Today's columnist is Julian Egelstaff from Freeform Solutions. He writes:
I learned a lot of things during the early years of Freeform Solutions. But not just about business and entrepreneurship. I also learned:
Two-year-olds will eventually go to sleep by themselves for an afternoon nap, if you're on the phone with a client long enough.
Not all child-proof medicine bottles are created equal.
And never, ever, ever leave a permanent marker on the kitchen counter when you're in another room answering e-mail.
I had the good fortune to learn these and many other
lessons courtesy of my twin daughters, who were born a few months
before Freeform Solutions was officially incorporated. For me
personally, and for my family, a big reason to start Freeform was to
have a flexible job that I could do at home, so I could look after
the girls. My wife continued with her 9-to-5 job out of the house.
So, at the same time as I became a social
entrepreneur, I also became a man in the woman's world of child
rearing. I think it gives me a unique perspective on some of the
challenges facing women entrepreneurs.
Make no mistake, the world of child rearing is a
woman's world.
If you don't believe me, just check out a random
selection of books on how to take care of babies and young children.
It won't be long before you find helpful chapters with titles like
“What Dad can do to help.” Just imagine picking up a
general business book and finding a chapter entitled “What your
wife can do to support your career.” Equality of the sexes is
closer to reality in the boardroom than the playroom.
As a society, we seem to pay a lot of attention to
equality issues, at least in the workplace. They are routinely in the
news, many organizations have anti-discrimination policies, and a lot
of hiring practices are specifically designed to create an equal
playing field. A lot of the articles in this
month's OSBR issue on Women Entrepreneurs talk about the
importance of various policies and programs in supporting women
entrepreneurs in the workplace.
But when it comes to family life and personal
decisions, our society seems to have a different set of expectations
in place. These expectations are not just in the “parenting
industry” – the book publishers, the toy makers, the
companies marketing goods and services for looking after infants and
young children – those companies can almost justify the focus
on moms by the fact that women make up about 90% of the people
providing child care at home. But in my experience, many individuals
also implicitly hold this idea that looking after kids is “women's
work.”
When I was out and about with my pre-school aged
girls, people would often make conversation. Twins are a real
show-stopper. If you enter a grocery store with a matched set of
babies in a double stroller, total strangers will stop and talk to
you, several times, whether you like it or not.
A common theme of conversation would be how nice it
was that I was giving mom a break. These people were trying their
best to be complimentary. It was just their instinctive assumptions
kicking in, we're all prone to that. When you hear hoof beats, you
think horses not zebras. And when you see a man pushing a stroller,
many people think dad-home-from-work, not stay-at-home-dad.
My anecdotal experience is not the end of the story
here. Many researchers have spent a lot of time examining these
biases, as Tess Jewell explains in her
article in this month's OSBR.
But it's not just the everyday world outside of work
that needs to welcome and support men who provide child care. The
workplace needs to stop viewing this as a women's issue, and start
treating it as a family issue that affects men equally.
This is touchy stuff. You won't necessarily find
people talking about it openly around the water cooler, but in how
many workplaces would it raise eyebrows if a man took six or nine
months of paternity leave? He's entitled under the law. But wouldn't
it hurt his career?
Breathless profiles of women executives in magazines
will not hesitate to comment on how she balances work and kids. But
for how many men is that even a question in the interview?
Nonetheless, perceptions and behaviours are
gradually changing. Since 2001, fathers in Canada have been able to
take up to 35 weeks of parental leave, and a steadily growing
percentage of eligible fathers have been taking at least part of that
time – 10%
in 2001, increasing to 20% in 2006. In Quebec, nearly half of
eligible fathers take at least some parental leave time. That's
probably because in Quebec there are more generous subsidies,
replacing up to 75% of your income.
This is real progress, but men are still a distinct
minority when it comes to providing child care. Support for fathers
in the workplace needs to keep improving. Fathers need to be
encouraged to provide primary care for their children, and as a
society we need to welcome them into this role. Maternity leave is
not some kind of special trump card women get to play. Being involved
in raising your kids is a right that all parents have.
It's not just a right, it's a joy. Your kids are
only young once. So come on guys, step up and take on this wonderful
role. Until we find a way to make it happen, women will continue to
be the only ones stuck with the challenge of balancing work and kids.
As long as there's no equality in the playroom, it will be impossible
to achieve equality in the boardroom.
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