In an article by Shannon Brownlee, “Lies Parents Tell Them About Why They Work. Brownlee effectively describes the mental challenges that parents face in order to balance work and home and the sacrifices parents make when they chose not to. Arlie Hoschschild wrote a book called the “The Time Bind” where she wrote, “whether consciously or unconsciously children are taking a backseat to the needs of their parents pursuit of financial gain.” Both authors seemed to endorse the concept that ‘home’ can become a stressful and dreaded black-hole and going to work can become the great escape. Unfortunately, the American family structure has indeed been substituted for dollar figures. The absentee parent has unconsciously allowed a deficiency to form within our society that has torn away at family values, traditions and morals. I guess in the world we live in, it is difficult to imagine a world where our children could be under the constant care of their parents. Better yet, a world where our children would be the central focus of a household. Our children will no longer have to rely on television or babysitters to provide them wit their hierarchy of needs. It is a tragedy that in most cases a child’s personality is formed by the exposure of negative forces that may be greater. Karl Zinsmeister wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly, “Growing Up Scared” where he focused on the tragedy of the absentee parent, he wrote “the physical safety and psychological security are the foundations, the essential preconditions for a child’s health, education and overall development. Zinsmeister theory was that when a parent chooses to stay home with their children it gives their parents a reason for being, over and above their own personal needs. In short, essentially, if one parent stayed home it could guarantee an environment of affection and security. Children will no longer have to grow up in an unpredictable home which creates voids of emptiness that threatens a child health, both physically and emotionally.
The medical breakthroughs that have happened this past century are making children healthier and helping them mature faster, physically, than ever before. As the median age for new parents grows older each year, these children are hitting developmental ages during the main peak of career decision-making for these parents.
Often time these stresses are too much for a 40 something who prior to being 30, had no spouse nor children to care for, only their career which to them, defines who they are. We are in an increasingly specialist society where career and job titles define a person moreso than their family values.
The family unit is undergoing social changes due to these pressures, and often second adolescences (young 20s) are experienced as children come back from college and finally spend time with their retired or near retired families.
I would disagree with your first comment, because I do not believe medical breakthroughs are the cause of healthier children, nor increasing the ability to mature at a faster rate. Maturity is not something I would consider to have anything to do with how healthy one is. Those who have a life threatening illness, I would think, actually causes one to experience more in a shorter period of time and causing them to mature faster, and not the other way around. What is your evidence for this statement? Erik Erikson described development that occurs throughout the lifespan. Learn more in this chart summarizing Erikson's stages of psychosocial development on the webpage: http://psychology.about.com/library/bl_psychosocial_summary.htm To your second statement, the median age for parents, I would suggest looking at the following website: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2010.html Paying attention to Table FG1. Married Couple Family Groups, by Labor Force Status of Both Spouses, and Race and Hispanic Origin/1 of the Reference Person: 2010 How many times do we hear someone around us say "we're going to wait until we are financially stable before we have children?" I might add that an adult in their 30’s, who has not married yet, could also be due their own selfishness. Single adults have made decisions NOT to marry for one reason or another, maybe even a combination of reasons. I would say that if you were to ask them that their responses would be heavily weighted to reasons which are selfish. That is what I believe defines who they are even more so than a job title in a ‘career’. America has blesses so many with rights and freedoms that lead to choices. We all can understand to an extent that the choices we make today dictate the life that we lead. No one is promised tomorrow, and how often does one hear the statement "I want to be married, and have children, and raise a family?" Depending on your interactions with others and the stage of life they are in I would say we hear it often, right? If you were to ask that same person "Why have they not accomplished that goal yet?" What do you think would be their response? That response could give insight, assuming no blame will be shifted AND they are honest enough to take accountability for the choices that THEY made in their lives. Just a thought.
I am would like to agree with your comment that an absentee parent can cause damage, but would that damage be apparent early on, or later in life? Do children of absentee parents make up for this deficiency in other ways? Do these children try to be more unlike their parents than most children claim to want to be?
