sure made a lot of choices here. Wow.”

  55. ThursdaysGeek*

    I worked at a place that covered 100% of our healthcare insurance costs (they still do). So a single person got health insurance covered by the company. A family with 8 children got health insurance covered by the company. But it wasn’t a secret – we all knew that families got their health insurance paid. It was a great benefit, more so by a family with 8 kids.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Secrecy is imo the main issue wrt insurance and PTO
      e.g. in Germany, each parents by law get 10 extra paid days per child, double for single parents and of course a year’s paid maternity leave. I’ve never minded that because it is open, paid by the state and public policy (that could be theoretically be changed next election but no political party advocating this would win)

      BUT There is no justification for lower subsidies to non-parents for gym etc and lower pension benefits are absolutely outrageous, as is shorter working days and having comp days for no-show volunteering.

      1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

        and iirc state insurance here also covers the entire family for no extra cost, even for 10 kids under a certain young adult age.

    2. carrot cake*

      That does sound great.

      I just wish we would de-couple health insurance and healthcare from employment altogether.

    3. mreasy*

      Yeah! It’s not that the company spends $X on a family and $Y on a non-family, it’s that everyone is given equal access to benefits they could use, like the PTO.

  56. EarlGrey*

    what really stands out to me here is the audacity of all these parents who KNOW these are secret, unfair benefits and are out there using them daily. Not the financial bonuses that just passively accrue, but the leaving tasks on others’ plates daily and at every one of these off hours events. It’s just a level of being okay with foisting work off on others that takes a lot of chutzpah. All the time on this website we see folks stressing out about taking a day of leave when their team will need to pick up slack, and here are these guys leaving at 2:30 daily.

    Which tells me it’s not just a hidden benefit, but a work culture that doesn’t include reasonable consideration about how and when to use your flexibility. Are all the managers approving this flex time also parents? If I’d just learned this information, I’d be taking a hard look at the parental status of the folks getting promotions, raises, big clients, etc., the folks who end up setting office culture expectations via hard or soft power.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Any benefits systematically kept secret by an employer are likely a red flag that needs examination.
      It is astonishing that only now is one parent spilling the beans – and only now that they are leaving and will no longer have these extra benefits.

      1. EarlGrey*

        I am shocked that it’s never come out accidentally, too. “Hey Bob, we’re both signed up for Saturday’s event so I’ll see you then!” “Oh, I’m going to have a ‘childcare emergency’ then, wink wi—oops, you’re not supposed to know about that…”

        1. Apex Mountain*

          Yeah this was what I was thinking also – and besides that what about the HR people who had to administer the benefits? I guess they all had to have kids to get hired?

  57. Anon-mama*

    I would be tempted to do any of the following: post this letter on the breakroom fridge and wire in block letters “this is our company” and see what happens. Email my manager and HR and say “I just learned about the Family benefits package. My elderly relative/dependent adult sibling live with me, are my family, so I need to switch to the free poool membership and have my 401K matches adjusted. Who do I talk to about that?” Or email this company wide “I’m just asking questions.” Maybe cite ERISA.

    I completely understand that the working world is not in sync with caretaking world–I think I read about a Nordic country that has many workplace core hours the same as school hours (on top of parental leave for long enough to limit daycare use). In the US, it’s either not work at all, not work enough to be financially independent, or have your children in care for 10 hours a day for a decade. So I get the offer of: don’t worry about an extra day or two for sick care. Or, get your kid, but log on later. But I am a parent saying all employees should have the same match, the same limits/freebies on discounts, and flexibility. If the non-parent employees can’t use those benefits, then they get the financial equivalent.

    What this company is doing is awful.

  60. Hydrates all the flasks*

    If the company is truly doing separate retirement contributions based on parental status and it’s a US-based company, then the Department of Labor is going to have a *field day* with that, oh boy. That right there is a worth an anonymous tip to the DOL. Honestly, is that even logistically possible? Are there any experts in retirement contribution (*through your employer, for US companies*) in the peanut gallery who would know about that sort of thing?

    IDK, I’d just blast the company name anywhere and everywhere at this point. It sounds like it’s a large org and it can’t be traced back to your friend if every damn parent is partaking in this. (I’m not saying that OP has to necessarily reveal themselves or anything, I’m just saying that, given how big the org sounds and therefore, the level of conspiracy, I’m honestly surprised that it would be kept this secret this long by that many people, successfully. So might as well just blast that company name and policy all over the place before r/childfree finds out and starts baying for blood).

    1. Dancing Otter*

      I think the IRS conducts examinations into 401K/403b plans, which most commonly look at whether highly compensated employees are getting more than their fair share.

      It’s been a while, but I don’t remember /anything/ about family or parental status in the rules. Which could equally well mean that they don’t care or that it’s not allowable to consider.

      ERISA is the other major set of regulations regarding retirement benefits – that’s DOL territory.

      I’m sure there must be people here with a deeper knowledge of the subject…

  61. carrot cake*

    What about women and men who are sterile? They are to get fewer compensations accordingly?

    What the F?

  62. AmuseBouche*

    Okay, I’m laughing at the comments about parent shaving it easy. Do you even know how much it costs to try to raise a child in this country? I know we made different choices (I had kids) and you made different ones but I have had to pay an arm and a leg for any type of childcare, got not paid time off other that what I had saved for childbirth, paid astronomical rates to give birth in a hospital with no complications, get sidelined at work for younger single people who can work harder and more than I can because a full time job in the US salaried is often about two full time jobs, etc. Please tell me more about how this country makes it *SO EASY* to have kids, and that kids are an incentive for better benefits are you even kidding me??

    1. NerdyLibraryClerk*

      What comments about parents having it easy? I see plenty of comments pointing out that parents aren’t the only ones who have it difficult, but that’s not the same thing.

