The Parent Paradox

So I was reading "It's Almost Impossible to Be a Mom in Television News" in The Atlantic. At first blush, "Yawn." It's yet another in a never-ending series of stories that bemoan the fact that women suffer career consequences of some or another sort when they become mothers. This one, dealing specifically with television news, may be more narrowly-focused than others, but it's the same old song.

I had more or less despaired of finding anything new and interesting the piece when I came across this: "Moms need people at the highest leadership levels of TV news who can help promote a culture in which working moms are not expected to work as if they don’t have children." This caught my attention, because many of these articles, concerned as they are with an overall culture of perceived sexism, tend to cast the conflict almost entirely as being one of men versus women. Just prior to the quote above, Ms. Goldman points out that:
Many of the TV-news moms I spoke with said that when men broach child-care issues, management celebrates their fatherly duties and usually bends over backwards to accommodate them. One reason may be an assumption that a man’s caretaking responsibilities will be temporary, while a mom will always ask for special accommodations. “It’s still considered so unusual for a man to be an equal or primary caretaker that there can be brownie points associated with that,” said Kathleen Gerson, a sociologist at NYU who studies gender dynamics in the workplace.
This common assumption (and in this case it is an assumption, given the use of words like "may" and "can"), which has been around for some time, makes for a tidy narrative of male chauvinism and privilege, but it may hide a deeper understanding.

Ms. Goldman quoted Fox Business Network anchor Trish Regan as saying: “The pressure [to come back before my leave was up] was certainly self-inflicted in that I’m driven and ambitious and wanted to succeed. But at the same time, I was very aware that if I was gone for that amount of time, I was perhaps replaceable with either a man who could do the job or a woman who wasn’t having a baby. These were very real concerns of mine, and there was no one in my environment at either of those networks [who] was encouraging me to think otherwise.” (Emphasis mine.) As an aside, again, there is an assumption here, embodied in "perhaps." Assumptions are pernicious because we act on them as if they were true, but the inability to substantiate them means that they're easily denied. Fox Business Network can say that they had no intent to replace Ms. Regan has she taken her full leave, and so the topic becomes a matter of whose story fits in with one's emotional worldview.

If we cast the story as mothers vesus the childless, it become a different discussion. "Anti-mom bias" is a different beast than sexism, with different battle lines, and perhaps, different solutions.

The idea that "Moms need people at the highest leadership levels of TV news who can help promote a culture in which working moms are not expected to work as if they don’t have children." begs a particular question: Should women without children be expected to work harder, be more committed or "live the job" more than mothers? It's pretty clear to me that the idea believes the answer is "yes." But because it never addresses the question, it can't tell us why.

As a non-parent, I am often considered both fool and freeloader. I have cut myself off from the joy, fulfillment and meaning of raising children, while cynically mooching off of the indispensable benefits that parents bring to the society in which I live. Both of these are considered failings, but parents are unable to do anything about my being a fool. They can, however, lobby against my being allowed to be a freeloader. As children have been pushed by the definition of "childhood" and child labor laws from being an economic benefit (or even necessity) for families, they've been re-cast as an expensive luxury good. But they're also become viewed as social benefits, or possibly, necessities. I've been told on more than one occasion that by being childless, I am taking advantage of other people by availing myself of the goods and services that their children provide, despite the fact that all of these things come at a direct and tangible cost to me, whether that's paying taxes or simply paying the tab.

So the question becomes this: Does the very existence of children create a benefit to society that must be paid for? It's understood, more or less, that having children is a benefit to parents. They may be unable to put their children to work, or monopolize their services in their old age, and thus reap exclusive economic benefits, but we consider that crass. But, as I noted, I've been considered a fool (when people haven't simply questioned my humanity outright) for deciding that I'd rather be doing other things. People extol the happiness and pride that their children bring them as turning points in their lives, and the childless-by-choice are deemed pitiable as often as they are deemed irresponsible. But if parents have managed to make children into a luxury good for their own benefit, does that obviate any entitlement to social supports that non-parents are not offered? Is flexibility in working arrangements without a career cost a privilege atop a benefit or deserved compensation to mitigate what would otherwise be a sacrifice? And if it's both, which carries more weight? Should the economic pressure to be parents be reinstated in a different form? Should transfers from the childless be costly and constant enough that the perception of freeloading is erased?

I understand these to be important questions because they aren't limited to child-rearing. I find the same thing comes up in regards to entrepreneurship. Being a successful entrepreneur brings clear benefits, yet there is still an argument that it should bring more, and at public expense, because a) entrepreneurs bring benefits to society and deserve to be compensated for them and b) it's better to be an entrepreneur than not, and the better the lives of entrepreneurs are, the more entrepreneurship. And there is some logic to this. Loving one's work is wonderful, but it doesn't pay the bills, and so we don't see the lack of a "fulfillment discount" in many areas of life as inappropriately double-dipping.

And so "Who are children for?" needn't be an "either/or" answer. But it does need an answer. The expectation that employers will tax their childless employees with greater demands of effort, lack of flexibility and commitment to deliver those to the parents on the payroll will likely work out better if there is at least some buy-in from everyone involved. It's true, however, that many parents didn't agree to a standard that refused to exempt parenting from the list of choices that needed to be balanced against career. But simply demanding that the shoe be moved to the other foot isn't necessarily progress.