To begin with the first posted question, I believe day care should be subsidized in some form or fashion, although I would not agree that a company should provide it themselves. Maintaining an onsite day care is incredibly expensive and the overall cost will be of too much of an expense for rest of the employees who might already have their own provisions. Absentee parents can cause damage if the parent is neglectful in the way they treat their kids. There is a difference between not giving your kids time when there is a little bit of free time available and not having much free time but trying your hardest to give your kids the attention they require. I think kids migrate where they feel most loved. Sometimes that is their friends, their friends’ parents, or some group or organization that provides with the structure and love that they desire. While I myself am not a parent, I feel that I have had an integral role in raising my siblings whether that has been as a big brother, financial provider, paying tuition, or just being there. An extension of this, is the role I play with other people’s children whether as a youth football coach or as an “uncle” type figure. Relating this back to work and organizations, I believe that the constant bevy of work diminishes many individuals ability to spend time with their children and loved ones. The overall performance and passion that individuals have for their tasks diminishes because the work is unending. We work to work nowadays as opposed to working to provide ourselves with the standard of living and lifestyle that we desire. Employers that enable their employees to spend quality time with their families tend to have higher performing employees. The cost of losing an employee is great and if an opportunity for autonomy without a significant loss in pay is provided most individuals while shift to that new position. The concept of diminishing marginal returns is applicable here. Firms should be aware of the costs associated with overburdening their employees and the effect it has on their revenue.
Whenever work breaches the walls of parenting at a crucial time then how far does it affect the psychology of child?
I would say it definitely affects his / her psychology. It is said that you can buy cushions but you can’t buy sleep, you can buy books but you can’t buy knowledge. Raising a kid is just like that. You can buy daycare for your child when you go to work but you can’t buy love which he needs. I was reading an article before a few days. It says that mother’s touch is so important is early stages of nurturing that it develops a strong emotional bond between the child and mother. Babies, in particular, need a lot of love and attention to thrive and do well. The article further says that kids who grow up in daycare till their nursery become more aggressive and disobedient.
Some people believe that enrolling your child in a daycare center can be a tremendous opportunity for your child to learn new things and interact with different types of people but I totally disagree with this. Parents are the ones who can shape their kids. Love and care you pour on them, comes from the bottom of your heart. A child gets emotionally attached to the parents during that period. Once they know which nest they belong to then they start identifying other people and interact with them.
Although there are both advantages and disadvantages to enrolling your child to a daycare center, at the end of the day it is important for you to sit down with your child and talk to them about it.
The option of daycare being provided by an employer may prove to be very advantageous to parents as well as kids. Especially if the day care facility being offered is in the vicinity of workplace.
The idea of being able to just walk up to your kid while you are taking a short break from work might prove to be very soothing to a working parent. This would also help kids to a great extent as the very feeling that a parent is close by might prove to be extremely reassuring. Every parent misses their kids while at work and while most of us being parents have to choose between our career and staying at home to look after kids, there are others that have no choice but to work. There might be problems that prevent them from staying at home like financial obligations. In such cases, daycare facility offered by an employer is a huge relief.
It would not be right to say that we expect day care to give our kids the love and affection they should get from us, but we do expect the day care to ensure that our kids are safe and happy.
I feel that employers should have some type of option to aid in the cost of daycare expenses. Sometimes companies will assist employees with being able to defer (pretax) a portion of their paychecks to reduce income taxes on their take home pay, while also putting cash aside into an account that can help pay for daycare. I think it may be a lot to expect a company to pay for day care expenses, being that many parents today are often dual-parent working situations. I feel that the benefit may be extended at a higher level for certain executive employees who may contribute more to a company and thus may be offered more incentives/benefits. To expect daycare being covered for certain other types of jobs is unrealistic, and really, day care expenses paid for workers at lower paying jobs can often overtake what that person earns as income. It's definitely not fair - but its a reality. In all, i think there should be assistance but to expect outright paying for daycare by the employer is not something that's going to happen or be in effect much longer considering the economy and cost-cutting innovations.