        1. AMH*

          You do understand that not having children doesn’t magically make your life easy, right? That there are different types of difficulties, and some of those “poor childless people with no dependents” have far greater burdens than you, right? (Equally, some parents have it harder than others. Some single people have it harder. Some married people do. What I’m saying is, having or not having children does not solely define the difficulty of your life).

          Obviously our country has enormous holes in the safety net and it’s shameful. We should have better support for childcare, health care shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg (and it costs that much for everyone — yes, it’s very expensive to have kids. It’s also very expensive to have a chronic condition, an emergency, or even a semi-serious illness).

          Take a look at who you’re directing your ire to; I think it’s a bit misaimed.

    2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      I don’t think anyone claimed people would be incentivised by these secret benefits – 18k extra per year – to have more kids; merely that it is outrageously unfair to non-parents

    3. mreasy*

      There would be no problem if an employer offered subsidized or fully-paid childcare, or covered health insurance for children. The problem is that most people can use more PTO and more schedule flexibility and if it’s possible to offer it to anyone… it is unacceptable (and discriminatory) to offer to parents only. It’s also not incumbent on childfree employees to make up work so that employees with children can meet their parenting obligations, even though the latter is time consuming and difficult.

    5. Hydrates all the flasks*

      I don’t think you’re really making the point you want to make here, babe.

    6. AC36*

      With all due respect, that is not what’s being said in the comments. People are pointing out that kids aren’t the only complications people can have in their lives. People have aging parents, health issues, etc. that can be equally as costly or as difficult. Having kids is not justification for the level of extra benefits that OP is describing. Take a bird’s eye view and see outside of your own circumstances.

    7. HonorBox*

      I don’t think anyone is suggesting that parents have it easy. What people are reacting to is the secret benefits that a specific subset of the workforce this employer has. Just because you (and I) have children, does that mean that we’re entitled to extra PTO? Should that mean that we get additional money for commuting? Parenting is hard. But tipping the scales as much as this employer has done to benefit the parents only is hugely problematic.

    8. Head Sheep Counter*

      I don’t know about shaving… but…

      Literally no one is saying anything is easy. We just want the same benefits to be applied. We don’t want to be told that someone is worth more because of their fecundity… that’s gross and that’s how we end up pitting ourselves against each other… which means the “man” wins because no one gets any appropriate benefits for their lives.

      Equal access to benefits and career paths for all employees… is the kind of organization I’d like to support. I’d like to burn the whole place down if you swain in with your “but I deserve… and you should work more for less because…” crap.

    9. Kotow*

      And so you people think you should just get to not work and have the rest of us do your work for no extra pay or compensation. You are part of the problem.

  63. Definitely not me*

    I’m sure this has been mentioned… but if the retirement plan is a 401(k) or similar tax-advantaged savings plan, the IRS would be very interested to know the organization is treating its employees differently based on non-work-related circumstances.

  65. HugsAreNotTolerated*

    I *know* we don’t do ‘Name & Shame’ here. I’ve been reading AAM for over a decade, I KNOW we don’t do that. But holy hell this is SO bad that I cannot fathom NOT following this company’s leadership with a bell yelling “Shame, Shame, Shame”. OP’s co-worker ESTIMATES that they’re getting EIGHTEEN THOUSAND dollars in benefits a year from this company by virtue of being a parent. That is batshit crazy.

    1. mreasy*

      The monetary value is to me a red herring. E.g. my husband’s company covers my health insurance fully, which is probably a $12K/year value – and anyone without a spouse/partner wouldn’t receive that benefit. If this company covers health benefits for spouse & kids, that could easily add up to $18K or more per year.

      The difference is that nobody without kids could use health insurance for kids. Everyone could use extra PTO and schedule flexibility, as well as to have the option for higher retirement matching, free gym membership, etc. Like, my colleagues and I without kids generally use less sick time than our colleagues who have kids, because kids get sick all the time – that’s just math. But if I do get sick or have surgery, I have the same option as those colleagues do, and that’s the important thing.

      All the people who are saying “You must confirm this 100% because it’s unlikely a company would do this” have worked for more buttoned up companies than I have! This doesn’t surprise me one bit.

      1. HonorBox*

        This is spot on. If coverage is provided for a spouse/partner, it isn’t like someone is getting one over on colleagues who don’t have a spouse/partner. Similarly, if the company offers free gym membership but I prefer to do my own thing for exercise, I’m not losing anything. I’m not owed anything just because I’m not using a benefit. When others are getting measurably more, and can access it only because they have children, that’s where the problem comes up.

      2. QED*

        Right–I don’t think the problem is covering health insurance for spouses and dependent children. I think those are great things even though I don’t have a spouse or kids–if that means some of my coworkers are getting a benefit worth a bunch more money, that’s fine. The problem is the rest of it–the PTO (particularly the vacation and personal time), the retirement matching, gym memberships, the leaving at 2:30pm, the getting extra comp time, etc. To me it’s not the value of the package or that parents are offered some kind of benefit that doesn’t apply to people without children. It’s that the company is blatantly saying with this policy that parents should get every perk imaginable just for being parents because being a parent is hard/expensive/time-consuming (which it is!) and non-parents should have to pick up the slack and do more work for none of these benefits because clearly they can and should live for work. And by the way, someone at this company knows that this is wrong and unfair (and possibly illegal) because otherwise it wouldn’t be a secret.

        1. Wilbur*

          I think the scope of it is a bit wild because some of these benefits have to be pretty cheap. Gym membership at a select facility? Not everyone is going to use it and it probably costs less than $1000. Swim lessons? The discount program? I can’t imagine that even gets used that much if the company even pays for anything. Extra remote days? Free.

          If they’re having trouble with getting parents to attend events, then they should look into providing childcare for those events.

  66. EngineerMom*

    This is absolutely wild.

    These are the kinds of benefits that should be universal, to be clear – I’d be in favor of extending the policies to include all employees.

    The fact that so many employees with kids have kept silent is frustrating, but understandable – I’d imagine it’s framed as “if you tell anyone, the benefits will disappear.”

