To ask my employees why their DH’s aren’t pulling their weight when it comes to childcare?

[TheHoneyHunt]

So I know that my DH and me are fairly unusual in that we have a very equal approach to childcare and household chores. To be fair I wasn’t born lucky. My first H was an abusive freeloader, and I swore never to make that mistake again. However, I’ve now got so used to this way of living that I now find it normal.

I’m now lucky enough to have got to the stage in my career where I manage a large team. These are well paid jobs, paying £40k+, but do require some out of hours working.

Two of my team are on maternity leave. In discussing their return to work they both seem to be assuming that they will do all the childcare. Every pick up, every drop off. Their DH’s don’t seem to appear in the equation. As the employer of the mother, I am asked to accept all the flexibility required. And yet they are still talking about wanting to be treated as equals with their male counterparts.

If the want to be treated as equals in the workplace, AIBU to question why their childcare arrangements aren’t equal?

(I know there is an official “HR” answer to this...which will definitely go along the lines of “don’t even go there”....but what I want to know is am I being unreasonable to think this)

seven201
I agree.
What a couple do outside of working hours is up to them, but appointments, emergency leave, sports day, nativity etc should really be shared.
There shouldn't be an expectation that employers will allow for repeateded routine 'I'm just being late, need the morning off, need the afternoon off, need to leave early'. The expectation from some women that their employer should continually tolerate that sort of disruption (to prop up their DP's disruption free career) is annoying and entitled.

We need employees and employers to have a flexible attitude to work. If I have an important project the DH picks up the slack and if he has important stuff going on at work I pick up the slack.
Where childcare duties are unavoidable and it clashes with busy times at work I will usually flex my hours to either pick up the work in the evening or the weekend so nothing gets missed. My work are very good at letting you take short notice time off as long as the work get done which is great not just for family life but for my RA and when you’ve got to have tradesmen in or if parents are ill. DH work is the same and our employers get so much more out of us then they would if they clock watched and insisted in presenteism.

Not everybody's spouse/partner will have the sort of job that makes it possible.
My dh often had to go away for work, sometimes for long periods. It was an intrinsic part of his job.

Long hours, long commutes, needing to be away - there are all sorts of reasons why childcare often can't be 50/50.

Might add that the same goes for elderly care. Because of the nature of dh's job - very long hours, often away - I did the vast majority of it for both his father and his aunt.

What happens when a man with an important, lots of travel type job meets a woman with an important, lots of travel type job?
I think we know the answer to this one, don’t we? We’re not ants or bees, we don’t get jobs handed to us at birth we choose the work we do and men who choose to do work incompatible with family life AND have children are doing it knowing that someone else (a non-penis person) will adjust their expectations to make it all possible for them.

But dont you think it's usually the man who has the inflexible job and the woman whose job is flexible? And usually lower paid? Or do you thibk its pure chance?

Art, I'm sure in the majority of cases they discuss it in detail and decide fairly who will take a step back, and it's completely evenly likely to be either the man or the woman.
And pigs fly

I think trying to judge the lifestyle/ choices/ etc made within any one family - which shifts and changes constantly - by rigid standards of what an equal relationship should be. Is too limited and limiting. I work now after years of staying at home with kids while DH built his career. I am now working part time. So far so 1950s - but DH now does the majority of pick ups and child care as he works from home. I have been working for most of the summer hols. I have a job I enjoy find challenging and can develop in. I have the space to enjoy a life/ work balance. I have a very supportive and loving relationship. I may ask for flexibility at work on occasion if DH needs to go to a meeting and I am needed at home. In a few years time we will probably have aged parents to manage. DH is likely to retire before I do and may well take the lead on elderly parents duty. Over our lifetimes the balance ebbs and flows it is not possible to dissect and judge a relationship from a snapshot or by making assumptions.

God Stealth you had me worried for a moment there!

In my last job I managed men who stayed at work unnecessarily late, partly for completely pointless presenteeism, partly to sustain the myth to their wives that they couldn't help out more at home. And when they absolutely had to as wives couldn't change their work schedules I got thanked from them on behalf of their wives. Just incredible- there was flexibility available to them as employees - no need for their wives to be grateful! Oh and they slagged off women at our work who were part time/jobshares as unreliable/ineffective managers. Just lovely!

men who choose to do work incompatible with family life AND have children are doing it knowing that someone else (a non-penis person) will adjust their expectations to make it all possible for them.
I’ve had to give up my career because DH earns more so we have to prioritise his career. We both knew it would happen before we had kids though. I’m sad about my lost opportunities but the only other option was to not have kids.

Women tend to be the younger ones in the relationship, so even if their career is on the exact same trajectory as their husband, they will probably earn less at the point of having children, so there is a logical reason "his job takes precedence".

Every couple makes the decisions that works best for them. There are obvious patterns to what works well, which is why women appear to be at a disadvantage from a work PoV.

OP, YANBU to wonder. Obviously you shouldn't actually ask.
But IMO, if flexibility impacts on their ability to do their job then of course they can't be treated as equal to someone who does not request/require such flexibility. If it doesn't impact their job then surely there is no issue treating them equally?

But dont you think it's usually the man who has the inflexible job and the woman whose job is flexible? And usually lower paid? Or do you thibk its pure chance?
I think men go after careers knowing that social norms mean they can have children and their working life don't change. They never contemplate going for that promotion or think 'if I make that move now it'll affevt my paternity pay package'.
They've (more often than not) not been brought up to consider flexible working an option, let alone staying at home.

Women however have to make decisions worrying about whether they can make a move for a promotion and how that'll affevt maternity pay, they're more likely not to take higher posts because 'one of us needs to be around for the children'. They'll tend to be more likely to pick careers or jobs for family friendliness, whereas for many men that's not something they have to think about.

