One thing really annoying that I’ve noticed working in the white collar industry is that some people get a free pass all the time on important things, just because they have kids. For example, in a different team who often has to step away during business hours and becomes unreachable, simply because they have kids. There’s always some sort of excuse with them. Have to go pick him up from the bus stop, have to go pick him up from school because they got in trouble, dance recital during the middle of the day, always something. But when it comes to ordinary normal people who don’t have kids, it feels like there’s a lot more scrutiny. Why do you need a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day? Why do you need to go pick up a prescription at lunch time, like why can’t you work through lunch?
But also, when it comes to employment, it feels like there’s a lot of preferential treatment for people with children. Oh that person has kids / children! They need the job a lot more. They have a little girl! Clearly they need it more than the the person who has a disabled spouse, because kids are way more important than an adult dependent! We can’t fire this person, they have kids! Let’s choose someone who doesn’t have a family. Like, stuff like this. Why is there so much preferential treatment to people who have children? Is this some sort of utilitarian thing? The least number of people affected?
In practice, kids provide more good excuses to work around unrealistic expectations, like needing fifteen minutes to pick up something. There’s a good emotional excuse in “I need to take my kid to the doctor”, much more than “the Elden Ring expansion came out”. If your boss is being unreasonable, you’ll need something good to dissuade them. Unfortunately for everyone involved, kid stuff just happens a lot less predictably and a lot more during office hours than (your own) adult stuff. Kids get sick more, do more dangerous things, are more vulnerable, and have weirder schedules than adults. They also can’t really get around by themselves up until a certain age, and at certain age ranges they probably shouldn’t be going to doctor’s appointments without adults either, even if they can get there by bike or by public transport themselves.
As for kid stuff happening during the day: that’s just how kid stuff works a lot of the time, unfortunately. Doctors and schools are open for only so many hours a day. It’s not like parents get that time off, they need to do chores they’d rather not be doing when they’re away from work. However, if you need to see a doctor or pick up medicine, you shouldn’t be restricted to super uncomfortable times because you’re not a child.
I don’t see why a kid would be more important than a disabled spouse, or any spouse for that matter. If there’s a family concern where you need to be present, kids shouldn’t get preferential treatment. When it comes to things like being available in your free time or being put forward as a backup, your time should be as valuable as anyone’s time. However, something to consider is that in some occasions parents will negotiate their contracts to be exempted from certain things, often at a cut in pay or with something else to make up for it; in those cases your time is legally worth less than theirs, but that’s down to contract negotiation.
As for being fired and other stuff where dependents may suffer, I think that’s only logical. It often doesn’t matter which team member gets fired for economic reasons, so a compassionate boss should probably fire causing the least amount of suffering. Someone’s going to feel the pain, but unless there’s a good reason to fire someone else, a single person having their life upset by getting fired will be preferential to a family of four having their life upset.
It sounds like your company is being extremely unfair for favoring absences based on children and nothing else. Time to look for a new job if you ask me.