I have not worked in a law firm — I work in TV. Where, just like you describe, there can suddenly be relatively arbitrary seriously labor-intensive work tossed down to us by a producer, director, actor, network exec, or other head honcho type. I spent most of this week at work too sick to really be there, but there was shit I had to do, so I just kept medicating and pushing through it to get everything done.

Last Friday, after an incredibly long and stressful week full of 13-14 hour days, I got handed enough work to keep me in the office until almost 10pm. This happened pretty much as I was shutting down for the night.

As I was headed out the door to attend my own birthday party a few months ago, someone called and wanted some stupid petty thing changed which required enough work on my part to put the kibosh on celebrating my birthday with my friends (luckily coworkers pitched in on that one!).

Because the producers want to do several days of reshoots and inserts after we wrap for the season (pretty much out of the blue with no warning), one of my coworkers is very seriously looking at having to cancel his vacation.

I’ve come into the office on holiday weekends, canceled plans, had to miss out on about 80% of my social life. Right now I’m about to cancel the date I’m supposed to go on tomorrow because not being able to take a sick day or two last week means I’m STILL too sick to have fun.

So, yeah, I understand where you’re coming from. Law is not the only work that exists, you know.

But still, because of the crazy workload that can’t just be rescheduled or declined or blown off, everyone in my office can sympathize. And the folks who are all, “too bad, so sad, mommy wants to leave early…” look like even bigger dicks.

I am with you that men with children need to demand a more flexible workplace. However, I think you miss that pregnancy and breastfeeding happen to women’s bodies, and only women’s bodies. Being able to breastfeed–not just pump– at work is not asking you to work nights and weekends to take up our slack. Leaving work early,and then working from home, is not asking you to pick up our slack. Setting the tenure clock back a year is not somehow giving us an “unfair” advantage.

I can see how you read it that way. Clearly you don’t “miss” it in the oh gee, I never knew the facts of life way. In the original post I was responding to there, yes, it seemed as if you were against any kind of gendered bias in terms of who gets the breaks for caretaking. Hence, my response. I am trying to think here of a more polite way to phrase it–”Please remember that”? “I think it is important to remember that”? And it seems that you would have read them all the same way.

As I said, you were clearly very upset, sorry to have hurt your feelings.

Well, except for the part where that’s EXACTLY what you said.

So while your point that I must be missing something because I’m speaking from my own experience in the legal/corporate world — imagine that, using my own experience! and in comments to a post about the legal/corporate world, no less — is noted, I reject it. Law firms might be on the more extreme end of the continuum, but they’re not on a separate continuum.

I did not say you were missing anything because you were speaking from that particular experience. I was in fact pointing out that it and academia (my experiance) are in fact rooted in the same basic issue, in my opinion, the construction of “work” and masculinity.

As for you, chava, you are indeed disappearing the employer, because you continue to whine about those mean, mean childfree people who don’t like being asked to cheerfully take on additional work without additional pay, as if it were their responsibility to provide the family-friendly accommodations to the mother, and not the employer’s. And where you got the idea that I’m against such benefits, I don’t know.

No, actually, I didn’t “continue” anything, I pointed out why I ever had the idea in the first place by citing your previous comments. But as you like. And I got the idea because you repeatedly said you are against family-friendly policies. Generally, that means things like maternity leave. I certainly don’t think that in situations where there is a pool of work to be done, single people should be obligated to do it without pay—and I never said they should. I would also point out that the employer is also taking a loss here—when he or she has to hire a temp or jury rigg the workload. Is THAT fair? But that is a whole different discussion about incentives and what we as a society value/want to subsidize.

Pay attention to what Octogalore said — simply providing “family-friendly” (and do note the scare quotes) benefits without also changing the culture of the workplace to make it more flexible and fairer for everyone simply further entrenches gender roles, further entrenches the idea that the woman’s job is the one that is disposable, and creates further divisions and resentments among the employees. Which serves no one very well in the end. You may not think that men asking for time off would be enough, but even if it’s not sufficient, it’s damn well necessary, because women alone can’t change the workplace culture, just as we can’t stop rape by ourselves and we can’t end misogyny by ourselves.