After maternity leave, more women will give up their career to spend more time with the family. When they return to work , it's often not to the same level as before or it'll be in a new lower paid job. The lower paid job is viewed in the household as bringing in a little extra cash but it's not as valuable as the man's aka we can live without my job but we couldn't live without DH's. So then it's the woman who is expected to drop work every 5 seconds whilst the man has his uninterrupted career and his untouchable working day.

The bottom line is for many men they go through life never even contemplating or a minute thay their job would ever be touched by family life when they choose to start a family. It's an unwritten rule that their partner will sort everything.

Although I have not given up hoping for promotion I have noticed that I have self-limited my search to my local area - before dc I looked for jobs in my city and the 3 or 4 regions around it, now I just look at central ones. No one has told me to do it, but I have subconsciously absorbed the fact that a longer commute would be logistically harder, and mean dh doing all drop offs and collections instead of half of them, as he does now.

Tackle the men in your team about their attitude to their children and partners, and don't harass your female employees.

Working is shit once you’ve had a baby. Your years of late working, extra hours and flexibility are forgotten the minute you have to take a half day to be off with a sick child. Even when that half day is from your annual leave. Getting up at 3.30 to fly away for 4 days on business expected but sports day? Rolling of eyes

This is such a good point.

Businesses expect their relationships with their employees to be mostly 'take' with only a little bit of 'give'.

When that has to change because of family priorities, there's mutterings about people not pulling their weight, career stagnation and if you're unlucky, managing out.

OP, I had exactly this conversation with a member of my team a few years ago. She worked part-time and her husband worked full-time. All of her children’s (non-emergency) GP and dental appointments were booked on the days she worked and she always accompanied her children; which meant she was eating into her part-time hours.

I told her that I knew that there were always going to be times when she needed to take time away from work for these sorts of things but that from now on, I expected non-emergency appointments to be made on her non-working days and where that wasn’t possible that her husband took an equal share of time away from his employment to take his children to these type of appointments.

I didn’t enjoy having that conversation (and I doubt she did either) but she’s still in my team and when she now asks for time off for appointments, I know that there really isn’t an alternative. And the requests have decreased significantly.

I can see where you're coming from, OP, and I do feel women should consider their jobs as part of planning their families. Of course family comes first but some do abuse their employment.

Can only answer personally really...

🤷🏼‍♀️ DH and I split the drop off / pick ups.
I have only worked part time though (between 20 and 32 hours) since my last baby and work evening shifts roughly 4pm - 1am so I get up with DS in the morning, drop off at Nursery around lunchtime, have an hour to myself for shower / lunch then go off to work, DH picks up and does bedtime.
Exhausting for me especially when DS was little and still waking in the night but I wanted to be around him as much as possible so I chose to do these hours which coincidentally worked out in my employers favour.

Some women may not want to return to work but financially have to, so they want to do all pick up / drop offs...

As long as they are doing the required work and the hours are agreed by you then I don't see why they shouldn't be treated the same as male counterparts.

I well remember the childless hag boss saying to me; if I say you can't take your leave in the Easter holidays, you can't take it then. Her face when I said, well I absolutely can because if you insist on that you don't get me here for any of the time because I don't have to work

I'm a boss and a "childless hag" and if any of my employers said that to me they would be invited to hand in their resignation or, even better, fuck off now and don't come back.

There is a breathtaking amount of denial on this thread that it’s still the case that it is most often the woman who undertakes the bulk of this kind of task not because they want to or need really but because men often just won’t and remarkably, “can’t”.

How come it seems to be that it’s all the men who have these big important inflexible jobs. And women are expected (often by themselves too) to pick up the childcare slack from that. I wonder how and why that so often miraculously the case?

. It irks when a bad boss knocks a grafter

Yes it does, but it also irks to use the reproductive status of a woman to insult her.

The thing I find interesting is I know a number of households where the woman is the higher earner and the family have 'prioritised her career' but the women all work flexibly or part time in the type of jobs that men can't possibly work flexibly or part time.

Their lower earning husband still work full time but not long/silly hours with travel. (2 are actually childminders)

If the woman travels her mother /MIL step in to help the husband.

She ISN’T blaming her female employees. She is blaming the fathers of their children for not taking an equal or fair share of the childcare!

That's just as wrong! There are plenty of men out there who would love to spend more time with their children but their employers, and in some cases entire industries, are stuck in the dark ages.

DH works in a highly competitive and very male dominated environment. There is only one female employee in his comany, the Receptionist. If he took days off for sick DC or started asking to reduce his hours to do pick ups and drop offs then he would find himself being managed out of the organisation very quickly. If he left and went to one of their competitors he would have the same experience because it's very much a cultural thing within the field. One of DH's colleagues refused to go to India for six months on a project as he had recently had a baby, had other children at home and his wife put her foot down. He didn't last long after that, but could never prove that was the reason they got rid of him.

It's wrong of course but it's not the fault of the men employed in these companies.

In our situation I went back part time. My Husband is paid a huge amount more than I am, even if I was full time, so it was never discussed that he would change his contract/hours. My Mum looks after our children on the days I work (thankfully). My Husband works quite a bit away from our home/school and therefore only ever does the pick up, school runs or Granny drop off/pickup when I am ill or if he is off work. He does take time off to sort the kids if needs be, I would ask him to do appointments the odd time, but to be honest it's easier for me to do it. I work closer to our Drs, dentists etc... and can nip out for an hour and work time up to cover...with him working an hour away from home he would need to use a holiday to cover and to be honest I'd rather he use his holidays to spend time with his family.