Work-related problems with the childfree.

[TheGunnShow 5,985]

DISCLAIMER: I'll start this by saying it's in response to @king canary's comment/question to me in Webber's mountain-climbing thread wondering what my point was. Rather than knock that thread off course, I have decided to focus on the matter I was looking at by starting this thread over here in non-football.

It is one of those issues that rumbles in the background, like anything that's about non-nuclear family set-ups. Same can be said of how singles are treated as well, but that's not the issue I'm covering.

I'm basically saying two things:

1. From a legal perspective, in ensuring that people can look after their newborns, there's an increasingly flawed assumption going on that "everyone's turn comes around" as ever more people are not having children. The result is that arrangements that are just aimed at parents could use tweaking so that those without kids can also be adequately taken into account. What used to be reasonably fair as ultimately everyone's turn did come around is increasingly less equitable as more and more people decide not to have them.

At this point, let's make one thing absolutely clear. This is not about denigrating the need for maternity/paternity leave as the benefits are well documented. This is about providing similar options for those who have other needs.

2. There's social tolerance of a lot due to parenthood in the workplace that is not remotely extended to those without (and, by association, the single too).

Rather than get too verbose, here are some links to flesh it out.

Do companies lean harder on non-parents? - BBC Worklife 

Single’s Backlash: No Spouse, No Kids, No Respect | Workforce.com (deliberately picked a much older article, from 1996, just to show this is not new thinking)

The unspoken bias that child-free working women face (shedefined.com.au) (Australian piece from a woman's perspective, focuses more on the social expectation side of matters, so my point 2 in particular).

How should we proceed?

 

[king canary 7,654]

So I agree to an extent with point 2.

The workplace is certainly more open to things like flexible working hours and arrangements when childcare is involved- for instance my wife works a condensed week (5 days worth of work within 4 days) and I'm not sure she'd have been able to get work to agree to that if it wasn't for the purposes of childcare. We're also more tolerant of things like an employee being offline for 20 minutes in the morning to do the school run than we would be for someone who said they were taking 20 minutes to go for a jog.

I'm not sure what you mean by point 1 though- what sort of needs do you have in mind that you'd want equivalent paid leave for?

[TheGunnShow 5,985]

21 minutes ago, king canary said:

So I agree to an extent with point 2.

The workplace is certainly more open to things like flexible working hours and arrangements when childcare is involved- for instance my wife works a condensed week (5 days worth of work within 4 days) and I'm not sure she'd have been able to get work to agree to that if it wasn't for the purposes of childcare. We're also more tolerant of things like an employee being offline for 20 minutes in the morning to do the school run than we would be for someone who said they were taking 20 minutes to go for a jog.

I'm not sure what you mean by point 1 though- what sort of needs do you have in mind that you'd want equivalent paid leave for?

It's not always feasible, or if it is, it's easier in larger companies with some degree of imagination (there have been some cases of multi-nationals doing this but it's rare, and it's almost certainly beyond the capacity of most smaller places), but some would say sabbaticals for any major undertaking. That could be anything which would require several months of fairly prolonged action. Learning a language, a rare challenge - such as climbing Everest, for example - that requires months of preparation to be in a state to do it, looking after a disabled relative, or even just a prolonged break. No-one's saying maternity leave is a holiday at all as it's a lot of work away from home, but it is basically time away from the desk, and nolens volens, those without are usually covering.

Much of it, really, is simply greater tolerance of cases like you mention and that I underlined. This is where I'll always maintain there's a blind spot (It is a double standard of sorts, but I think calling it a blind spot is less likely to raise hackles) in our social expectations towards those who aren't in a nuclear model yet, or have no intention of doing so. 

As much as this is from the Mail, so I do wonder if they highlight these stories for their readers to gnash their teeth at, this summary isn't too bad. Not to mention, it gave a practical example of a smaller company that genuinely tried to provide an even playing field for everyone.

Why SHOULD childless women like us do longer hours to cover for working mothers? | Daily Mail Online

Edited March 29, 2022 by TheGunnShow

[king canary 7,654]

7 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

It's not always feasible, or if it is, it's easier in larger companies with some degree of imagination (there have been some cases of multi-nationals doing this but it's rare, and it's almost certainly beyond the capacity of most smaller places), but some would say sabbaticals for any major undertaking. That could be anything which would require several months of fairly prolonged action. Learning a language, a rare challenge - such as climbing Everest, for example - that requires months of preparation to be in a state to do it, looking after a disabled relative, or even just a prolonged break. No-one's saying maternity leave is a holiday at all as it's a lot of work away from home, but it is basically time away from the desk, and nolens volens, those without are usually covering.

