Filthy Commerce

Note how "mommy" is still a synonym for "engaged parent"

A tip of the hat to the blog Monster Thinking, with its recent post, "What Employers Can Do to Recruit & Retain Working Mothers," for this point:

This Is Not Just A Woman’s Issue.

It is vital that employers regard this as a company challenge—important for all individuals and for the health of the organization—not only an issue for female employees. Paternity leave and flextime are often not as readily available to men, and men don’t feel as comfortable taking it. Companies should encourage male employees to engage in the work-life conversation.

If we level the expectations for both genders, we will not have such an insurmountable disparity in the opportunities available to men and women. This TED talk by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg offers a powerful perspective on leveling the playing field.

Fun fact: If you live in California and you're a new dad, you can usually get six weeks of paid family leave for bonding with your child. It may not be full pay, but it beats a sharp stick in the eye.

But to get to my point: So long as we still refer to workers struggling with job/life balance as being on the "mommy track," we're perpetuating the idea that only women are responsible for caretaking their family members. And that may continue to send the message that men who take time to care for a new baby or aging parent are somehow weird or abnormal.

As it stands, the American workplace profits from the assumption that every household runs on a gendered division of labor. This hurts both men (who miss out on family life) and women (who become financially vulnerable because they lose earning power). The question I have is: What is stopping us from uniting against the common enemy here?

Spending on your children: You're doing it wrong

I was reading "Handing Down Hand-Me-Downs Goes High Tech" (GOOD, Mar 1, 11), which details the online children's clothing exchange ThredUp, and I was admiring the business rationale behind it:

There are massive inefficiencies within the second-hand kids clothing market. Millions of parents simply give away hardly worn clothing, and buy new stuff every five months.  It's expensive, wasteful, and time consuming. Why is this the norm? Because no great solution exists to swap outgrown clothes for clothes that fit. That's the problem we wanted to solve.

To me, the attention-grabbing thing was how so many parents today apparently do not have access to the types of informal networks or community organizations that foster children's clothing swaps. It's an interesting reflection on the weakening ties between geographic community and family needs.

To the readers who commented -- one in particular -- here was the takeaway:

If you are paying full retail for any of your kid's clothes, you're doing it wrong.

Comments like this really chafe. If someone is beating down the commenter, ripping money out of her wallet, then spending $55 on a child-sized linen halter dress, then yes, the commenter has a case about someone going about outfitting their child in the wrong way. But otherwise -- why would someone bother making such a snap judgment about how other parents choose to spend their money? What is in it for them?

This is the flip side of the same geographic disconnect that prompted ThredUp in the first place. When you have no incentive to make nice with other parents so you don't get frozen out of the back-porch clothing swaps ... why not tell the nameless, faceless parenting masses out there: SPENDING -- YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG?

I will concede that there are times when how someone else spends their money affects me and my child, and so I'm comfortable tendering an opinion on the matter -- how housing prices in my school district are trending, whether or not a proposed bond measure will save music education in the schools. But when the stakes are so small and so private as what one pays for a child's coat ... picking your battles -- you're doing it wrong.