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)

It's not illegal to choose whom you want to employ, surely?

You can't seriously be that dim?

The law of the land is that parents can have emergency time off for dependants, and that is one of the thins you need to accept and be able to cope with if you want to be an employer.If you cannot accept it, then you have no business being an employer. I think you need to be very careful that these thouhts inside your head are not shown externally or you could be heading to a tribunal before long

Women facilitate men and their careers and continue men getting a leg up in the work place. There was a whole thread on this a while back. It is utterly depressing to see all of the excuses that come out of the woodwork but bottom line is the above.

YANBU, but I feel from reading the thread that this is somewhat in the minority. I am the main earner, and I have had to adjust my hours around the children because my husband feels unable to request flexible hours. If one of the children is ill and unable to attend school / childminders, I ask him to take time off and we split it, but it does feel like it naturally falls to me as a mother and as always it is down to me to organise. Sometimes I do feel that things haven't progressed as much in terms of equality as we would like to think

OP, this is a fair point though - have you asked your male employees with children if they''re doing their fair share, or were you just enjoying the fact that the employers of their wives were picking up the slack?

I find this topic really interesting, DP and I will be TTC next year.

DP has a V demanding and V well paid career. I recently changed jobs and took one that was incredibly flexible, low responsibility (compared to what I had been doing) and yes this involved accepting a lower (but still pretty good) wage.

However it’s made our home lives a lot easier and nicer.

Having a family is SUCH an important thing to me but I feel like we’re living in a society where it’s not ok for women to say ‘I’m more bothered about being a mother than having a high flying career’ and that’s horrible!

When we have DC I’ll cut down the part time and do 90+% of childcare because that’s what works for us. Equally because I’m ‘choosing’ to do that I don’t expect to compete career wise with others who don’t have child commitments.

It’s like saying “I’m only able to give this job 50% of my focus as I have a small child at home. But I want to be treated the same as others who dedicate themselves 100%.”

If you know you’re doing less thab your work peers then surely you’re expecting an unfair advantage to ask to be treated the same.

I earn way more than my wife but it’s me that does a day a week at home to make childcare easier, do all drop offs (arriving late) and I’m much more likely to work from home to cover a sick kid where as she would have to take leave. I do think more men should do a chunk of it and I sympathise with the OP (and I’m really grateful to my boss) but the world we live in you can’t say anything!

But this becomes self selecting, doesn't it?

Someone with a less flexible/understanding employer who needs that flexibility will leave. This is, more often, women (the number of single dads is very low compared to single mums), so an industry/workplace becomes dominated by those not requiring the flexibility. The employers feel less pressure to develop flexible working conditions, and then people who need the flexibility end up leaving. Then it just becomes 'common sense' that it is impossible for that industry to be more flexible, when probably it would do IF it had enough pressure from within to change things.

Another reason is also money. DH has, at times, earned 3 or 4 times more than me. Of course we're going to ensure that he gets to work and does the hours if we have to make a choice. We couldn't survive without his salary but we'd just about manage if I lost my job. It becomes a bit chicken & egg, as the one who earns more often then keeps pushing their career and the other partner keeps their career static or even 'downsizes' but generally, (there will be exceptions) the lower-paid partner will show less priority to their career.

XingMing I can understand why your post isn't popular (it's illegal for starters!) but I can totally understand why it's true.

I've been asked in an interview before about my kids, if I've "finished" my family (answer- yes) and if I have emergency childcare in place (answer- yes, exh/father and both sets of grandparents on hand for emergencies / late working) and I got the job. I can 100000% guarentee if I hadn't said those things I wouldn't have got it.

Women do need to realise that the more we take on, the more people expect us to take on. For every "my husband can't possibly do the drop offs" post theres an employer rolling their eyes about how women want to be equal but at the same time aren't actually doing a bloody thing about it.

BillywigSting
My dp works 8:30am to 5pm Monday to Friday and is basically responsible for ensuring the shaved monkeys running a chemical plant don't explode anything and gas everyone in a five mile radius.

what an offensive people you and your DH are.