Much of it, really, is simply greater tolerance of cases like you mention and that I underlined. This is where I'll always maintain there's a blind spot (It is a double standard of sorts, but I think calling it a blind spot is less likely to raise hackles) in our social expectations towards those who aren't in a nuclear model yet, or have no intention of doing so. 

As much as this is from the Mail, so I do wonder if they highlight these stories for their readers to gnash their teeth at, this summary isn't too bad. Not to mention, it gave a practical example of a smaller company that genuinely tried to provide an even playing field for everyone.

Why SHOULD childless women like us do longer hours to cover for working mothers? | Daily Mail Online

In an ideal utopia, I agree it would be lovely for people to be able to take time to pursue whatever undertaking they wish, although I'd suggest that is a wider problem with capitalism, rather than anything to do with whether you do or don't have children. Fundamentally the reason maternity & paternity leave is enshrined in law is that having children is largely seen as a societal and economic good (although I am aware of the environmental arguments against)- you need people to make more people in order to keep the wheels of society turning, hence why economists and think-tanks are seriously concerned about the drastically falling birth rates in the UK. It might wind people like yourself up but I wouldn't be shocked at some point to see governments do more to try and incentivise people to have kids (or at least remove some of the pain points that come with it- childcare costs being a huge one).

Similarly that Mail piece is a bit bizarre to me- the example of the first woman who asked for time off, the issue is clearly with her boss and company being unsympathetic arseholes, yet it seems to be blamed on working mums? Also the stuff about long hours culture- the issue is to do with the work place and the culture of expecting people to work beyond their contracted hours, yet the issue is painted as working mums vs childless employees. Classic divide and conquer. 

 

 

[TheGunnShow 5,985]

3 minutes ago, king canary said:

In an ideal utopia, I agree it would be lovely for people to be able to take time to pursue whatever undertaking they wish, although I'd suggest that is a wider problem with capitalism, rather than anything to do with whether you do or don't have children. Fundamentally the reason maternity & paternity leave is enshrined in law is that having children is largely seen as a societal and economic good (although I am aware of the environmental arguments against)- you need people to make more people in order to keep the wheels of society turning, hence why economists and think-tanks are seriously concerned about the drastically falling birth rates in the UK. It might wind people like yourself up but I wouldn't be shocked at some point to see governments do more to try and incentivise people to have kids (or at least remove some of the pain points that come with it- childcare costs being a huge one).

Similarly that Mail piece is a bit bizarre to me- the example of the first woman who asked for time off, the issue is clearly with her boss and company being unsympathetic arseholes, yet it seems to be blamed on working mums? Also the stuff about long hours culture- the issue is to do with the work place and the culture of expecting people to work beyond their contracted hours, yet the issue is painted as working mums vs childless employees. Classic divide and conquer. 

 

 

I don't see the Mail article as blaming working parents, it does look to me more like it aims its brickbats at the underlying assumptions and indeed some bosses being, as you put it, unsympathetic arseholes. And that attitude is part of what I've criticised.

I do sort of agree that there is a problem with capitalism issue in there, but it has always manifested itself as a form of discrimination against non-nuclear set-ups so homosexuals, singles, childfree people etc. have invariably ended up on the wrong end of it. And we can already see some titbits here and there, there was a gloriously deranged piece of nonsense masquerading as serious debate in the USA saying that parents should have votes for each kid, and those without kids shouldn't vote. (Almost as if he has forgotten the notion of taxation without representation. Vaguely remember that causing some issues in the USA in its early days, haha!).

New idea gaining steam in right-wing circles: Only parents should be able to vote | Salon.com

Not to mention there was an almost as moronic idea from former German health minister Jens Spahn back in 2018 saying that the childfree should pay even more tax. (Newsflash: OECD tax wedge figures have shown for years that this is already the case in every single country within said OECD. Think Chile, off the top of my head, was closest to being equal. Germany was absolutely miles away, and was the key reason I didn't emigrate there after Brexit.).

German minister says childless people should pay more tax | News | DW | 09.11.2018

There is an interesting combo when it comes to earnings that usually there tends to be a motherhood penalty (childfree women tend to earn more than mothers), but a fatherhood bonus.