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?

When pregnant with no2 I only worked two days a week. Unfortunately the GD clinic at my hospital only ran on one of those two days. I had a bit of a row with the Dr who wanted me to come every week to look at my diary of blood sugar readings - I'm capable of seeing for myself if it's between X and y and we compromised on bi weekly attendance but i wasn't "taking the piss". The clinic runs when it runs.

Agreed

Surely we are all affected by others lifestyle choices to a degree? I think drivers/cars get preferential treatment that negatively affect my day to day life, but it is something I accept as part of the society I live in.

I actually haven’t seen one example on this thread just random “she’s taking the piss” comments and I strongly suspect they actually mean ‘she accessed everything she was entitled to’.

The only sort-of example I saw was a hypothetical one of “she works one day a week and uses that day to see the midwife”. Firstly - it may also be the midwife’s only working day. Secondly, I’m assuming someone works only 0.2 FTE because they already have small children. It’s much easier to attend a MW appointment without a child wriggling about on your knee. It’s not piss taking if she’s actually taking what she’s entitled to.

I’m also a bit of people claiming if women had too many rights it would be bad for them. Sounds like the misogynist’s charter!

I remember about 13 years ago I worked somewhere where about the same 3 people would constantly nip out for fags about 4 times a day. Another colleague brought up that it was unfair that others worked more than they did because they didn’t smoke. The smokers genuinely thought it was the same because “well you at all stop work to make cups of tea don’t you” - they did too! And hydration is kind of a requirement 😂 of course the same people moaned when someone took time off sick or had maternity leave with absolutely no irony.

I posted earlier on saying that where I work, parents always get Christmas/summer hols off, never do late or early starts, never do overtime, regularly work under normal hours (on full pay) as they’ve got kids at home but don't get called out on it because when management is made aware they just tell us we need to be team players and support them etc etc etc.

I was told to get a new job, that I shouldn't mind working Christmas because us non-parents aren't making magic, and that it's not parents' fault but the employer's. Some people don't want to hear any actual examples, trust me.

And it is the employer's fault for enabling them, but you can see why I'd roll my eyes at yet another campaign for more preferential treatment in the workplace.

@MuggedByReality I used to think like you before I had kids. Felt my free time was worth just as much as a mother's, so why should they get to leave early to pick their kids up, etc.

Now I have a child, I realise that these things are benefits for the young, vulnerable child, not for the parent. The child literally can't look after themselves, so they need someone to pick them up, provide their dinner, put them to bed. Surely you agree that as a society we need to have children, otherwise we'll have nobody to be our doctors, nurses, street cleaners, postmen, carers, train drivers and pension-funders when we are elderly? And hopefully you can also understand that children do need someone to look after them?

The parent doesn't get any benefit for themselves - they leave early to pick up the child and then have to work late into the evening once the child has gone to bed to make the time up, whilst the childfree are relaxing/out enjoying their evening. (Not that it's a competition or anything to be bitter about - I used to enjoy my childfree evenings or choose to work late to further my career, now I look after my child happily and then bear the late evening work, as I know it's a short-term necessity).

Well in this case as your colleague I would expect you to change that work day to another in the week that did work. I’d be royally pissed to hear that you were “working” two days but the clinic runs when it runs. This to me sounds 100% piss taking. Surely you just move your work day 🤷🏻‍♀️

I posted earlier on saying that where I work, parents always get Christmas/summer hols off, never do late or early starts, never do overtime, regularly work under normal hours (on full pay) as they’ve got kids at home but don't get called out on it because when management is made aware they just tell us we need to be team players and support them etc etc etc.

Yes and when childless/free employees need support e.g for chronic health conditions or sick elderly parents they don’t get it. Being a team player only seems to go one way.

A lot of posters here seem to have no empathy for how horrible it is to be childless when you don't want to be, and to then have to miss out on anything else that matters to you because of parents. Quite often events we may want to attend happen in school holidays/bank holidays (and certainly at the weekends), or wanting to meet up with family who have kids so school holidays is the only time available. Not to mention extra pressure/the most antisocial shifts given at work if you're childless. It's as if childless people are seen by some as not needing any meaningful relationships and shared times off.

I actually had to leave my last job as the timetable and demands became so ludicrous I mentally broke down (not helped by losing out on shared events that would have been a mental boost, because I had to work), after a new member of the small team started, with very specific availability due to having kids.

Of course society should make accommodations for pregnant women, and be child friendly in general. We need people to have children. But pretending it's some altruistic gesture for the greater good is ridiculous. I doubt any posters here didn't want kids but decided to have them for the good of society! They had them because they wanted them and get to experience all the rewards and meaning and benefits of having them.

In the workplace, it should be treated the same as reasonable adjustments for disability. The clue being in the word "reasonable". Ultimately if you can't do the job and others are having to pick up the slack to an unreasonable degree, you can't continue working there.