It's rather difficult to be flexible about childcare responsibilities when your work is about ships. Our people go to sea; that's the job. If you are in the middle of the Pacific fixing the fresh water system that's keeping 8000 people on a cruise ship supplied with drinking water, then you're not going to do the school run without notice. There are jobs you may not have considered doing; they are good and well paid, but they are not compatible with suburban family life. They still need doing, hence our emphasis on recruiting the right people.

I have the same problem. Employ mainly women. Always sacrificing their careers for their husband's. Always taking the time off for caring roles. You're not allowed to question it but it drives me nuts.

Don't assume it's because the dp's won't pull their weight, I want to do all those things.

Luckily I have a very progressive employer.

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

I want to be treated as equal in the workplace because that's the Equality act.
Because I am awesome at what I do.
And my childcare arrangements are none of your business.

IAmAllAstinishment , you can be a mother AND have a high flying career , they aren’t mutually exclusive .
If you want to be a stay at home mother or work less then do it . It doesn’t make you a better parent or a worse parent . And no one particularly gives a shit either way , everyone is too absorbed with their own brand of guilt with their kids.

"we’re living in a society where it’s not ok for women to say ‘I’m more bothered about being a mother than having a high flying career’ and that’s horrible!"
Do we live in the same society? You live in one where women, mothers are expected to have careers? How interesting.

Iamallastonished what bollocks. I work part time and give my employers 100% of my effort for the days they pay me DH is full time and puts in 100% for the days he is paid. All employers should fulfill their contracts and work hard - requesting flexible work does not actually nullify this.

@rainy it’s great your OH can work 4 days a week. I suspect similar working hours is more important than similar salary with regards to sharing the load?
I’d be interested to know how many jobs would allow part time / reduced hours and how many men would ask for them! My area of work part time is usually agreed to, but I also know many friends who work in areas that wouldn’t allow that.

@calmingvibrations I'm afraid you'll have to remind me what I said that you don't understand. I'm afraid baby brain lasts quite a while :o in my case anyway.
Unless you made the shaved monkeys comment in which case just don't bother.

Women facilitate men and their careers and continue men getting a leg up in the work place.
^^ agree: the pattern is set when women come back from mat leave and it never changes.

We had a woman who did all the childcare, and stayed at home when a child was sick. She and her husband did the same jobs in different companies.. Her boss got so infuriated, he asked her to tell him when her kids were sick and her husband was covering it. She was shocked but I do understand where he was going with that line of inquiry. (He clearly had no right to know of course).

YANBU to think it at all.
There's always a reason why a man's career can't be inconvenienced.
E.g. He earns more than me - i didnt realise that meant he can't parent his child when they are poorly 50% of the time?

Men get places because it's expected women will drop to part time, women will do the pick ups and drop offs, women will take the day leave if child is unwell, women will do the double shift at home etc.

YA totally BU to ask them or say anything about it, but it would annoy me if I had a return to work interview where the message was loud and clear from statements of intent about time off etc that 'this job is an option to me and ultimately my home life and husband's job is more important'.

This has been more revealing than I would like. I just wanted to explain that there are valid reasons behind our recruitment rationale.

Xingming I wonder if someone will work out who you and your husband are from the details in your posts and realise you are in violation of fair recruitment practices. You sound massively up yourself. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that you can’t do a school run if you’re overseas. Is that what we are talking about here?

Do we live in the same society? You live in one where women, mothers are expected to have careers? How interesting.

I think we live in a society where no matter what a mother does she is considered to be in the wrong. Stepping back from career is selfish, having a career is selfish. Looking after your own children is lazy, paying someone else to look after your children is lazy. Etc etc.

What I do feel is that with the demographics of this particular website, there is an expectation that women should have 'high flying' careers, whereas in my day to day life, I feel that the pressure is very much the opposite.

It is tricky but I think there is a good balance for the emergency care between my husband and me. He does the ‘child woken up poorly’ days and I do the ‘child is ill at nursery’ calls. If it is obvious the night before we fight it out depending on who has the biggest diary issues.

I have to leave early for drop-offs though and I think that is what puts me into the ‘Mummy track’ more than emergency care or being part-time. In contrast, everyone fawns over my husband for occasionally taking the day to do emergency childcare, leaving early when my trains are buggered and arriving ‘late’by 9am. People seem to love male employees doing childcare.