Up until now, ‘having it all’, in it’s crudest sense, meant enjoying a challenging, well-compensating career alongside a healthy family life that includes a partner, children and maybe the odd yoga class. But what if having it all means all of the above … minus the offspring. A recent Time magazine cover story explored the struggles that face child free couples. Leah Eichler’s recent column in the Globe and Mail also touched on some of the obstacles the single and/or child free face in the workplace.
And since you asked — some of these child free women are starting to speak up. A new survey by Red magazine revealed that four in ten working women who have no kids think they are doing more work than their colleagues who have children. Forty-one percent actually do not like it when they have to cover for working mothers when the latter goes on leave. In addition, about forty-two percent also resent that their leave requests are given less priority than that of their female colleagues with kids.
Zoe Clarke-Powell experienced the same challenge when she asked for a leave to settle her dad into a care home. The child free and single marketing manager told Polly Dunbar of Mail Online how difficult it was to get the leave she asked for even if she worked harder than colleagues who had kids. “They asked me if it had to be that specific week. Of course it did. It had taken forever to get the arrangements in place, and I was desperate to be there for Dad when he needed me. After some wrangling, I was finally granted the days, but so begrudgingly that it made things even more upsetting than they were already. Yet I know that if my request had been to take care of a child, it would never have been questioned.”
Dunbar writes: “Her experience is indicative of an emerging pattern, in which single women are penalised with longer working hours and less flexibility than their female colleagues with children.”
In the Red survey, only four percent of mothers believe that it irritates their co-workers when they ask for time off for their sons and/or daughters. Yet, eighty-six percent of career moms see the workplace as “a secret relief and rest” from the responsibilities of family life even if fifty-nine percent of them say they are “overwhelmingly guilty” for not spending sufficient time with their kids.
Reacting to Dunbar’s article, Karen 63 of South Africa, says she’s willing to cover for a working mother even at short notice when the latter is faced with a real emergency. However, she loathes the assumption that single, childless women like her “have nothing better to do with our time, or that there is nothing that could possibly be more important than work.” She concludes that it’s “time for attitudes to change.”
Red’s Editor-in-Chief Sarah Bailey admits their survey results aren’t a comfortable read. “However, we figured that only by lifting the lid on some of the unspoken taboos about modern working life and encouraging honest feedback could we start to have a mature conversation about supporting the millions of working parents in Britain; and perhaps most fundamentally stop pitting women against women.”