I haven't done any research but I thought many companies instituted tele-commuting and alternate work schedules to accomodate workers with children.

In my personal experience, the latitude given workers with children isn't in response to an inflexible employer. My current employer does not give sick days but does offer generous vaction days and flexible work hours. The latitude is given by supervisors who also have children.

In my past career in the military time off is un-officially the territory of a supervisor. He or she makes the decision who gets time off. Need to leave early for a night class? Better be able to make it up. Need to leave early for Parent-Teacher conferences? No problem. The great thing about the military is people are typically brutally honest. I was told more than once that I didn't have children so I would work night shift or holidays.

OK. I did it. We place a high value on children and parenthood. But it is galling to then be told I owed it to them because they were doing society's work. A sacred charge. Frankly, no one has to have children these days. True, it would adversely impact our society if no one did, but putting that aside there is no reason on earth that people must have children. It is a choice to have children and comes with great responsiblity and hardship.

im1: Next Christmas, don't volunteer and point out you've done enough Christmas's recently that you can't reasonably be chosen. If you want to, you can then switch with the person chosen, but you have family too... maybe this year should be devoted to them.

I can do that in my current employment. In the military I had no choice. If I was told to work Christmas I worked Christmas. Saying anything about it would have gotten me branded a complaining woman.

However, even in my civilian life there are still disparities I can't do anything about. I have been working at a project only to discover the manager who directs it is picking the kid up from school or is at her soccer game. I'm working alone. I can stop working on the project until he returens, but I'd likely be looking for employment elsewhere. It would probably be the same elsewhere since in my experience that's the way it is everywhere. Frankly, it should not be an issue.

It's not always a matter of volunteering. I really have no problem if someone asks me to help them out. It's that it is institutionalized that workers with children have other priorities and the right to simply not be at work.

im1:

Do you think if the government or HR instituted some flexible part-time or 3/4 time options that this would help the situation? Wouldn't it be harder to justify the same pay for 9-5 and 8-6 if there was some way on the books to work just a little less and still keep your position?

This is an excellent point. About a year ago, in response to employee requests, my company began allowing workers to take reduced schedules for reduced pay - working an 80% schedule (32 hours) got you 80% of your previous full-time salary. I went to 60% for one year following the birth of my second baby, and then went back to 100% when she turned one. Several others are still working reduced schedules, and not all are parents. It has been huge in improving employee morale and reducing turnover - there are three employees (myself included) that probably would have quit if we had not had the reduced schedules. And I have not heard anybody who stayed at full-time complaining - they all know we took corresponding pay cuts to do it, so they do not feel they were slighted. And even the employees on reduced schedules still work extra hours when it's needed - I always considered myself a 60% employee, not a 24 hour employee, and when I was needed beyond 24 hours I worked.

and you don't know the slang? When you hear someone say, "I worked for a living" means they were enlisted and not commissioned. 8up much?!

genetic? biggest reason? thats just so wrong

children happen mostly because of, well in the west, because the mother wants to.

differetEllen: get over it. I've heard that trite phrase my entire military life. I thought it was stupid when I first heard it and I still think it's stupid. I merely stated I didn't see those words in your post.

Try something original for a change or stick to the topic of the thread. Buh-bye.

actually, if you think about it, most people DO choose to have kids out of a desire for genetic influence. (i'm talking about those who make a choice, not who accidentally got knocked up... that becomes another dialogue). There are so many kids who need adopting, yet when a couple has a hard time getting pregnant, they look to fertility experts before they look to adopting. sure adoption is expensive, but so are fertility treatments and they aren't guaranteed to work.

so why do so many people spend so much money, taking out mortgages and loans for these treatments? because they feel a biological imperative to spread their genetic material. not to raise someone else's. people use this argument all the time- as reason for why men cheat or why women get the nesting instinct, all that biological clock crap they feed us. i don't necessarily believe all the rhetoric, but if you use this to argue one point, then you should recognize it for other points as well.

if people seriously were just caring about raising another generation to get a suitable work force for the future, then we would do a lot more to care for children that are in "the system" and raise them to be productive and caring members of society. Part of this i blame on the system itself for making it so difficult to adopt.

I had a vasectomy at 22 years old because I knew I never wanted kids. There are political reasons for it--the world is horribly overpopulated and we're running out of resources being the main one--but mostly it was a personal decision: I did not want to create another human being and be responsible for it. Is that selfish? Perhaps, but isn't also having a child? Why are you having the child? To keep the species going? To keep society from crumbling? To contribute to the world? Give me a break! You're having a child because you want it, because you feel you need it.

I've lived with the consequences, good and bad, of my decision. It behooves parents to do the same. We can sympathize with each other and help each other out, but parents cannot claim to hold any moral high ground in my opinion.

I am childless by choice. A few years ago I requested in advance and was granted my vacation time so my husband and I could go to Europe. It was a trip we planned & saved for, and paid for in advance.

Then one of my co-workers started complaining that she couldn't get off a certain week because I was on vacation that week. She said it wasn't fair that I, a childless person, should be allowed to take off in the summer when school was out. Only people with children should be allowed to take off during the summer because of their children's school schedules.

This is the kind of mentality I have found is some, not all, parents. Just because some of us don't have children doesn't mean that we don't have lives outside of work or that we don't count.

I agree. People who are single and/or childless by choice just want a little equity with time off/flexibility, that's all, and an understanding from our employers, etc. that our lives outside of work count also. Our contributions count, too - even though some of these contributions will often minimally or never accrue to us personally. I've paid more in just federal and state income taxes (not including social security taxes, then the figure would be even higher) each year than a family of 4 the poverty level even earns in a year (not quite $21K USD). I don't mind doing that or paying that, but to infer that I "don't contribute enough to society" is quite the misnomer.

