If you’re childfree and you already feel that mothers get advantages in the workplace this article should give you some idea that when it comes to politics, there’s nowhere too low to stoop. And far from things getting better, they can get worse. Even if you don’t live in the UK, this article should still ring alarm bells. It has overtones of the French system, only it’s trying to be subtle – and failing. Thanks to Mercurior for finding this interesting link.
The UK Conservative Party plans to reward families where one parents chooses to stay at home to look after a child.
It seems that buying the female – (read Stay-At-Home-Mother) vote has become all important.
Tories Plan Rewards For Stay At Home Mothers
According to the Daily Mail, David Cameron, Tory party leader says:
“Millions of mothers have been “pressurized” by Labour to return to work.
And, according to a report ordered by David Cameron the Government’s approach to working women had been to “compel, to lecture and to condescend”.
Funny, I thought that going to work meant bringing in money…which you have to do to pay the mortage, put food on the table and presumably all those other things that working enables us to do.
The report also says that benefits and regulations have been skewed to help working mothers – to the disadvantage of those mothers who stay at home, such as tax breaks.
In response, the Tories are pledging to:
“re-balance the tax system to reward families where one parent chooses to stay at home to look after a child.” These “reforms” could mean an extra £3,000 a year for some couples.
Now, I would think that working women might not be too pleased at this one. But maybe it doesn’t matter. If these so called reforms take root, it’ll be easier than ever to have kids and not have to go to work. I mean, it’ll be almost like being paid to have kids, same difference.
Meanwhile, while they get to “choose to stay home” with the kids, who will be picking up the workload? Your average childfree person – who can probably expect to see a dramatic up-tick in the amount of work that they will have to do, and, unlike the proposals for their childed counterparts, no additional benefits. More work, means less time available to take off. Bad enough with maternity leave, where the additional workload often gets shifted on to another worker, who often doesn’t have the option to head off on maternity leave.
Businesses are not going to be happy. Small businesses will be hit especially hard But they’re going to have to make money to stay in business and so childfree people are going to be even more royally screwed. Because the Tory party is:
“pledging to allow all parents with under-18s – not just those with under-sixes or disabled children, as at present – to ask for family-friendly hours.”
And the party want to go further still.
“Eventually, our ambition is to make flexible working available to as many people as possible,” it said.
The problem is that it looks like “as many people as possible” means just “as many parents as possible” . If everyone, truly means “everyone – childfree and childed – then that’s good.That isn’t what they mean, it seems. So far, the only people who are counted as worthy of “family-friendly” hours are the childed. I am yet to hear of childfree workers being granted “family-friendly” hours without question as are parents.
Discrimination? You tell me.
The Conservative party’s minister for women says:
“What we want to do is to have a situation where women and families are able to choose what’s going to work for them.”
Right… and it’s taxpayers who are going to pay for it. In addition to already paying taxes to support existing benefits, if these reforms get approved we will now be paying not only for someone’s choice to breed but for their “choice” to stay at home with the kids. Of course, we’’l be told how many scarifices parents have to make to bring up kids…how the work place isn’t suited for raising kids etc and how it should be designed around parents childed activities.
Conveniently leaving out that having children is a choice.
The Conservative Party is out to buy votes. Looks like any means will do.
Watch out, the already heated battle between the working mother and the SAHM is about to hot up even more – before the working mother decides to join the ranks of the SAHM. It might be too tempting to opt out of getting paid to choose to stay home with the kids. Nothing has been said about the working father…at least not yet.
But their vote isn’t the issue.
Technorati Tags: childfree, childfree
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
2 things, first nothing will ever be said about the fathers. there is an attitude that men are not needed/wanted in a womans life. its going back to the old way of man (if they have a male partner), working till he dies to support a woman who looks after the kids at home.
Hang on.. isnt that the same as what happened in the victorian era and before. and didnt they complain that it was wrong that a woman was stuck at home. over 100 years later and its back to how it was.
2 even clinton/obama has done the same bribe to mothers in the american elections.
Why? well my thought is that men are tired of the inequalities so they dont vote, women who work dont have the time to vote or they love the idea of getting something for nothing, so that leaves them and single or sahm to be the voters. To win power they bribe the people that will get them in. in a popularity contest
it’s almost making the baby making process look more attractive to me…
*gives self a hard slap to face*
Right, thats better.
You know, the day a UK political party starts advertising giving people ‘family friendly’ hours AND pay to carers of old/disabled relatives, is the day my ears prick up. The money i save by not having kids, can go towards my care when I’m older. So I don’t have any kids feeling the burden of having to look after me. My mum has MS (luckily she is kinda coping at the moment) but it’s inevitable that soon in the future it’s gonna be down to me and my sis to care and look after her. Will I be getting family friendly hours then? Or elderly parent sick leave?
sorry, rambled a bit there. I get carried away sometimes, especially when children are placed on a higher level than elderly relatives who can need just as much care & attention.