    And how do they even figure out who to include?? Grandparents raising grandkids? Foster parents, but only when they have kids in the home? Siblings raising younger sibs? Aunts/uncles raising niblings? Adults who don’t have kids but are caring for adult siblings with developmental disabilities?

    So much of this is so messed up. Just make the policies available to all employees, and key managers deal with anyone abusing the policies.

    1. jane's nemesis*

      Without knowing this for certain from the letter, I feel quite sure that this is only extended to “traditional” families – mom, dad, young kids. Maybe single parents of young kids too, but probably with some tut-tutting.

      1. Temperance*

        Where are you getting that they are discriminating against single parents and only favoring the typical family setup?

        1. jane's nemesis*

          It’s just a guess! But a company that is this invested in giving “secret” benefits to “families” just doesn’t seem like it’s going to be enlightened about nontraditional families.

  67. Waiting for this go off the rails, because eyeroll.*

    Thought for discussion (with the caveat that I have given absolutely no thought to how this would be administered on the back-end):

    People all deserve benefits. People need different benefits. Offering blanket amazing benefits to all employees might be super expensive for a company (thus, they won’t do it because profit).

    I wonder what a “choose your own” option would look like. Like here’s our standard benefits and now you get to pick an extra three based on what you need more that year. Even if its pick one from column A, column B, column C, etc.

    Option 1: Free childcare. Option 2: Extra 401K match; Option 3) More time off; Option 4) Gym membership…. etc.

    Everyone gets the same basic level of extra benefit, but you get to choose what works for you.

    1. EngineerMom*

      That’s been attempted with health insurance (HMO, PPO, etc.) Employees will choose what costs them less in the moment.

      A better idea is to advocate for all employers to be required to provide basic benefits. That equalizes the costs, and levels the playing field.

  68. KC*

    If I found out that my coworkers were getting thousands of dollars in perks and preferential treatment just because they had children, I would be furious, and I’d probably quit and see if I had a discrimination case as well.

  69. Chirpy*

    “Crazy cat ladies” aren’t angry because of our “life choices”*. We’re angry because parents pull this crap, then have the audacity to tell us we’re literally not worth as much to them – monetarily, socially, morally, potentially number of votes (!), etc.

    * some people are single/ childless by circumstance, not by choice, but whether you want kids/spouse/etc or not is completely irrelevant. There should not be huge gulfs of discrimination based on family status in any direction. And the answer to addressing this inequality cannot be “so get a boyfriend, then” (something that I have actually been told to my face when I brought this up.)

    1. ragazza*

      Yup! And not to mention all the myriad ways single people are essentially penalized for not adhering to the conventional family dynamic.

      1. Chirpy*

        I mean, I’m definitely not in the place I hoped to be at this point in my life, but I have always known that I do not want to date/ marry someone just to avoid being single, and that whether or not I had kids was always going to hinge on finding the right guy because I do not want to do that alone. So I’m okay with not having a husband/ kids because I never found the right one. But I did want them if it did work out.

    3. Meep*

      I really feel like the shift is because the gender pay gap (and the fact fathers are often paid more while mothers are punished) is no longer socially acceptable. Got to keep some women down, if you cannot keep all of them down.

      Inb4: I am pregnant.

    4. CommanderBanana*

      ^^ While still expecting us to support parents by covering at work, paying taxes, being “the village” that everyone expects to have, blah blah blah.

      Let me be clear that I am a huge supporter of things like paid parental leave and I think our society needs to do a lot more to support people who have children, but that support has to come from somewhere and you don’t get to call me a useless waste while you’re demanding I help.

  70. CPA who can’t do taxes*

    I used to do compliance audits for employee benefit plans. Assuming this is happening in the US, there is absolutely no way the extra retirement matching is legal.

  71. Knitting As Foci*

    I wonder how deep this conspiracy goes, honestly. Do initial ads for the job state one thing and then, once the new hire confirms they have kids, a bait-and-switch? Are they threatened to keep their mouths shut?

    This all seems extremely crummy, and smells like a DoL issue (IANAL), methinks. If it wouldn’t be -too- much work for you OP, I’d make a flyer, head to kinkos, and get a bunch printed and posted in your office, ASAP. None of this is okay.

  72. mreasy*

    I just had this thought – folks who are skeptical that this could go on so long without anyone hearing about it: think of how many people find out their coworker at the same level with less experience make more money than they do after years. Especially in the US, workplace culture is very amenable to this type of secrecy around salary to avoid “awkwardness” – if this is being presented as “don’t tell them to avoid awkwardness” it could absolutely go on for years undetected outside of the parental beneficiaries.

    1. 1LFTW*

      I think you’re right. It’s considered rude in most American subcultures to talk about your salary, and employers leverage that norm to discourage workers from discussing their working conditions. Most places I’ve worked have had an implied understanding that this Is Not Talked About. Like, you’ve earned this raise/benefit/perk, but not everybody earned that, so don’t talk about it openly, because we don’t want those slackers to get mad and cause “drama”.

    2. Daisy-dog*

      This was the crux of the Bon Appetit YouTube channel scandal back in 2020. (Conde Nast has since unionized.)

  73. AC36*

    I’d research the laws very carefully, hire counsel, tell my coworkers, and leave…This is ridiculous.

  74. VP of Monitoring Employees’ LinkedIn and Indeed Profiles*

    What happens if someone’s child dies? (“You’re no longer a parent, so we’re taking these benefits away from you.”)

    Good luck with that.

  75. Kesnit*

    This is bananas.

    One of my coworkers has a 15 month old child. For several months, he was leaving 15 minutes early to pick his child up from daycare. (He and his wife have since changed child care arrangements.) That never bothered me because it was 15 minutes. (I know that adds up to over an hour in a work week, but it’s minor. And I take long lunches go to go the gym, so it works out.)

