I don't know about kids, but I'd prefer to enjoy the precious few moments of sunlight after work, rather than catch a glimpse of it on the way to work and then waste away the sunlight hours in an office.
A lot of people are borderline incapable of waking up in the dark and functioning normally throughout the day. There are a lot of physiological triggers sunlight exposure in the morning does to naturally wake most people up, and deviating from those can be quite unhealthy.
Artificial lighting, white not yellow, and lots of it, can help with that.
Anecdotally, when I moved my clothes into the guest room and got ready for the day with all the lights on instead of getting dressed by nightlight, I was much more wakeful. Also made fewer errors with navy/black socks :)
In Australia, Philips sell an LED bulb call SceneSwitch[1] (formerly Choose Scenes), which alternate between cool and warm white when switched off and back on. I've installed in all but the bedrooms.
That was sort of the parent's point: the sun is down for everyone leaving work in the winter. Moreover, it's surely been down for almost all of us for at least an hour, so an extra hour wouldn't really help.
For me, it's dark by 5:30pm from about mid October (even with daylight savings) to the end of February. It's way more than two weeks.
And that's if you get out of work at 5 every day. Lots of us get out later (say, 6 or 6:30) and then have at least a half hour commute.
The only time I see the sun in winter is in the morning. With daylight savings in effect I lose that too. Those extra few weeks they tacked onto daylight savings at the end of October are dark and brutal.
Also, wake up lights.