balancing the needs of your children and your job.

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Purple

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I think this post; in this thread poses some interesting questions; basically should it be ok for people with children to leave work if a problem arises with a child during the working day without it impacting negatively on their career prospects and pay etc.
Speaking as someone with three children, soon to be four, who's wife works full time as well, I see no reason why anyone would think it would not impact negatively on their career. It would be unfair to people with no children if it did not. I get paid to do a job, what my family circumstances are and how many children I choose to have is my own business and not relevant to the value I add in my job. Obviously give and take is a good idea and Dickensian regimental-ism is not conducive to happy and motivated employees but if I bugger off early and/or come in late or leave work during the day for a few hours then this has a negative impact on my job. I see no reason why this should not be taken into account when assessing employees.
 
I have been reading the other thread with interest as well!.

I would very much agree with Purple assessment on this. I have no children but expect to in the next couple of years. I have always worked full time and will continue to do so - money is not the only factor, I really want to continue working as I don't feel that i'd be particularly happy at home all day. I would expect it to impact greatly on my standing within the company if I was leaving at various times for various child related emergencies and to be honest why shouldn't it affect your career? - you are not as focused on the job and it is simply unfair to think that a child gives you an automatic right to come and go! . Shoe other foot, if somebody was constantly leaving because they said they were feeling ill, wouldn't you start to doubt them & their commitment to their work?

I had an experience a good few years back with a colleague. She was quite career motivated then got pregnant - no problem there, took long maternity leave, came back no problems! - The problems arose when she started missing a great deal of time from work, nipping off during the day, home early, in late. Now, everybody would understand the odd emergency i.e child falls and has to go to hospital etc etc, the problems occur when over protective mother's (as she was) were nipping home when the child had so much as a sniffle! .(we have always had a very relaxed atmosphere here, give and take is quite important) I understand the need to want to be with your child when child is ill etc but you cannot have it both ways, you cannot be a great mam, there all the time for your child through everything no matter what is going on in work and still have exactly the same career/standing within your company. It's just not doable and it's not fair on those who don't leave as much and don't take time off all the time!.

Family factors should not be taken into account in work. I would like to think that in work I am judged on the hours I put in, the work I do & the commitment I have, if I don't put in the same hours or work as a colleague then shouldn't we be judged differently?. It doesn't matter whether illness/babies/family issues are the reason you are absent from work a lot - the point is that you are absent from work a lot! .

I think a lot of women get on their high horse and assume that they are being treated differently because they have a baby, this is not always the case, a lot of time you are being treated differently because you are behaving differently and carrying out the job differently.
 

If a parent has to leave work early due to an emergency, then no there should not be an impact. If it happens in an unplanned fashion repeatedly, then inevitably it would.

In my experience sensible employers would be flexible in the case of children being sick etc, but it takes a bit of effort and goodwill from the employee too. Most of the issue is pre-empting and planning. I had a US manager once who planned conference calls to start at 5, which meant that, routinely, people left work after six. Everybody complained, but not to him. When I mentioned it to him he was quite happy to start earlier. So, while it would not be good to leave the meeting early, it was perfectly OK to move the start time.

There is inevitably some juggling to do though, and it is important to have a support network in place. And I generally don't buy the idea that staying for long hours in the office is a good thing. One can work productively in office hours instead of staying late.

PS - of course when I was a new parent it took me a while to adjust. However, I was happy to get back to work, I liked my job and honestly never felt guilty either at work or at home.
 
I agree that there has to be a certain amount of flexibility and give and take in any workplace. Everyone -not just mothers of young children - will occasionally have a crisis at home or an unexpected event which causes them to have to rush off early. I think the problem is that some mothers are tarring all mothers by taking advantage of this flexibility to an unfair degree and really annoying their colleagues. I mean the working mothers who assume that colleagues without children should always be the ones to stay late, travel long distances to meetings, provide cover for bank holiday weekends etc. Most mothers I have worked with don't behave like this, but the ones who do leave a strong impression and can sometimes cause people to start giving out about 'bloody working mothers' as if they're all the same.
 
