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?

A lot of people have a crabs in a bucket mentality. Especially if they had to suffer. They hate seeing things get easier for people. They want them to suffer too - like they did.

People also love to say 'well you chose to get pregnant' as if that means you deserve to suffer and have a hard life. A lot of people lack compassion.

I actually could give you specific examples in the NHS department I work in, BUT there are many people who are not pregnant taking the piss with sick leave as well.

This is nonsense.

Firstly, if you park at the back of the car park, there are less likely to be other cars around to impact you.

Also, get out the car, get your pram/buggy out, put it infront or behind your car, wherever is better, get one child out, strap them in then get the other one out.

If they are too big for a buggy but cant stand next to you without running off, then you need reigns.

Its hardly rocket science.

I can only speak for my employer but we get six months of sick leave on full pay and full pay for the first 6 months of maternity leave.

My employer isn't perfect, some of my reasonable adjustments for my disabilities have taken a long time to put in place (6 months plus) but they've also made adjustments for my pregnancy. I WFH for most of the first trimester due to bad morning sickness and am WFH in my third trimester due to PGP.

One of my disabilities requires a lot more WFH than we get as standard and that disability has been worsened by my pregnancy and that hasn't been an issue with work at all.

I do feel I've had less bother about my WFH since the pregnancy (there's been a push to get people in the office more) but I think that's less about pregnancy being treated more seriously than disability and more because I now have an additional protected characteristic.

The problem is getting the child in and out. The spaces aren’t wide enough to allow you to open the door sufficiently. Car seats these days, particularly since the recommendation to keep children rear facing until they are 4 or 5, are very large and unwieldy!

I get your point, but I also needed to get a double seated trolley to put the children and my shopping in (rather than using a buggy which isn’t as practical for shopping for me) so I wasn’t going to park at the back of the carpark and leave them in the car by themselves whilst I retrieved one. Also our local Tesco isn’t actually ever quiet enough (unless you go at 10pm) to be assured of having that much space around you. I wasn’t leaving them in front or behind of the car in the traffic unless I absolutely had to - have you seen how some people drive? My DH worked away a lot then. Internet shopping wasn’t as much of a thing and I liked to get out and about.

Child spaces, without a doubt, made my life a lot easier and I’m not going to apologise for that. It’s good to make things easier for most families is it not? Yes I could have done things differently and sometimes I did when the spaces were taken - wasn’t as safe for my children though, especially when they were babies. It was certainly easier once they were walking and could climb into their seats etc.

And this too, at both sides.

I'm really disappointed by your response @saltinecrackers - so you think that because pregnancy is temporary that's why mat pay etc is better? It's attitudes like that which keep long-term disabled people from being promoted or hired and them working on despite clearly being ill. This isn't an attack on mothers, who I believe should be granted pay, but just that people with disabilities are hugely overlooked. The sad thing is I - by and large - think your attitude is reflected in society today. The dream is to be a healthy, white man, of course.

The issue really is flexibility for all. Parents and child free people have personal commitments. If everyone was treated the same, then it wouldn't be an issue.
It only becomes an issue when it's deemed one person's choices supersedes another person's and they get preferential treatment.

Pregnancy/motherhood is a CHOICE. I think a lot of people have the mindset of 'well, why should I be put out or have to subsidize your choices'.

This doesn’t really make sense.

What kind of flexibility would a person with no dependants need that would be equivalent to a parent?

Is it preferential treatment to allow a parent to leave early to pick up a sick DC from nursery but deny a childless employee leaving early to go to the gym?

Surely you can see why those two things are not the same.

Be as disappointed as you like. Not only does the math remain the same. It's attitudes like yours, not mine, which will prevent long-term disabled people from being promoted or hired. And I have no idea why you're talking about healthy white men. Perhaps you have reading comprehension issues? I already stated that I am disabled too and not only that... this is Mumsnet. I am neither a man, nor white.

Because your position, without any nuance or clarification, appears to be that the long-term disabled should be given the same terms and conditions on people on maternity leave.

Stop and think about what you're saying for a minute. Some organisations have full maternity pay for a year. According to you, the chronically ill should have up to year off on full pay. But then, unlike people coming back from mat leave, they will always be ill, so then the next year, they can also get a full year off.. and where does it end? When are they actually going to work?

This is a completely different position from saying that organisations should work closely with disabled people and put reasonable adjustments in place.
This could also include a reduction in hours, if someone is ill often enough to be unable to do a full-time job effectively. And as a separate point, organisations should have a reasonable amount of paid sick leave that has nothing to do with maternity leave. Most good employers have either LM discretion or company critical illness/income protection policies that make up for the loss of income.

BTW I have hired/trained/promoted quite a few long-term disabled people (and will continue to do so). Including a couple treated horribly by other managers. Whatever you think about me, my conscience is clear and my results speak for themselves.

And as an aside, many orgs have terrible policies all around. Maternity pay, sick pay, none of it beyond the statutory requirements, which makes it a moot point.

It's maths.

Caring for an elderly parent. Taking them to hospital appointments. Having to leave because they’ve fallen over. Or caring for a partner with a chronic health condition.

