some essential reading

a must-read piece, via blue milk, on the value of work:

When performed by married women in their own homes, domestic labor is work—difficult, sacred, noble work. Ann says Mitt called it more important work than his own, which does make you wonder why he didn’t stay home with the boys himself. When performed for pay, however, this supremely important, difficult job becomes low-wage labor that almost anyone can do—teenagers, elderly women, even despised illegal immigrants. But here’s the real magic: when performed by low-income single mothers in their own homes, those same exact tasks—changing diapers, going to the playground and the store, making dinner, washing the dishes, giving a bath—are not only not work; they are idleness itself.

[...]

So there it is: the difference between a stay-home mother and a welfare mother is money and a wedding ring. Unlike any other kind of labor I can think of, domestic labor is productive or not, depending on who performs it. For a college-educated married woman, it is the most valuable thing she could possibly do, totally off the scale of human endeavor. What is curing malaria compared with raising a couple of Ivy Leaguers? For these women, being supported by a man is good—the one exception to our American creed of self-reliance. Taking paid work, after all, poses all sorts of risks to the kids. (Watch out, though, ladies: if you expect the father of your children to underwrite your homemaking after divorce, you go straight from saint to gold-digger.) But for a low-income single woman, forgoing a job to raise children is an evasion of responsibility, which is to marry and/or support herself. For her children, staying home sets a bad example, breeding the next generation of criminals and layabouts.

brilliant.  please go across and read the whole thing.

also, i linked to this report on women's leadership in asia (pdf) on my own blog yesterday.  it's also worth a read.  a few key findings from the executive summary:

• The gender gap is closing on health and survival, educational attainment, economic opportunity, and political empowerment.  This implies that the women of Asia can leverage rising personal endowments as well as increasing structural opportunities for
  future leadership. Family and dynastic factors have also catapulted some women in Asia to the highest levels of political leadership.  Indeed, Asia has seen more women heads of state than any other region in the world. Asian women have also joined the ranks of the world’s most rich and powerful.
• the countries of South Asia, which perform worst in overall gender equality and women’s attainment, actually lead among the top five countries in political empowerment (Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India); number of women in parliament (Nepal, Pakistan); number of women ministers (Bangladesh); and women leaders in subnational government (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh). This contradictory picture is partly due to the region having the most number of women who have become heads of state because of family and dynastic connections (and not because of greater gender equality). Moreover, affirmative action has significantly increased women’s representation at different levels of government.
• the relationship between human development and women’s leadership is not directly proportional. Some economies in Asia with the highest human development rankings (e.g., Japan and South Korea) also perform most poorly in some measures of women’s leadership (e.g., women in senior management, women on boards, wage equality, remuneration and political empowerment). Others, such as Singapore and Hong Kong SAR, China, continue to have significant gender leadership gaps despite their high human development.
• To address cultural and social norms that impede women’s leadership, a broad campaign is needed to educate people and push for change in the valuation and perception of girls and women. Three shifts need to happen: 1) societies must perceive girls to be as valuable as boys; 2) societies must view women as having roughly similar abilities and potential to lead as men; and 3) societies must be more open to gender roles that involve women leading outside the home and men doing more in the home.

that last is something we're still struggling with here, and we definitely need improvements in the areas listed in the second bullet point.  comparative to other countries, nz scores well.  but comparative to men in our own country, there's a lot of work to be done.

Of children and protests and taking the former to the latter

Port workers and their families on the picket line. 
Child holds placard saying "All my daddy wants is a roster".

On Saturday I will be going to the Rally to Save Our Port (4pm at Britomart for those not into Facespy).  I'll try to communicate my outrage at the union-busting tactics of Ports of Auckland management in an appropriate manner for someone who is part of the co-governance structure of POAL's inevitable owner (Auckland Council) in another post, if I can find a way. 

My children will be coming with me, and their father, to the rally.  I expect to see many other children there too, not least because at the heart of the issue of the Ports dispute is the impact of casualisation on families.

Wriggly and Snuffly are unlikely to be holding placards or chanting (neither can read and one can't talk) but they will be there and we will talk to them about what it is and why and see what the verbal one things and so on.

Part of my reason for taking the kids is to show them the possibilities of collective action, of standing up together with others, and give them experiences that are about challenging authority.  In time I shall possibly be the authority that gets challenged, but no matter as long as they are thinking critically. 

