Semi-relatedly, I remember rolling my eyes as the Twitter congratulations rolled in for spackerman's announcement that he was taking paternity leave. I mean, good for him, obvs, but women don't get to bust that one out and expect to be cheered.
"My colleague's wife just their first baby. " Please tell us that the missing verb is "ate."
Oops. My colleague's wife is just their first baby. It's a creepy situation.
FWIW, and don't take this as a strong righteousness claim, but men in privileged positions ostentatiously doing what should be the new norm is I think a good/necessary step. I mean, if it's obviously self-congratulatory, that's assholery regardless, but the general thing of, "this is the right thing, and I'm doing it [because I can]" is something that should move the needle for the less privileged.
To use a banned analogy, taking the lane while cycling on busy streets is something that's not doable for most people in most places (in America): it takes some combo of courage and privilege (the more you have of the latter, the less you need the former). But the more that people in a position to do it do so, the less courage/privilege is needed.
From each according, etc. To reiterate, I agree that taking a victory lap over this sort of thing is distasteful at best, but I do think that doing it on the DL* isn't helpful, even if it's more tasteful.
*because today is mid-'90s day at Unfogged
To be clear, he didn't, insofar as I paid any attention, do anything wrong, it's just a bit rich, as a woman, to sit and watch the "OMG, man! Good for you!"'s roll by.
I took four weeks of paternity leave when each of my two children were born. Because I'm a feminist.
Also, on the OP, when my wife was expecting, I had two different had (male) supervisors informally pull me aside and tell me that, whether I knew it or not, my priorities would shift, and I'd find myself either wanting or needing to be out of the office a lot more, and that was okay. I thought the conversations were weird, but well-intentioned.
JRoth is completely right. As weird as it can seem to give men props for doing something that women get endless criticism for, I think it's positive.
And urple's story surprises me on two levels -- first, that he had two such humane and non-macho bosses, and second, because I can barely imagine a woman being given such a talk. The default assumptions run completely the other way, as heebie noted in the OP.
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No More polishing Foucauld's Pendulum.
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On the other hand, I've worked at another place where supervisors openly mocked the very idea of paternity leave, which no one actually took (because it would have been considered a major career strike.) Men whose partners gave birth were invariably back to work the next day. The maternity leave, in contrast, was generally accepted and respected.
I already posted 9 in the other thread.
1: well it *would* be kind of weird to cheer a woman for taking paternity leave...
4: true, but I agree with oudemia that "congratulations" can get a little annoying. It's an old double standard, but no one thinks I'm an amazing mom just for changing a diaper, and no one thought that I was doing anything amazing by taking maternity leave. Certainly think men who get parental leave should take it.
Perhaps he make it up to you by explaining that parenting is a lot of work.
13: I did have a woman I work with take non-birth-parent parental leave recently. Awkward linguistic situation, to be sure.
So there are office cultures where women are really still catching flack for taking mat leave instead of being congratulated on their coming bundle of joy? That's fucked.
16: I took mine with Mara and Selah and none of my coworkers seemed bothered, though they probably called it maternity leave when I wasn't around. (Nia was school-aged and on summer break when she moved in, so I just took a few days off and got her settled in her summer program and then took her on vacation later in the summer.)
13: Tim's company just took a step back in terms of its paid leave policy. Women got 13 weeks, and men got 5. They've cut the paternity leave to 2 weeks. They've also cut the women's leave by 3 weeks. For HR purposes, they were saying that women got 8 weeks of maternity leave and 5 weeks of paternity leave. So now women get 10 weeks paid.
People do generally think women are amazing for having babies, though. I expect that when paternity leave is absolutely the norm, no-one will praise men for taking it, either.
For what it's worth, everyone at my workplace takes it, and I've never heard it remarked on, either way. Except one colleague who was a bit of a dick about telling his boss about it, as in he took it, but didn't say he was taking it, so just disappeared for a few weeks.
People do generally think women are amazing for having babies, though.
In a nebulous, general, fetus-worship way, sure. But actual women having or holding actual babies are considered pains in the neck as often as not.
