Women With Children First?

Want to get a rise out of your local human-resources manager? Ask her this: Does your company value employees with kids more than those without?

Of course, the answer invariably will be some version of: "Zedco values diversity, and we value all our employees." But consider: Don't workers with kids typically get more valuable health benefits? Are they more likely to take advantage of flexible work schedules? Are their childless colleagues often left holding the bag?

This is the often-silent elephant in the room when execs and employees wrangle over the "family-friendly" workplace. Is family-friendliness inherently exclusive? Are workers without kids picking up the tab for the benefits and flexibility granted to those with traditional families? If so, is that morally acceptable? These are incredibly touchy, difficult questions -- and in one way or another, they affect nearly everyone who works. They force us to reckon with our definition of a "family," and to wrestle as individuals and as a society with our priorities. What are we willing to compromise in our work and in our lives? What is the common good, and who should pay for it?

Last month, Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business waded into these choppy waters as part of its 2001 Work/Life Symposium. And Fast Company was there to help navigate the course. In front of 150 MBA students, professors, and alumni, Fast Company moderated a debate between two women with profoundly different views. Writer Elinor Burkett is author of The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless (Free Press, 2000), a book that rails against "the culture of parental privilege." Nancy Rankin is executive director of the National Parenting Association, a research and advocacy group in New York that proposes greater parents' rights. Here are excerpts from their lively discussion.

Fast Company: Elinor, you argue that family-friendly practices actually discriminate against people without kids.

Burkett: The Equal Pay Act in 1963 was a triumph because it said that people should be rewarded for what they do at work. Over the past decade, though, that principle has been undermined by the rise of the family-friendly workplace.

For example, Liz Maguire, the former editorial director of the Free Press, which published my book, was single and childless. In the middle of a heavy publishing season, her associate publisher had to go on bed rest for a pregnancy and was off, with pay, for six months. Who did the associate publisher's work? Liz Maguire. For six months, Liz did two jobs. Is that fair? Is that the way we want business to be running?

When you give benefits to one group and not to another, it's always at someone's expense. Look at the benefits companies give people according to their family size. At Marriott, if you have children, your insurance is worth about $4,000 more than it would be if you were single. Marriott also subsidizes child care to a tune of $5,000 per child per year. So an employee with two kids essentially earns $14,000 a year more than one with no kids. No matter how hard she works, how long she stays, or how loyal she is, a single woman can never be compensated as well as a person with a "family."

Think about this problem as a manager. Imagine that you're a supervisor and you have eight account managers working for you. One of them says, "I have kids, and I can't handle a full work week; I want to work four days a week." You're a nice person and a good manager, and you understand her problem and want to keep her. So you say yes. The next week, another employee comes in and says that he saw the schedule you gave Mary and that he needs it too. He wants to write a novel or run marathon -- or maybe he doesn't want to tell you why he needs that schedule. You can only have one employee on a shortened schedule. So how do you decide?

When you try to create a workplace based on an employer's vision of what is acceptable outside the workplace, you land in a trap. You create a social hierarchy -- saying that what one group of people is doing with their time is more important than what another group does. I don't want people to tell me that taking care of my dying mother is more important than taking care of their kids. I don't want this issue to turn into a contest, but that's what it's becoming. And in the process, we're allowing employers and the government to define what a family is. They've said, in effect, that a family is a father, a mother, and children. Well, I don't have kids, but I do have a family.

Fast Company: Nancy, you would argue that, if anything, the workplace is not family-friendly enough, right?