But the main reason they are going, and the main reason most small children who go to protests are there, is because I simply cannot participate unless I can bring my children with me.

Do I think that Wriggly and Snuffly understand precisely the cause and the chants and the speeches flying around above their heads?  No.  And I don't expect anyone who sees them to think "wow those kids are big supporters of this cause."  They are there primarily because I am there.

Is that selfish on my part, to take them along so that I can participate?  I don't think so.  I'm not putting them in danger or depriving them of something vital; in fact I'm showing them a part of civil society that lots of kids probably only see from the outside, on the television. 

If I go shopping and I take them with me no one says I am cruel for making Wriggly and Snuffly tag along.  Whenever I've taken the kids to council work I haven't faced any criticism for forcing them to be in a workshop or meeting; rather I've been apologising for when they are a bit noisy or try to steal someone's shoe. 

When they get older and it becomes more feasible to do so, I will ask them if they want to come and if they say no then I'll try to arrange a babysitter or something.  We'll see how that goes. 

And as with protests so with so much else in life - if you make it so that children are unwelcome then you are also effectively shutting out their primary caregivers, and most of the time that's going to be women.  Let's see if we can change that.

Open thread: Children's Commissioner's report on education & care of infants & toddlers

Thought people might be interested in discussing this further.

Here are links to both the Summary and the whole of the report Through Their Lens:  an inquiry into non-parental education and care of infants and toddlers.
For those not into reading long stuff *cough* me *cough*, here's an excerpt that jumped out at me:

These findings are made in a context in which many parents feel they do not have a choice about returning early to work, or that their choice is very constrained and determined by factors other than their preference. These findings should not be construed as a criticism of working mothers. Society has changed. Working mothers and consequently non-maternal childcare are part of this change. The inquiry on which this report is based has concluded that formal ECS should be seen as a contribution, in partnership with parents and often extended family members, to a child’s learning and development.

And here's some of the media coverage for quick overviews:

Under-2s best at home, says report - Herald
'Time to take under two's seriously': report - Stuff

Please consider this an open thread to discuss this and related matters.*

One of the things I have really liked about a lot of the media I've seen so far (mainly radio) has been the prevalent use of the word "parent".  Such a relief to not have everybody assuming it's just about mums!



*  I have previously felt quite constrained about discussing early childhood education stuff because of my day job.  However I'm on maternity leave now, and when I return to work soon I'll likely be working in a different sector, so now I feel a bit free-er to talk about the education and care of under 5s.  No one should misconstrue anything I say as being the opinion of my regular employer, NZEI Te Riu Roa.

you can stop feeling guilty now...

... if you ever did feel guilty about being a mother in paid employment. can't say that i ever did, but now the research proves that your kids' turn out just fine, so i was right to not waste my time worrying:

According to a review of 50 years of research on the subject, kids whose moms went back to work before the kids were 3 years old had no worse academic or behavioral problems than kids whose moms stayed home. In fact, in some instances they did better. The research, which appears in the Psychological Bulletin, a peer-reviewed publication of the American Psychological Association, looked at 69 studies between 1960, when research on the issue started, and 2010. The researchers looked specifically at academic and behavioral outcomes....

The researchers found little evidence to suggest that mothers who work part-time or full-time have children with problems in later life. But the researchers did find two positive associations between working motherhood and well-adjusted children: kids whose mothers worked when they were younger than 3 were later rated as higher-achieving by teachers and had fewer problems with depression and anxiety.

The only small caveat was that children whose mothers worked in the very first year of their lives tended to have slightly lower formal academic scores than those whose moms didn't. However children whose mothers were employed when the child was 1 or 2 years old had higher academic scores than kids with full-time moms. Over the three years, the effects evened out.

yes, i too hate the term "working mums", because all mums work. they just don't all get paid for the work they do. but aside from that niggle and a crappy last paragraph to make sure you feel guilty about something, it's nice to see actual research is showing that whether you take up paid employement through choice or necessity, your kids aren't going to be any worse off.

on a related topic, it was interesting to hear the interview on nine to noon this morning (11.20am) with desmond morris, author of "child: how children think, learn and grow in the early years. at 21 minutes into the clip, he also talks about women in paid employment feeling guilty about leaving their children in childcare. he says they shoudn't feel so guilty, because a nursery school provides social interaction which is very natural. he speaks of the importance of children being able to interact with others of their own age, to become more socially educated, more in tune with the behaviour of other individuals, and more able to give and take. after all, he says, we evolved for a million years in small tribes where the children were playing with one another and there wasn't the isolation that we have now.