Could it be argued that not having children is more of a choice - given the centuries of it not really being a choice and society being built around the existence of family?

This is idiotic, sorry. It’s like saying ‘doctors choose to be doctors, it’s a lifestyle choice, so we shouldn’t give them better working conditions. And people have always chosen to be doctors, so we’ll manage.’

the uk birth rate is in steep decline, by the way, and has been for the past 15 years.

These threads always bring out the kind of mean spiritedness that makes me wonder how society manages to function at all. Fact is, everyone needs everyone else to have any kind of life in a civilised society. If we were all genuinely out for ourselves then society would break down and we would all be running around lawlessly doing what we want a la Mad Max type situation. Maybe we should all try and work together better so that doesn’t happen?

@Feelinadequate23

The parent doesn't get any benefit for themselves

If it's of no benefit to you, why did you have children? Is it not rewarding, although hard?

they leave early to pick up the child and then have to work late into the evening once the child has gone to bed to make the time up

Well then there's no problem. PPs are talking about people leaving early without actually making the time up. Or getting all the best shifts/not working holidays.

In this day and age (ie. the relevant one we're actually living in), having children is the choice. We have access to contraception.*

Whereas NOT having children may be a choice, but so often is not. Infertility, not meeting a suitable partner in time. (To be fair a lot of people don't meet a "suitable" partner but have kids anyway - but they still chose to have kids!)

(*Obvs aside from abusive situations)

I think your right however

it is fair for companies not to give you a pay rise when your going on maternity leave in a few weeks/minths

It's the lack of recognition of the pressure it puts on other parts of the team.

Within my team, I will have four directors out of seven off in the second half of the year for maternity/paternity leave. My company now offers a basic 12 weeks for paternity leave, plus more and more people are opting for shared parental leave, so it's not just a challenge confined to new mothers. In theory, this is all good and it's positive that new parents have more time with their child.

However, that leaves me without 4 senior people, who would otherwise be bringing in work, and leading on complex projects. It's a niche role, and I'm trying to get cover in, but honestly I can only think of 2 or 3 people who might be suitable & they don't have the same level of client relationships, so that puts all the business generation pressure on the 3 directors who are still around. And other more junior people in the team will try to step up - that's a good growth opportunity for them, but leaves you with management issues when those on parental leave come back, and again, it's a lot of new pressure for less experienced team members.

The cost of maternity pay comes out of the team's P&L, plus the cost of the paying for anyone who comes in as cover, at a time that the team is probably going to be less productive because we're missing key senior people. But the expectation to deliver the usual profit margin doesn't get toned down by PLC who introduced these enhanced parental leave policies, and everyone is going to kick off if they don't get their usual bonus... This year is the most pressured, but its has been a continued headache of things to juggle for the last three years, and its those who don't have children who are always under strain to hold it together. And it is genuinely impossible to get appropriate maternity cover for these types of roles, I have tried and tried and the people with the skills and knowledge I need are not looking for roles for only a year.

It's the same around flexibility and working from home - great in theory, but it means that those who are in the office are taking all the work of informal training of new team members, picking up random queries, getting pulled into last minute in person client meetings. I know that people in my team who are stopping work between 3-5 for picking up kids etc are logging on again in the evening to catch up, but that still means that the immediate firefighting in the middle of the day is left to the non-flexible working people every time.

I think people are just commenting that it's not possible for every role.

The types of role generally filled by woman are care, teaching, nursery, nursing, retail etc (yes this is a different issue but it's true).

These jobs can't be done from home. So most people can't have these adjustments and have to get on with it!

I usually see it as people saying they aren't needed because most can't have them (and manage!) rather than viterol towards though that do have them.

Pregnancy isn't a disability or disease.

OK but you must realise that’s a management problem not just employees trying to muddle through life with the additional challenges having children brings?

And with respect no one is obliged to do overtime and presumably early and late starts are unpaid? I wouldn’t do unpaid work even if I didn’t have kids.

Do you have to work every Christmas Day? That’s definitely one to raise with management.

What kind of preferential treatment are people campaigning for that would be detrimental to you?

<slow clap>

Thats the first time someone’s ever said that on this thread and indeed the world 😂

No it’s not but it can be very debilitating and quite often cause temporary disability

As I said, then...

What’s the point? People have done, only to be told that’s their employer’s fault. There’s no examples that you’ll accept as valid.

Why should they make a whole contract change, and potentially change childcare days, just because a clinic time runs off their working day? Or a day they care for parents, or their child, or do something vital to them? I hope you don’t line manage anyone as if you insisted someone change their working day so you didn’t have to accommodate their pregnancy appointments you’d potentially land yourself in very hot water.

Ill never understand women trying so very hard to shit all over other women.