Want to keep your job? Get a vasectomy
Remember a while back when it came out that firefighters in Washington, D.C. were given the choice between getting an abortion and getting fired? Now there another reproductive rights angle to work/family conflict.
In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, Sharon Lerner documents that countries with family friendly public policies -- surprise -- have more children. Seems logical. Sweden, where families can count on affordable, high quality child care, where families have over a year of paid leave (if I remember correctly) as well as the right to work part-time until the youngest child is six, families have more children than they do in European countries with few family friendly benefits, where the assumption still is that, when children are born, the mother will stay home.
In fact, European countries with supports for working families have much higher birth rates than those without such supports, which include child care, paid leave, protections for part-time workers, limits on working time, and protections against discrimination based on family responsibilities. Countries where family policy consists of la mamma are not even at replacement: their populations are falling.
How about the U.S.? We have family-hostile public policy, and a high birth rate, right? Not really. What we have is a high immigration rate. Immigrants' relatively large families are the only thing that stands between the U.S. and a rate of population growth below replacement rates. For example, Maine -- a state with little immigration -- already has a birth rate below replacement. (So who's going to pay YOUR social security?)
Why is this happening? It's no secret. Consider the situation of Jon and Staci, a young couple in Texas. Staci -- so when she was asked during her interview who would care for her daughter when the child was sick (perhaps an illegal question), she was able to say that her husband would.
And Jon did. But when he did so, his employer put him on probation and actually took away a promotion. Note that he wasn’t refused a promotion – his employer actually took away a promotion Jon had already earned, because he was staying home when as his toddler marched through strep throat, the flu, a sinus infection, and another virus.
It's not that Jon didn't have sick time -- he did. And it's not that his employer was worried about fraud – he had doctor's notes and documentation that his daughter really was sick. (Kids that age often get sick 6 - 9 times a year.) The employer just didn't like Jon using his sick time for care of a sick child. So Jon was placed on probation. (Note that the child was twice placed on antibiotics after a doctor’s visit, which means that Jon’s absence may well have been covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act, making this illegal retaliation for use of FMLA leave).
While Jon was on probation for the irresponsible behavior of caring for a sick child (or was it the irresponsible behavior of not having a stay-at-home wife?), Staci took time off to care for their daughter. She, too, got negative feedback at work, despite the fact that she, too, had plenty of sick and vacation time available.
Jon’s work situation "played a big part in our decision recently not to have another child and my husband even got a vasectomy. We've also made sure that our respective management is aware that this choice, in hopes that it will help his situation. I guess it will help mine, too...."
Any more questions about why we are heading for below replacement birth rate?
Honestly, I think that reduced population might be a positive thing because many respected people think this world "over populated."
And, people like myself-- who are single, also need more vacation time too. For example, I'd love to help my sister raise her children. Or, I might want time (sabatical) to explore building my own business.
At the end of the day, when you take a job, you have the responsibility and I'm not sure where the balance is because, once your responsibility is reduced, the pay goes down and nobody likes that, so you have to make choices.
Progressives want "access to health care" and that means that someone has to slave away and make that dream a reality. Thus, I don't necessarily "buy your argument" that "working" isn't family friendly. The "work ethic" has always been "family friendly" and maybe American workers just need to invent new ways of making things work?
Nobody that I know, who was truly successful, believes in the 9-5 model because they work passionately until they achieve their vision. Of course, if they get rich, then they have the opportunity to "opt out" of "trying to make money."
March 5, 2007 8:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would love more protections for workers, especially women. I'm not sure I'd wish to justify them by arguing that without them we're not increasing the population, however. Is that seriously a policy goal? Is it even consonant with certain other goals, such as environmental protection and avoiding immigrant bashing?
I think I'll stick to arguments from the usual left and feminist goals of safety nets, economic opportunity, justice, ensuring a woman's fair chance at a career, ensuring a woman's range of choices when it comes to jobs and family, etc., etc.
I took the point of the article, which as good, more as restoring sanity to the debate, by not permitting conservatives to use "family values" to bash women.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
March 5, 2007 8:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Joan's use of the "replacement rate" argument in support of a call for better national health care and family leave policy is persuasive for a couple of reasons. First, demography is destiny; countries that don't replace older generations with younger ones wither away. This probably begins with crises in social security and medicare. But Joan's appeal to replacement is even more compelling because raising children can be an essential and hopeful act--one that is necessary to the creation of the good society.
If one doesn't want to have children, I honor that choice for lots of reasons. But, mcs, your view seems so gloomy. We may have lots of problems (militarism, environmental degradation, poverty--just to name a few), but do you really believe that constitutional democracy and a liberal society can't solve these problems over time? Even if our society has become dominated by reactionary zealots, isn't fighting to reclaim that society, and for a better one that lives in relative balance with its environment, a good thing? Who's gonna fight the good fight if there isn't a follow-on generation to pick-up the standard?
I have trouble MCS, what do you mean when you say:
"I think that reduced population might be a positive thing because many respected people think this world "over populated."
March 5, 2007 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not convinced US population growth, through immigration or birth, is necessarily a good thing. The nature of industry is to require a lesser number of more highly-trained people than it did in pre-automation assembly lines.
Now, I recognize we can't guarantee every child will be above average. :-) Nevertheless, our education and medical resources are strained. Even with good liberal social democratic policies, the US is going to have to reorient to match industrialized and post-industrial countries where such are in place. There may well be scaling issues from, for example, Sweden to the US.
Numbers alone won't deal with reactionary zealots. Brains, which are born healthy and well educated, will.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 5, 2007 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
This post is "non-sensical" and "misses the point" and uses too many "scare quotes."
March 5, 2007 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
We just need to treat workers better in general. I don't think it should be tied to who has kids and who doesn't.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
March 5, 2007 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly.