    I kept wondering how the company is getting away with this. And I thought about my last “big office” job (about 15 years ago) and can see how it would work. My office was a cubicle farm. Each of the “workers” had a cubicle while the section chiefs had an office. We worked a flexible schedule and could arrive any time between 7 and 9am. We could then leave 8.5 hours later.

    Extra PTO, Family gym discounts, Business discounts, Extra commuting funds, Retirement matching: Those are not things that would normally be discussed, so there would be no way for others to find out. As other people have said, if HR and/or Payroll are outsourced, there would not even be those employees who know. All the company has to do is tell Payroll “this person gets these benefits” and Payroll enters it in the computer.

    Remote work: Unless you have to meet with someone every day, it is possible that you may not notice how often someone was or was no in their cube. Maybe they are at lunch. Maybe they are in a meeting elsewhere. Maybe they are off sick. Maybe they are on vacation.

    Evening/weekend events: If there are a lot of them, or if there are a lot of people who would be volunteering, there would be no way to notice who did or did not work a certain number of events.

    Not having to work after picking up the kids from school: I was one of those who preferred to arrive and then leave early. I was usually in the office about 7:30, so left at 4. No one thought twice about it because we all worked different hours and those were my hours (as well as the hours of many other people).

  76. VP of Monitoring Employees’ LinkedIn and Indeed Profiles*

    Wouldn’t those benefits count as COMPENSATION? Isn’t it illegal to ban employees from discussing their compensation?

      1. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

        And including benefits. And including working conditions (which WFH should fall under)

      2. Dawn*

        Is it still illegal if you’re not actually banning them from talking about it, just saying, “Hey, if this gets out, we won’t be able to offer you these benefits anymore”?

    2. Just Wondering*

      Posted below that it seems the same to me. Would be a violation of the FLSA, I would think.

  77. TeapotNinja*

    Wow!

    The retirement matching difference is particularly offensive to me. A young person joining the company is going to lose an enormous sum of money on their retirement savings account. Unless, of course, they have a child already or quickly after joining the company.

  78. Check it out*

    IANAL but there are RULES for 401(k) matches and I would be surprised if giving different matches to people doing the SAME job and having been at the company for the same amount of time is legal. I would check.

  79. Flying Fish*

    This feels ridiculous.
    I say that as a parent of two elementary school children.
    There are plenty of ways to fairly help out employees:
    Gym memberships either should or shouldn’t include family members.
    Extra PTO / WFH flexibility could be offered for people with dependents – a spouse with cancer, kids, elderly relatives, etc. they could also do something bonkers (sensible) like paying people for a certain amount of FMLA leave. That adds some gatekeeping in a fairer way.
    Etc..

  80. Jonathan MacKay*

    The pragmatist in me says: Find a kid to adopt, or otherwise become a parent ASAP.

    The realist in me says: This doesn’t seem like an overly sustainable practice…. or there’s something fishy going on – because if it was an open fact, it’d be taken as an incentive for employees to have children…. which has some ethical connotations which are quite uncomfortable to dwell on too long.

  81. HazMatt*

    This is all over the top!

    One company I worked for provided health insurance for the whole family if you had spouse/kids. That did not go unnoticed by all the unmarried people. Compensation needs to be equitable.

    1. PotatoRock*

      That is actually a very common set up, at least for US employers (or at least to partially subsidize insurance costs of spouse and kids). It means that the company spends more on benefits for employees with spouse+kids; but technically the “outcome” is available to all employees (insurance for you and any spouse and kids). Or a similar situation – I am (luckily!) very healthy and cost very little to insure and my medical benefits are not very financially meaningful to me – a colleague might with complex medical needs and regular expensive prescriptions is getting a lot more financial benefit from our insurance, and (large self insured company) the company spends more on the colleague. But we both are getting the same insurance benefit.

    2. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      I’m sorry I don’t understand your complaint. Are you saying that people who don’t have a spouse or kids should be able to put other family members (like parents or siblings) on the health insurance? Are you saying it’s not right that the company offers health insurance for people who do not work directly for the company?

      I could be wrong but I believe the reason why most employers offer family health insurance for spouse and kids is because 1. kids aren’t going to be able to get their own insurance and its expensive to do private insurance, but mostly because when there was 1 income the wife (usually) was the one to take care of the kids and stay home so she was not able to get insurance except through her husband.

    3. metadata minion*

      That seems very standard. Did people not have to pay extra for a couple/family plan?

    4. 1LFTW*

      If everyone’s children and spouse are covered, that’s equitable. As someone without a spouse or children, that’s a benefit I don’t need, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t need it or shouldn’t get it.

      The problem here is that workers who have a spouse but no kids, or no kids and no spouse, are getting vastly less compensation than those who do.

  82. Childless*

    As someone who is childless due to a medical condition (not by choice), this is horrible. Women were historically treated as valuable to society only if they had children, something that I am grateful is starting to change. However, if I were to find out that I was treated as less than other coworkers simply because I am unable to have children…ugh, this feels really discriminatory.

  83. Just Wondering*

    Wouldn’t the employer instructing the employees who are parents to not discuss these additional benefits be an FLSA violation?

  84. not neurotypical*

    Everybody is acting surprised, but we’ve got a major party candidate for Vice President who thinks that parents should get extra votes. And almost everybody on here supports paid parental leave without insisting that non-parents have the same opportunity to collect a paycheck while pursuing a personal passion. Want several weeks off every time you do something that teenagers do accidentally? You got it! Want several weeks off to clean up a river, install free solar panels on low-income housing, or volunteer in some other way that will help hundreds of people? Sorry, we can’t spare you, and if we could, you’d have to do it on your own dime. This is what queer ecologists call “reprocentrism,” which is inextricably linked to patriarchy and capitalism and has already pushed the aggregate human population well beyond the boundaries of sustainability. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if secret extra benefits for parents practice isn’t much more widespread.