Some parents either don't have the luxury or the desire to have one parent quit work 100% to take care of the children. Whatever the case, balancing work and parenting could be difficult. One way for companies to ease employee's stress of making a living and taking care of their children is to provide child care benefits such as daycare expense reimbursements or even daycare services.
One good example is IKEA's in-store daycare service for employees (may have extended to customers). This took much of the burden off of parents who are working both financially and on time. This service became a corporate culture for IKEA and contributes to their success in lengthening employee retention.
In other first world countries, schedules are timed so that the parent can get home at the same time as the children. I mention this in reference to "Latchkey Kids". This refers to children who return to a empty home at 3:00pm after school while the parent return at 5:30. Typically children who are exposed to this consistently throughout their growth are more likely prone to Drug and alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity at a younger age as well as poor academic performances. The options are to start extended school programs, where children could stay on and complete assignments, however this could be viewed as detention and subjecting the child to a 11 hour school day. Other options are for the parents to convert their workday to suit the child or for one parent to become a stay at home.
I think it is very important for employers to provide on site daycares for their kids. This may be initially expensive for the company, but I think it pays off in the long run in that parents are not very worried about rushing off work to pick up the kids before the baby sitter or daycare closes. Also, the parents will be able to spend time with their during their work breaks without rushing off work premises to do so. Also, the parents may feel more in control of their kids care because the day care s right around the corner.
I may not be the most objective contributor to this discussion because I lived this reality, but alternatively I may be able to provide additional insight, too.
Both of my parents are older and have had careers or jobs that took most of their focus away from me on a regular basis.
In a perfect world there is a balance between work and family, but unfortunately this world is not perfect and "balancing" such crucial aspects of one's life is a difficult, if not impossible, task. Family or work must suffer so that the other can prosper.
I agree with Parimal in that just because daycare is provided for kids it does not ensure that the daycare is good for the kids. The service has to be staffed with qualified caregivers and must create a structured environment conducive to development.
Even in with quality care, there is no substitute for creating a lasting, intimate bond with one's parents. In the absence of parents as role models kids will look to popular media, older kids, other adults, and reach out in any way to find somebody or something that is identifiable.
This can be good or bad, depending on who or what the child chooses to structure themselves around.
All this being said, I also agree with S. Mason--sociologically speaking it is unrealistic to expect family to take a central role all of the time. The old saying "it takes a village" really does apply, but the modern 'village' is composed of not one group of like-minded tribesmen and women, but rather a shrunken world where every human being is connected by a highway of lights and binary (the internet of course) and additionally we are surrounded with popular media influences.
Daycare should be provided by work, free of charge, and it should be staffed to the highest possible standard. If the workplace could provide a daycare and education center for kids that would be optimal.
The only way to ensure that your child is being raised right is to make sure they are open and honest with their experiences and at the end of the day they can come home to their parents and have these events explained and validated. Strong ideals, morals, and traditions have been the staples of our ethics in the past, but these unwavering instruments of understanding largely fail in a world where everything is connected and cultures and people are more gray and less the same than ever. We have to try to raise our kids to be more intuitive, more accepting, and more open so that when the parents are absent they know how to respond or at least how to ask for a solution at a later date.
Should daycare be provided by employers? I do not believe that daycare should be provided by employers. I do not feel that it is the burden of the employer to provide daycare to employees. As one of the assigned articles for class discussed Marriott hotels pays its employees fair wages but offers a number of non-monetary fringe benefits to their employees. These fringe benefits greatly retain employees. If day care for children is offered to employees as a fringe benefit I think it is completely fair and I think it is important that companies consider these types of benefits for employees. By offering day care for company employees the company sends a message that that company cares for its employees and the employees families and employees are less likely to feel like "pawns" for profit.
What would be the optimal situation for parents and work? If it is possible for companies to allow employees to work virtually then companies should greatly consider virtual work to be done. There are a number of technologies now available to companies to ensure accountability from virtual working employees. One such technology takes random photos from a web cam, and screen shots, to ensure that the employee is actually doing work when working remotely. If it can be managed then companies should consider thinking out of the box to allow for working parents to be more flexible.