I really do think it’s an employees market now and a lot of job hunters can pick and choose and companies have wised up to the fact that they need a good offer to get good employees. I like to think that if a person caring for their elderly parents doesn’t have a supportive workplace they can soon look elsewhere. My boss’s husband needs round the clock care, she WFH FT and this means she can care for him too. We have a carer’s policy that allows for unspecific working hours. The understanding is that as long as the work is done that’s fine.

I know not all workplaces are like that but I do think many are now wising up!

This is honestly not meant as goady. But its an observation.

Out local supermarket shares a car park with a large, busy soft play centre. Weekdays mornings, when I shop, it is presumably toddlers.
The parent and child spaces are nearer the supermarket than the soft play, although the footpath connects both.
There are always plenty of parent and child spaces free. But the rows nearest the soft play are full. Its the busiest bit of the car park.
There are no time restrictions in any parking space.

I think the reality is that there are a whole host of reasons why people may need more flexibility at work, or space in a car park not through choice and yet ‘but I have kids’ seems to be trotted out as a way to get priority.

Yes the infrastructure challenges/bad bosses are not the fault of the pregnant woman but I can easily see how a tinkly person giggling whilst plotting calling in sick when it’s their turn to work Xmas day is enough to tip a frustrated person over the edge into telling them to piss off/children aren’t a disability etc etc etc

Nobody would have a beef with P&at spaces being closest if all spaces were wide enough. When I had a broken leg I still needed to get to the Drs for example. Temporary so can’t get a blue badge, needed the space to open the door fully to get my leg out. P&C space the best option. I they didn’t exist we’d probably have just parked over 2 spaces. I was once let out of the car before my partner then backed in to the rest of the space and a car drove fast at me on the horn because I was then standing in the road waiting for my partner to bring the crutches and they had to wait while a car came the other way to drive round me. Don’t need that sort of aggression.

im also medically not able to have kids, and yet I think the view on flexibility for those with children is still ‘everyone will benefit at some point so it doesn’t matter if it is the ones who don’t currently need it who do the covering’. If you are always the one doing the covering believe me it grates. We’ve had a few kids born at work recently and every single person without fail, male and female, has come back with some sort of flexible request that has been granted, but I was not allowed to shift my day by 30 minutes so as to avoid the school run outside my house on the commute because the phones need covering despite having to answer the incoming calls being not actually in my job and something that we all in our dept have just as a ‘if others engaged type thing. I think employers are scared of pushing back when people say oh but the kids.

Really the solution is to make things better for everyone, but maybe, just maybe, a little appreciation that whilst it should be the workplace putting in enough staff etc in reality it is just the other employees doing the covering a lot of the time for the parent, and a thanks rather than an expectation wouldn’t go amiss when it’s unexpected eg kid sick at nursery needs picking up, and maybe making arrangements sometimes to be the one who stays late would go a long way. People are once bitten twice shy about a lot of things so if you’ve had a piss taker parent in the past your view of course starts with ‘here we go again’ when the flexibility requests start, I think that’s just human nature.

I agree with you to an extent, but I notice you’ve focussed on the childless persons other responsibilities and them being the ones to change. I’m not having a go, because I think people in general are free to move to try and get what they want, but I think you’d have got outrage if you’d suggested that someone with a young child find a different career with more flexible options if their current one requires working Xmas day on a rota, though they equally could move and work elsewhere.

That’s not an outrageous suggestion at all. It’s a sensible one I’d say. Maternity tights are enshrined in law but having a flexible employer is not.

also some people have young children AND are a carer for elderly parents. My Aunty-in-law (who was one of eight children born when her mum was 45) was 35 when she shared care of her elderly mum with her sister. She also had a 6yo and a toddler to juggle.

Yes, it is the Sandwich generation- caring for children and caring for the elderly. Most unpaid caters are women, whether that is for the elderly or a relative with a chronic/terminal medical condition, where every sibling has children it is statistically likely that if there is a daughter it will fall to her. Anecdotally, I have a brother, we both have children, I have been the one to sort my Dad’s housing issues out, making phone calls on my work lunchtime to organisation’s that can help, I have two DC to care for along with DH but he works away frequently as bigger earner. I do stuff for DH’s Mum occasionally as well. I wouldn’t think this scenario is particularly unusual. I do think people should have dependent’s care anyway and they do with my employer. Pregnancy can be difficult for some and it is an impact on your own health which is hard going, it is surely a sign of a civilised society to afford that priority. I would constantly faint during my first pregnancy and I absolutely had to be afforded special consideration at work when I was coming around from those episodes. What was my LM supposed to do step over me when lying on the office or steps of the building one time!

But all employees have a statutory rights to request flexible working.

A right to ask yes. But not a right to have it. And the reality in most workplaces is that requests from people with children are more likely to be granted than those from people with elderly parents. Especially if those people are childless.

I do agree that flexible working is far more likely to be granted to parents and that any other reason than “I have a child” is not considered a good enough reason. It’s not supposed to be discriminate but humans are humans and it is.

Yes. We all have it at my workplace now but for the first 5 years I was there, only parents were ever granted it. Anyone else got hit with the "business need says no" stick.

Now the same thing applies to part-time working. Every parent who has come back to work and requested PT working has gotten it. Every person without kids who has requested it has been told no, business needs.

(I know this because it's finally getting put on our union's radar.)