Life/Work - Issue 38

Every once in a while, someone comes along who rocks you back on your heels and manages to turn some of your most cherished assumptions inside out. That's what happened when I read Elinor Burkett's entertaining, merciless, pungent, angry, and often irrefutable polemic The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless (Free Press, 2000). What Burkett challenges -- and ultimately decimates -- is the righteous assumption of parents like me that we're entitled to special privileges and hallowed status simply because we're simultaneously working and raising children.

It all started when I received a letter from a reader named Jeffry Still. "I've noticed in your column [ that ] you tend to value work-life balance only in terms of family," he wrote. "Judging from your writings, all it takes is being the father of two ... and we're immediately to assume the subject has a much nobler calling than the rest of us: parenthood ... Those of us who are childless by choice should not be ignored in the quest for bringing meaning to life beyond work. As a gay male, I enjoy spending time with my partner, studying for my MBA (part-time), traveling, exercising, renovating our home, and being with our dog. These are valid ways to spend my free time and balance a hectic work life, but your reporting tends towards sainting the happily married with kids among us."

Until Still and Burkett (who is married and without children) provided a wake-up call, I had looked at the new wave of "family-friendly" benefits as evidence that smart companies were finally taking into account the broader needs of their employees. I had viewed on-site child care, extended maternity and paternity leave, flexible work hours, matching grants for tuition, and time off to attend child-related functions as examples of progressive management.

I still feel that way. What I hadn't stopped to consider, however, is that these benefits are available only to the minority of employees who have young children. Only one-third of the nation's workforce has children at home under the age of 18, and fully one-fourth of baby-boomer women will never have children. Meanwhile, a broad array of government-sponsored tax breaks not only exclude the childless (and those with grown children) but also overwhelmingly benefit middle- and upper-middle-class working parents, rather than helping lower-income families, who most need assistance.

Burkett's brief focuses mostly on fairness, and she isn't one to mince words. "The bottom line is that all of the endless hand-wringing and angst about the state of the nation's children isn't being directed toward kids at the greatest risk," she writes. "It's a charade designed by and for parents who aren't thrilled with the consequences of their own choices, who feel guilty that they don't spend enough time with their children -- and who, after decades of funding welfare for the poor, no matter how parsimonious, are demanding theirs."

All of this would be acceptable, Burkett argues, if people without young children received comparable benefits. Instead, she says, this oppressed majority is expected to abide by what she calls the "Ten Commandments of workplace etiquette in family-friendly America." To wit: "Thou shalt volunteer to work late so that mothers can leave at 2:00 PM to watch their sons play soccer." Or: "Thou shalt take thy vacations when no one else wants time off so parents can take theirs during the summer, over Christmas, or on any other school or 'family' holiday." You get the idea (and the attitude).

Burkett also offers evidence that she is speaking for a large and increasingly angry constituency. She cites a study conducted by the trade magazine Personnel Journal, for example, in which 80% of the readers polled said that employees without children are being left out of workplace benefits programs, while nearly 70% of those polled said that corporate America should expect a backlash from single employees. In a Conference Board study of 78 companies that offer extensive parental benefits, 57% of the companies acknowledged that nonparent employees felt some resentment toward colleagues who had children.

I was especially fascinated by Burkett's description of the current working environment at one of my former employers, the New York Times. Both my wife, Deborah, and I were working there in the early 1980s when we had our first child. A year later, overwhelmed by raising an infant and working long hours, Deborah asked the Times if she could cut back her hours to a four-day workweek at a prorated salary. Eventually -- and reluctantly -- the Times agreed, but it then stripped Deborah of her seniority and her benefits. That seemed extreme and unnecessary, and a year later, Deborah left the newspaper for a more flexible job.