As someone who does work in a family-friendly work environment, I often feel that the single and child-less employees are often left out of many company policy decisions in these types of environments.
I often feel like moving to a different company that doesn't force child-less employees like myself from covering multiple shifts from the majority of my teammates as they take off constantly for family issues.
I certainly do want to see more family-friendly work policies; however, I feel these can go into the same types of extremes that are being fought against by parents who work.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity.
March 5, 2007 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
You hear about parents missing out on a promotion but never about the single worker who had to cover for the parent and who might have been promoted instead.
Or, it's acceptable for a parent to say "Can't work late today, kid has a soccer game," but it's not as acceptable for a single worker to say, "Can't work late today, I have a date."
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
March 5, 2007 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've argued with the post's reasoning, but I still agree with its prescriptions and don't agree with comments that parental leave should be subordinated to something like extended time off for all. If nothing else, it's a feminist issue as long as women are expected to put in more parenting time (and no doubt have to anyhow immediately after birth), so as long as discrimination is holding back women from having careers. That is, it's about a woman's right to have a real life including work, not about whether we'd rather be using our free time giving birth, watching kids play soccer, or having a date. Indeed, that takes me back to my problem with the post's reasoning, but there you go.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
March 5, 2007 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The correlation between "family-friendly" government social policy and birth rate is dubious at best. In fact it's probably non-existent. Countries like Germany (8.25 births per 1,000 population) and Japan (9.37) have labored mightily to raise birth rates through family-friendly policy for years to limited success. At least according to this table, Germany has the second-lowest birth rate in the world.
And while the population of the US (14.14 births per 1,000) may be reproducing at a rate below replacement level, that rate is still quite a bit higher than other countries with much better social programs, such as the Netherlands (10.90) and Sweden (10.27) who also, by the way, have a lot of fast-breeding immigrants.
There are many good arguments for spending more on family-friendly policy. Unfortunately, this post hasn't made them. There are few things more frustrating than watching someone state a position you agree with and then back it up with a totally bullshit argument.
March 5, 2007 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see what you're saying, John. And I'm not against family leave.
But, there is a value judgment here that works against people who don't have kids.
One of the assumptions here is that when you're taking leave to deal with your kids, you shouldn't lose any ground at work, even though other people are covering projects that would have been yours. I mean, if you're on leave and somebody else who wasn't gets a promotion you wanted, you really don't have grounds to complain, do you?
Another is... why shouldn't everyone get some sabbatical option, whether it's to have a kid or to write a book?
Again, I agree with you on the equality issue, so I'm willing to give on this. I'm just annoyed that we seem to get so worked up over people and their kids while we don't care a lick about people's other goals and obligations outside of work.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
March 5, 2007 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Destor. To be honest, I'm single, male, don't even like kids (which may be why I'm single), and don't want to go to work at all,
but I still worry about women's rights.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
March 5, 2007 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great fun comment, John. It inspires a slightly off-topic mini-rant. (Warning to the off-topic police: do not read.)
Do you, like I, get a little depressed and/or disappointed when you see anyone left of center plying the "family values" side of the street so strongly and/or the Protestant work ethic thing? (By the latter I mean the "few wish on their death bed that they had spent more time at the office" thing.)
A times, I find I am still upset that I have not gotten any of the promised fruits I expected as a kid from the 60's revolution--it was so exciting, out with the bourgeois values and in with do your own thing. It was going to be a whole new world where those who didn't want traditional lifestyles were not segregated into small districts like Greewich Village and Montmarte, and all different life choices were equal. How did we end up back in the 50's talking about supporting the kind of "family" that gave Betty Friedan nightmares? Ick.
The adoration of wholesomeness is really growing tiresome. Gays, for example, grow more acceptable in our culture every day because there is this P.R. campaign out there to show that they are "just like everyone else!"--they want two kids and a cottage with a picket fence and to be "respectable." The concurrent death of drag queen culture I find very sad. To me individualism is what is American as apple pie and what is special about Western culture. For employers or governments to reward one lifestyle over another always gives me pause.
I wish everyone in the Democratic party was required to watch the movie Home for the Holidays followed up by a lecture on how Norman Rockwell's paintings do not represent reality.
P.S. I absolutely love babies but consider children over the age of reason not to be much fun.
March 6, 2007 9:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps as a riff on this, of the gay men I know, the largest group is mainstream, the next is leatherman, and the smallest queeny. Actually, of the transvestites I know, more are het than gay.
I get utterly amazed by complaints in the military about "swish", when some ultramacho would fit right in. Do I know the wrong class of pree-verts? :-)
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 6, 2007 9:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
ArtA, I appreciate the thoughtful comment. I honestly am afraid to pursue it, since it would feel guiltily off-topic, although it might stimulate a discussion of 2nd/3rd wave feminism more substantive than Jessica's, which took too much of precisely that discussion for granted (on the grounds that presumably her Web site already covered it, although I'm curious to see her book). Maybe another time.
But if you need a drag queen fix, it's the subject of Nan Goldin's current show on West 24th, not to my mind as moving as the one last year on her sister's life.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
March 6, 2007 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
To the extent that there is a kind of leave here that can be distinguishable from a general sabbatical option (and hey, I'd welcome that, too), I think it's not exactly about having kids. It's about having obligations to care for someone, be it an infant or an aged parent or dying spouse. Properly written, the policy that allows parenting leave really doesn't leave out the childless - there are very few people who might not, someday, be in the position to have to care for someone in a very labor intensive way, who wouldn't greatly benefit from having the option to do so.
March 6, 2007 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a great point. As the boomers age and need care from their working children, the laws might be more properly written. As it is, there's a pro-kid bias that favors childcare over eldercare or caring for a sick spouse or sibling, though.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
March 6, 2007 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink