What working parents really need from workplaces | The Way We Work, a TED series

60,982 views ・ 2021-11-08

TED


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Transcriber: Leslie Gauthier Reviewer:
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Every parent is a working parent,
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whether they have a job outside of the home or not.
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[The Way We Work]
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When Angela shows up at the office,
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know that Angela has been up for at least three hours,
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had her hand covered in human excrement,
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unwedged a small person
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who has become lodged in between the washing machine and the wall,
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gotten down on her hands and knees and picked up oatmeal off the carpet.
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Domestic labor,
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which is what parenting is and everything that goes along with parenting,
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it’s not just taking care of a child;
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it’s keeping a household running,
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washing dishes,
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doing laundry,
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it’s keeping the schedule tight.
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We again assume that that work will be done by a wife who’s at home.
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The reality has progressed beyond where we’re at policy-wise.
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Most people need multiple sources of income,
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women want to work outside of the home --
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we’re still expected to do all of the same things.
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And so now we outsource a lot of that parenting work
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to other women,
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and mainly women of color.
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We don’t give it financial, cultural value,
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and so we don’t see it as real work.
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Care is really the backbone of our society.
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That work is what makes all other work possible.
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So how should we support parents in the workplace?
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[Support family leave]
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There are only two industrialized countries in the entire world
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that don’t guarantee some paid family leave,
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and the United States is one of them.
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We should be envying Ghana,
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Brazil, Turkey, Serbia, Japan,
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the United Kingdom,
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Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden --
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we’re lagging behind the world on this.
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When I say paid family leave,
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I’m not talking about necessarily just newborn maternity leave.
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That includes paternity leave,
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all genders,
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families that are adopting and welcoming a new child into their home,
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people bringing foster children into their home,
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taking care of aging parents.
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You know, at some point in your life,
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someone that you love and care about is going to need help.
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You should have the right to take time to take care of them.
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People do their best work
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when they feel seen and supported by the people that they work for.
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It’s pretty simple.
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[Listen to parents]
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Being a parent is often seen as a weakness in the workplace.
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You come back and people make a lot of assumptions about you.
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You're not invited to go on work trips
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because assumptions are made that you don’t want to do that,
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or you can’t.
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And that can be really disempowering to people,
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and it’s really discouraging
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and it makes them --
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in a period of time that’s already stressful --
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can make you feel even worse.
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[Talk to parents]
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Asking a coworker about how things are going at home
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or with their kid,
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making people feel like they don’t have to hide that.
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“What’s up with your two-year-old?”
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Ask to see a picture of their child.
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[Be flexible]
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For parents, the hours between 5-8pm are really crucial.
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It’s sometimes the only time you really have with your kids.
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You’re often running to pick them up somewhere
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or to relieve someone from doing childcare.
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I would much rather send a few emails at 8:30pm than be on a call at 5pm.
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And so I think emphasizing and creating a culture of work
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where it’s the work that gets done,
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the work is what matters,
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the end result is what matters,
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as opposed to tracking time in a traditional way,
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and opening up the lines of communication around that can be really beneficial.
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Letting a coworker know that you have their back
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if they want to say that 4:45 doesn’t work for them as a meeting time,
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that you’ll step in and say that you can’t do it either, right?
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Just something to show solidarity.
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[Oh yeah ... ]
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One other thing,
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as a former breastfeeding mother in an office place --
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a pumping mother --
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I should say that if you want to clean out your office fridge every now and then,
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that is a really beautiful thing to do for a pumping mother,
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because I used to do that in my office.
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I would put my little cooler that had breast milk amid like
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year-old bottles of salad dressing,
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pad thai that had become petrified,
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just gross stuff.
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And no one should have to do that, right?
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Again, a very, very small thing
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that makes a big difference in someone’s life.
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In striving to be as efficient as possible,
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as achieving,
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as productive as possible,
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we’ve drifted away from this notion of care
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and parenting being important work.
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But we need to talk about these things
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and bring parenting and family life out into the open,
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because we can't fix problems that we don't see.
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We can’t fix problems that we don’t talk about.
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It really doesn’t have to be this hard
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and we can do much more to support people.
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