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)

I think you have a really good point. Like previous posters have said there are a lot of valid reasons for these situations. I think I'd be trying to take a subtle approach to make them think about their options eg encouraging men in your team with young kids to ask about flexible working, encouraging them to take shared paternal leave, asking women going on maternity leave if they are planning on sharing paternity leave with their partners, and being flexible with male employees who have a kid sick at home etc (offering them to wfh if they mention it etc). If it is a case of these women just assuming that they should do the majority of childcare as they are women, hopefully this will make them see that men can be involved, and question why their partner isn't. I was one of the first to share paternity leave and am always surprised that more people don't take it.

OP in answer to your question.
Yes women would love to be treated as equal and have the same opportunities. But as shown by this thread, they are bogged down by expectations that they will do all the childcare (and hw). That’s why their wages are lower, positions not as senior etc...
It’s not that they don’t want to. It’s that they can’t.

£40 is not well paid is your answer. Especially for a job that requires regular over time. Chances are that most of their husbands earn more. It makes sense that the lower earning spouse does the childcare at the risk of their career rather than both parents doing it at the risk of both careers.

DH and I earn similar but DH does all the pick up and drop off, except one day for DC1's after school club. It's simply because he has a local job with a 5 min commute, compared to my 1 hour one (one way). Both of our jobs are flexible.

So I think you are both being resonable and unreasonable. More women should be able to have support of their partners to develop their careers, but it's not happening. By not helping other women in the workplace, you are making it harder for mothers to stay in their jobs. I try my best to support the part time working mother in my team.

I do more than my OH. I do the pick up and drop offs as I work close enough to work to walk but OH commutes for over an hour.
I think the difference comes down to a few things - my OH earns much much more than I do, his hours are much longer and in his line of work it is expected that one puts in the hours over and above 9-5. It’s just the culture there. The women also do the same (but I only know of ones who have much older children, no idea if there are women there that have young ones). He wouldn’t have a job if he didn’t put in those hours. We couldn’t survive on my salary alone.
I work part time so I have more time with baby at home therefore there seems to be a bit of a trap whereby I end up doing more as I’m more used to doing x or y.

My friends who work full time and have more equal salaries tend to have more of an equal division of labour. Or at least with regards to the obvious stuff like pick ups, drop offs, time off when kids sick.

I'm not saying 'no point', I'm saying 'there a systemic issue'!

I agree with you. Which is why I was asking if OP will be addressing it by supporting her male employees in taking on equal responsibility for childcare.

OP may never have had to think about how supportive she would be of men asking.

Well if she was even half way serious about her concern then she bloody would have wouldn’t she?

I absolutely love how more or less every single of those answers is explaining at length why MEN can’t possibly do more childcare...

Including that they work 8.30 to 5.

My EXH did nothing. I mean nothing. I was left to do it all. I earnt more -same job - but I was much much higher up - but if a child was ill -it was ME that had to take the day off. That's why he is an EX.

I can't believe the responses on here. I can't believe there are people patiently explaining to the op that their dh happens to earn so much more and they have a secure job and paid dependents leave so that is why their employer is always inconcenvenienced. Massive entitlement.

And as for "is basically responsible for ensuring the shaved monkeys running a chemical plant don't explode anything and gas everyone in a five mile radius."
Did you really just say that??

I work for a large engineering company, so completely male dominated (theres a handful of women in the whole office). Everyone has flexitime, we need to do 37hrs a week minimum between the hours of 10am and 3pm. Every single male parent who I work with uses this for childcare advantage, so for example they will come in at 6am two mornings per week and then come in at 9.30am the other two mornings, same with drop offs. The guy I sit next to is a senior engineer on extremely good salary, his wife is a careworker, and he still does half the pick ups and drop offs, leaves at 11.30am on a Friday for example. Because it's so normalised it in no way affects anyones careers.

I think the problem here is that if men were given the chance to work flexibly as the norm, it would be common practice to take it. But it's women who ask for it when it's not standard, so then it's women who are expected to take it. And then it's seen as women not prioritsing their careers and the whole vicious cycle starts again.

