actually strategized to mention our infant multiple times when talking to people
I hope you understand that by doing so, you placed your interviewers in a very awkward position. It would be the same if you revealed to them your e.g. religion or sexual orientation, when they never asked. It smells like you were setting them up for a future lawsuit.
IMO the benefits of seeing the company's reaction to one's lifestyle far outweight the risks of making the interview process slightly uncomfortable for risk-averse interviewers.
So it's ok for a company to say "he's not a culture fit", but not ok for an employee to say "that company is not a culture fit"?
The reason every startup asks "so what do you like to do for fun" in interviews is that kind of "cultural" fishing. The OP is just flipping the game around.
Its perfectly fine for a candidate to look for a culture fit.
The problem here is that familial status is legally protected, so by bringing it up it puts the interviewer in a tight spot. If I reject a candidate who states such things, then there may be lawsuit risk, and my superiors may not be sympathetic to the fact that I did not ask the candidate.
Unfortunately, I don't think theres a way out of this problem. Family friendliness is probably the most important culture question for anyone with a family. The only solution I can think of is to dig up information online from previous employees, but that is a crap-shoot for small companies.
That's not what I said, I am talking specifically about an interview. A company is not allowed to ask you about your family plans, religion, sexual orientation, blah blah, and for good reason, these things are nothing to do with job performance, yet may be the basis of discrimination. It's therefore in poor taste to "force" your interviewer into knowing something they should not and would never have asked.
> A company is not allowed to ask you about your family plans, religion, sexual orientation
More accurately, a company is not generally allowed to discriminate in hiring on those basis, and thus will generally have policy in place not to ask about those things. The law doesn't actually prohibit asking, it prohibits discrimination on those bases; but asking the question is something that can be used as evidence of intent to discriminate.
Of course, someone volunteering the information is substantially different than the company asking it.
One societal and corporate response to such laws could be to encourage supportive work environments for various subgroups. In that scenario, the interviewer would pre-emptively advertise employee benefits which are relevant to all candidate subgroups, obviating the need for candidates to ask identifying questions. It's therefore in poor societal taste to "force" your candidate into asking questions which are specific to one subgroup.
Because all religious people are anti-gay? C'mon, the point of anti-discrimination laws is so you don't make snap judgments about a person based on the attributes of a group they belong to. Your comment is just as bigoted as those who say that a person's sexuality means they can't have a family.
It is not bigotry to assume that someone who self-identifies in a religious group believes the things that the community of that religion identifies as its beliefs. While it is true that not all religious people discriminate against homosexuality, most Western (and particularly Abrahamic) religions disapprove of homosexuality as part of the standard interpretation of their doctrine. Other people cannot be expected to know what exceptions you personally make to the rules of the religion you follow.
I hope you understand that by doing so, you placed your interviewers in a very awkward position. It would be the same if you revealed to them your e.g. religion or sexual orientation, when they never asked. It smells like you were setting them up for a future lawsuit.