it's something i see even now when i visit india. many live in an extended family situation, and parents don't actually see much of their kids at all. they see them when the kids are hungry, or when the kids need to be bathed. this is especially so in the village situation. in the cities, there is a greater movement to nuclear families, and so much more competitive pressure with the education system, that the natural interaction of village life is being lost.

it's one of the outcomes of a developed and industrialised society that we lose a lot of that social interaction. and the response has been to make mothers feel that they should be spending every possible moment at home with their children, as if this would somehow make up for the loss. my own sense always was that this is not natural, or at least not traditional, the way it has often been claimed.

which is not to say that i have any problem with women who choose to stay out of paid employment, and who do focus more of their time & attention on their children. it's an equally valid & valuable choice, but what the research is showing is that it's not a better (nor a worse) one.

The market as judge: good for baked beans, not so good for childcare

Cross posted

As has been widely discussed, New Zealand's National government decided that one of the best places to save a bit of money was in Early Childhood Education. Childcare centres would no longer be required to 100% qualified staff (with grandparenting provisions for existing staff who were working towards their degrees); instead, only 80% qualified staff would be required, and centres would be funded at that level.

It's a downgrade. And it's a downgrade that means that parents will have less assurance about the quality of care and education that their children are receiving. We all know that good quality early childhood education is critical for children, and all the more so for children who don't come from privileged middle class homes. There are plenty of children who turn up for their first day of primary school, having never held a book in their hands, having never had a book read to them, not even knowing that in European writing systems, we read the left hand page, and then the right, and then turn the right page over. One way to give these kids at least half a chance, to ensure that in our supposedly egalitarian society there is a minimal semblance of equality of opportunity, is to ensure that they get good quality early childhood care. We need to make sure everyone has a chance, that everyone can get a good education, if we want the children who are in childcare right now, to grow up to become citizens, people who are part of our society, people who have a stake in it, people who want to make a contribution, instead of forever feeling that the bosses and the big important people just don't give a damn.



As a society, we should be deeply concerned about the quality and availability of early childhood education. We rely on having expert and well-qualified teachers and carers in our childcare centres and preschools, because we are concerned about the future of our society. On top of that, most parents want to be sure that their children are in good care. So they rely on having expert and well-qualified teachers in childcare centres and preschools.

But the National government has decided that early childhood education just doesn't matter all that much, so that's where "savings" can be made. As for quality assurance, well, Granny Herald has got a solution.

The market will provide!

It is easy to insist little children deserve nothing but the best. And working parents who place their infants in childcare want to be assured on that score. But "the best" at this level might not require professional training. The best could include people with an aptitude for caring but not for academic study and tests. Checks on their performance can be reliably left to a competitive industry that must constantly satisfy observant parents.

Editorial: Preschool Budget cuts right move

Oh good grief! Early childhood education, indeed, any education, is not like a can of baked beans. For starters, it's not as though there is a whole shelf full of childcare centres, from which you can pick one. The supply is limited, especially if you are constrained by other factors, such as needing childcare near your home, or your work, so that you don't spend hours every days commuting between one place and another, with tired children in the back seat. But more importantly, it can take time to work out that a child is not thriving, time to work out that for all its glossy brochures a childcare centre doesn't really have the resources to care for your child, time to work out that some of the staff who looked so lovely don't in fact know how to manage children, and have only taken the job because there is nothing else they can do. One of the great guarantees that comes along with demanding degree qualified staff is that you know they are genuinely committed to early childhood education, committed enough to slog their way through a degree, because this is where they want to be.

But the time you have been able to work this out, your child is six months older. Six months is not such a long time for an adult to endure a poor job, but it could 10% or 20% of your child's life. Time enough for a child to lose out, to slip behind developmental guidelines, to miss out on critical early learning experiences. You buy one can of baked beans and it turns out to be not so good? Well, you can always go buy another brand the very next day. But "buy" the wrong type of childcare, and the consequences could be much more severe than a meal that isn't quite as good as you would like it to be.

