Why shouldn’t life be made easier for pregnant women/mothers?

[Duckwithnobill]

Read quite a few threads here lately that have really shown vitriol towards advancements in working conditions, pay and other adaptations that make life easier for pregnant women and women with young children, which is bizarre to say the least on a parenting forum.

A couple of examples being resentment at the increased ability to work from home or more flexibility from employers around attending meetings/commuting in late pregnancy. I’ve seen women that take advantage of these enhancements be labelled as workshy or as the reason women aren’t respected in the workplace. Full disclosure I am pregnant and my employer has been great at accommodating my pregnancy presumably because they want me to return after maternity leave!

Then there’s the whole debate around P&C parking spaces, where some posters seem genuinely angry that there might be small conveniences put in place to make life a little bit easier for parents.

AIBU to find this attitude quite baffling? Surely improvements to the way pregnant women/mothers are treated can only be a good thing? Or should we all just suffer and struggle?

Yawn.

Somehow when you're an elderly pensioner and need the working population to pay for your social care and pension payments, you may not feel the same. People need to have more children to pay for the ageing population. It's going to be a really serious issue in the near future

Not enough people are having children

I think why this doesn't work though is the fact that a long term illness/disability is often just that - something that is going to be potentially lifelong and therefore attendance levels may not get any better. Certainly where I work to dismiss for attendance it has to be very clear that there is no reasonable prospect of a return to work in the future or little prospect of attendance improving. Similarly for warnings etc. but with pregnancy it is a temporary situation so it wouldn't be a fair comparator (the point of an attendance management policy is looking at what levels of sickness a business can support so pregnancy isn't a fair reflection on someone's attendance when it is potentially 40 weeks out of someone's whole working career).

Do people with Children not need support for sick parents then? Do women that have children not have chronic conditions?

I have no issue with parental rights, that's great. But I actually think - and I'm going to get flamed for this - they're better than sickness rights and the female masses voices are louder (I'm a woman btw!). Where I work you can get way longer maternity leave pay than sickness pay. There's still lots of support as there are lots of pregnant women. I'm really pleased about that but what happens when you've got a chronic illness or cancer? I appreciate this is just an example but being pregnant is not a minority and being young and disabled is, and that's (when you look at PIP and SSP) the really shitty end of the stick.

I didn’t say they didn’t. But childless people are more likely to be shouldering the burden of elderly parent care. Especially if they have siblings with children.

I agree with this overall

So will you be encouraging your own children to work in care homes or is that just for other peoples kids?

Good to know i will get no judgement if i refuse to care for my elderly mother.........................oh wait

Will you be encouraging YOUR children to be care workers?

Sorry i cant let this slide. Ive been on many of the same threads as @fitzwilliamdarcy and when she was finally given last Christmas off (after doing EIGHT in a row) instead of thanking her for the 8 Xmases she had already done they went whining to HR about discrimination and then one of them called in sick on Christmas Day.

OK you had a good pregnancy but some women are so ill they're hospitalised or need to bed rest for their entire pregnancy to save the baby.

You had an easy time in pregnancy it seems but not everyone is so lucky. Only women with easy pregnancies who have no idea how bad it can be say things like "pregnancy isn't an illness". Pregnancy is the illest I've ever been in my life.

Im 50 and back in the 90s and several times since Tories have moaned and griped that people should not have children if they cant afford them. People like me who live in social housing. I know thats who they meant.

And yet now the reckoning has to be paid here comes the fucking whining

Pretty much this.

I don't think many people mind flexibility being afforded to pregnant women or parents-provided it is not at the cost of others-and is also available to others for other reasons as well.

I think the push back comes when companies, for example, prioritise the parents at their company at the expense of colleagues who don't have children or who have grown children. If, for example, your company requires Christmas Day working and you knew this when you signed the contract but upon having a child-you refuse to ever work it- and demand that the childless colleagues have to work it-you can bet you're going to be a disliked colleague and for good reason.

I think there are many situations where companies, for example, could afford their staff more flexibility-not just parents or expectant mothers such as caring responsibilities, etc.

People don't mind allowances and flexibility being given (at least I've never seen anyone mind) to people (especially in a work context) because we all have lives outside of work and commitments outside of it, too. It's just when it starts to take the piss and impact on others that people start to mind, in my experience.

Because pregnancy is temporary. And has a set timeline. Treating women well means they're likely to return and become productive employees again. Not only that, they also tend to value flexibility + being treated well and stay despite lower pay. It's a cheap way to retain good employees. For jobs that actually need high performers.

However serious illness will need long-term accommodations. Do you really expect companies to pay people a generous amount to not do any work, for a long time? How exactly is this going to benefit them?

I also don't understand why you're comparing PIP and SSP to pregnancy. Are you aware of the SMP rate?

@saltinecrackers I thought your response is a bit harsh. There are lots of adjustments that can be made that allow disabled people to remain within the work place, for example the same flexibility for appointments etc as benefits parents. However, often there is a huge stigma to employing disabled staff, even where they are highly qualified for the role. I absolutely believe maternity rights should be protected and promoted but reasonable adjustments in the workplace eg flexible working, paid time off for appointments can and should be provided to disabled staff too otherwise it just builds resentment.

No they aren’t, this simply isn’t true.

I work for a company which just affords everyone flexible and agile working, with the expectation being that you get your work done and attend meetings you need to be at, whether in person or remotely.

That just makes more sense to me. It avoids hostility, fosters more general empathy and understanding and on the whole makes people work more productively.

Doesn't matter whether you're taking time out or staying at home because you're pregnant, want to do a gym class, have a meeting with your mortgage broker, want to walk your dog, are caring for elderly parents, managing your disability etc.

Societally, aside from disability, nobody in need is realistically more in need than others in need. Make the spaces accessible rather than parent and child, and provide more of them but further away from the entrance. Give seats to those who need them.

I imagine if you're someone who like me is childless and not through choice, being on the shitty end of the stick to accommodate preferences of parents is like being punished twice.

Well I am disabled too - neurodiverse. Also managed and worked with a lot of disabled staff.
It's already the law to consider reasonable adjustments but because disability is so varied and can last very long , unlike pregnancy it's difficult to put in a 'one-sized fits all'.
A good workplace will have generous sick leave and flexible working that can also be used by disable staff. But equating it to maternity is a stretch!
We have 2 months sick leave, most people won't need even a month a year. Maternity is full pay for 6 months, than tapered off until a year.
6 months sick leave is a lot IMO. If people have chronic illnesses arrangements are made for them to work PT. But to say they need to be kept like FT and given paid time off for appointments, plus illness, longer than 2 months worth makes it extremely difficult.
And if made the law will result in less disabled people being hired as employers just don't want to do that.

I imagine if you're someone who like me is childless and not through choice, being on the shitty end of the stick to accommodate preferences of parents is like being punished twice.

VERY much this. My employer doesn’t give employees any flexibility for attending and enduring fertility treatments, either, which I think only makes it worse.

It’s very unfair, it’s like having kids is a lifestyle choice if you happen to need fertility treatments but not if you are fertile.

It is according to this - see the highlighted bit in the abstract.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6532053/#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20estimates%20from%20multivariate%20logistic,by%20transfers%20to%20elderly%20mothers.

There is a bill for statutory fertility treatment going through the House of Commons right now https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3235
It certainly has my support.

@MsCactus totally agree. My former psychopath of a manager was a total cunt to me during my last pregnancy. I had crippling PGP to the point I needed a wheelchair, yet she refused to let me work from home even though my productivity was excellent!

"Pregnancy isn't an illness" was one of her favourite lines to trot out. I had GDM and she told me to inject my insulin in the toilet, as she said the empty meeting rooms were for "important things" and "nobody else gives a shit about your pregnancy."

It caused a ridiculous level of stress and I'm still angry about it.

When you’ve managed to get infant twins out of a car (on your own) in a normal space without leaving one child in oncoming traffic come back to me…

I think parents need wider spaces for safety alone. I appreciate that other groups in society would benefit too, but where do we draw the line?

I hope you reported her, what a c*