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> Ok so you can't as an employer treat your [women] employees having babies as a life-changing [and work-productivity reducing] event Read the next section aft

> Ok so you can't as an employer treat your [women] employees having babies as a life-changing [and work-productivity reducing] event Read the next section after the part you quoted - since the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, those prohibitions (against pregnancy based discrimination) apply to both men and women.

einhverfr 15y ago
Sure, but still... One thing we have to face here is that having kids is different for men and women. Women often want to take more time off after having babies, scale back on work, etc. Men usually don't. Maybe we should treat this as something to be supported instead of a problem to be solved? Maybe women who want to do these things should be encouraged to do what they want (or not do them if they don't want). But for many women, having kids is a much more life-changing experience than it is for most men.
- Anechoic 15y ago
  > Women often want to take more time off after having babies, scale back on work, etc. Men usually don't. Is there data or research to support this statement that women want to take more time off and (by implication) men don't want to (or want to less)? I don't have kids, but looking among my friends, both the mothers and fathers want to spend as much time as possible with their kids. While the fathers often went back to work before the mothers, it wasn't because they wanted to, it was more about the cultural pressure for them to be the bread winners and not about them "wanting" to care for their kids less than the mothers.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    I don't have hard data. All I know is that I have known more than one women who quit her job after being told she couldn't take a year off following childbirth and never known a man to do the same. I have also known far more women to take unpaid timeoff than men, and to cut back on work following having kids. Interestingly the data presented in the TC article is stuff that's been true for over ten years: unmarried women without kids earn more than similarly experienced unmarried men without kids. This then reverses particularly after a married woman has kids.
  - Anechoic 15y ago
    edit: I can't respond to your response, so I'll post it here > have known more than one women who quit her job after being told she couldn't take a year off following childbirth and never known a man to do the same. I have also known far more women to take unpaid timeoff than men, and to cut back on work following having kids. Sure, I know plenty of women who have done the same, but it's never been that they wanted to do so more than men, it's that the cultural expectations ("father has to be the breadwinner") meant that the fathers felt they had to keep working, while it's more cultural acceptable for the women to stay home. IOW, all of the young fathers I know would gladly quit their jobs and stay at home if money wasn't a problem (and in the case of one friend who's wife is a surgeon, that's exactly what he did).
    - einhverfr 15y ago
      I think one has to wait for a while before replying at that depth. Obviously it is impossible to adequately measure subjective things like how badly someone wants something except as a function of what that individual is willing to give up to get it. Women are more likely to sacrifice career for spending time with infant children, so we can conclude that they prefer as a group on average the latter more than the former, at least when compared with men. I don't know of a better epistemological way to measure this. I think you have a fairly complicated set of balancing acts that happen in corporate America which make this necessary. The big one is that maternity/paternity leave has to be as short as possible to reduce disruption to the business, and it has to be fair so the same policies have to apply to men as to women (otherwise you have a big discrimination mess on your hands, bigger than we have now). So what this means in effect is that the system demands that one parent makes a sacrifice. As we all know how financially strapped middle-income families are (esp. after the rise of the two income family, see Elizabeth Warren's excellent book "The Two Income Trap"), this means one has to go back to work soon. For biological reasons,* this fundamentally favors the man (who will then be favored when it comes time to assess promotions). * When I worked at Microsoft, you got 1 month paid leave and up to two months unpaid. One month is probably not enough to get really adjusted to life as a new parent, especially for the mother who is going through hormonal changes as well as sleep cycle changes, may be breastfeeding, etc. So after that, the dad goes back to work and the mom stays home for at least a few more weeks. However, even this cannot explain the willingness to quit so one can take a year or two off work. That's separate.
- jarek 15y ago
  > Women often want to take more time off after having babies, scale back on work, etc. Men usually don't. I'm going to shoot proper discussion methods in the heart and counter your unsupported claim with an anecdote: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden....
- nknight 15y ago
  > Women often want to take more time off after having babies, scale back on work, etc And when they do, you can make objective evaluations of their performance, not pay them for days they don't work, etc. If your employees are working reasonable hours, and you're applying leave and vacation policies uniformly, you'll get in no legal trouble. If not, your company has problems beyond sexism.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    So... By that matter requiring that all employees (male/female) only take no more than 2 months off after having a child, and that all vacations occur in regemented times, and that if you can make it through this for say 15 years, you get added benefits is not sexist right? At some point one thinks of the quote by Anatole France, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
    - nknight 15y ago
      I'm honestly not sure what any of that means. I'm guessing you misunderstand "uniform application of policy" to mean "rigid application of a rigid policy", but with the way you've written, I can't even be sure of that.
    - einhverfr 15y ago
      I am saying that there is a difference between what's a facially non-discriminatory policy that clearly discriminates and what's a truly non-discriminatory policy. BTW, from discussions I have had with young women trying to decide whether to go down the tenure track in academia in the sciences, I would say that academia has a system which is very discriminatory in its effects.

einhverfr 15y ago

Sure, but still... One thing we have to face here is that having kids is different for men and women. Women often want to take more time off after having babies, scale back on work, etc. Men usually don't. Maybe we should treat this as something to be supported instead of a problem to be solved? Maybe women who want to do these things should be encouraged to do what they want (or not do them if they don't want). But for many women, having kids is a much more life-changing experience than it is for most men.

