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From: regard@ttidcc.UUCP (Adrienne Regard)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Whose watching the kids
Message-ID: <580@ttidcc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Jul-85 13:36:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: ttidcc.580
Posted: Mon Jul 22 13:36:34 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Jul-85 06:31:25 EDT
Organization: TTI, Santa Monica, CA.
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>>> Unfortunately, MOST OF US can't take a year or two off and not
>>> risk spending another year obtaining another job.  (Women too!) So what!?
>>Today none of us men or women can afford to take a year or two off
>>either for economic or profesional reasons.
>Is it me, or does no one else realize that most states and employers
>*allow* a women time off for "maternity leave" and are *forbidden* to
>discriminate against these women when they return to their place
>of employment?
>Men, of course, don't have the same rights.  So if a man takes time
>off to raise, or to help raise, his child, it hurts him more
>professionally than the women.
--Ross Greenberg

Yes, Ross, but why does it "hurt him more"? Could it be because men, on
the whole, haven't lobbied for their "rights" to take a full part in the
first few months responsibility of raising kids?  Could it be because men
are subject to unfair expectations as to their "commitment" to a work
effort, and that expectation doesn't allow for external commitments without
punishing them in the workplace?  If you are speaking of "greater hurt"
in an economic sense (a woman gets her $200/wk paycheck when she is on
leave, a man doesn't get his $400/wk paycheck, for example) might it not
be because men are being _overpaid_, their wives are being _underpaid_ and
therefore the men are not able to take the time off because their wives
cannot get paid enough to "allow" _him_ to stay home, if he so chooses?
Or are men just abdicating, and leaving it up to the women (which is a
whole set of prejudicial assumptions that does affect women and their work
image MUCH MORE than men)?

>>Any man who can use this kind of arguement or who allows this reasoning to
>>shrug off a responsibility he voluntarily created is guilty of working to
>>maintain the very discrimination which has kept women ** in the kitchen **
>>for so many years (generations).
>Hogwash!  So if *we* decide that *we* wish for *our* family to have
>the highest possible standard of living and (for whatever reason) I make more
>than my spouse, then by *our* deciding who quits the job to raise *our*
>kid, then *I* am guilt of some foul deed?

Yes, no and maybe.  As long as you don't really have a choice (i.e., men in
general do make more and women, in general do get maternity benefits) you
can't really be held up for blame -- except for the fact that you haven't
done a damn thing to change this arbitrary set of assumptions.  Nobody in
this context is really acting from CHOICE, but instead choosing the only
logical outcome in a skewed workplace.  Come the day when you REALLY have a
choice (i.e., both women and men make the same money, so who works and who
doesn't is a matter of personal choice rather than economics, and that both
men and women have "family leave" from their work, without prejudice) then
it will not be at all remarkable that one may make personal choices based
on personal preferences.  We have not yet reached that date.

>further comments of a more personal and flammable nature. . .

O.K., let's not get personal about "horrendous" mothers, and irresponsible
fathers.  There are plenty of great and lousy people in both sexes.  The
point is, women and men in the workplace are not acting out of free choice
because the workplace does not yet recognise their contributions in an
equal sense, does not recognise their level of commitment in an objective
way, and does not allow them the same rights and recognise the same res-
ponsibilities toward familial obligations.  There are numerous women who
have fought for their benefits.  There is a significantly smaller number
of men who have done the same.  But it's a little silly to get all hot
under the collar about "what choice does a man have faced with the ruination
of his career" when the men insist on working under a different set of
rules.  The same question applies to women, in every case, and the altera-
tions to the workplace have addressed these complaints.  Personally, I
think that the repurcussions of "maternity leave" are incredibly ruinous
to women -- but what's the option, presently, if men don't take a hand in
their own destinies, continuing to buy the old assumptions?

Personally, I think every woman in the world ought to demand their husband/
child's father take off two months (after her maternity leave, for instance)
each time she has a child just out of a righteous notion of social
engineering; however, I don't believe in social engineering myself, so I'm
not going to get on a soap box about it.  But I'll certainly encourage my
friends, and my co-workers, and anybody whose interested.  If I were a man,
I'd be as furious about the inequality of "maternity" (Parental) benefits
as I currently am (being a woman) about discrimination against women in
the workplace.

So, get furious, Ross, but don't bother with getting furious at Jeanette --
get furious about the people who are making assumptions about you and your
fellow men where it counts -- at the office.

Adrienne Regard