Job Interview- can they ask about children/chilcare?

[HarpieDuJour]

I had a job interview last week, and one thing has left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. They asked how many children I had, and if I had reliable childcare.
I do have cast-iron childcare, as it happens (although youngest child is 12 and oldest is 21, so it's less of an issue than it might be anyway!), but I was a bit taken aback to be asked. It's an NHS job, too. I had assumed that this sort of question wouldn't be allowed (because it wouldn't be asked of a man) and it threw me off balance a bit. Is it normal, though? My last job interview was about 25 years ago, so I'm not all that up to date!

No, completely out of order to ask that!

If you don't get offered the job you could rightly accuse them of discrimination!

Did they already know you have children?

AFAIK they can’t ask if you have kids, or if you plan to have kids. However, if they know you do (either due to you telling them, or because you already know the panel) they are allowed to ask about the logistics of how you’d balance home and work.

As it happens anyone with half a brain would avoid the whole subject because of the risk of overstepping the line, but there are plenty of dinosaurs still out there.

If you don’t get the job or have decided you don’t want it, I’d be dropping their HR a line.

Yes, they know that I have children. They asked why I wanted to leave my current job, and I said that it had been convenient while my children were small (I am SE and WFH), but now they were all at least at secondary school, I wanted to work outside the home.

I don't think I will get the job, but if I do, I don't really want it. It's 23 hours (fine) but I only found out at interview that the shift pattern isn't fixed, so I won't be able to get another PT job to make up the hours (not so fine).

I wasn't quite sure how to respond when I said I had 4 children and the interviewer interrupted to say "Oh, well done!" I had been about to add that two were over 18.

I doubt I'll complain, because there are so few jobs in this area and I might want to apply for anything else that comes up, but I wanted to know what was allowed for (hopefully!) my next interview. I hadn't prepared a response, so I just answered that my husband is retired so there was no problem with childcare.

Sorry, I didn't make it clear (not sure if it matters, but just in case). I said about having children at the beginning of the interview, and it was at the end that they asked about how many and if I have childcare. So it wasn't an immediate response to what I said.

They shouldn't really ask.

I can imagine that they don't want to be in a position where they appoint someone to a role with flexible shifts and then have ongoing issues with an employee who wants preferences on shifts because they have children, or worse tries to argue they need set shifts to match the part time childcare they've got (which leaves other colleagues always picking up the slack), or calling in with "childcare problems".

They shouldn't have asked though and would probably be better stressing in the interview that they want to make sure all candidates are aware that the shifts are flexible over X days, swaps and dibs on shifts cannot be done, so in light of that are they still a firm candidate for the job.

I bet they would not have asked a man this

You brought it up, so I think it's ok to ask follow up questions

You shot yourself in the foot really, by mentioning your children.