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      I understand where you are coming from but equating parental leave to a “personal passion” is way off. For one thing, if the employee is a woman she is also physically recuperating. It takes a minimum of 6 weeks to heal, and that’s not including the changes in hormones.
      For men taking parental leave it meant so that they can help care for their wife who is going through all of this. And for both parents and for those who adopt parental leave is also to help ease the transition and get your feet under you.

      1. Meep*

        I think the point they are making (as someone who will be giving birth in 4 months) is that everyone needs time to recover and do something that benefits their health, mentally and physically. Yes, labor is hard and deserves to be acknowledged. (There is a man whining online right now because a nurse didn’t offer him tea while his wife was giving birth and so many men are on his side.) Yes, women deserve time to recover and men deserve time with their babies, but studies show that the same part of our brains that love our babies is the same part that love our pets. Deciding one is more valuable over the other because we birthed one is asinine. We agreed to take care of both the dog and the baby when we decided to have them.

        Not letting people experience their own joy/passion because it isn’t a baby is problematic too.

        1. SpaceySteph*

          Yeah but its still trivializing to say having a baby is pursuing a personal passion. A childbirth is not a personal passion, its a personal medical condition, and that benefit is not just available to parents. Other people are also eligible for FMLA for their own medical condition or as a caregiver.

      2. Head Sheep Counter*

        Personal Passion – is something one chooses to do with one’s free time. Giving birth while less of a choice than it used to be… is often a personal choice (and hopefully driven by passion).

        It might be more fair to equate family leave with all the other things family leave covers as long as its equatable (eg any care giving). However the language here is specific about “reprocentrism”and the inherent problems (see this letter).

        At least in the US, you aren’t paid for the things you do in your private time (except for this wacky company). Your family is your private time. My cats, dogs and hens are part of my private time.

    2. Meep*

      I am pregnant and happily so, but let me tell you… I HATE the discourse around parenthood on that side. It is so interesting to me that they only care about social services as far as their SSN is concerned and how they are pushing for more (white) babies to replace an already bloated population so they can keep their benefits. (Benefits they need because they refused to save for retirement and want to call millennials lazy despite the fact they have less savings across the board than our avocado-toast-and-Starbucks-loving butts!)

      I am annoyed that my 10-person start-up doesn’t have maternity leave, sure. I would love more benefits for having a kid. (Even if my company is already really supportive for WFH and doesn’t make you take time off for short doctors appointments, regardless of child-count.) But I made that decision, ya know?

    3. Cthulhu's Librarian*

      The “Time off” that you’re talking about isn’t actually a choice for employers – it’s mandated by law, and there had to be a massive amount of work put in to make it happen.

      As such, you might claim it is an example of social reprocentrism, but that’s actually sensible by societies – a society is far more likely to be continued by those who are born and raised in it than by outsiders.

      As for queer ecologists and their claims about human overpopulation and sustainability – they’re frankly doomsayers and radicalists. Most studies have suggested a sustainable world population, presuming no improvements to infrastructure, of approximately 7.5 to 8 billion, which is remarkably close to current levels, as significant portions of the world are experiencing population decline.

      The more radical projections that say the sustainable population worldwide should range from 1.5 to 2 billion consistently fail to suggest how we should get there without being overtly racist, eugenicist, or otherwise outright evil, or how you’re going to sustain anything approaching usable infrastructure on a worldwide scale with that spread out of a population. They also fail to account for the need for a relatively consistent population aging cycle to prevent infrastructure collapse (cf. Japan’s decline inability to school or care for children on a widespread societal level, due to a decline in birth rate and population gap) and skill degradation.

  85. Orora*

    Not only is much of this unethical, a lot of it is illegal AF.

    If you offer fringe benefits (gym memberships, discount program memberships, etc.) to some employees but not all, that is considered taxable income to those employees; they should see the value of those benefits added to their W-2 at the end of the year so they can pay tax on it. I’m betting that if the company is trying to keep these benefits a secret from child-free workers, they aren’t being up front with the IRS, either.

    Retirement plans are heavily regulated. It’s highly improbable that a compliant retirement plan can provide different matching based on family status. Any matching information must be set forth in the plan documents, and you as a participant should get a plan summary every year from your employer. Even if they couch it as an “elective match”, the criteria they are using to award it is not based on work, but on a personal characteristic. They are likely failing any non-discrimination tests for highly compensated employees that they should be performing on the plan. If they are not passing

    FSAs are also heavily regulated. If they put money into a commuting FSA for some employees but not all, they are in violation of Section 125 rules and the IRS would probably like to have a word with them.

    OP, talk to your co-workers and maybe your state’s Department of Labor.

  86. Ex-prof*

    Run off photocopies. Put them in everyone’s mailbox (if you still have mailboxes) and post them on every bulletin board.

    Reading between the lines, since the whistleblower didn’t tell anyone until she left (and the other parents never told anyone at all) it’s maybe also be a company where people fear retaliation.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Not so much retaliation but since this has been kept secret for so long it’s unlikely that all parents independently decided to keep quiet about their extra benefits. Most likely they were all told that if the secret got out then it would be impossible to keep paying parents this extra 18k because the non-parents would kick up a stink/leave

    2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      and the extra benefits are only possible so long as non-parents unknowingly subsidise them.

  87. Rufus Bumblesplat*

    I’m kind of side eyeing the coworker and I’m not sure if they’re really deserving of those kudos. By their own admission they’ve been quietly pocketing $18k of extra benefits per year the entire time they’ve been with the company (or however long they’ve had children for if they joined before becoming a parent) without protest. It’s only now they’re leaving and will no longer be reaping the benefits that they’ve bothered to say anything.

    Granted, it’s better than them leaving with the secret intact. But if they really “didn’t feel right” about the massive disparity they could have brought it to light years ago.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      If they’d spilled the beans years ago, then the extra 18k would have been lost to everyone – and their fellow parents would hate them.
      It’s likely only possible to have these extra benefits because non-parents unknowingly hugely subsidise parents.