Consider the amount of time many workers occupy commuting
Should employers reimburse for daycare costs? I do not feel that employers should have to pay for daycare costs. It would be a great benefit for large employers to negotiate with local day care centers and perhaps the buying power of a larger group could help lower day care rates for a company's employees.
I personally think that employers should offer on-site daycare but shouldn't have to reimburse for those costs. By providing such a facility, the employees will hopefully better be able to work, especially new mothers who have a hard time balancing motherhood and work. On-site daycare will provide a sense of comfort for new parents who don't have to worry about leaving work early to pick up their kids from daycare or have to find a babysitter everyday while they are at work. There is a new mom at my workplace who has to leave work at 2 everyday. She is very behind on her work and it is stressing her out. She is not as efficient either which is causing our clients to be upset with us. If our company provided the daycare, she would be able to work 9-5 and be more efficient in her work as she would be able to concentrate on her tasks and duties. As far as the costs go, if the company is willing to provide the on-site daycare, I think that is a big deal in itself. They shouldn't be held responsible for the costs. They could offer lower costs instead to help the employees out by offering discounts or coupons, etc. By offering daycare at work, it would be really helpful to the women in the workforce to hopefully balance their work and personal life and help them advance in their career as they wouldn't have to take off from work as often as one would have to if the company didn't have on-site daycare.
I believe that the employees would focus more on their jobs when they do not need to worry about their families. Both sides, employers and employees, should try to find a balance between work and life in order to create a win-win strategy. If the budget for daycare is tight for a company, then it may be a good idea for both parties to share the expense.
In my former company, the employer viewed the parental right as a hurdle of the business. As a result, those super female workers who have gained profit for the company eventually left as they were asked to forfeit the value of family.
I believe that empathy is an essential factor which leads the company and employees to the success. Therefore, I would say " taking care of what the employees need is also reminding them of what they are obligated to."
Should daycare be provided by employers?
ReplyDeleteWhat would be the optimal situation for parents and work?
Should employers reimburse for daycare costs?
In an article by Shannon Brownlee, “Lies Parents Tell Them About Why They Work. Brownlee effectively describes the mental challenges that parents face in order to balance work and home and the sacrifices parents make when they chose not to. Arlie Hoschschild wrote a book called the “The Time Bind” where she wrote, “whether consciously or unconsciously children are taking a backseat to the needs of their parents pursuit of financial gain.” Both authors seemed to endorse the concept that ‘home’ can become a stressful and dreaded black-hole and going to work can become the great escape. Unfortunately, the American family structure has indeed been substituted for dollar figures. The absentee parent has unconsciously allowed a deficiency to form within our society that has torn away at family values, traditions and morals. I guess in the world we live in, it is difficult to imagine a world where our children could be under the constant care of their parents. Better yet, a world where our children would be the central focus of a household. Our children will no longer have to rely on television or babysitters to provide them wit their hierarchy of needs. It is a tragedy that in most cases a child’s personality is formed by the exposure of negative forces that may be greater. Karl Zinsmeister wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly, “Growing Up Scared” where he focused on the tragedy of the absentee parent, he wrote “the physical safety and psychological security are the foundations, the essential preconditions for a child’s health, education and overall development. Zinsmeister theory was that when a parent chooses to stay home with their children it gives their parents a reason for being, over and above their own personal needs. In short, essentially, if one parent stayed home it could guarantee an environment of affection and security. Children will no longer have to grow up in an unpredictable home which creates voids of emptiness that threatens a child health, both physically and emotionally.
ReplyDeleteThe medical breakthroughs that have happened this past century are making children healthier and helping them mature faster, physically, than ever before. As the median age for new parents grows older each year, these children are hitting developmental ages during the main peak of career decision-making for these parents.
ReplyDeleteOften time these stresses are too much for a 40 something who prior to being 30, had no spouse nor children to care for, only their career which to them, defines who they are. We are in an increasingly specialist society where career and job titles define a person moreso than their family values.