Anechoic 15y ago
> Women often want to take more time off after having babies, scale back on work, etc. Men usually don't. Is there data or research to support this statement that women want to take more time off and (by implication) men don't want to (or want to less)? I don't have kids, but looking among my friends, both the mothers and fathers want to spend as much time as possible with their kids. While the fathers often went back to work before the mothers, it wasn't because they wanted to, it was more about the cultural pressure for them to be the bread winners and not about them "wanting" to care for their kids less than the mothers.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  I don't have hard data. All I know is that I have known more than one women who quit her job after being told she couldn't take a year off following childbirth and never known a man to do the same. I have also known far more women to take unpaid timeoff than men, and to cut back on work following having kids. Interestingly the data presented in the TC article is stuff that's been true for over ten years: unmarried women without kids earn more than similarly experienced unmarried men without kids. This then reverses particularly after a married woman has kids.
- Anechoic 15y ago
  edit: I can't respond to your response, so I'll post it here > have known more than one women who quit her job after being told she couldn't take a year off following childbirth and never known a man to do the same. I have also known far more women to take unpaid timeoff than men, and to cut back on work following having kids. Sure, I know plenty of women who have done the same, but it's never been that they wanted to do so more than men, it's that the cultural expectations ("father has to be the breadwinner") meant that the fathers felt they had to keep working, while it's more cultural acceptable for the women to stay home. IOW, all of the young fathers I know would gladly quit their jobs and stay at home if money wasn't a problem (and in the case of one friend who's wife is a surgeon, that's exactly what he did).
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    I think one has to wait for a while before replying at that depth. Obviously it is impossible to adequately measure subjective things like how badly someone wants something except as a function of what that individual is willing to give up to get it. Women are more likely to sacrifice career for spending time with infant children, so we can conclude that they prefer as a group on average the latter more than the former, at least when compared with men. I don't know of a better epistemological way to measure this. I think you have a fairly complicated set of balancing acts that happen in corporate America which make this necessary. The big one is that maternity/paternity leave has to be as short as possible to reduce disruption to the business, and it has to be fair so the same policies have to apply to men as to women (otherwise you have a big discrimination mess on your hands, bigger than we have now). So what this means in effect is that the system demands that one parent makes a sacrifice. As we all know how financially strapped middle-income families are (esp. after the rise of the two income family, see Elizabeth Warren's excellent book "The Two Income Trap"), this means one has to go back to work soon. For biological reasons,* this fundamentally favors the man (who will then be favored when it comes time to assess promotions). * When I worked at Microsoft, you got 1 month paid leave and up to two months unpaid. One month is probably not enough to get really adjusted to life as a new parent, especially for the mother who is going through hormonal changes as well as sleep cycle changes, may be breastfeeding, etc. So after that, the dad goes back to work and the mom stays home for at least a few more weeks. However, even this cannot explain the willingness to quit so one can take a year or two off work. That's separate.
jarek 15y ago
> Women often want to take more time off after having babies, scale back on work, etc. Men usually don't. I'm going to shoot proper discussion methods in the heart and counter your unsupported claim with an anecdote: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden....
nknight 15y ago
> Women often want to take more time off after having babies, scale back on work, etc And when they do, you can make objective evaluations of their performance, not pay them for days they don't work, etc. If your employees are working reasonable hours, and you're applying leave and vacation policies uniformly, you'll get in no legal trouble. If not, your company has problems beyond sexism.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  So... By that matter requiring that all employees (male/female) only take no more than 2 months off after having a child, and that all vacations occur in regemented times, and that if you can make it through this for say 15 years, you get added benefits is not sexist right? At some point one thinks of the quote by Anatole France, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
  - nknight 15y ago
    I'm honestly not sure what any of that means. I'm guessing you misunderstand "uniform application of policy" to mean "rigid application of a rigid policy", but with the way you've written, I can't even be sure of that.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    I am saying that there is a difference between what's a facially non-discriminatory policy that clearly discriminates and what's a truly non-discriminatory policy. BTW, from discussions I have had with young women trying to decide whether to go down the tenure track in academia in the sciences, I would say that academia has a system which is very discriminatory in its effects.