      In practice, how many people would sacrifice an extra 18k for years just to be fair to coworkers, most of whom they don’t even know and none of whom are their family.

      1. Rufus Bumblesplat*

        Do I think that most parents would happily take the money without sparing a thought for their childless coworkers? Of course they would. Such is human nature.

        My point was that I don’t believe the coworker deserves praise for outing the disparity now that they are no longer personally benefiting from it. If they feared retaliation but genuinely believed the situation to be unjust I’m sure they could have quietly declined the extra benefits, but they didn’t, they happily milked the system. Talking about it now seems to be more about trying to soothe their own guilty conscious than anything else.

        1. Apex Mountain*

          Maybe but without the coworker we wouldn’t know about this insanity to begin with, so I tip my cap to her!

  88. The Kulprit*

    OP, tell everyone. Put it on Glass Door. Name names. This is outrageous and can only continue with secrecy. Burn it to the ground.

  89. Emac*

    I really hope the OP blows this up and stays around at least a little while for the fallout to give us an update!

  90. LadyHouseofLove*

    Me: *reads the whole thing*

    Me to the IRS: *gif of Scar saying ‘Kill him’ to the hyenas*

  91. Dashwood*

    This kind of nonsense is why, as far as every employer I’ve had in the last 20 years is concerned, I have 2 kids.

    Those 2 phantom kids have gotten me so many extra benefits, like late starts and extra days off.

    Thanks kids!

  93. dontbeadork*

    I cannot describe how much I’d enjoy learning that because my uterus doesn’t work properly I am being screwed over by my company. Wow.

    I …. wow.

    Rat ’em out, OP. Sing it loud and strong. Let them have to explain to all their childless workers why they aren’t being treated equally.

  94. and then it was Petyr!*

    Two words – Glassdoor review. I would absolutely want to know this before I took a job there.

  95. Waiting on the bus*

    OP, this is so wild that I would actually confirm this with a different parent colleague you trust before taking any action. Maybe someone who already left the company. Just to make sure there’s nothing else going on (like maybe benefits like the retirement matching are actually tied to a particular level and the colleague who told you mixed it up because smaller stuff like the gym membership for spouse and kids are parent-only benefits).

    Once you have confirmation, tell everyone. This is outrageous.

  96. Ann*

    Smokers get more breaks than I do…parents get maternity/paternity leave when I’d love a sabbatical…but the extra PTO and match and quitting at 2:30 is a whole new level of outrageous.

    2. VP of Monitoring Employees' LinkedIn Profiles*

      In my office several years ago, non-smokers were specifically banned from taking “health breaks” — they had to stay and do the smokers’ work (for which the smokers still got full credit).

  97. SoonToBeRetired*

    My employer started programs like this but also included additional vacation hours for people with less than 20 years at the company, student loan repayment and childcare bonuses of $1500 (no receipts needed-just having a kid.) Someone ran a test case of applying for the childcare payment when they were the legal guardian of an elderly relative and were denied. Then a group made an age discrimination complaint because the collection of these benefits overwhelmingly benefit younger people, and 40 is the magic age. Our company is a federal contractor who has routinely claimed federal enclave to avoid state labor laws, but the Supreme Court just ruled tightening the requirements on federal agencies and age discrimination. The company modified the vacation plan and increased all employees’ vacation accrual and allowed the “dependent credit” to include any guardianship situation. It’s still unbalanced but it worked.

  98. K in Boston*

    Honestly kind of shocked at the amount of comments touching on some eugenics-esque arguments, as far as a lot of judgment as to who should and shouldn’t be allowed to have children, and what amounts to demands for justification on what children (and, by extension, adults, since that’s what children eventually grow up to be) must go on to do with their lives in order to be considered worthy of existing in society. Not to say that’s even a majority of comments, but still alarmingly more than I would’ve thought I’d find at AMA.

    1. Head Sheep Counter*

      When you make company policies like this and then use the “societal benefit” argument as your justification… it invites the other side of this conversation. Because penalizing folks who aren’t fecund is… gross. Inviting me in to work more hours so you can be fertile… means I get an opinion. Do you really want me to have an opinion? I’d like to not have an opinion… honestly. You do you.

      1. K in Boston*

        I don’t see why it’s necessary to advocate for reducing anyone’s reproductive rights in order to support reasonable work policies for everyone.

        1. Head Sheep Counter*

          I don’t think there have been arguments supporting reducing anyone’s reproductive rights. For myself, I’m pointing out the slippery slope problem of grossly giving benefits for someone’s reproduction abilities (especially in a work environment) over someone who hasn’t reproduced because “societal good”. Shenanigans to the “societal good” argument which conveniently looks like… it benefits me so it benefits society. All of the children in care would figure that they weren’t benefiting. All of the folks in jail… were found to not be benefiting society (not always correctly). All of the folks killed in DV incidents would suspect that they didn’t get this benefit. All of the people impacted by mass shooting events might feel that their benefit was… somewhat limited.

          If you claim a benefit it needs to be defined and if its defined… it rarely goes as anticipated. Don’t invite people to define something that could well lead to the issue you identified in your first comment. Because societal good to me means some very specific things and it means different things to someone else. To get to consensus… all of those meanings would be generalized to something everyone agreed to… and that would not be a good outcome.

    2. I Have RBF*

      IMO, it’s not who is and is not “allowed” to have kids.

      It’s treating people who chose, for their own reasons, to have kids as somehow more “worthy” of extra benefits over people who haven’t had kids (yet or ever). It’s not a work related reason to give them extra 401k match or extra PTO.

      While some religions and political parties are trying to make it not the case, at this point having children is still a choice that has zero to do with most* workplaces.

      * It can be an issue for some people who work with certain hazardous chemicals or in certain environments while potentially gestating. This, however, is rare, for obvious reasons.

  99. yourlocalexpert*

    The 401(k) thing is unbelievable. I’d report the plan to the Department of Labor.