I know some fabulous women and men who have worked in childcare - my mother, a cousin who is doing her degree, a former male student who was a qualified nanny, the wonderful, gorgeous, Jackie Clark. What distinguishes these people is their commitment to children, exemplified by the qualifications they have worked hard to get. Those are the kind of people I want to see in early childhood education.

I would like to see the National government think a little harder about what it wants to achieve in education, and why, and how, instead of simply thinking that it can be trimmed and cut without anyone much noticing the difference.

As for where the money is going to come from? I hear there's a cycleway that isn't being built. Perhaps that might be a good thing to trim.

I suppose that's one solution

From the Weekend Herald on Saturday.

Wife as waste of space

Cactus Kate has highlighted a truly awful sexist motoring column by Eric Thompson, which you can read if you want to soil your eyes with an ill-judged rant about how women should be banned from driving 4WD vehicles.

Unsurprisingly, Kate agrees with Thompson, in her usual barbed style that involves kicking her sisters, hard, with her spiky stilettos at every opportunity. It's another chance for the Cactus to show that she really doesn't seem to like children, mothers, or indeed other women very much at all.

The comments that follow Cactus's post mostly expand on this theme, although with some notable disagreement, thank goodness. The view that is particularly bugging me tonight, from the post and the comments, is the idea that married women who aren't in paid work and are raising children are not contributing anything of value to their relationship or family.

We've seen this view from CK before, and no doubt will again. I don't expect my post to change her mind. Perhaps the only thing that will change her mind is being in that position herself; partnered up and not in paid employment for some reason, be it child-related or otherwise. And she's pretty clear that's not on her agenda, ever, so I guess that's that then.

But for other people who seem to not notice the very real value that someone not in paid work adds to a household, there are quite a lot of points I could raise, including:

• The caring, nurturing work - not necessarily just children either, it could be about parents who need extra attention, other family members, friends, and of course the paid partner. It's my observation that often this stuff, which is vital to maintaining friendships and family relationships, is more likely to be carried out by an at home partner, to the significant benefit of both. As small scale as sorting all the Xmas presents, as big as nursing someone who is terminally ill, this is unpaid work that can be arduous, dirty, annoying, rewarding, time-consuming, and is essential. Much of it can't easily (or cheaply) be contracted out of either, and even if you can arrange it getting someone else to do it can fracture relationships irreparably.
• Volunteer work - can even bring significant kudos to the paid partner, not to mention the community benefits. While I personally think it is enough that it often gives you a sense of achievement, a chance to contribute meaningfully to something you care about, skills, friendships and contacts, it is perhaps worth mentioning to the more Cactus-minded that volunteer work by the unpaid can also provide vital networking opportunities for the paid partner, not to mention they could even claim some involvement on their CV by association.
• Running a household - no longer as full-on as in Jane Austen's time, but nonetheless often significant. Particularly during renovations, just ask my least-favourite Listener columnist, Joanne Black. Making sure the bills are paid, there's enough food to eat, the toilet gets unblocked, the bed linen is clean, the holiday gets booked, there are clean work clothes, the neighbours don't hate you, the mail is cleared... you get the idea. Add children to the mix and this work expands exponentially. Even if you pay someone else to clean, cook, shop, nanny, there's still always unpaid work to be done in this area, not least coordinating, paying and instructing any paid workers helping out.
  

Readers can no doubt add more stuff to the list.

It bothers me that Kate's language is all about married women who she reckons sponge off men. It's almost as if it's in the wedding vows: "I promise to take as much as possible and give as little as I can get away with, at least until I'm likely to get a significant divorce settlement, at which point I will stop giving anything at all."

I don't know if I've ever seen a marriage that has worked like that, even the ones that have ended before death do them part. Maybe it's because I also don't know anyone who sends their children to Kings. Or has a 4WD and never goes off-road.

Should men change nappies?

Or more specifically, should a man who doesn't have a biological relationship with a child change it's nappies?

The reason I ask is because I've ended up in quite a few conversations lately about this, particularly in the context of male ECE teachers and their work. Most people seem to think it's ok for a father, or grandfather, to change the nappies of their child/grandchild. But things get trickier for some when you take things wider than that.

For me it's very straight forward; there should be no gender differentiation about who can change nappies. If you are happy with a woman changing nappies then having a man change nappies should be no different.

And further, if you box men out of changing nappies then you intrinsically box women into changing nappies. Which is definitely Uncool.

