"What I can say is capitalism has won this round," JessieMay Reed, a single mother of two who works in education, told Insider. And it may be part of a system that firms use to hold leverage and power in the labor market. Instead, they say, it's a systemic failure. And that might, in turn, lead to childfree workers being asked to take on more.īut the childfree workers, parents, and experts that Business Insider spoke with say that making it a worker-to-worker dispute takes the onus off of companies and policy. At the same time, return to office mandates might threaten the delicate balance some parents have struck to carve out some flexibility. It's a problem that stands to only get worse, as childcare funding dries up and more parents are left scrambling to find care, or to drop out of the workforce completely. "I haven't heard of many options where parents are being accommodated or given more resources in order to successfully parent and be a quote unquote good employee," Amanda Pericles, a 31-year-old speech language pathologist and mother of one, said. They might also face discipline for missing work, or be forced to log back on to work hours after school pick up to catch up. For workers with children, it may mean guilt or embarrassment. For childfree workers, it may lead to resentment, or feeling like their time isn't as valuable. It's a thorny topic, and one where workers on both sides of the equation end up feeling squeezed. As childcare costs rise, and parents aren't guaranteed paid leave, they have to contort themselves between work and home - and their childfree coworkers are sometimes forced to pick up the slack. In a race for increasing profits, firms are trying to keep labor costs low, cutting back on the kind of benefits that make balancing work with parenthood tenable. The great childfree-versus-parents battle isn't really between those two groups, experts say, but instead comes from a new post-pandemic labor shortage norm at many companies. "So everyone is constantly running on the ragged edge, so when you're asked to do a favor, you don't want to do the favor - because you're already tired."īenson's not alone in experiencing the tension of splitting work between childfree workers and those with kids. "The reason childfree people are upset about getting dumped on with this responsibility is largely the company's fault, because they have not provided enough staff to adequately do the amount of work," Benson, a 25-year-old based in Seattle, said. They said on multiple occasions, coworkers' kids would get dropped off and hang out at the shop while their parents worked. With a shortage of workers at the shop, Benson said their coworkers often expected childfree staff members to be more flexible and work more hours when needed. Kira Benson used to feel the pressure to pick up extra shifts at a former barista job when coworkers needed the time off for parenting duties. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |