Inappropriate interview question

[stretchmarkqueenie]

Looking to return to work after being a SAHM for a year after my mat leave ended. In a job interview yesterday the interviewer asked me 'do you like being a mum?' AIBU to feel this isn't appropriate? To put this into context the question didn't come from a chat about children, it was during competency based questioning about the job so I was quite taken a back.

I am feeling all nervous about returning to work so I don't know if I'm overreacting but it's just thrown me a little, I was in professional mode and there to talk about my skills and what I can bring to the company so wasn't expecting personal questions like that. Of course something like 'what are your childcare arrangements?' I could totally understand but this felt a bit probing!

PuppyMonkey I have lived in the US since the early 70’s and when I left the UK things were much different. So yes, as far as my views of the UK go, I am still in the 70’s and that is why I am curious about maternity leave there.

RhiannonOHara I have been trying to remember how we managed in the old days. My parents were middle class and my mum (born in the 20’s) always worked except for when my sibling and I were little. We were close in age and mum stayed home until the youngest started school, then she went back to work. She didn’t have to work, she just hated being home all day. Maternity leave didn’t exist in the 50’s.

As far as I remember my mum was the only mum on our street who worked and only a few of my friends mum’s worked outside of the home. Dad’s made enough money to support their families back then I suppose.

I remember being asked once at an interview if I had any plans in the near future to have a baby. Didn't occur to me to put a complaint in, didn't bother me in the slightest.

I remember a subtler fishing question at one firm, where they suddenly started talking about the benefits package and how they offered childcare vouchers (which were then relatively unusual). Then they paused and waited for me to fill the silence. I smiled as blandly as I could and said nothing at all.

"Maybe someone could tell me how long maternity leave is, how much one gets paid while on it and if anyone there believes it makes a difference as far as new hires are concerned. Thanks."

By law, you get paid at 90% of your normal earnings for the first 6 weeks. This 6 weeks starts when you stop work, or if you take time off for a pregnancy related illness within 4 weeks of your due date.

After this, you get paid about £140 a week or 90% of your weekly earnings (whichever is lower) for the next 33 weeks.

So its not a huge amount of money really.

The main protection for most women is not so much the money, but the fact that they should have a job to come back to after maternity leave.

Yes, this is much more generous than the US, but lots of worker's rights are worse in the US than in other developed countries.

Under equality legislation, questions like this which are unprofessionally clumsy at best and inappropriate fishing at worst, are inadvisable because they lead to exactly this thread whereby applicants ponder whether their family circumstances have influenced their ability to perform a job.

If you don't get the job, suggest you ask for feedback. If you're feeling a fraction as irritated as some of us on this thread are, you could write to them and explain that questions like this frankly belong in the Dark Ages. You could probably pretty it up a little.

One thing which occurs to me: we use 'SAHM/D' as an accepted abbreviation here. Beyond here I think you should consider using 'Mother' as a job title - I always did. I always refer to myself as having 're-entered the workforce' when our children went to school full-time. I don't say that I particularly won any friends with my stand but I do feel it important to give that role its professional title.

I would ask for feedback - althought he might lie. Was it just the one interviewer? Maybe you have dodged a bullet though!

Candidates have a right to see what notes are written about them during interview. I'd request a copy of his scoring sheet and see precisely what was written below that question.

Charlois Susannah you might want to check out the basics of equality and discrimination law. www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1363

Although 'being a parent' is not in itself a protected characteristic, it has been successfully linked to gender discrimination as females are more likely to be the main caregiver. This is not about a few people finding a reason outside of themselves for not getting a job. Falling foul of this can get your organisation in serious hot water with hefty fines.
And now that tribunal fees have been scrapped, these sorts of claims will be back on the rise.
Out of interest, would you both refuse to hire someone with a disability in case they need some time off or adjustments for that? Dear lord, you might have to pay SSP!

US employment law is so archaic, it's insane.

Conversely, I was once in an interview where the (all female) panel kept going on about how it was such a good place to work for mothers, how they were so flexible, etc. Clearly trying to get me to say if I had kids. I didn't and I think they assumed I wouldn't fit in because of it. I didn't get the job, but had decided before then that I didn't want it.

Well, that's really strange! I can't imagine ever asking anybody a question like that in an interview! Far too personal!

I could imagine if the interviewer were a woman, possibly just had her first or pregnant for the first time, making ice-breaking chat, maybe before the interview properly begins, but in the context of the interview it's definitely very strange!

Sorry to hear about your application. However, if they're so weird to ask the questions they did, perhaps you dodged a bullet.

What Coastalcommand said was my thought - was the interviewer simply asking about your current 'job'. If I was interviewing a man who's CV stated he was a stay-at-home dad I might ask him about that, unless my boss told me that wasn't allowed.

If a candidate's experience of being a parent is an off-limits topic in interview then doesn't that itself discriminate against women who are more likely to have been out of paid work for longer?

But the possibility of it being a way to effectively ask if you plan more children, which is of course illegal, can't be ruled out.

I was asked if I planned to have any more children in an interview recently - at 55??? I said no, maybe grandchildren
They gave me the job, bloke said he doesn't hire "breeders" as his company would go under if he had to pay maternity.

Christ on a bike @irritatedUser1960

A colleague I work with often tells us with glee how her husband and his cronies refuse to hire young women as they will likely get pregnant. They work for big companies too ( think male orientated surveying/building etc)

My male boss is lovely btw

Above is precisely why I effectively hid my child from everything when applying for jobs. Including removing all reference to her from my social media. Discrimination is real.

That's not usually how interview questions work though safariboot is it. You don't ask specific, different questions of each candidate. You ask everyone the same generic questions, such as 'could you tell me about your approach to project planning' (or procurement, or meeting multiple challenging targets, or teamwork, or whatever's relevant), which they answer based on their experience. So the opportunity is there for a SAHP to draw on that experience, if relevant.

Definitely not best practice and could be perceived as discriminatory. It's difficult to make a judgement though without the entire context of the conversation. I would just ask for feedback.

It's very inappropriate to even ask about childcare arrangements.

Inappropriate. I would complain and take this further. It's just not allowed.

DH's old boss doesn't like employing younger women for exactly this reason, he doesn't want them going on maternity leave then asking to work part time or leaving. Unfortunately for him it's quite a specific job that doesn't attract a huge amount of applicants and it tends to attract graduates so he has no choice. I was appalled when DH told me though. A friend of mine also told me she was outright asked if she was planning on having anymore children in her interview (yes, by an older man), she said no and wasn't bothered because she isn't but that isn't the point. Yes she did get the job. I imagine if she had been more evasive she wouldn't have got it.

I think there’s quite a lot of frenzied overreaction and extrapolation happening here.

It might have been discriminatory although it’s unlikely the interviewer didn’t already know the OP was coming back from maternity leave already so it wasn’t really finding out new facts.

Personality fit is such a huge part of recruitment into a team and asking questions to get someone to relax and open up is very common, especially for candidates who answer competency based questions with a yes or no or who are otherwise very nervous.

There’s nothing to be ashamed about with having children and no reason for it to be taboo in interviews.

My company offers all roles with “family friendly hours” as an option i.e. school hours during term time only, if they want it and conversations often get onto talking about kids and families.

Before anyone questions it, yes we talk about families with male and females equally, often it’s the men that talk about kids more than the ladies.

Perhaps the reason the OP didn’t get the role is that the interviewer saw her as the type of disruptive employee that runs off to her manager or HR (or mumsnet) telling tales whenever something doesn’t go her way and didn’t want that type of personality in the team.

Just a thought, no more valid than thinking the interviewer was a misogynistic dinosaur that hates women as some others seem to think

Big, no one is over-reacting and it wouldn't be 'telling tales' to either complain to HR about this kind of thing or give your concerns as feedback to a company who had asked you this question.

The OP is clear that the question came during competency-based questioning about the job, so it really doesn't sound as if it was in the context of 'asking questions to get someone to relax and open up'.

Neither is asking a direct question about the OP's reproductive status/parenting opinions anything like the same as 'conversations [that] often get onto talking about kids and families.'

More people need to feel less ashamed or nervous about challenging questions like that. Employers who behave like this, as well as attitudes like yours, describing challenges and concerns as 'frenzied overreaction' and people who speak up as 'disruptive', only help to perpetuate negativity and glass ceilings for women in the workplace.

My company once employed a woman who turned out to already be pregnant when she started work. No, we didn't have to pay her maternity pay but she worked for us for a grand total of 7 days as she was sick so often, and then went off on maternity leave early. During her year off, she accrued a full year's worth of holidays which we had to pay her. She never returned from her maternity leave so she was employed by us for over a year ( I can't recall exactly how long for), worked for 7 days but got an additional 6 weeks pay. We also had to interview and employ someone else to cover her role.

It really is no wonder that so many employers would take on the male candidate over the identical female one.

Most pregnant women are not off sick all the time though.
And, again, men have children and childcare to sort too. Don't they? Most women with young children actually work harder when they are at work, because they are well aware of how they are perceived.
They also NEVER seem to bring their kids to work, which lots of men in my old job did in the school holidays or when their wife was ill. As a single mum I never would have dreamt of doing that.

Hope dare they / he.

They clearly hate all women. Misogynists.

I love the notion that a company would go under if they paid maternity pay! If they cannot factor this in, they are truly close to going under anyway.

Now the UK is full of pensioners still wanting to work, I have no doubt some companies will avoid women of child bearing age. They are depriving themselves of great talent of course.

I love the notion that a company would go under if they paid maternity pay! If they cannot factor this in, they are truly close to going under anyway.

Quite. They claim most if not all of it back from the government anyway.