Well, duh. I’ve been saying over and over that we must change the culture of the workplace. I also never said that men shouldn’t start asking for time off as a first step. I just said that ultimately that won’t be enough.

Look, the reason why I find this whole line of discussion scary is that it leads back to the typical Republican line of “Well, you CHOSE to have those babies, and that pay gap, and I [employer, coworker, fellow taxpayer] am being discriminated against if I have to help you.”

I don’t really understand how repeatedly implying that I am an idiot helps your case here, but as you like.

I did feel that your original post implied that women should not have any special consideration as mothers in the workplace. Hence, the breastfeeding and childbirth comment–i.e., IMO there is a certain amt of gendered caretaking that is inevitable due to biological considerations.

But in any case, it clearly upset you a great deal. I never (and I think you know this) meant to say that you are somehow magically ignorant that women are the ones who give birth.

I don’t disagree…I think men typically have been socialized to treat child rearing as a babysitting exercise while women typically have been socialized that it is an enormous responsibility that we are solely responsible for. Living outside of those expectations/socialization takes work on the part of both women and men…under the best circumstances…its a negotiation…a realization that we each have different priorities and an attempt to find a middle ground that meets the needs of both people without making one or the other feel like they’re subordinate.

If she had a point other than to call me ignorant of basic biological facts, perhaps you could point it out to me.

In any event, the problem is the same whenever there is a pool of work to be done, a limited number of people to do it, and one of those people misses work because of illness, childcare or family obligations. And the problem is that the culture of work and social conditioning we have in this country is such that only women wind up taking time off for childcare. Which means that those women miss work, fall further behind in salary than their peers because they miss work, and wind up penalized because of it. And while family benefits are in theory available to men, they don’t make use of them — again, because of societal pressures and a culture of work which stigmatizes family issues as women’s concerns and a reluctance for men, who are job-identified and acculturated to think of themselves as providers, men are far, far less likely to even consider incurring the kind of career penalties that women routinely incur in order to care for their families.

Which means that when a mother takes time off to have a baby, care for a baby, stay home with a sick child or go to school events — because it’s the mothers, and not the fathers who are doing such things in most cases — someone has to pick up the slack at work. And if you’re the one who is always asked to do that, you have a right to be angry about it. You just don’t have a right to be angry at your coworker rather than your employer, who could damn well hire another person or bring in a temp or rejigger workload so it’s distributed more fairly. This holds true in *any* workplace where one person being out means that other people have to pick up the slack.

So while your point that I must be missing something because I’m speaking from my own experience in the legal/corporate world — imagine that, using my own experience! and in comments to a post about the legal/corporate world, no less — is noted, I reject it. Law firms might be on the more extreme end of the continuum, but they’re not on a separate continuum.

As for you, chava, you are indeed disappearing the employer, because you continue to whine about those mean, mean childfree people who don’t like being asked to cheerfully take on additional work without additional pay, as if it were their responsibility to provide the family-friendly accommodations to the mother, and not the employer’s. And where you got the idea that I’m against such benefits, I don’t know. Unless it’s the same place you got the idea that I don’t know how babies are made, which would be from somewhere just off the seat of your chair.

Pay attention to what Octogalore said — simply providing “family-friendly” (and do note the scare quotes) benefits without also changing the culture of the workplace to make it more flexible and fairer for everyone simply further entrenches gender roles, further entrenches the idea that the woman’s job is the one that is disposable, and creates further divisions and resentments among the employees. Which serves no one very well in the end. You may not think that men asking for time off would be enough, but even if it’s not sufficient, it’s damn well necessary, because women alone can’t change the workplace culture, just as we can’t stop rape by ourselves and we can’t end misogyny by ourselves.