Diziet said:
And I generally don't buy the idea that staying for long hours in the office is a good thing. One can work productively in office hours instead of staying late.
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I have to agree with this. The amount of employees who will stay in the office late doing nothing but trying to get noticed gets on my wick. If you can't do your job during normalish hours (44 a week) your either not up to it or you've too much work on.
 
Interesting.

It is true that your career prospects are based on your hard work and commitment. Therefore, if you are constantly being the one that can't work late to make a deadline or has to take time off at short notice then this will be noticed and taken account of,
by management and work colleagues.

In my experience, its not just working mothers who do this and its really unfair to point the finger at them only. I have worked with plenty of people who have been very quick to take time off work for very minor reasons, constantly.

BTW, Fathers are parents too. Working mothers get a really bad press some time.

I know plenty of men who refuse to ever leave work
for any reason related to their children, and of course their wife has to, and her's is the career that suffers. I also know plenty of men who are happy to take some of the burden.

Also, I have known people who have struggled through times with sick children, sick parents, bereavement and other personal issues worked really hard to keep up their work commitments. In these cases,
a workplace and colleagues who are willing to help and willing to be flexible is invaluable. But, if you take advantage of this, it will go away very quickly.

In short, be nice to your work colleagues, if they have personal issues, you might need their help some day, and don't take advantage.
 
Diziet said:
If a parent has to leave work early due to an emergency, then no there should not be an impact. If it happens in an unplanned fashion repeatedly, then inevitably it would.
Click to expand...

Like all things work-related, it's about finding a balance and that's hard to do if strictly legislated for. An extreme example would be a surgeon in the middle of an operation insisting on going home because their child has been taken ill in creche.

I do wonder what has happened to the family unit out there though. Whether its geographical spread, grandparents enjoying the kid's inheretence or whatever, but an oft used complaint is that there isn't anyone at all who can help out.

Not to use the argument of history...but in my day, the family unit helped out wherever it could. Of course there were emergency situations, but in the main grandparents, aunts, even neighbours stepped in and helped each other out. I'm not even talking that long ago either.

I've heard several times from employees and individuals that their parents are unwilling to help out even in some emergency situations "because they've done with all that raising children lark."

To counter that I have plenty of friends whereby the parents do help out along with others in the family. But during the old Celtic Tiger, there did seem to be an view of every man for himself.

Blinkered looks to the past aren't that helpful, but both my parents had to work and raise two kids with nothing like the maternity protection there is now. They did it and it wasn't easy. BTW, much to Purple's delight, both are avid Labour supporters, however both would disgree with too much state protection on this issue.

In effect, it absolves the family unit of the responsibilities that come with parentage and shoulders the employer with paying for what is a societal responsibility, not an employers.
 
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I agree this would be the ideal, but most neighbours and aunts are out at work themselves nowadays. Grandparents, as you said, often don't live that close by and tend to have much more active lives than our grandparents did. Obviously, they would be prepared to give up a game of bridge or lunch with their friends to help out in a crisis, but don't tend to be 'on call' all the time to collect the kids from school so that their Mum can work late, or hang onto them for the day because they have the sniffles and can't go to creche.
 
Agree with Ney001's post on this.

It is only normal for a persons focus to change after having a baby. This may sound awful, but there are a number of people in my job who only speak 24/7 about their kids. Its like once they had children they had their brain removed. Scary stuff and I avoid them like the plague. Same people always expect someone else to do the late hours, extra projects, etc, because they have children. Just because I dont have children, does not mean I dont value my hours outside work and have commitments apart from my job.