In my last job I was actually having a conversation with my new manager and another male colleague who'd started at the same time (drunk outside a pub smoking, as you do!) and he said to male colleague he'd be prioritising his development the coming year. He turned and said to me "Thomlin you'd be great at what i have planned for male colleague but you'll really be focusing on your family won't you...". I was fucking raging but actually, he's probably got that opinion because the majority of the women in that place of work were part timers, late starters, every sick day for 3 kids type women and he probably saw me as the same!

Vicious fucking circle I tell you!

I do all the pick up and drop offs... I work further away so I have our one car. Dh walks to work.. Masks sense one with car does drop off and picks ups with the amount of stuff baby requires on a daily basis

And as for "is basically responsible for ensuring the shaved monkeys running a chemical plant don't explode anything and gas everyone in a five mile radius."
Did you really just say that??

I did laugh at that! 😂 he obviously hasn’t trained them very well has he?

I do all the childcare drop offs and pickups and if dd is unwell I take the time off work. DH wants to do some drop offs but it isn’t practical as he would be 2 hours later getting to work which would mean he would miss dds bedtime. Also he earns 4x what I earn so wouldn’t Make any sense for him to take an unpaid day off when he earns so much more.

My DH has a small company and has one female employee, newly employed. She is great, but is in the background and he would sift out female applicants whose children were younger than secondary age, without interview, because when you only have seven staff, you don't have the flexibility to cover unscheduled absences. If a female were to apply who was recently married and therefore likely to want maternity, she wouldn't be considered. Very small companies simply don't have the capability or the admin staff to deal with all the paperwork a maternity leave generates, and can't afford another set of headhunting fees to fill a short term vacancy. I know this isn't going to be a popular post, but it's the reality.

DH and I share drop offs and pick ups, we also share emergency time off for sick DC, snow days etc. If you were my manager however you would only know about the emergency time off I take. You would never know DH was off for 2 days in Jan for snow days or that he did a lunchtime pick up from holiday camp last week to collect a vomiting DC. So don’t assume you know what’s going on behind the scenes.

My job is flexible, DHs isn't. If he needs to be in at 9 to open up, he has to be in at 9, getting in at 9.45 isn't good enough. As long as I do my contracted hours and are there for certain meetings (about four a quarter) I can work the hours I choose within reason.

In an ideal world YANBU. Yes, personal choice etc etc but choices aren’t made in a vacuum and it’s impossible to separate decades of socialisation from what an individual would otherwise want.

And the wide eyed innocence of the women whose husbands just happen to hugely out earn them but they're sure in most other families it's totally different. Look around you. Seriously.

I think the teacher thing depends on t h e school. I teach and dh is always the one who has to leave to pick.kids up if ill. Firstly, I can't answer my phone and it takes about 5 minutes for someone in.the office to walk and find me. Then, someone has to be found to cover me and I have to try and think of work to set.

To be fair, it's onky happened about 3 times in the 9 years or so the kids have been in.childcare, but dh is a lot more flexible than.me there.

When DC’s were at nursery and then school, DH did the morning drop to nursery/breakfast club and I collected from nursery/after school club. Many of our friends operated a similar scheme so that we could both continue with our ft careers but also share the drop offs/collecting.

Recently at work I’ve had two requests for flexible working - one from a female member of the team and the other from a male. Both related to childcare responsibilities. Due to business and operational reasons, the females request was turned down and the males approved.

Xing

There is very little small companies are capable of doing correctly or fairly, in my experience, so that doesn’t surprise me at all.

Well if she was even half way serious about her concern then she bloody would have wouldn’t she?

Based solely on my own experience, I hadn't questioned how supportive I would be of a man asking for flexible working until months after I authorised it for the one who did ask. I never considered it because I analyse the merits of each request by the same markers...none of which are gender. I still don't think of the matter in terms of 'supportive', I think of it in terms of trying to resolve an imbalance that I'm uncomfortable with.

It’s none of your business.

As an employer, it IS her business, if she is being expected to accommodate and make do with absenteeism, when other employers (of their male partners/husbands) get the benefit.

sharkwithknees: I'm a single mother. If you asked me this I'd first have you sacked. Then tell you to take your judgmental head out of your arse AND to get fucked. You sound a bit of a twat. HTH
And if I got one whiff of that attitude at interview, I wouldn't employ you in a million years.

@XingMing your husband is acting illegally and I'd be embarrassed to post that, even anonymously

@Semperidem, so you'd ban small companies? From small companies, larger companies grow!