    I was a 401(k) Plan administrator and companies are required to have a Summary Plan Description, which describes all the details of the Plan, and is sent to all employees on an annual basis. All of this info about contribution amounts, etc. would have to be disclosed in the SPD and openly available to employees. I know no one reads SPDs but it seems crazy that not a single employee would notice this? Is there really no one in HR who doesn’t have children?

    Non-discrimination testing is to show that the highly-compensated employees aren’t benefiting from the Plan more than non-highly-compensated employees. I’m surprised that this plan is passing. Higher comp employees are generally older, more established in their careers, perhaps more likely to have a family whereas younger employees are often entry level, lower paid, perhaps less likely to have a family? That’s a huge generalization, and maybe it just doesn’t apply to this company’s demographics? I wonder if the OP is confused and it’s some type of non-qualified plan, not a 401(k)?

  101. Coverage Associate*

    I just signed myself and my spouse up for discounted gym memberships. I had been casually reviewing the discounts available, and when I went to compare them, I realized that the discount through my employer’s payroll company and the discount through my employer’s health insurance company were exactly the same. Both had “partnered” with the same company that negotiates for retailers to offer discounts to big groups of people in exchange for the advertising that promotes the discounts. The partner is LifeMart, which offers all sorts of discounts on things like the cooking kit subscriptions and auto insurance and gym memberships and adult daycare and home security through payroll. I didn’t check, but the health insurance probably has a smaller partnership with Lifemart that doesn’t include things with no connection to wellness.
    Anyway, even though both payroll and health insurance have my spouse’s information thoroughly documented for various reasons, the information didn’t carry over when I signed my spouse up for the gym. There was a box to promise we were really married or RDPs, and then I had to enter name, etc. separately.
    So I can see how this could work as a practical matter for the most fringe benefits. The employer just doesn’t tell childless people about the discounts or how to sign up, maybe the discount marketers let employers make tiers/groups in ways that the retirement plans can’t.
    But I am totally with everyone on the mystery re 401ks.
    Also, the gym discount was, instead of paying a $50 annual fee and $29/month, the annual fee is waived and we pay $28/month, 2 months upfront. So the annual savings is $62 per adult, but we pay $56 per adult up front instead of just the prorated $29/month fee. So a very fringe benefit.

  102. Victoria*

    This policy is outrageous, but I do believe parents deserve much more support than they get–children are a societal good overall. Although my controversial opinion is that I would love if childfree people could take 9-12 months paid or partly paid leave to work on a project they care about that had some benefit to society–a childfree equivalent to parental leave, if you like.

    I absolutely know that parental leave isn’t a holiday, and raising kids is hard work, but the majority of parents have chosen to do the work and I assume they get some enjoyment or fulfilment from it, overall. So it’s not like parents have decided to take on a horrific task solely because society needs them to and they get nothing out of it. In this way *only*, I am suggesting having a child is like having a project you love that also has benefit to the wider world.

    (I caveat this with: I know it’s not always a choice for everyone–until it is we have work to do; some people may sadly decide to have kids and find they’re unsuited to it; society does not offer enough support to, well, anyone, but particularly parents who struggle and may be ashamed of that struggle).

    1. NerdyLibraryClerk*

      Parents and non-parents do deserve more support from society than they get, but I’m very uncomfortable with tying that support to “benefiting society.” Rating the contribution of people’s projects would go south fast and rating the contribution of people’s children starts out in hell no territory.

      I do think leave to work on projects and/or spend time with one’s family (whatever that looks like) would be a net positive. I also think that things like universal basic income would help everyone, parent and non-parent alike.

  103. H.C.*

    Agreed that this disparity is bonkers, but it also makes me wonder that in the unfortunate case that a parent lost a child (particularly only child) do they get all those benefits stripped away too?

  104. JLC*

    I could’ve sworn it was required/illegal not to to have retirement benefits like 401k be the same across the entire company. The whole point was to prevent execs from getting a 200% match while you get 4%.

    1. NurseThis*

      I think that only prevents companies from doling out extra benefits to executives and top C suite people.

  105. TheBunny*

    As Alison said, tell absolutely everyone. The company knows this is shady, hence why they tell people not to tell.

  106. CV*

    People have made a good point that if someone with a printed version of this policy copies it and puts it on everybody’s desk, that person might be discoverable by surveillance cameras, or someone just noticing the activity.

    This issue can be evaded by using postal mail to send copies to others at their company address. If you put a false return address on your postal mail, nobody will know who it is from.

  107. Nespresso addict*

    why are we letting companies frame this issue as though “work life balance” exists as a fixed pie? When I hear parents saying they need more work life balance I think that means “more than I have now”, not “more than what my childfree coworker gets”

    1. The Unionizer Bunny*

      but through injustice an’ vile envy,
      “There’s no Irish wanted here”

      It’s an old ploy: set workers against each other. Pick some of the slaves and uplift them over the rest; they’ll be eager to prove they belong, even if it means pushing everyone else’s heads back down into the mud. Irish-led labor unions did this to marginalized workers’ groups for a while. It’s one of the reasons for deliberately cultivating solidarity with people we learned how to think of as “not like us” – it’s likely a safe bet that some of what we learned was shaped by those trying to divide us, and any real differences aren’t significant enough to set aside the commonalities we share as workers.

    2. Cinnamon Stick*

      That’s a damn good question. Work/life balance means different things to everyone. Someone who doesn’t have kids also has commitments and a life outside of work. A few people have mentioned caring for aging parents. A friend of mine coaches a kids’ soccer team. Some people need second jobs for various reasons. Not to mention we all need the rest & recreation of our choice.

    1. Salty Caramel*

      Why is it okay with you for parents to get more benefits than those who aren’t?

      Note that nobody is saying parents shouldn’t get the benefits, but that everyone should and it may very well be illegal not to, especially in the case of the retirement matching.

