Jane Gilmore has written a piece at King’s Tribune, “The glorified baby bonus” in response to my article about Abbott’s more generous parental leave scheme in The Guardian.
Let’s start with a quick overview of my opinion on Abbott’s parental leave scheme because apparently my thinking can be quite “muddled”.
For the record, I don’t think the scheme is the highest priority for working parents right now. It’s progressive in that it equates parental leave with sick leave (and this is important when parental leave is too often described as a ‘holiday for mums’), but in doing so it is tilted towards higher income parents.. However, I do think more generous parental leave is better than paltry parental leave, and a scheme based on minimum wage is, let’s be honest, very modest, particularly in light of international comparisons. And if we’re going to be debating parental leave, then I’m predicting there will be plenty of accusations that it is all a complete waste of money and if that happens then let it be known that I disagree strongly.. and the economic data supports me.
Now, on to Gilmore’s article. For starters, I’ve spoken to Gilmore and we’re both of the mind that it is something to celebrate when this topic gets discussed and we’re both enthusiastic participants in that discussion. I enjoy Gilmore’s writing a great deal, and there’s plenty I agree with in her piece, too.
The way forward for so many problems in terms of equity, including inside the workplace and inside the home, is more flexible working conditions for both men and women. I am in full agreement with that statement. That to make a difference flexible working conditions need to be offered to more than white-collar professionals and that they need to be taken up by senior levels of management too, for them to be seen as truly acceptable. Complete agreement. That flexible working conditions should be championed by everyone, not just parents, because everyone has important shit to do in their lives. Complete agreement.
And to some degree, I also agree with Gilmore that juggling work and family responsibilities is seen as a women’s issue and that this both stigmatises the topic and also means that men get to remove themselves from a sense of responsibility for the solutions. It also makes it difficult for those men who are already attempting to take on a more equitable share of child rearing and paid work in their families to do so.
I’d go further than Gilmore’s piece and suggest that if we’re thinking feminist revolutions we could do more than thinking about legislating this stuff just for the public sector.. for instance, introducing something legislatively stronger than the right to request part-time work upon returning to work after a baby for everyone would be a game changer.
Now, here’s where my views differ significantly from Gilmore’s.
Unlike Gilmore, I believe parental leave is, in part, a women’s issue and I think parental leave is about a range of objectives including, but not limited to, “closing the gender pay gap”. Parental leave is about broader goals than just workplace participation and some of the measures include not just outcomes for women but also for children. Giving birth, establishing breastfeeding and forming an attachment with an infant require time and rest. They’re all standard aspects of reproduction (and they all have economic benefits), and it says something about how patriarchal our society is that such standard aspects of reproduction are not catered for when we organise the commercial marketplace.
I suspect a critical difference in Gilmore’s and my feminism is covered in this post, “Why we should be careful taking the ‘maternity’ out of ‘parental leave'”, quoting Julie Stephens:
This, however, taps into a productivist ethos entirely consistent with the demands of the neoliberal marketplace, with caregivers replaceable or interchangeable in much the same way as employees in workplaces. In addition, a feminism promoting gender neutrality (in the name of equality) denies the bodily experience of women after they have given birth. Though a boon to the productive workplace, the breast pump may not necessarily protect the emotional needs of women and babies. To deny that baby leave is a women’s issue, to decouple ‘maternity’ from ‘leave’, is also to conceal human vulnerability and dependence. It reproduces what Iris Young has called ‘the normalising but impossible ideal’ that we are autonomous, unencumbered self-sufficient individuals, somehow beyond human dependency.
However, parental leave as public policy is obviously also about keeping women attached to the workforce. This goes some of the way towards ensuring long-term security for women but by no means can a single policy turn back the entire tide of structural inequality for women, and I think it is unfair for Gilmore to use that as its measure. No individual policy will “keep women in the work place and support their earning capacity”, it is always going to require a combination of strategies. And I note that Gilmore’s path to equality is predicated on the assumption that women must be participating in paid work. There is no mention of institutional changes that could benefit women’s financial security when they specialise (by choice or otherwise) in unpaid care.
Gilmore believes for equality to be achieved that the responsibilities of child-rearing need to be shared and I agree with her. In her article, Gilmore refers to data indicating that unless countries legislate for some of the parental leave to be used by fathers then regardless of other benefits of maternity leave, women tend to get stuck on a ‘mummy track’. (There’s an implicit assumption here I’m uncomfortable with that financial earnings, rather than work life balance, is the key to fulfillment, but I’ll leave that aside for the moment). The ‘mummy track’ includes not just taking parental leave when babies are born, but also opting for career-limiting moves, like taking part-time, low-level jobs and being the parent to take ‘sick leave’ when children are home ill. This becomes a long-term problem because one parent’s career progresses while the other’s stalls, and eventually it can appear pointless for a household to do anything other than rally resources behind furthering the higher income parent’s career. Split up and the consequences can be disastrous for women.
For the record, I support the case for generous parental leave schemes to include legislated time-sharing between men and women (it normalises care work in the workplace), and I agree that such schemes accelerate progress towards more equitable divisions of child-rearing and income-earning responsibilities. But by no means does this imply that parental leave for mothers is “nothing more than a feminist cause celebre that makes a symbolic nod to the significant gender differences in wealth”.
Gilmore takes particular issue with the fact that I focused my article around parental leave as an issue for women rather than one for both women and men. I understand this criticism. I considered preemptively addressing it in the article but subsequently decided I couldn’t afford the ‘words’ given there was a tight limit and I already wanted to cover a number of angles on the topic of Abbott’s parental leave scheme.
