To be narked by this woman’s attitude? Working parents v child free employees

[SJaneS49]

Not a biggie, at the moment I’ve got a lot going on in the background and am generally hacked of with the world .. but this response has generated a real ‘oh ffs’ reaction in me just now.

Expectations of working parents, especially women as typically (but not obviously always ) we have to date carried more of the childcare burden and been the ones taking the compromises has always been of interest to me & something I think we have got wrong in Britain. I posted something on LinkedIn earlier about how society expects parents to work as if they don’t have children and to parent as if they don’t work. Until I started working from home 14 years ago, that was my experience as a professional working in London, working all hours in the office while also being the sole parent at home, getting in about 7.30/8pm & going straight into helping out with homework.

So I put out a question on LinkedIn, asking parents if their recent experience of working in the new normal had changed what they themselves would be looking for in their next role in terms of flexibility of hours worked when or where they carried out their work. Plenty of employers are currently offering flexibility..but are pretty woolly & vague on what the expectations will be in the longer term. Quite possibly as a number haven’t really worked that out themselves yet! As well as interesting me on a personal level, as I advise my clients on how to make their roles more attractive, I wanted to gauge what changes 2020/21 had made to attracting candidates who if they were parents might not now (having experienced the opportunity to be more ‘present’) want to go back to how it was. Potentially!

Anyway. I have had a reply from someone who is child free who I worked with on a project years ago basically saying special measures should not be made for parents and therefore burdening their childless colleagues. Flexibility if it was being offered should be for all.

While I completely agree with her that parents should not be offered special measures or more flexible options than others, I wasn’t suggesting that at all! Which has me wondering whether this would read like this to others? This particular woman seems to spend a lot of her time writing ranty comments on LinkedIn posts judging by my feed so feeling a bit 🙄 about implications made in her post that the child free ‘carry’ more workload than working parents.

Basically, is she being a knob? Or was it fair enough! Just brought back memories of some of the attitudes around years ago of some of the women I worked with, making bitchy comments about women who had to head out at dead on 5 to relieve the childminder.

The trouble is, it isn't just 1 sports day a year. It's sports day, prize giving, Nativity, 3 other random events during the year, 10 times the child feels anything other than perfectly well (this can last more than 1 day each time. Then double up this for more than 1 child, especially if they are at different schools. Then double it again for the OTHER parent in your team of 3.

You make it sound like parents just get 'given' all this extra time off - is that really the case where you work? Everywhere I've ever worked all of those would have to be taken out of annual leave or taken as unpaid leave if you run out (I've had to do this for child illness before). I have no more paid time off than anyone else (well, actually I have less as it happens because I have the least time off for my own sickness of anyone in my team; I've had one half day off for my own sickness in three years) - I didn't get given a load of extra annual leave at the birth of each child!

We have the opposite issue at work. Just one colleague has primary school age children and we always offer her flexibility/cover, but she's reluctant to take it. I think she thinks it makes her look like the weakest colleague. We've all got older children and know how tricky it it to manage the spinning plates. All of us, that is, except our manager, who expects us all to, as the OP said, work like we don't have children. We're all just waiting for her to retire, but her work is her life, and it's not likely to happen any time soon.

I very much hope, then, that 'child free work colleagues' and the like are happy to pay for benefits for the many parents (mostly women, many lone parents) who wouldn't be able to work without some level of flexibility.

This kind of attitude works both ways. If it means that the workforce is replaced with people who are willing and able to share the workload, then I probably would be happier than I am right now, having spent 18 months working up hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime to cover parents, whose only thought on their return was to ask why all the childless workers had been given priority for annual leave, over them.

FWIW, I think YANBU. As I understand it, you asked on LinkedIn if flexitime jobs are attractive to parents - as opposed to being attractive to all prospective employees in general. Perhaps it was phrased too positively and it might have been easier to ask if a lack of flexibility deterred parents from applying for some jobs?

Like... does free coffee in the breakroom make jobs attractive to parents versus does a lack of free coffee deter parents from applying for job roles? After all, everyone - whether or not they are parents - would perceive free coffee as beneficial even if they didn't intend to drink the coffee. However, not everyone would consider a lack of free coffee as an unattractive factor when browsing job adverts.

@AudacityBaby

I very much hope, then, that 'child free work colleagues' and the like are happy to pay for benefits for the many parents (mostly women, many lone parents) who wouldn't be able to work without some level of flexibility.

This kind of attitude works both ways. If it means that the workforce is replaced with people who are willing and able to share the workload, then I probably would be happier than I am right now, having spent 18 months working up hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime to cover parents, whose only thought on their return was to ask why all the childless workers had been given priority for annual leave, over them.

