Sociologinja Jana Javornik je pravkar objavila mnenjski članek za spletno stran The Conversation o spreminjanju odnosa družbe do usklajevanja materinstva s službenimi obveznostmi:
The recent decision by Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer to take “limited parental leave” once she gives birth to twins invoked a strong reaction about “proper” motherhood. What seems to have annoyed the public most is that she will take too little time off and says she will remain “dedicated to both [her] family and Yahoo”.
Mayer is breaking the social norm by managing her family and work as most male CEOs do: by leaving childcare to others. Although more companies are starting to offer shared parental leave, only a few CEO dads opt to care for children full time. But men are judged differently when it comes to parenthood.
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Work is central to our lives – it is a key source of income, social interactions and integration, and can be a source of our well-being. It affects the way we live and the different opportunities we have in life.
But it is unequally distributed and there is a significant mismatch between how work is organised and the needs of an increasingly diverse workforce.
The amount of time mothers can devote to paid work affects their opportunities to earn money, develop skills and advance in their jobs. By contrast, failure to reconcile work and family provokes many trade-offs, including poorer health and well-being. This distinction is a crucial one, but largely absent from mainstream debates about female employment.
In the current economic climate, when jobs are scarce and companies are in constant pursuit of cheaper production and lower labour costs, it is timely to ask what we want from the state and how to assure the well-being of mothers and their children, even where their interests seem in conflict.
Because childbearing years correspond with the years of core economic activity (when wages and skills should continue to grow), it is important that governments invest in policies that support work+family reconciliation of all parents. Let’s not forget that the vast majority of parents are not chief executives, and not everyone works with a family-friendly employer. (Vir: Is it becoming easier to be a working mother?)
V članku omenja tudi rezultate naslednje raziskave:
Egalitarian couples who share between 40 to 60 percent of child care duties, from reading bedtime stories and diaper changing to arranging carpools and playing in the park, not only have higher quality relationships than more traditional couples where women do the bulk of the care work, they also have the best sex lives, the research shows. (Vir: One key to a happier sex life: Share child care duties equally, new research finds – The Washington Post)
