![]() Google and Microsoft extended similar paid leave to employees dealing with children at home or a sick relative. In March, Facebook offered up to 10 weeks of paid time off for employees if they had to care for a child whose school or day care facility had closed or for an older relative whose nursing home was not open. The tension between parents and nonparents has been most vividly displayed at Facebook. Tech companies were among the first to ask employees to work from home at the start of the pandemic, and to offer generous leave and additional time off once it became apparent that children would remain home from school as well. The divide is more pronounced at some technology companies, where workers tend to be younger and have come to expect generous perks and benefits in exchange for letting their jobs take over their lives. And parents are frustrated that their childless co-workers don’t understand how hard it is to balance work and child care, especially when day care centers are closed and they are trying to help their children learn at home. But one Salesforce manager, who is not permitted to talk publicly about internal matters and therefore asked not to be identified, said two childless employees, reflecting a sentiment voiced at several companies, complained that the policy seemed to put parents’ needs ahead of theirs.Īs companies wrestle with how best to support staff during the pandemic, some employees without children say that they feel underappreciated, and that they are being asked to shoulder a heavier workload. When Salesforce announced that it was offering parents six weeks of paid time off, most employees applauded. It wasn’t long before employees without children started to ask: What about us?Īt a recent companywide meeting, Facebook employees repeatedly argued that work policies created in response to Covid-19 “have primarily benefited parents.” At Twitter, a fight erupted on an internal message board after a worker who didn’t have children at home accused another employee, who was taking a leave to care for a child, of not pulling his weight. They used their comfortable profit margins to extend workers new benefits, including extra time off for parents to help them care for their children. When the coronavirus closed schools and child care centers and turned American parenthood into a multitasking nightmare, many tech companies rushed to help their employees. Laszlo Bock, Google’s former head of human resources said that “for people to get upset enough to say that ‘I feel this is unfair’ demonstrates a lack of patience, a lack of empathy and a sense of entitlement.OAKLAND, Calif. ![]() ![]() In response to the situation, people dubbed the childfree people “selfish,” a tag many of them are tired of hearing. The Times reported that some employees without children complained that the new benefits based on caregiving status were unfair, and that the childless were expected to pick up the slack from parents who were no longer pulling their own weight at work. At various big tech companies, during the covid-19 outbreak in the autumn of 2020, parents dealing with child care were given more time off and bonuses that were once tied to performance. Meanwhile, it seems like our society is still pretty much hostile to childfree workers. ![]() The Childfree Girls explained: “people say ‘have a child’ cavalierly, as if it isn’t the monumental job parents will often tell you it is, but it is the most personally impactful decision an individual can make, permanently affecting not only the parents’ lives, but the life or lives those parents create.” In the midst of the pandemic, companies were more eager to reward employees with children The common disagreements between childfree people and parents may also have to do with the fact that previous generations, boomers in particular, saw having offspring as something courageous, mature and thoroughly encouraged.
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