Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site h-sc1.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!h-sc1!friedman
From: friedman@h-sc1.UUCP (dawn friedman)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Whose watching the kids
Message-ID: <492@h-sc1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Aug-85 14:12:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: h-sc1.492
Posted: Thu Aug  1 14:12:39 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Aug-85 07:13:07 EDT
References: <580@ttidcc.UUCP> <357@timeinc.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
Lines: 73

Single >: Ross Greenberg

> I would love to take the time off to raise a child.  But women MUST have 
> time off due to the simple idea that she gives birth to the child.  
> I would hope that the pregnancy didn't just happen: that it was planned, 
> and the family decided whether they could afford it on one person's 
> salary for a while. Okay, this is not the case in single mother
> households, I agree.  But I'm only discussing the traditional
> family here.
It seems to me that this describes a family, starting with two adults,
which intends to create a child.  They make their plans to absorb the
monetary, emotional and sheer time costs that childrearing entails,
because having a child is a personal good for them, a goal worthy of
some sacrifices.  One then hopes that, as two humans who are on 
equal terms and respect each other, they will try to share these
costs in a fair way.  But this describes the interaction solely *within*
the family, in analogy to a person buying an apple.  
There is some feeling that *society* has, as a group goal, the promotion
of people's ability to buy apples at a non-prohibitive cost -- or at
least to buy some reasonable substitute at non-prohibitive cost.  There
is no close substitute for children.  
Is it a goal of society, or should it be, to promote conditions that
make childrearing NOT prohibitively costly to a couple?   
> 
> But the repurcussions are not totally in the man's lap: women were
> demanding special treatment that was solely based upon their sex and
> upon their capability of having children.  I don't deny the right
> to special treatment.
> 
> But is it fair to say:  I want special treatment that benefits me
> due to my sex, and how dare you~r discriminate against me due to my
> sex?  I, too, would love to have my cake, and eat it also.
  
The point I want to make is that maternity leave is *not* a benefit
to the female sex alone!  Are women the only people who care if 
babies are born in a comfortable and safe environment chosen ahead
of time, or in a taxi in a midtown traffic jam?  How can maternity
leave -- and by extension, any "special treatment" received by 
the pregnant partner which furthers the bearing of a healthy child,
or makes pregnancy and childbirth easier on the mother (who will
then be less reluctant to entail these costs) -- be discriminatory
against men?  It cannot, unless men don't care whether women can
have babies safely.

Paternity leave should, I think, also be seen as a benefit to the
*couple* raising a child, rather than to MEN as opposed to women.
 
This leaves us asking whether it is fair to discriminate, not on 
the basis of sex, but in favor of *childrearers* (couples, or
single men or women, who choose to give birth to or adopt, and   
then care for, children) as opposed to nonchildrearers.  
 
Which brings me back to my original question: Is, or should be, the
furtherance of the choice to rear children rather than doing without,
a societal goal?  If it is, then we'll have to come to terms with the
(blessed, from my point of view at least!) transformation of child
raising from an operation carried out by a woman, supported by a man,
into something for which the couple shares the responsibilities of
actual child-work and financial support in proportions they determine
(ideally) for themselves.  And with the phenomenon of the single
parent (I am thinking mostly of poor single mothers) who *must*
take both these responsibilities on hirself.
If society is not to be concerned with this goal, then employers
will be left free to decide whether *they* are, and what they'd like
to do about it.
  
But it seems clear to me that, unless I badly misinterpret men's feelings
about having kids, maternity leave is not a discriminatory benefit
to women, nor paternity leave to men; they both discriminate in favor
of childraising families.
  
                                                    dsf
                                            (dina ansieri)