  109. BekaRosselinMetadi*

    Honestly this sounds like the big reveal in a horror novel-mainly because I’m so horrified by this. So, OP, blow it up. Tell everyone, all the time. Whether it’s by anonymous email, making copies offsite and handing them out (or leaving them in common areas) or telling everyone because you’re planning on leaving, tell everyone. This sort of thing thrives in silence so blow it all to smithereens.

  110. Jane*

    LW, print out this letter to Alison and make 150 copies at a copy shop (not at work), and scatter them all over the office. Enjoy.

  111. Elizabeth West*

    This sounds like something JD Vance would salivate over.

    I’m with Alison — blow the whistle on this garbage! The other employees should know they’re being screwed. I think it would be awesome if they walked out en masse, but at least it may help some of them decide to start looking.

  112. Dang*

    “If your organization considers this defensible, they should have no problem with everyone knowing about it.”

    On top of that, I would ask how many of those benefits would be possible if child-free people don’t put in additional work? If child-free people just stopped volunteering for weekend events, if they stopped/drastically reduced their evening/weekend work, if they stopped accepting delegated tasks or significantly reduced their acceptance of delegated tasks, would parents still be able to enjoy all this flexibility/ability to log off at 2:30? Or would child-free people suddenly start getting a lot more pressure to do more work?

    Here’s the thing – I do think parents need as much help as they can get, and it makes sense to be able to add kids and partners to certain benefits (insurance, gym memberships). Even the extra money on the travel card makes sense. But like other people have said, there’s ways to make these benefits more equitable (making certain things available to people with dependents, extending the flexible WFH policy to everyone, making sure 401K contributions are equal, etc).

    And if one benefit is only possible because of the additional work of child-free people… well, it makes sense why they’d keep it hush-hush.

  113. Bean Counter*

    OMG! As a childless woman in the workplace for 40+ years, I sure have seen signs that childed people appear to get more flexibility than the non-childed and/or parents whose kids are grown, but this policy is something else! I pretty much agree with the comments here so won’t go into a long winded response.

    HOWEVER…..I hope that the OP blows this up as Alison suggests, because I really, really, really want an update on how this goes down once the cover is blown!

  114. Aggretsuko*

    Many many years ago, this girl had a LiveJournal where she didn’t have kids or want any, but worked at a company like this. She FAKED having children at work, which she could get away with because of the divide between HR and where she actually worked. She mentioned the names of her pet guinea pigs as her kids and got offered all of these sweet benefits and time off and things for the kids.

    I’m surprised this sort of thing is still going on somewhere, but surprise, surprise.

  115. merida*

    My company offers the equivalent of about 3 extra paid days off to parents to take care of sick kids and to attend school events during the work day – certainly not at all as egregious as OP’s situation (seriously, wow!), plus my company wasn’t fully trying to hide it (it’s in the staff handbook that no one reads but it’s not listed on our handout sheet of PTO benefits)… and I STILL bristled when reading my company’s parental leave policy. I’m all for companies having empathy towards parents; they should! But I think employers are missing that they should have empathy towards *all* employee needs, not just the unique needs of parents. Some of us have kids, some have parents/relatives under our care, some have our own unique health issues to take care of, some all of the above. While we each have unique responsibilities outside of work, well-meaning policies like this send the message that parental needs are more important than all others.

    My situation, for example, is that I have no kids. However, because my sibling is busy with her children and I am more readily available, I am my parents’ sole emergency contact. I’ve taken many vacation days to stay with a parent after surgeries, take them to the ER, check in on them daily when they’ve been sick, been distracted at work waiting for the phone call update that they’re ok, etc (and they’re only in their 70s so naturally their health needs will continue to increase). One of my parents is local and one is 200 miles away. We all have our role to play in society and this is mine. I wish there was more understanding about my need to very occasionally work remotely to stay with my parent during their health crisis in the same way it’s ok for my colleagues to work from home to stay with their sick kid.

    Historically, the average workplace culture in the US has not at all been one of empathy or understanding that we’re all people first, employee second… so of course it’s unrealistic of me to expect drastic improvement immediately. But giving parents more benefits/leniancy is just one step, not the final step by any means, to developing benefits from a place of empathy. *Hopefully* benefits directors will take note.

  116. AABBCC123*

    I see theirs only three ways that this can even make sense to the company/owners.

    1. Like others have said, they are part of specific religious sects that put a value on traditional family and parenting above everything else

    2. Like someone else said, families with children are their primary customers (i.e. toy manufacturer, certain hospitality business) and these benefits are some way to keep them “engaged”

    3. Some perversion of DEI where “families have more challenges so we give them more” or something like that.

  117. QuinleyThorne*

    HMMMMM. So…what are the chances that coworker was simply told that these benefits were available to all parents, but in reality, the benefits are actually only available to a select few, and she just got lucky? Assuming this secret is as well kept as OP says, I’d bet dollars to donuts that the parents are broken down into “tiers”:

    A-tier: employed parents who are getting the full parental benefit package as described above.
    B-tier: employed parents who are getting some, if not most of the benefits package, but are locked out of the 401k matching or other, more “luxurious” benefits that might cost the org more to provide
    C-tier: employed parents who–for one reason or another–never got let in on the secret; they have no idea that a parental benefits package tailored specifically for their needs even exists, so they effectively don’t have any.

    Separate tiers would go quite a ways to explaining why the org goes to such great lengths to keep it secret. I imagine there are plenty of parents who would love to talk about how great this package is with other parents–but if they did that, they’d run the risk of revealing that, on top of the separation of parent/non-parent benefits, the parents themselves are also on separate tiers, so they aren’t all getting the same stuff.

    But yeah, OP. Tell everyone yesterday. And get an employment lawyer.

  118. Anonymous For Now*

    I have never heard anyone say that they were having children for the good of society, the country, etc.

    For those who try to make the argument that parents somehow deserve more benefits because of their contributions, does that mean we get to claw back whatever extras they received if their child turns out to be a drug dealer, embezzler, crooked politician, etc.?

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