So what do you think dear readers, are you hip to the jive of men doing the dirty work?

Quick hit: Catholic boys' school does good thing

From the North Shore Times, on Stuff, earlier in the week:

Teenage boys are learning a thing or two about fatherhood at Rosmini College.

The year 12 students are taking part in a Plunket tots and toddlers course as part of their NCEA studies.

Director of religious education Steve Mills says it is just as important for boys to learn about parenting as it is for girls. They need to know it is a team effort to raise a child.

"Society to some extent still expects women to be the ones to care for children and that needs to change," says Mr Mills.

Click through for the rest.

Hurrah!

thank you, mr borrows

backbenchers on channel 7 had a gem of a moment this week. on the panel were hon annette king, john boscowan, sue bradford and chester borrows. as you would expect, there was a debate about the amendment to s59 of the crimes act. as many of you will know, mr boscowan has a member's bill drawn from the ballot which seeks to amend s59 even further. mr boscowan's describes his bill as bringing in the "chester borrows" amendment, which would have brought in a detailed description of what "reasonable force" might entail.

well, the gem was to hear mr borrows tell mr boscowan that the bill was in fact a "nanny state" state amendment that sought to go into people's homes and tell them exactly in what manner they were allowed to hit their children. i'm sure i haven't got the wording exactly right, but it was in effect what mr borrows said. he totally disowned it the bill, and was thanked both by ms king and ms bradford later in the programme. it was absolutely brilliant.

i would also like to sincerely thank you mr borrows for your change of stance. please be more vocal about it.

Quick hit: Work-life balance a problem for dads too

Found on the Herald's site:

A report published in the UK today suggests that more men are giving up the battle for a better work-life balance. Almost half of fathers there fail to take up their right to two weeks' paternity leave.

Research published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission also reveals that two out of five men are afraid to ask for flexible working arrangements because they think it would harm their career prospects.

They fear their commitment to their job would be questioned and it would negatively affect their chance of promotion.

"While there have been huge changes in women's participation in employment over the last 30 years, men's contribution to childcare has not increased at the same rate," say the authors of the report.

Click through for the whole thing.

It seems to me that until we give fathers access to many of the supportive provisions mothers can get then we'll continue to struggle to come to an equitable share of the child-rearing work. In my own situation if my partner wasn't keen to stay home then on days like today, when our son is sick, I guess it would be most often me who had to take the day off from my paid job.

Quick hit: Division of housework measured by The Egalitarian Index

From the Herald today:

Kiwi men are not doing enough around the house to win over their wives and partners, new research suggests, but we are still doing better than our transtasman cousins.

New Zealand ranked ninth-equal out of 13 countries in an Oxford University study that examined how people become more attractive to the opposite sex by helping out with the household chores and looking after the children.

...The website quoted experts who said that women were more attracted to men if they believed they would help around the house and share the childcare.

Relationship expert Janice Davies said ... "There is some of that old school thinking still around, that even though the man is working and the woman is working, that she should be doing all the housework, which is obviously showing up in this survey..."

...Researchers in the study questioned 13,500 men and women aged between 20 and 45 from each country about gender, housework and childcare responsibilities.

Based on their responses, each country was given a rating on an "Egalitarian Index". Women in countries with less equality in the home were found to be between 20 and 50 per cent less likely to settle down with a man.

Click through for the whole article.

Someone in my office has helpfully blown it up and put it on our staff room noticeboard!

And here's the accompanying cartoon the Herald has chosen:

children at work

i was quite interested by the discussion around this story about an australian MP who took her child into the house for a short while:

Politics has to be, perhaps along with long-distance road transport, one of the least family-friendly occupations in the country.

Even your average backbench Federal MP works long hours. They’re away in Canberra 19-20 weeks of the year, and with a long schedule of electorate events and duties when they’re back home. Ministers, shadow ministers and swing vote senators, who have to get their heads around every piece of legislation and work out whether to back it or amend it, work even harder.

This time of year, the last sittings before the winter recess, are particularly intense.

Sarah Hanson-Young is to be commended for having her child with her in the chamber yesterday. It was for a division, not a debate, and her daughter was about to leave to return to Adelaide.