(Once I was flying somewhere with a wee O and we'd been upgraded to business class. I had to change O's diaper, headed for the bathroom and was basically bodychecked by a flight attendant. No babies in the business class bathroom! Report to the back of the plane! This is only tangentially related to the topic at hand, I realize.)
21.2!! Is that a standard policy? If so I can't believe there haven't been mass protests.
re: 21
Oh, definitely.
J' and I are more or less 50/50 on child-care, which works out more or less like alternating single-parenthood, as the only way we can make childcare and working hours work, is to alternate working late, and leaving early. And since we are about and about a fair bit, I'm on the receiving end of the children-are-an-inconvenience scorn all the time.
20, 21: IME it really depends on context. Sometimes I get a lot of credit for doing things like remaining professionally active after having had a baby. But most of the time I get sad noises about how horrible it is that my kid goes to daycare, students wondering if I'm quitting my professor job due to the baby, etc. No one ever says "wow, after a day of teaching and meetings you took your kid to the park and made a homecooked meal before starting on an evening of laundry and writing? WHAT AN AMAZING MOM."
No one ever says "wow, after a day of teaching and meetings you took your kid to the park and made a homecooked meal before starting on an evening of laundry and writing? WHAT AN AMAZING MOM."
Nor should they. They should say, "WTF? Do you have a spouse/partner who should be doing some of those things?"
If the spouse also works full time, there's plenty enough housework and childcare tasks for everyone to do during all waking hours. At least that's been our experience.
Speaking of leave, blogity blogity
(Obvious from the link who this is, signed anon so as to keep some semblance of pseud)
27: exactly. It's not like taking the kid to the park is a hardship; it's that nothing I can do will ever not make me a shitty mom to nearly everyone, because I have a job.
there's plenty enough housework and childcare tasks for everyone to do during all waking hours
So very true. I cleaned the bathtub today! Also I let my child bite my torso. WHAT AN AMAZING MOM
(Then Snark took her to the playground and library while I did grantwriting at the cafe.)
I have been unusually lucky, I think, for the degree to which I have not experienced blowback suggesting I am a shitty mother for my extra-parental activities. This is down to some highly fortunate combination of where I live, where I work, my nice family, the relatively limited circles of my acquaintance, and my obliviousness.
bite my torso
I will bite your torso and give you a disease!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=loqYlYqtsmY
Your money is now our money and we will spend it on drugs.
I will bite your torso and give you a disease!
A classic in its own right, but also, it turns out, a striking encapsulation of the parenting experience!
Speaking of which, Ryan Reynolds is a SUPER DAD because he apparently changes a few diapers. "Sometimes he helps with the baby!!"
OP--yes, annoying. And pretty much yes to everything everyone else has said too. Still. Here in Stepford there's are additional wrinkles, not unremarked upon in the wider world, but wholly unmentioned here. The basic often elsewhere noted phenomenon is-- extra uncompensated work falls on not-childrearing women. My best (very rough outline) after a decade of how that happens-- Most couples here are het, or het-modeling (version: 1953)-- someone works, someone does not; insofar as het, the non-working is the woman. The non-working women commonly get part time (10-20hr/wk) jobs when the offspring hit middle-of-grammar-school age. Academic women are about half/half childrearing/not childrearing. Childrearing academic women I'm sure face some of the pressures described above, but otoh, are never asked to pick up extra work ("because babies! even when the children are teenagers) Childrearing men, over and over again, pull this infuriating stunt-- (a) say they can't do [uncompensated thing that needs to get done] because babies (no matter how old the children are); and (b) consistently refer to themselves as "balancing two careers" as part of the justification for (a). This is SO common that it actually took me the better part of a decade living in Stepford to realize that the 'second career' in these 'two career' families were--without exception-- 10-20 hr/wk jobs.
Example of extra work: this past week, I spent three out of five work days shuttling around/entertaining/dealing with job candidates that my child-rearing colleagues "couldn't" do because children.
Lesson: the economic system and sexist structure screws most of us. Except maybe not those childrearing men married to housewives.