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.