Instead there has been some remarkable vitriol, particularly on radio, and from at least one of her colleagues, Barnaby Joyce, who accused her of pulling a stunt. That was one of the lowest jibes I’ve seen in this place for a while. The distraught look on Hanson-Young’s face as a staffer took her daughter outside didn’t look much like a stunt.

the debate is mostly between those who think there's no place for children at all in the workplace, and those who think workplaces should be more accommodating of family needs. and then there are those who are saying that this was just a one-off event in the case of a particular crisis, and why is everyone making such a huge deal of it.

as for me, i'm a working mum & well know the pressures associated with that. i'm really lucky to have a workplace where my employers are really understanding, and i'm also lucky to have an office of my own. which means that i've had one or other of the children with me during the day, now and again, when childcare has fallen through in the school holidays or when one of them is sick. it does mean i'm not as productive as i would have been if the child wasn't there, but it's at least a lot more productive than if i hadn't been there at all.

when my eldest was really little & i was working at a university, i'd often take her in with me to lectures. she'd be well fed and sleeping on the floor near me in her little carry cot. or, when she was a bit older, i'd sit her to one side with a few toys and she'd play away quietly. of course, once they're toddlers who want to be running around, there isn't the scope for that.

i know that many workers don't have the luxury of having their kids with them in the workplace, and i'm sure this places stress on many families. it's probably high time that we, as a society, put much more thought into the structure of workplaces. at least this aussie MP has gotten a real debate going in her country.

Too much of a good thing?

A friend tipped me off to this poster, which promotes World Breastfeeding Week (apologies for the quality of the image). She'd seen it at her daughter's creche in all it's A2 glory, and although a feminist, she found it 'confronting'.

The Women's Health Action Trust website features an interesting article about the poster, which discusses public discomfort with the poster. The article concludes that breastfeeding in public is permissable so long as women are discreet about it - and breastfeeding a toddler, by definition it seems, is not discreet.

I completely support the right of mothers to breastfeed for as long as they please (with a bit of a proviso: if the child is old enough to be alienated from his/her peers by breastfeeding, then I think it's time to stop). I breastfed my own kids until 20 and 16 months respectively, when they lost interest, and I've not doubt this made some people uncomfortable.

And yet, I too found the poster somehow confronting. There are social expectations around what we ladies do with our boobies. When our children are small, we get a dispensation to stop regarding our breasts as sexual items only. Beyond a certain point in a baby's growth, however, it's expected that we'll stop using our breasts as a source of food, and return them to their rightful place in the realm of the sexual.

Maybe the ultimate question is this: who owns our boobs?

Maternal instincts

In a recent discussion about immunisation, the question was asked: does mum really know best?

I'm going to be upfront here - I don't believe there's any such thing as maternal instinct. I believe that many mums have a special relationship with our kids; but this is because we're often the primary caregivers and socialised to be interested in kids, not because of anything mystical ordained by nature. I've known people (both men and women) who've had affectionless upbringings, and who've had trouble expressing their love for their own kids. This is just one of the reasons I think that parenting is learned, not natural.

Because I spend a lot of time with my kids, I have some expertise. I know how they learn best, I know how to reason with them, and I can almost always tell when they're sick. I have another canny mothering ability, too, and I wonder if this has a biological basis: I can always hear my kids crying (more so when they were babies), when nobody else can.

But my expertise has limits. I was happy to take my midwife's advice to give my kids Vitamin K after birth, because she'd done the research and I hadn't. I don't know the best way to teach a child mathematics or science. I don't mind the so-called nanny state giving me suggestions on how to feed my kids healthily or how to discipline without smacking, so long as I'm being given the best information available. I'd never consider freebirthing, because my ability to bear children doesn't give me the medical expertise to deal with a potential medical problem. There are many limits to my knowledge, and maternal instinct simply doesn't tell you stuff like how to cope with childhood asthma or prepare a balanced meal.

I think it's tempting to buy into ideas about maternal instinct because they seem to recognise the specialness of our mothering work, in a society in which paid work matters more than unglamorous domestic labour. But if we subscribe to the idea that mother inherently knows best, we both downplay the parenting potential of men, while giving them an excuse not to pull their weight around the house. And that, ultimately, is self-defeating for women.

Man about the house

Less than a year ago, my family and I decided to uproot ourselves and move from the South Island to the capital. With the move came a rearrangement of work responsibilities: we dropped from two incomes to one, with me taking the 'breadwinner' role, and my partner staying home with the kids.