I dont think peoples circumstances should really be taken into account and favouritism shown towards people with children. Employeers should be flexible and fair to all staff. Have no problem with people leaving for an emergency (we all have them, children or not)
 
I think sometimes people are too quick to assume that because you have a family, your job/career is not important to you.
I work in a small office where I am the only parent. My colleagues are very quick to assume that I am not interested in training/more challenging work because I have "other priorities".
Thankfully I have not been in a position where I need to leave work to attend to my child in an emergency situation. My non-parenting colleagues have however had a myriad of "emergency situations" to attend to.
It's too easy to pigeon hole parents as not being career minded - we are people first and parents second!
 
I suppose it’s about priorities; if someone puts their children ahead of their job then that’s fine but they can’t expect the same advancement as someone who puts their job first.
 

+1 This is one of the few times I have ever heard this expressed.

In my last job I worked in a team of 4 Plus boss. The other team mates all had kids (I don't) and constantly did the coming in late leaving early, can't be there today can you attend my meeting. My manager told me that the Company has family friendly policies & I had to "suck it up for the team". As far as I'm concerned team work involves give and take. The others were doing all the taking.

During my time in that job my father suffered terminal cancer and I helped my mother nurse him. For some reason family friendly policies extended only to people with kids and not to dying fathers.

Having said all that I got on very well with with team mates and all nice peoplebut one man in particular was genuinely astonished that I would have a problem with covering for him as he had to take his kid to the dentist/go to sbhool paly/collect him form the creche as it closed at 5.
 

I agree, totally. It's tough raising a family, especially when both parents work. In emergency situations everyone should be understanding and flexible. But what constitutes an emergency?

The more it is legislated for, the more the problems. And again my point would be whether it is for employers to be given the responsibility of raising a family? I cannot deny there should be flexibility and compassion where it is necessary, but this is between the employer and its employees, not the State and the employer.

I should also state that this is different to maternity protection legislation, which even with the potential for abuse, I 100% agree with.
 
Both my wife and I work and have 2 kids under 5.
Although we both have extremely sympathetic and good employers,we don't use our kids as an excuse for time off although either of us may be late the very odd time if something arises.
But if and when our kids are sick we take it in turns to use our annual holiday entitlement to stay home and look after them...
 
Worked in a place before that had staggered hours where one girl having returned from Maternity Leave wanted to work all of the early options (which would have left me covering all of the late options)

Boss being a gutless wonder who did not want to rock the boat said he did not have a problem with it, as long as we worked it out between ourselves!

Colleague approached me and I said no, that would not suit me. She believed because I was young, that I could sleep on in the morning and stay later. That was her reasoning. Said no, wanted as many 9-5 options as I could get, if not, had no problem doing my share, or in an occasional emergency, was more than willing to help out. No more than my fair share though. Colleague was a bit put out, to say the least and we never had the same relationship again.
 
Like I said it's people who behave like this who, very unfairly, can get all working mothers a bad name in some offices. I worked with a girl who asked the boss if she could work through her lunch break every day in order to take an hour off to collect her child from school and bring her to the childminder. Boss said no problem. After a couple of days of this she just drifted into the habit of taking a full lunch break anyway and then heading off for an hour to collect her daughter. Colleagues were not impressed but boss was in another room and didn't realise what she was doing.
In fairness, I realise lots of people take advantage and don't pull their weight. But in cases like this, if anyone had complained, they would have been accused of being 'anti-family' or something like that.
 
Bit off point I know but one thing that really annoys me is when colleagues who have children themselves tell me that 'i'll feel differently once I have my own children'. If I ever express my desire to continue working and the fact that I would not like to be stuck at home with a child I am simply told 'ah but sure that'll all change, you won't want to leave the baby blah blah blah" Perhaps this is true for some and who knows what'll happen to me, but I find it annoying that they say with such conviction that I'll change as if what I am thinking now is wrong! The simple truth is, that of the two of us, my soon to be husband would be much more suited to being with a child all day and would relish that role - I on the other hand would not! It is not wrong however to know this or think this - just because you are the mother doesn't mean that you naturally want to be with baby 24/7 that you want to give up everything else in order to do so!.
 
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