The family unit is undergoing social changes due to these pressures, and often second adolescences (young 20s) are experienced as children come back from college and finally spend time with their retired or near retired families.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete:: @ Sarah ::
ReplyDeleteI would disagree with your first comment, because I do not believe medical breakthroughs are the cause of healthier children, nor increasing the ability to mature at a faster rate. Maturity is not something I would consider to have anything to do with how healthy one is. Those who have a life threatening illness, I would think, actually causes one to experience more in a shorter period of time and causing them to mature faster, and not the other way around. What is your evidence for this statement?
Erik Erikson described development that occurs throughout the lifespan. Learn more in this chart summarizing Erikson's stages of psychosocial development on the webpage:
http://psychology.about.com/library/bl_psychosocial_summary.htm
To your second statement, the median age for parents, I would suggest looking at the following website:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2010.html
Paying attention to
Table FG1. Married Couple Family Groups, by Labor Force Status of Both Spouses, and Race and Hispanic Origin/1 of the Reference Person: 2010
How many times do we hear someone around us say "we're going to wait until we are financially stable before we have children?" I might add that an adult in their 30’s, who has not married yet, could also be due their own selfishness. Single adults have made decisions NOT to marry for one reason or another, maybe even a combination of reasons. I would say that if you were to ask them that their responses would be heavily weighted to reasons which are selfish. That is what I believe defines who they are even more so than a job title in a ‘career’. America has blesses so many with rights and freedoms that lead to choices. We all can understand to an extent that the choices we make today dictate the life that we lead. No one is promised tomorrow, and how often does one hear the statement "I want to be married, and have children, and raise a family?" Depending on your interactions with others and the stage of life they are in I would say we hear it often, right? If you were to ask that same person "Why have they not accomplished that goal yet?" What do you think would be their response? That response could give insight, assuming no blame will be shifted AND they are honest enough to take accountability for the choices that THEY made in their lives. Just a thought.
:: @ S. Mason ::
ReplyDeleteI am would like to agree with your comment that an absentee parent can cause damage, but would that damage be apparent early on, or later in life? Do children of absentee parents make up for this deficiency in other ways? Do these children try to be more unlike their parents than most children claim to want to be?
To begin with the first posted question, I believe day care should be subsidized in some form or fashion, although I would not agree that a company should provide it themselves. Maintaining an onsite day care is incredibly expensive and the overall cost will be of too much of an expense for rest of the employees who might already have their own provisions.
ReplyDeleteAbsentee parents can cause damage if the parent is neglectful in the way they treat their kids. There is a difference between not giving your kids time when there is a little bit of free time available and not having much free time but trying your hardest to give your kids the attention they require.
I think kids migrate where they feel most loved. Sometimes that is their friends, their friends’ parents, or some group or organization that provides with the structure and love that they desire. While I myself am not a parent, I feel that I have had an integral role in raising my siblings whether that has been as a big brother, financial provider, paying tuition, or just being there.
An extension of this, is the role I play with other people’s children whether as a youth football coach or as an “uncle” type figure. Relating this back to work and organizations, I believe that the constant bevy of work diminishes many individuals ability to spend time with their children and loved ones. The overall performance and passion that individuals have for their tasks diminishes because the work is unending. We work to work nowadays as opposed to working to provide ourselves with the standard of living and lifestyle that we desire. Employers that enable their employees to spend quality time with their families tend to have higher performing employees. The cost of losing an employee is great and if an opportunity for autonomy without a significant loss in pay is provided most individuals while shift to that new position.
The concept of diminishing marginal returns is applicable here. Firms should be aware of the costs associated with overburdening their employees and the effect it has on their revenue.
Whenever work breaches the walls of parenting at a crucial time then how far does it affect the psychology of child?
ReplyDeleteI would say it definitely affects his / her psychology. It is said that you can buy cushions but you can’t buy sleep, you can buy books but you can’t buy knowledge. Raising a kid is just like that. You can buy daycare for your child when you go to work but you can’t buy love which he needs. I was reading an article before a few days. It says that mother’s touch is so important is early stages of nurturing that it develops a strong emotional bond between the child and mother. Babies, in particular, need a lot of love and attention to thrive and do well. The article further says that kids who grow up in daycare till their nursery become more aggressive and disobedient.
