In the pre-Covid days, it was absolutely reasonable to tell an employee that someone else must be taking care of the children while you are working. Telecommuting does not mean caring for your children while building a marketing plan.
Then the schools and the daycares shut down and nannies had to return home and shelter in place there. Even with things starting to open up in some places, the schools, daycares and the summer camps have not re-opened everywhere.
And here’s a secret about small children: They can be kind of noisy.
In the ideal family situation, you have two parents who can seamlessly hand off the children to one another with no disruption to work.
In real life, moms still do most of the child care and single parents exist. And, unless you live in a large house, a toddler meltdown will still be heard throughout the house even if someone else is doing the actual child care.
Some bosses get frustrated and criticize, discipline or even, as Modern Cali Mom says, fire.
To keep reading, click here: Can You Hear Kids on Your Zoom Calls? Don’t Fire the Parents
Who would want to work for someone who would fire an employee because their child was heard on a ZOOM meeting?
I never realized how much people hated children and parents until Covid hit. Since then I’ve found that people have zero qualms about informing parents of exactly how much we’re ruining everyone’s life by having offspring. And fellow employees are often worse than bosses.
It makes a twisted sort of sense. Some people just have to hate others, and parents aren’t a protected class, so we’re viewed as fair game by such people. I suppose we’re the new scapegoats.
Actually, parents can be a protected class, of sorts, in an EEO claim based on “sex-plus;” that is, gender plus parenthood. The Evil HR Lady alluded to it when she cautioned employers not to treat the appearances of kids in ZOOM meetings differently for a Father than for a Mother.
Yeah, usually people are a-okay with fathers but not with mothers.
I agree. There’s a tremendous double standard. As you noted, “moms still do most of the child care.” As a result, we tend to overly-recognize and praise hands-on fathers, and just take for granted mothers doing the very same things. As more dads get involved in child care, hopefully, this double standard will lessen.
Yeah, the old “Isn’t it great when dads babysit!” Dads don’t babysit, they parent.
This merely brings up a biased attitude toward parents in the workplace based on the idea, children are not a visible part of the work environment. Children are only seen/heard when it is convenient to display them.
But the parents who have been complaining the most about the effect of the children on their work performance didn’t before the pandemic deal 24/7 with their children because they had put those children in someone else’s care for the majority of the day but fired that help, to avoid exposure because the help wasn’t a live-in but a per diem employee, as claims.
It is bad enough that in the USA , we don’t have adequate childcare and most jobs don’t offer childcare as a benefit. It is assumed that one of the parents will take care of childcare at whatever effect it will have on their career. The higher up the ladder in position, the childcare is expected to be less visible, but the need for childcare is important for all levels of income and needs to be available 24/7. And that childcare needs to be properly maintained with well paid trained staff.