‘Family friendly’ working hours for *everyone*, regardless of why! Where ‘family’ can mean partner, parents, relatives, pets, hobbies…
Hey, maybe they should just call it ‘Life Friendly’ instead? Oh, in the ideal world… *crosses fingers*
As long as parents are in the majority, they will be in power. Unfortunately. I’m in the States. I have come to believe that there is no honest politician and that, quite frankly, anything real can be done. Our politicians don’t say or do anything substantial, and if one side tries to get something to pass, the other side does whatever it takes to block it. There is no concern for the well being of the people.
All politicians want is to continue playing the game. They all know that they need to appeal to the largest voting base possible.
Unfortunately, there will always be these “family friendly” policies because of this.
UKShell, here in the States we have this “FMLA – Family Medical Leave Act” where we can take some time off of work for an immediate family need. This is mostly used and referred to when someone has a baby, but it can be taken if you need to care for a parent (but not an in law). In a nutshell, it’s up to 12 weeks and an employer does not need to offer it until the employee has been with the company for 12 months and it does not need to be paid time off either. Most women “save it” for the birth of a child, tho’. When it becomes unfair is if an employer offers to continue to pay salary for all or part of those 12 weeks for the birth of a child, but not for an employee taking time off and using their FMLA when they need to care for a spouse or a parent. FMLA can also be used for yourself when you have a medical certificate that says you need to take time off from work.
even here in the UK, we have no good politicians, browne, (who is a parent of a disabled child who was born while he was chancellor), blair, (whos wife had a 4th child while he was in power), cameron, see article. Our MP’s voted themselves a pay increase, of 2% while trying to deny the police a raise.
politicians are out for what they can get, blairs gone, but he is now earning MILLIONS a year, strangely with companies he passed legislation that helped them.
and Moo laws are an easy way into power.
Quote: “it’s almost making the baby making process look more attractive to me…”
…Yes doesn`t it…
..*gives self a hard slap to face*, twice…with both hands…
Being home with children for a couple of years, want change the reality of parenting. But like every other political rubbish, someone are probably going to buy this too.
Willl there some day be a law, where you are directly being taxed for not having children? Sounds crazy, and hope development goes the other way. Maybe it will, because more and more people see they have a choice.
Really? 3000 pounds is enough to cover the loss of an entire income on top of the expenses of a child? If people are boneheaded enough to go for this, they are going to be shitty parents who will end up causing more expenses to society.
Lurker-
Here are some excertps from the blog “Childfree news”, taken from a Newsweek article two years ago:
“From Germany to Russia, there is increasing talk of sanctions against the childless. In Slovakia, a leading adviser on the government’s Strategic Council on Economic Development proposed in March to replace an unpopular payroll tax with a levy on all childless Slovaks between the ages of 25 and 50. In Russia, where the birthrate has dropped from 2.3 in the 1980s to 1.3 today, a powerful business lobby has called for an income-tax surcharge on childless couples. In Germany, economists and politicians have demanded that public pensions for the childless be slashed by up to 50 percent—never mind that such pensions were invented as an alternative to senior citizens’ having to depend on their offspring. These moves resonate favorably with voters and the media. Since a large majority of people in all countries still do have children, critics say such measures in effect serve as middle-class tax breaks in the guise of social policy.
In any case, there is no reason to believe that sanctions against the childless will do much to raise the birthrate. Germany, for instance, already spends more than any other country on family subsidies, and has the world’s second-highest taxes on childless singles (after Belgium). Yet that hasn’t done a thing to boost the birthrate.”
It’s already happening.
Force seldom work as motivation. Most of times, it just put the attacked group stronger together.
If you dont have children, you consume less, and people already pay tax for services they never use. In democracy its how things work, but taxing someone for NOT having children, is crazy.
Unacceptable. As if Cf were secondary citizens. What about an environmental tax, for producing more consumers and pollution?
Sanctions against the childfree might be just the trigger to start highlighting more clearly that the childfree are being discriminated against. The thing it won’t do is to make them have kids. People who have seriously considered not having kids are unlikely to be bought with threats of taxation. As Carisa says, if that worked, Germany would be boasting higher birthrates instead of the plummeting ones they have.
Let them court the media – who only go after the soundbites anyway, before they’re off to feed at the next trough. And soon, even the lure of more subsidies won’t be enough to force people to breed more…some of us just don’t want to be hampered with kids. It’s not just the money Politicians really are stupid… yes, Lurker, the gas guzzling SUV’s are waiting to be taxed, the additional consumption of childed people because of their kids… but then they might hurt the fickle voters.
Feh – agree, but some never stop to do the math
When I heard about the one off cash incentives being given in some countries (like in Italy I think it’s 1,000 euros or something) to ‘encourage’ people to have kids, the words drop and ocean came to mind. Like thats gonna make any difference in the grand scale of things…? Sheesh.
Getting taxed for not breeding… Thats scary beyond words. The day it starts happening here, I’m off.
Lurker – thankfully I’ve only really had to slap myself once or twice (metaphorically speaking of course) over the years
Maybe not for this post, but maybe still interesting..:?
http://childfreenews.blogspot.com/2008/02/for-dads-happiness-is-no-kids.html