Some people believe that enrolling your child in a daycare center can be a tremendous opportunity for your child to learn new things and interact with different types of people but I totally disagree with this. Parents are the ones who can shape their kids. Love and care you pour on them, comes from the bottom of your heart. A child gets emotionally attached to the parents during that period. Once they know which nest they belong to then they start identifying other people and interact with them.
Although there are both advantages and disadvantages to enrolling your child to a daycare center, at the end of the day it is important for you to sit down with your child and talk to them about it.
The option of daycare being provided by an employer may prove to be very advantageous to parents as well as kids. Especially if the day care facility being offered is in the vicinity of workplace.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of being able to just walk up to your kid while you are taking a short break from work might prove to be very soothing to a working parent. This would also help kids to a great extent as the very feeling that a parent is close by might prove to be extremely reassuring. Every parent misses their kids while at work and while most of us being parents have to choose between our career and staying at home to look after kids, there are others that have no choice but to work. There might be problems that prevent them from staying at home like financial obligations. In such cases, daycare facility offered by an employer is a huge relief.
It would not be right to say that we expect day care to give our kids the love and affection they should get from us, but we do expect the day care to ensure that our kids are safe and happy.
I feel that employers should have some type of option to aid in the cost of daycare expenses. Sometimes companies will assist employees with being able to defer (pretax) a portion of their paychecks to reduce income taxes on their take home pay, while also putting cash aside into an account that can help pay for daycare.
ReplyDeleteI think it may be a lot to expect a company to pay for day care expenses, being that many parents today are often dual-parent working situations. I feel that the benefit may be extended at a higher level for certain executive employees who may contribute more to a company and thus may be offered more incentives/benefits. To expect daycare being covered for certain other types of jobs is unrealistic, and really, day care expenses paid for workers at lower paying jobs can often overtake what that person earns as income. It's definitely not fair - but its a reality. In all, i think there should be assistance but to expect outright paying for daycare by the employer is not something that's going to happen or be in effect much longer considering the economy and cost-cutting innovations.
Some parents either don't have the luxury or the desire to have one parent quit work 100% to take care of the children. Whatever the case, balancing work and parenting could be difficult. One way for companies to ease employee's stress of making a living and taking care of their children is to provide child care benefits such as daycare expense reimbursements or even daycare services.
ReplyDeleteOne good example is IKEA's in-store daycare service for employees (may have extended to customers). This took much of the burden off of parents who are working both financially and on time. This service became a corporate culture for IKEA and contributes to their success in lengthening employee retention.
In other first world countries, schedules are timed so that the parent can get home at the same time as the children. I mention this in reference to "Latchkey Kids". This refers to children who return to a empty home at 3:00pm after school while the parent return at 5:30.
ReplyDeleteTypically children who are exposed to this consistently throughout their growth are more likely prone to Drug and alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity at a younger age as well as poor academic performances.
The options are to start extended school programs, where children could stay on and complete assignments, however this could be viewed as detention and subjecting the child to a 11 hour school day. Other options are for the parents to convert their workday to suit the child or for one parent to become a stay at home.
I think it is very important for employers to provide on site daycares for their kids. This may be initially expensive for the company, but I think it pays off in the long run in that parents are not very worried about rushing off work to pick up the kids before the baby sitter or daycare closes. Also, the parents will be able to spend time with their during their work breaks without rushing off work premises to do so. Also, the parents may feel more in control of their kids care because the day care s right around the corner.
ReplyDeleteI may not be the most objective contributor to this discussion because I lived this reality, but alternatively I may be able to provide additional insight, too.
ReplyDeleteBoth of my parents are older and have had careers or jobs that took most of their focus away from me on a regular basis.
In a perfect world there is a balance between work and family, but unfortunately this world is not perfect and "balancing" such crucial aspects of one's life is a difficult, if not impossible, task. Family or work must suffer so that the other can prosper.
I agree with Parimal in that just because daycare is provided for kids it does not ensure that the daycare is good for the kids.
The service has to be staffed with qualified caregivers and must create a structured environment conducive to development.