You'd expect people to be accepting of stay-at-home dads, and usually they are - but often, people express surprise at our choice. In the seven or so years I've been a parent, I've had two negative comments about being a working mum. My partner has been an at-home dad for a matter of months, and has had an array of remarks.

There was the guy who found out we'd moved to Wellington 'for work', and immediately asked my partner what he did. There was the manager who said the part-time job that interested my partner paid wages too low for a man. There was the woman behind the counter who saw my partner with our toddler, and commented that my partner must be 'giving mum a rest today'. And then, just the other day, there was a guy who saw my partner and son shopping together. This guy said my boy had been 'spending too much time with mum' and should be given a rugby ball.

Not one of these comments was meant unkindly. Sadly, though, they made my partner feel a bit stink. It's not because he thinks that being a stay-at-home parent isn't worthwhile - more, perhaps, that other people may view it this way. It's OK for a woman to do this 'menial' work, but when a bloke does it its surprising, or even vaguely amusing.

The strange thing is, I know a few dads who stay at home with their kids, or share the childcare with their female partners equally. It's not commonplace, but it's hardly unusual either. Perhaps our gender roles are changing faster than our cultural expectations?

She works hard for the money

Two readers have independently contacted me about a North American study just released in the last few days which shows that men who take on non-traditional roles earn less than men who stick to the more archaic public/private division of labour. You can read about it on the BBC's website here, or peruse Little Mis Brightshine's thoughts over here. The guts of it (dollar amounts are US$):

The study, carried out by researchers at the University of Florida, was conducted on a large scale, with 12,686 men and women interviewed in 1979, when they were aged between 14 and 22, and three times in the following two decades, the last time in 2005.

The researchers asked them whether they believed a woman's place was in the home, or whether the employment of women was likely to lead to higher rates of juvenile delinquency.

Predictably, more men tended to hold these views than women, although the gap has narrowed significantly over time.

However, when the men were asked about their salaries, another gap emerged, with those holding "traditional" views earning significantly more.

Conversely, women who held the opposite view did earn slightly more, on average $1,500 (£833) more than women with "traditional" views.

All sorts of theories abound about why this might be; men who wield power in their relationships also do so in their jobs and thus end up more highly paid; women in the workplace, and men who take on non-traditional roles, are subtly discriminated against; work that has historically been done primarily by women is significantly undervalued whether it is paid or unpaid; men who are the only source of income for their family are more likely to get promoted because their employer recognises they need the money (I find that one a bit bizarre).

For my family this potential pay gap is about to become highly relevant. After nine months off from my paid job, while my partner worked full time in the job he's had a while, we are about to swap places; swivelly chairs for high chairs, pant suits for sleepy suits, that kind of thing.

I don't have any particular worries about my workplace, or my employer's attitude to mothers. They've certainly been great so far, and made it clear they are looking forward to having me back on Monday.

But I am starting to get the impression I'm lucky. I have observed other employers treating mothers who work less kindly than fathers who do so, particularly when mum first comes back from maternity leave. Anyone who has read I Don't Know How She Does It cannot escape the observation Reddy makes, that men who leave early to attend a child's sports event are Fathers of the Year, while women who are a little bit late because their offspring vomited all night are letting their home life get in the way of their work.

I'm sure this attitude is changing, for the better, and many women, in New Zealand anyway, don't face frequent and open disapproval for not staying home full time until their child is at school. But it's the subtle stuff that dismays me still. In my office there are a number of fathers of young children, and in some ways they have blazed a trail for me. One has an arrangement that he comes into work a bit later so he can take his kids to school; another takes off a week in each school holidays to look after his three children; a third took a month off at the birth of his daughter and negotiated a day a week working from home. My hope is that as more men ask, and are granted, arrangements like this it becomes easier for mothers too.

I guess I'll be finding out in the coming months...

Get better ads, please

The NZ Police's 'Get better work stories' recruitment ads have been annoying me for some time now. I don't like the idea that anyone might be motivated to join the Police by the thought of having more racy anecdotes to tell their buddies. This seems downright immature to me - the antithesis of the professionalism and ethical conduct we should expect from the Police. I for one wouldn't want to report a sexual assault to the Police knowing I might become the source of a tale told at the pub after work.