Although there are plenty of instances where I have talked about ‘work and family juggling’ as a topic involving both men and women, none the less, this concern comes up quite a bit here. I realise that some feminists (including many readers of this blog) feel strongly that the discussion should be gender-neutral and I have a lot of sympathy for that opinion; however, I remain of the view that while this juggling act dominates women’s lives I will often address the topic with women as the focus. And as I mentioned above, I have some concerns with seeing women and men as completely interchangeable parts in the experience of parenthood.
Yes!
Thank you for the end of that last paragraph. I’ve struggled a lot with a few things you’ve written recently because of that assumption that the experience of parenthood is essentially different for men and women, and that attachment is always going to be stronger to the mother (also the emphasis on breastfeeding as a bonding thing more important than other factors makes me feel bad for non breastfeeding mums). I guess I do feel that men and women are equal/interchangeable as caregivers, or rather that they can be, and the reason they are mostly not at the moment is entirely socially constructed and therefore open to change. Anyway, I just wanted to say I am pleased you acknowledge this issue and how your position differs from many others.
Really good rebuttal. I am getting a bit tired of the ‘gotcha!’ kind of article response to other articles that says ‘WELL, what about THIS then’. Of course you think that paternity leave is important, and better leave conditions/ability to take them for fathers of older children… it just isn’t your focus.
We can spend all this time talking about it and agreeing/disagreeing with each other on the focus of leave conditions, or we could just bloody well do it. Like giving the right to return to part time work, not just request it, as you said.
Aaaaand this is why I switched out of working in gender issues / women’s issues, because I needed a break from all the research and the talking, talking, talking over the perfect way to do it. I love research, but nothing works except actually trying things.
It’s complicated for me because I did have bad birthing injuries that meant that a lot of my maternal leave wasn’t spent bonding at all, but trying to rehabilitate my body. It’s certainly not a common experience, but it is a rather normal experience – birth can be very dangerous. How you legislate for that, I’ve no idea. But my partner certainly didn’t require hours of abdominal surgery. For us, it just couldn’t be gender neutral even though we had these wonderful ideas about it being so.
For crying out loud. ALL of these issues affect women far more than they do men. We give birth, and shred our bodies. We breastfeed, or have to go through the discomfort of waiting for our milk to dry up. We are considered not We lumber about, pregnant, for 9 months. We have serious health risks with pregnancy and childbirth. All of this requires time for physical recovery.
If we adopt, we manage to escape the pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding – but we still have a new, dependent human being suddenly enter our lives, with all the attendant 24/7 caregiving required.
Then, we get most of the day-to-day child-rearing tasks handed to us. We wanna pretend that most fathers are doing 50+ percent of child-rearing? Sure. Let’s pretend.
But first, let’s see who already makes less money, who give up careers to “stay home” with children, who finds and arranges the childcare. Let’s look at the facts before we ring our hands and ask, “What kind of feminism” fails to lament, “But what about the MEN?”
When the playing field is equal, I’ll worry about the Dads. Until then, “my feminism” concerns itself with the oppression of women in patriarchy.
And I say this as someone married to a man who did, and still does, do at least half of the child/house tasks. He’s an exception.
[…] blue milk responds to Jane Gilmore (who had responded to her article about paid parental leave). […]
[…] as I’ve been sitting on the couch eating my body weight in chocolate-related items, a debate about paid parental leave has been raging. For my first child, I received the baby bonus, which was standard at that time. […]
It was having a baby (12 weeks ago) that most challenged my ideas about feminism and parenting. Breastfeeding is what makes my role as caregiver so different to my partner’s. After breastfeeding we can reassess, but will I be too far down the ‘mummy track’ by then? It is infuriating how incompatible paid work is with parenthood, which I suppose makes it easier to ‘opt out’ of one’s career.
[…] blue milk writes about the Australian Coalition’s parental leave scheme and adds a followup in response to critique. […]
[…] I’m not a huge fan of Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme, although I appreciate the progressiveness of treating maternity leave like other forms of workplace leave, I don’t believe the scheme is there to address a genuine policy problem and its funding is likely coming at the expense of cuts or lost funding opportunities for other big policy problems.. but I could do without the sexist claptrap in the discussion. […]
[…] I’m not a huge fan of Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme, (although I appreciate the progressiveness of treating maternity leave like other forms of workplace leave, I don’t believe the scheme is there to address a genuine policy problem and its funding is likely coming at the expense of funding opportunities for other big policy problems).. but I could do without the sexist claptrap in the discussion. […]
The way forward for so many problems in terms of equity, including inside the workplace and inside the home, is more flexible working conditions for both men and women. I am in full agreement with that statement. That to make a difference flexible working conditions need to be offered to more than white-collar professionals and that they need to be taken up by senior levels of management too, for them to be seen as truly acceptable. Complete agreement. That flexible working conditions should be championed by everyone, not just parents, because everyone has important shit to do in their lives. Complete agreement.
I really agree with this paragraph, same as what I experienced at this time.
Hmmm…This is cake and eat it to stuff. Wanna work but I want a child. I have a child but want to work. So at what point do we stop asking the tax payer to cover the cost of our life style choices. For all the belly aching about this topic, we may as well have children and stuff them in a creche from day one and not worry about who’s responsibility it is to raise them as we are all getting to bloody selfish about our careers, our right to work and our children are paying the price. Men and women have the right to a career, work and money and our children have the right to a Mum and Dad who don’t squabble over who has to bring in the cash.
[…] blue milk writes about the Australian Coalition’s parental leave scheme and adds a followup in response to critique. […]