From what I remember, proto3 behavior happened to map to objective c since iOS maps coincidentally happened at around the same time so they could be loud.
It was partially reverted with proto3 optional and fully reverted finally. Go's implementation happened to come around the same time as proto3 so allowed struct access, despite behaving quite differently when accessing nil fields. That is also finally reverted. Hopefully more lessons already learned from the Java days will come sooner than later going forward...
Don't think I saw it so will bring up that wouldn't it be a gap between employees with kids and not? If paying below market, there would be little reason for a single person to pick it over another company that does, assuming confidence to change jobs if they become less single.
Assuming companies don't want an entire workforce of parents for various reasons, paying at market and providing childcare benefits would be the only option. Then the whole shareholders win argument takes hold since income would go down. Most likely miniscule impact, but that satisfy some investor types.
Otherwise, government just has to require it for all companies over certain thresholds. And that becomes the cultural issue. For countries with smaller governments, I guess competition becomes the only venue. We are seeing more public-benefit corporations, which should be able to provide company benefits more easily than shareholder companies. And if startup performance finally picks up in this AI age (well, probably not ;), big companies might be incentivized to retain by providing more benefits.
It was partially reverted with proto3 optional and fully reverted finally. Go's implementation happened to come around the same time as proto3 so allowed struct access, despite behaving quite differently when accessing nil fields. That is also finally reverted. Hopefully more lessons already learned from the Java days will come sooner than later going forward...