| Who’s looking after the parents?
How are working parents coping with the pull of the day job and the needs of the child? Are government and employers doing enough to help? Did you know that a woman's educational achievement has the biggest single impact on her lifetime's earnings? Also, the hours she works, how many children she has and when she has them, and whether she divorces, all have significant influence on her lifetime income. This means that women are in a separate category of their own when it comes to work. The Women’s Unit commissioned research in 1999 in an attempt to quantify the earnings gap between equally skilled men and women. This revealed huge differences in pay due to being female (the gender gap) and also due to being a mother (the mother gap). Compared to a similarly educated male, a mid-skilled woman loses out on £241,000 earnings over a lifetime, plus an additional £140,000 earnings, if she has children. All this makes for interesting reading, when viewed in the light of the government Green Paper on working parents, Work & Parents: Competitiveness and Choice – introduced in December 2000 and under consultation until March 2001. The paper proposed modest changes to existing parental rights. For example:
Many of these ideas where brought to life in the 2001 budget. So what does the average family out there need? Sarah Lewinson recently returned to work after giving birth to her daughter in May 2000. How has she fared in the work-life balance stakes? ‘I returned to work full-time last November and this was a financial decision, as my partner and I have a mortgage that needs two salaries,’ states Lewinson. ‘My husband only had two official days of paternity leave, which he luckily made up to two weeks, using his holiday entitlement. This is a laughably short amount of time, but it was vital that one of us return to work as soon as possible to keep the finances on an even keel,’ she says. Lewinson was lucky to have the support of her mother, who virtually moved in for the first few weeks after the arrival of the baby. What are her childcare arrangements now? ‘The majority of my salary now goes on paying the childminder, which sometimes makes me question why I am enduring such a hectic daily regime. Every day, after an often sleepless night, I frantically dress and feed my daughter and drop her off to nursery, before dragging myself into the office,’ states Lewinson. Does she feel that changes proposed will have a real impact on her life? ‘Men need to be fully included in the responsibility of childcare. Longer paternity leave is a fantastic idea, as it’s only my career that has suffered, despite the fact that it was a joint decision between my partner and myself to have the baby,’ states Lewinson. In fact, the announcement that men will be offered the right to two weeks' paid paternity leave from 2003, is a huge step forward towards the recognition that caring for children is not just the mother's responsibility, and that men might need financial help from the government to be able to take a bigger caring role. Certainly, all the evidence from elsewhere in Europe is that entitlements to leave are not taken by men in any numbers, unless it is paid and paid at a high enough rate to replace earnings from work. Moira Patterson decided on returning to work part-time, even before she left for her maternity leave. ‘My partner and I have had to be much more careful on the money front,’ says Patterson. ‘To have the right to return to work on a part-time basis as part of the law would relieve a lot pressure on couples; I was lucky that my boss is very flexible and that I work for a small, family-run company; for many women, there wouldn’t have been the choice,’ she says. Some companies are sitting up and taking notice Market Monitor is a telesales company with 26 employees. It does not have formalised work-life policies, but staff can work flexible hours to suit their needs. There is an open-door attitude to talking about work-life issues. As a result, the organisation benefits from a high level of commitment and loyalty among staff, low levels of absenteeism and a high turnover. Flexible working arrangements are tailored to suit individual needs. For example, one woman who has a child with special needs works term time only. Another works a four-day week to reduce stress following a long-term illness. Should the state get involved? Many women feel that because having a child is more than a lifestyle choice, it deserves help and support from employers and the rest of society. But should businesses carry the costs of losing staff? Should childless workers work harder to cover for them? Some may think that the answer to both questions is ‘no’. Parents, especially women, need help to balance work and family care, employers and the economy will lose out on their skills – either because they have to give up work, or because they work less efficiently. Refreshingly, the Green Paper did offer as one of its goals, ‘safeguarding the health and welfare of the mother and child before and after birth’. The well-being of children or elderly dependants of working people often gets lost in today's debate over work-life balance and family-friendly employment. ‘Burdens on business’ usually get more attention. The 2001 budget however, shows that the government is moving in the right direction when it comes to providing help for families and working parents. But giving mothers the legal right to part-time work or shorter hours after maternity leave would represent a meaningful addition to measures already in the pipeline. Talk about your needs on the balancing work and home board Further information |