In addition, some of the arguments presented here are rather silly.

- Yes, I suppose my parents benefited from whatever - gov't programs, taxes, public schools, etc. But no one asked me (I don't think anyone's parents did or could ask the child in question); I am not responsible for their choices and I cannot speak to the "rightness/wrongness/benefits/­drawbacks" of choices made by others in which I had no say and zero choice in the matter.

- Yes, I suppose your children are the future and my non-existent ones won't be. However, some will be physicians, nurses, etc. Others will end up in Supermax and my tax dollars pay for that, too.

That should say for the past half-dozen or so years I have paid that much. Man, when I was 19, I would have been grateful just to EARN $21K a year, much less pay it in income taxes!!!

Good comments here that reflect how I feel about with-children v without. I don't think any of us begrudge allowing some advantages to families. But when it becomes entitlement and when I am told I am selfish or don't contribute to the sacred work of our nation that goes too far.

I was told by a family man that I worked with that I should pay more because as a childless married woman I don't put as much money back into the economy. I don't spend as much and therefore have more. Well, he could have remained childless and if I wanted I could have had children. But my conversation with him did not start with me complaining about his tax breaks or my childlessness.

I typically don't even think about the tax breaks families get because I live a happy life and am pleased with where I'm at. It's not until someone tells me I don't contribute to society that I get ruffled.

Only read the first two pages; forgive me if the discussion has moved on.

My feeling is that this debate is symptomatic of a deeper problem, which I've not seen addressed. I'm hardly a student of history, but my impression is that the nuclear family in American life is a fairly recent development, arising around the same time that cheap housing and cars became readily available. Prior to that, grandparents or other members of the extended family might be expected to spend time with children, as they do in many other cultures.

Since then, it's the stay-at-home mom who has borne that burden alone. More recently, as women's rights converge with men's and two-income households become more common, no one has time to raise the kids. Wealthier families can afford to hire nannies and maids to ameliorate the problem, but others can't, and the result is an increasing number of poorly socialized children.

Based on all of this, I feel certain that any measures allowing parents to spend time with their kids will be beneficial for society as a whole. I'm less certain that employers should be compelled to provide them, and even less so that other employees shouldn't receive the same benefits, as it seems a tad more socialist than America usually inclines.

For myself, this problem is a primary driver for my desire to acquire wealth. Otherwise I probably won't have kids.

panaceus:

My feeling is that this debate is symptomatic of a deeper problem, which I've not seen addressed. I'm hardly a student of history, but my impression is that the nuclear family in American life is a fairly recent development, arising around the same time that cheap housing and cars became readily available. Prior to that, grandparents or other members of the extended family might be expected to spend time with children, as they do in many other cultures.

Since then, it's the stay-at-home mom who has borne that burden alone. More recently, as women's rights converge with men's and two-income households become more common, no one has time to raise the kids. Wealthier families can afford to hire nannies and maids to ameliorate the problem, but others can't, and the result is an increasing number of poorly socialized children.

panaceus, I started to address this issue in my earlier post but you did it better. However, I was discussing this with my partner this evening in our once-per-year date (his teen daughter was babysitting our two young sons, thus illustrating my post's point!), and he also pointed out that society's insistence that we educate our children, thus costing us the benefit of their labor, also benefits them (the children) and us by improving their economic marketability as adults. Aha, said I, it benefits society directly that their childhood labors are redirected toward improving their skill set, but does it really benefit us directly? Only insofar as their skills contribute to the overall social good. The work we do as parents to support our children as they are educated to (we hope) become productive contributors to the tax base IS of benefit to society and is NOT of benefit to us in the direct economic sense. But as I sit here with my six-month-old son, whose nickname is Mr. Smiley, I have to admit that I wouldn't trade one of his smiles for all the tax deductions in the universe (chorus of awwwwwwws is appropriate here).

Most of the complaints here, however, seem to have little to do with direct economic benefits (i.e. deductions) accruing to parents vs the tacit benefits offered or denied by employers in terms of flexibility and allowances given to parents that are denied to non-parents. Don't really know how to address this one: as a single person, I felt the same resentments, but when I became a parent virtually overnight (long story, but to sum up, when my partner suddenly had to take custody of his children from their, uh, unsatisfactory mother, I found myself stepping into the shoes of Mom pretty much on the instant) I then came to understand exactly WHY those tacit benefits exist. Holy Cow, this is hard, is pretty much how I summed up the whole parenthood gig. Still do, in fact.

I sort of see the issue from both sides:

Yes, it makes sense to care about the greater good for whats good for society instead of being a bunch of selfish uber individualists. I mean in the words of Dennis Miller, since when has the minority become the majority? To be a realist, excessive libertarianism isn't good for society's survival and it makes sense to subsidize child welfare, UP TO A POINT.

On the other side, just how much are we willing to sacrifice individual rights for society's good. I mean this is the United States, not Spaaartaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! You don't have kids for the benefit of the state so they can be sent off to the wilderness to fight (compulsory education and elementary school playgrounds is the closest we got to that). Having kids isn't exactly a civic duty on par jury duty, paying taxes, registering for the draft. Romania once had VERY friendly pro-child bearing laws.. Call up Nicolae Ceauşescu on your oijuii board and ask him how that worked out for him.

So the question is: where to draw the line. Too much rugged individualism or too much tyranny of the majority.