Parents Sound Off On Twitter About Senate Wanting To Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent

In a rare unanimous, bipartisan vote on Tuesday, the Senate passed new legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent. The Sunshine Protection Act would end of all that spring-forward-in-March-fall-back-in-November clock changing that has been plaguing people, perhaps especially parents, for so many years. Now, as the legislation moves forward to be considered by the House of Representatives and President Joe Biden, parents are making their voices heard. And they are solidly, passionately divided about the idea.

Parents and their young children were, in fact, central to the argument to make daylight saving time permanent in the Senate. “This past weekend, Americans from Washington State to Florida had to lose an hour of sleep for absolutely no reason,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington State, according to The New York Times. “This is a burden and a headache we don’t need. Any parent who has worked so hard to get a newborn or a toddler on a regular sleeping schedule understands the absolute chaos changing our clocks creates.”

So what would the passage of this bill mean? Essentially, no one would have to turn their clocks back in November. Something approximately three-quarters of Americans said they didn’t want to do any longer in an October 2021 poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Parents are already having some feelings about the possible change. Like one dad who proposed that school start later so parents aren’t “waking up their kids like they’re in a Rocky montage.”

This isn’t the first time the concept of making daylight saving time permanent has come up. In 1973, President Richard Nixon signed a bill making daylight saving time permanent for two years during an energy crisis. While the idea was reportedly well received initially, the change was felt to cause possible issues with children heading off to school in the dark in the morning.

Something parents are thinking about in 2022 as well.

This parent was especially concerned about sleep deprivation, even if they were happy to end the clock changing chaos.

Not every parent is unhappy about the switch, however. In fact, some parents found the upside of sticking to permanent daylight saving time. Like explaining to your kids when they become parents about how much harder it was in the olden days.

Or telling tall tales to their kids about the epic struggle of changing that microwave clock.

In fact, the thought of explaining daylight saving time to kids after it becomes permanent seemed to be a real siren song for lots of parents.

Still, other parents hoped to see the bill pass because they are dealing with young kids, especially when they “had to sleep train them for a week” to get ready for daylight saving time.

Truly, for most parents it was about the clock switching. They just want off that horrible merry-go-round.

Some have even resorted to praying in the hopes the legislation will be passed.

Even people who have only “three months of experience of being a parent” are done with daylight saving time.

The end of daylight saving time could see kids heading off to school in the dark for three months of the year, but there are upsides too. Sunshine. No more clock changing. No messing with sleep schedules. If President Biden approves the legislation, we will have to wait until November 2023 for it to come into effect.

So parents will just have to hold onto those big feelings until then.