Personal life and work balance question

[Valmy]

That does not mean however that if your lifestyle choice interferes directly with your ability to do your work, your employer should bend over backwards to accomodate that

Well generally employers have policies that indicate precisely what accomodations they have to/will make do they not?  Are we presuming people are going over those limits and not doing things according to policy or just using them?

[Malthus]

Or are you saying there exist parents who, when little baby Jake has to go to the hospital with an ear infection, would say something like "no, back in 2009 I signed a deal that offered me $1,000 more in salary per year to have no accomodation, and a deal is a deal. Baby Jake, suck it up"? 

I am saying there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of parents who say I could go to the hospital to check up on little Jake with some dumbass ear infection but that will fuck up my chances of promotion/bonus/corner office/partnership.

My point is that parenting invariably creates emergencies that parents cannot ignore. You say parents can ignore them and that "thousands, if not millions" will do so.

Dunno what you are basing that on. 

[MadImmortalMan]

If you are an evangelical Christian and are opposed to contraception and abortion,

You're confusing evangelicals with catholics. Nothing wrong with contraception for most evangelicals.

[Malthus]

A partner in my law firm was in the negotiations room while his wife was delivering the baby.

It would impress me more if the partner was female and doing negotiations by teleconference while delivering her own. 

[crazy canuck]

In my experience the people that act like Marti or the partner Marti described are the ones who need to show they are martyrs to the cause because they dont really have anything else to offer but their hours.

For the rest of us, the world is a bit different.

[Valmy]

It would impress me more if the partner was female and doing negotiations by teleconference while delivering her own. 

Heh I had a director when I worked at Dell who all but did that.  I remember she had her husband pick her up at work when she started labor and was on the phone with my manager on the way to the hospital.  Her husband finally wrestled the phone away from her when they got there.

[Admiral Yi]

My point is that parenting invariably creates emergencies that parents cannot ignore. You say parents can ignore them and that "thousands, if not millions" will do so.

Dunno what you are basing that on.

A wild guess at the numbers employed in Big Law and high pressure Wall Street.

I don't know what you're basing your claim that parenting invariably creates emergencies that parents cannot ignore on.

[crazy canuck]

I don't know what you're basing your claim that parenting invariably creates emergencies that parents cannot ignore on.

They are called kids.

[Malthus]

That does not mean however that if your lifestyle choice interferes directly with your ability to do your work, your employer should bend over backwards to accomodate that

Well generally employers have policies that indicate precisely what accomodations they have to/will make do they not?  Are we presuming people are going over those limits and not doing things according to policy or just using them?

This goes to my point. Why will lawfirms do stuff like offer to top-up salaries during maternity leave, or offer other forms of accomodation (as mine does)?

The answer is that they wish to attract the best candidates, and they know that the best insist on accomodation.

Those employers who offer money in lieu of accomodation, as Yi suggests, are bound to find it a losing strategy. Why? For the simple reason that people's lifestyles change.

Say firm A offers a higher salary and firm B offers accomodation. A single guy joins firm A for the money. After a few years, he gets married and has a kid - hardly an unknown or unusual event. He now leaves firm A and joins firm B - who, in this scenario, reaps all the benefit (and firm A loses all the benefit) of that employee's years of work-related experience.

Of course the other side to that is that firm A is going to be more attractive to single people just out of university. But overall, the downsides of such a policy are likely not going to be worth it in a purely self-interested analysis.

[Barrister]

A partner in my law firm was in the negotiations room while his wife was delivering the baby.

That's just plain fucked up.

I've been very clear with my employers - they better put me in less critical assignmend the couple of weeks leading up to the due date, because when I get "that call" I am leaving no matter what.

That being said short of the birth of a child or a very limited set of tragedies, nobody is saying my employer needs to "bend over backwards".  Instead it's about "reasonable accomodations".  For me it comes down to court vs office days.  If I am in court I can not leave.  Simply impossible, and my wife hopefully can deal with the situation.  If I'm in the office though being able to work from home, or work later on another day, are reasonable accomodations to make.

[Malthus]

I don't know what you're basing your claim that parenting invariably creates emergencies that parents cannot ignore on.

Being a parent myself. And the experience of every single other parent I've ever known or met, without exception.

Just ask here. Any parents reading this *not* experienced any emergencies requiring their attention, while raising their kids?

[Barrister]

I don't know what you're basing your claim that parenting invariably creates emergencies that parents cannot ignore on.

Being a parent myself. And the experience of every single other parent I've ever known or met, without exception.

Just ask here. Any parents reading this *not* experienced any emergencies requiring their attention, while raising their kids?

Nope.  I suppose if you have a full-time stay-at-home partner it is minimized, but I'm pretty sure you can attest to the fact that things still come up that demand your attention.

[Jacob]

No, actually you don't.  You're a pissy little bitch, with pissy little bitch points.

Good point.

[Jacob]

But is that the standard at Marty's company?  It seems like it isn't but he wishes it was or something (or maybe they wish it was but Polish law requires them to have certain policies in this area).

He wishes it was the standard, because it would give him the edge over someone in the company who has children and whom Marty is apparently unable to get ahead of. Instead he bitches about it.

[Admiral Yi]

Being a parent myself. And the experience of every single other parent I've ever known or met, without exception.

Just ask here. Any parents reading this *not* experienced any emergencies requiring their attention, while raising their kids?

OK, you've tricked me into arguing an absolute, just like a tricky Jew lawyer would.  Though I would like to point out in passing that there's no law of physics that says such and such family emergency requires immediate attention or that a parent cannot stay at work.  Those are choices.

I'm not arguing that there is no such thing as a family emergency that should be accomodated.  Marty might, but he hasn't so far in this thread.  What I'm arguing, and what I thought Marty was too, is that a working father or mother's absence from the work place can and does impose burdens on their coworkers, and that this burden is disproportionately borne by coworkers without children of their own, since they are always making deposits but never making  withdrawals.

Then there's also the issue of the nature of the business, which is of course related to the issue about burden sharing.  Should a firm expect a parent to take off to tend to Jake's ear infection if it means a missed deadline or a lost sale?  I think it's perfectly reasonable for an employer to say we expect parents to work through that at crunch time.