Even in with quality care, there is no substitute for creating a lasting, intimate bond with one's parents. In the absence of parents as role models kids will look to popular media, older kids, other adults, and reach out in any way to find somebody or something that is identifiable.
This can be good or bad, depending on who or what the child chooses to structure themselves around.
All this being said, I also agree with S. Mason--sociologically speaking it is unrealistic to expect family to take a central role all of the time. The old saying "it takes a village" really does apply, but the modern 'village' is composed of not one group of like-minded tribesmen and women, but rather a shrunken world where every human being is connected by a highway of lights and binary (the internet of course) and additionally we are surrounded with popular media influences.
Daycare should be provided by work, free of charge, and it should be staffed to the highest possible standard. If the workplace could provide a daycare and education center for kids that would be optimal.
The only way to ensure that your child is being raised right is to make sure they are open and honest with their experiences and at the end of the day they can come home to their parents and have these events explained and validated. Strong ideals, morals, and traditions have been the staples of our ethics in the past, but these unwavering instruments of understanding largely fail in a world where everything is connected and cultures and people are more gray and less the same than ever. We have to try to raise our kids to be more intuitive, more accepting, and more open so that when the parents are absent they know how to respond or at least how to ask for a solution at a later date.
Should daycare be provided by employers?
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that daycare should be provided by employers. I do not feel that it is the burden of the employer to provide daycare to employees. As one of the assigned articles for class discussed Marriott hotels pays its employees fair wages but offers a number of non-monetary fringe benefits to their employees. These fringe benefits greatly retain employees. If day care for children is offered to employees as a fringe benefit I think it is completely fair and I think it is important that companies consider these types of benefits for employees. By offering day care for company employees the company sends a message that that company cares for its employees and the employees families and employees are less likely to feel like "pawns" for profit.
What would be the optimal situation for parents and work?
If it is possible for companies to allow employees to work virtually then companies should greatly consider virtual work to be done. There are a number of technologies now available to companies to ensure accountability from virtual working employees. One such technology takes random photos from a web cam, and screen shots, to ensure that the employee is actually doing work when working remotely. If it can be managed then companies should consider thinking out of the box to allow for working parents to be more flexible.
Consider the amount of time many workers occupy commuting
Should employers reimburse for daycare costs?
I do not feel that employers should have to pay for daycare costs. It would be a great benefit for large employers to negotiate with local day care centers and perhaps the buying power of a larger group could help lower day care rates for a company's employees.
I personally think that employers should offer on-site daycare but shouldn't have to reimburse for those costs. By providing such a facility, the employees will hopefully better be able to work, especially new mothers who have a hard time balancing motherhood and work. On-site daycare will provide a sense of comfort for new parents who don't have to worry about leaving work early to pick up their kids from daycare or have to find a babysitter everyday while they are at work. There is a new mom at my workplace who has to leave work at 2 everyday. She is very behind on her work and it is stressing her out. She is not as efficient either which is causing our clients to be upset with us. If our company provided the daycare, she would be able to work 9-5 and be more efficient in her work as she would be able to concentrate on her tasks and duties. As far as the costs go, if the company is willing to provide the on-site daycare, I think that is a big deal in itself. They shouldn't be held responsible for the costs. They could offer lower costs instead to help the employees out by offering discounts or coupons, etc. By offering daycare at work, it would be really helpful to the women in the workforce to hopefully balance their work and personal life and help them advance in their career as they wouldn't have to take off from work as often as one would have to if the company didn't have on-site daycare.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the employees would focus more on their jobs when they do not need to worry about their families. Both sides, employers and employees, should try to find a balance between work and life in order to create a win-win strategy. If the budget for daycare is tight for a company, then it may be a good idea for both parties to share the expense.
ReplyDeleteIn my former company, the employer viewed the parental right as a hurdle of the business. As a result, those super female workers who have gained profit for the company eventually left as they were asked to forfeit the value of family.
I believe that empathy is an essential factor which leads the company and employees to the success. Therefore, I would say " taking care of what the employees need is also reminding them of what they are obligated to."