But it was the ad I saw a couple of nights ago that really pushed me over the edge. It features a woman Police officer briefing a room full of her colleagues, who are apparently about to begin searching for a missing child. As she's giving instructions, the camera moves to a child who has appeared at the back of the room. The child puts up his hand and asks if he can go to the toilet. The camera moves back to the policewoman, and we realise she is not a Police officer at all - merely a primary school teacher reading to a group of children seated around her. As she's been reading, the teacher has been fantasising about leaving her mundane job caring for and educating children, to do something worthwhile and interesting instead.

Irk.

Things to read

There's two interesting pieces of research reported in the NZ Herald this morning.

It turns out that higher rates of abortion are linked to domestic violence. Perhaps right-to-lifers might consider working to eliminate domestic violence if they want to bring the abortion rate down.


And the social stigma attached to receiving the Domestic Purposes Benefit makes parenting alone much harder. Moreover, the difficulty of juggling the many tasks that parents must do, alone, makes it much more likely that any paid jobs taken on by a sole parent are more likely to be part-time, low paid and lacking employment benefits and job security. A nice double whammy for sole parents.

Get those sole parents working

Cross post

I'm inclined to see the National party's plan to work-test sole parents as a good thing. We've been told a number of times that National has comprehensive policies prepared, and that it will release them during the election campaign. We know it's not really a matter of money - after all, the policy will only save the government about $20million each year, so I'm guessing that the point of the policy is one about the value of working and supporting yourself and your dependents. I'm going to assume that given that the policy is about ideas rather than the money, National has some comprehensive policies that will need to be in place to make this particular policy work.


The detail (so far) of the policy - sole parents will be required to look for part-time work (15 hours a week) once their youngest child has turned six, and presumably is at school. The advantage of waiting until then is that this solves some of the childcare issues for sole parents.

So what is going to be required to make this happen? First up, there's going to have to be a number of employers who are prepared to offer 15 hours work a week, during school hours. There's no point in requiring sole parents to work 15 hours a week if no such jobs are available, so I'm assuming that National will be putting some sort of incentives in place to encourage the creation of such jobs.

Those jobs will need to be provided by employers who don't mind too much if a worker works say, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday one week, and different days the next, in order to look after sick children, or to attend events at school (parent teacher interviews, school sports days, all the usual commitments that come with having kids at school). So the work will need to be very flexible.

And the work will have to be just in term time. Kids do need to be supervised in school holidays, or otherwise, as Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony Helen so fetchingly puts it, they will end up building meth-labs in the back yard. It will probably take a bit of legislation or maybe incentives for employers to make this happen too, so that might be another dead rat that National needs to swallow, given that traditionally, they're all about "keeping government out of business" and "leaving people free to make their own decisions" and "cutting compliance costs for businesses."

Alternatively, if employers prepared to offer flexi work can't be found, then National will need to look at developing some serious out-of-school care services, and paying for them. At present it can be rather hard to find out-of-school care, and state schools are not required to provide it, so parents can be left struggling. Of course, state schools are not resourced to provide out of school care, and many of them don't have suitable spaces for it. Classrooms aren't available - they are teachers' working spaces, and contrary to popular belief, most, if not all, teachers are at school working before 8am each day, and there until 5pm in the evening. School halls often don't have toilet and kitchen facilities handy, and they are often too big to be heated easily. And even then, out-of-school care programs don't really work for teenagers, so you're into the meth-lab problem again.

You see, here's the critical thing about sole parents. They are, for whatever reason, sole parents. That means that they have no other back-up, they have no one else who can step up and help in an emergency. The other parent is, by definition, not there. And most times, family members aren't available to help either. They are busy working themselves. That means that if the state is going to require sole parents to work, then the state will need to ensure that conditions are such that sole parents can work.

I'm assuming that in order to make the work for the DPB policy effective, National has some comprehensive policies about the provision of childcare and out-of-school care too. I'm also assuming that they will be paying for them, because there's little or no point in forcing sole parents to get part time jobs, but then turning around and taking the income off them through high childcare fees.

I see this as a fantastic outcome of National's "work for the the DPB" plan. If the state gets serious about creating the conditions for flexi-work and providing good access to childcare, then all working parents will benefit. All working parents will be able to access good, low-cost childcare.

So I see the "work for the DPB" plan as a good one. It entails a whole lot of other family friendly policies too, and I'm delighted to think that the National party is prepared to put them in place.

Unless of course, the policy is all about bashing sole parents.