If they were on furlough then they were presumably being paid less and also doing home learning and childcare, so not just chilling out. If they were being fully paid on furlough while you didn't get paid overtime, that is absolutely totally unfair, but an issue with a crap employer issue, not furloughed colleagues who don't have control over the situation, nor insight into the work while they were away.

If they were working and homeschooling, but not able to deliver as much and you had to pick up the slack, then it's almost guaranteed they were doing as many hours of 'work' as you. I was terrified during lockdown as my work said it would be 'flexible' rather than furloughing and I knew cuts were coming and my department was full of men who were single or with sahms to take the load. I'm a single mum of 3 and was working, homeschooling and trying to do the absolute basics of childcare and cleanliness from 6am until midnight almost every weekday, and still got less than a full day's work done. I was waking myself up because I was crying in my sleep. Then on the return to school, I found out that holiday childcare was cancelled - so yes, had to request annual leave right after lockdown.

Of course an employer is not responsible for everyone's personal lives, but this is a crazy situation, and many of us have spent years bending and flexing too, missing school events or logging on at night to make up for leaving 'early' at 5pm, only to discover that when our entire home/work structure was falling apart, our employers didn't flex in return, and all some of our colleagues saw was lack of dedication.

@OverTheRubicon They weren’t furloughed. We’re public sector so can’t be furloughed. They were paid in full and credited 50% of their hours, for 18 months. Equally, no redundancy worries.

I’m not replying to the rest of it because it’s clear that you think unequal workplace treatment for one group of people for 18 months is justifiable because another group had a tough time parenting in the pandemic. I can’t get on board with that.

I see no one has really answered the question...

What are lone parents expected to do in my example?

And no it's no good saying you dont take a job that covers Christmas Day ..what if you are already in that job....what if you werent a lone parent when you made the choice to have kids?

And as I said in my earlier posts I would include others with caring responsibilities such as elderly/ill parents etc.

If there physically isn't a care alternative option on certain days of the year then I would definitely expect those without such responsibilities to be more flexible. On the face of it the law agrees.

I have disabled dc, my family have passed away and I live in a rural area. Unless you've been in a similar position then you cant possibly understand how difficult it is. When I was younger I always covered for colleagues and was happy to do so. Their needs were clearly greater than mine. But there again I'm not a selfish twat.

@OverTheRubicon if an employer isn't 'flex' is the first place then there's no issue of childless over parents. All employees will be held to the same standard regardless of personal life. Which sucks for you but that's a separate issue.
It's when employers ARE flex but at the expense of childless employees that it becomes a problem. Again it depends on team size and demographics.
Where I work it was accepted that the standard of work would drop during furlough. In well-managed teams nobody was expected to make up the difference. Managers did their jobs by managing the workloads of their teams based on capacity.
In badly managed teams however work was initially dumped onto childless people and they couldn't take A/L at all for a while as the managers had to comply with the companywide 'covid family friendly' policy.

@Willyoujustbequiet

I see no one has really answered the question...

What are lone parents expected to do in my example?

And no it's no good saying you dont take a job that covers Christmas Day ..what if you are already in that job....what if you werent a lone parent when you made the choice to have kids?

And as I said in my earlier posts I would include others with caring responsibilities such as elderly/ill parents etc.

If there physically isn't a care alternative option on certain days of the year then I would definitely expect those without such responsibilities to be more flexible. On the face of it the law agrees.

I have disabled dc, my family have passed away and I live in a rural area. Unless you've been in a similar position then you cant possibly understand how difficult it is. When I was younger I always covered for colleagues and was happy to do so. Their needs were clearly greater than mine. But there again I'm not a selfish twat.

And you haven't answered my question - what if your entire team was made up of lone parents? What would you do then?

People without children or older children have families too. Some care for relatives. Why should some employees always have to cover for people with kids, single parent or not.
Sorry, if we are paid the same, we are entitled to the same holidays on a fairly shared out rota.
I was a single parent and asked for no favours in my working life. Attitude s like that make employers think twice about employing us. If you take on a job where you know evenings, weekends and bank holidays are part of your working pattern and you are a parent you cannot expect the rest of the workforce to cover for you.

@Willyoujustbequiet

When childcare isn't physically available - Christmas day for example, what are people suggesting lone parents do? Its ridiculous to suggest child free people need the same flexibility

It's not their colleagues issue though, and would be unfair if the expectation was on them to work it every year.

When I was younger I always covered for colleagues and was happy to do so.

The problem is if you don’t go on to have children, you could potentially never get out of covering for colleagues.

[quote AudacityBaby]@OverTheRubicon They weren’t furloughed. We’re public sector so can’t be furloughed. They were paid in full and credited 50% of their hours, for 18 months. Equally, no redundancy worries.

I’m not replying to the rest of it because it’s clear that you think unequal workplace treatment for one group of people for 18 months is justifiable because another group had a tough time parenting in the pandemic. I can’t get on board with that.[/quote]
Of course not, that was my point about it being a crap employer. Making it about the parents themselves lets the decision makers off the hook and causes division which again benefits the decision makers.

‘What are lone parents expected to do in my example?’

Why do you consider that to be a problem childfree colleagues are obligated to solve?

The problem is if you don’t go on to have children, you could potentially never get out of covering for colleagues.
That's what happened to me for years. What started as a favor became an expectation with great consternation expressed by all (the parents) when I tired of it after 10 years and refused to be the default Christmas/half term/any other time default cover.

Since men are generally not affected much by childcare, even for their own children, do men also end up covering for female colleagues with children or are they somehow immune to the whole problem?

But parents of young children DO need more flexibility than others. Some people don't NEED flexibility at all, but just want it.
There's a difference between want and need, and I think we need to decide whether we personally feel that everything should be exactly the same for everyone regardless of their circumstances, or whether we need to make exceptions for people who are actually in need.

For example, is it fair to make sure that everyone is able to work FLEXIBLY, or is it fair that everyone is able to work?

If parents of young children (or people with other relevant issues that require flexible working) are prioritised for flexible working, then people with no children/other commitments can still work. Whereas if literally everyone has to have the same options - either everyone has the option of flexibility, or nobody does - then often nobody will be given the option. Which means that some people - a lot of mothers and carers - physically won't be able to work at all.

So what is really fair? The UK has become really selfish and there's no concept of people having different circumstances so if we are going to have a better society then we might need to be more caring/understanding. It's all just "Well if so and so has this, then I want it too!! Even if I don't need it! Or it's NOT FAIR!"

And yes, I know people choose to have children. And they always will.

@Balonzette

When I worked in Germany over 20 years ago we had just one requirement: you need to see that your work is covered if you worked flexible. First we had a fixed time of 10am-3pm we needed to be in but they then changed it to total flexiability.

And - it worked. I can't remember anyone in my department (we were over 50 people) taking advantage of it. You needed to ensure time was made good, so you either used already accrued overtime or you worked late the following days.

My current employer has its HQ in Germany and my colleagues there are able to collect overtime on special time accounts, taking time off when needed without using unpaid leave.

That is open to everyone because everyone has differnent needs. Until the pandemic hit I didn't know how many of my colleagues have eldery parents who they care for or do lots of work like life admin/accompanying to doctors/hospital appointments etc. They also need the flexability to do this. Unless you can pay for a PA for your elderly relatives it is often up to the children to do this.

And why shouldn't people want to have flexability? It's part of the work/life balance. I know one of my childless colleagues has hobbies she does during her days off, should she only do this in the evenings/weekends if she can afford to go part-time just because she has no children?

Do children are more difficult to plan? Yes, sure and I think most employer and colleagues do have sympathy with cancelled childcare or illness but it is unfair to expect them to drop everything and cover all the time.

And you haven't answered my question - what if your entire team was made up of lone parents? What would you do then?

Most things don't come up suddenly. Christmas, school holidays etc. If an employer isn't allowed to check these things before they employ you (and it is fair that they aren't) then the team have to decide, individually, if they can continue to do that particular job. Just as people without a car can't live rurally with no buses and take a job in the city that takes 3 hours to walk to, and expect the company to fix their transport problem.

And if the entire team are single parents, I'd expect them to support each other at times when something comes up suddenly, or take fair turns with Christmas etc.

But parents of young children DO need more flexibility than others. Some people don't NEED flexibility at all, but just want it.

It is not up to your team mates to fix your childcare problems or to expect them to take on extra hours/workload because you can't organise childcare. That is a you problem, as they say. The Government could help out, and good employers do offer flexibility - to everyone. Your "right" to attend a nativity play does not trump my "right" to visit my mum on her 90th birthday, as an example. And in the past when that kind of thing has cropped up in teams I've worked in the one-off of a child's wedding or granny's 100th has been covered and if the nativity play can be covered too, all well and good, but it wasn't a given.

If parents of young children (or people with other relevant issues that require flexible working) are prioritised for flexible working, then people with no children/other commitments can still work.

Unless and until those getting flexibility because of, say, children, accept that those putting in the extra hours, sucking up the extra work etc are given priority for salary increases and promotions, flexibility has to be an all or nothing thing for me.

When i had young children and bust a gut to make a career at my work, i was always first in, last out, paid a wedge of childcare to allow that to happen, did the weekends when necessary etc etc. i was turned down for promotion because "as a mother you'll never be as loyal to the company". Which is when i basically worked to rule for the rest of the year. And just shrugged everything off. That is the reality of many workplaces.

Whereas if literally everyone has to have the same options - either everyone has the option of flexibility, or nobody does - then often nobody will be given the option.

Bollocks. My company offers flexibility. My friend who works for a massive German manufacturer says that people literally work their whole lives there because of their work practices. Both companies massively successful.

It is the same thing as if a company has 30% female board members they are more successful. Companies see these things working, and adopt best practice.

As i said above: we should all be fighting for all of us.

@reluctantbrit
My current employer has its HQ in Germany and my colleagues there are able to collect overtime on special time accounts, taking time off when needed without using unpaid leave.

that is very common in Germany. A friend of mine works for (a different than in my last post) company where you can accrue overtime in a retirement account, as you're only allowed to have so much flex-leave for overtime. They're a bit short of workforce for some reason in his job, always have been. So he has: a) good salary b) good flexibility on his hours c) can currently see that he can retire a full year earlier than planned because of his overtime account

THAT is what employers should aspire to. Really good terms & conditions. And they get the pick of the best employees who stay a long time.

@Hardbackwriter

The trouble is, it isn't just 1 sports day a year. It's sports day, prize giving, Nativity, 3 other random events during the year, 10 times the child feels anything other than perfectly well (this can last more than 1 day each time. Then double up this for more than 1 child, especially if they are at different schools. Then double it again for the OTHER parent in your team of 3.

You make it sound like parents just get 'given' all this extra time off - is that really the case where you work? Everywhere I've ever worked all of those would have to be taken out of annual leave or taken as unpaid leave if you run out (I've had to do this for child illness before). I have no more paid time off than anyone else (well, actually I have less as it happens because I have the least time off for my own sickness of anyone in my team; I've had one half day off for my own sickness in three years) - I didn't get given a load of extra annual leave at the birth of each child!

It doesn't matter whether the time off is taken as leave or unpaid, it's the inconvenience to the business, other staff and their clients/customers.

@Willyoujustbequiet If there physically isn't a care alternative option on certain days of the year then I would definitely expect those without such responsibilities to be more flexible.

So, say, if Christmas Day working is required, you'd expect lone parents to have it off every year and for childless staff to have to work it every year to cover? So a childless worker could never spend Christmas with their parents, siblings or even each other? Wow!

And you haven't answered my question - what if your entire team was made up of lone parents? What would you do then?

That's a straw man argument. How about if every member of my team was in a wheelchair, how would we reach a top shelf? Or is it more likely that there would be a mix of abilities, and we could share out the work?

There would be very few teams that are actually made up of all lone parents. And even if they were, how many would be (a) totally lone parents who didn't share access so always needed Christmas (b) all with young children and (c) in an industry where Christmas cover is critical. It's incredibly unlikely.

@Hardbackwriter

The trouble is, it isn't just 1 sports day a year. It's sports day, prize giving, Nativity, 3 other random events during the year, 10 times the child feels anything other than perfectly well (this can last more than 1 day each time. Then double up this for more than 1 child, especially if they are at different schools. Then double it again for the OTHER parent in your team of 3.

You make it sound like parents just get 'given' all this extra time off - is that really the case where you work? Everywhere I've ever worked all of those would have to be taken out of annual leave or taken as unpaid leave if you run out (I've had to do this for child illness before). I have no more paid time off than anyone else (well, actually I have less as it happens because I have the least time off for my own sickness of anyone in my team; I've had one half day off for my own sickness in three years) - I didn't get given a load of extra annual leave at the birth of each child!

Not at all, though starting late/leaving early due to child caring issues was never expected to be made up by parents. It was more that if the parent had a child's event one week, I was expected to drop any plans I had for that week so I could cover. They even tried to cancel a paid for overseas holiday I had booked at virtually no notice because a parent in the team wanted a day off in that week for a child's school activity.

Them leaving early for childcare was possibly the worst though. Somebody had to stay late to get the work finished in time, especially when we were coming up to deadlines. I can't count the number of times I had plans that had to be cancelled due to last minute emergences in someone's home. However when I was having to take my father round for hospital appointments and cancer treatment, there was great reluctance for any flexibility or cover for this.

Strangely the child related emergencies seemed to be more common on Fridays as well, or the day before their booked leave, or when the workload was at it's heaviest.

I don’t see how anyone can say that every request for flexibility has the same merit.
So, say you’re the employer of a lone parent of a young child with severe special needs and they make a request for flexibility. Another employee, with no caring responsibilities, requests the same flexibility because they want to take up a new hobby. You can’t agree to both requests due to business needs.
What some pp are saying is that an employer should view both those requests as equally valid. Surely it would be totally unfeeling and inhuman to toss a coin and potentially agree to the hobby request and turn down the parent?!
We live in the real world where there IS (and often has to be) a value judgement of one person’s needs being more important than another’s. Unless we are all robots with no human feeling.