Holdout Jeff Bezos Confronted by Amazon Moms Demanding Day Care

This is a popular opinion, and in addition it is correct and good. If you're looking for a union the https://www.iww.org are a great place to start!

The underlying assumption here is that women take care of kids, while men work. That's what an union should address IMO. Instead of maternal leave, have parental leave that men, too, can take. That way, the playing field is leveled more.

Of course, there's no quick fix here - it's a deepset cultural issue, and getting men to take that leave when it's available to them still seems to take some pushing.

Unions are also like macros for action. All the work that goes into organized action is streamlined when you do it permanently as a union. It makes little sense to stick your neck out, and then wait until something goes wrong again and having to do all of the legwork all over.

The government needs to mandate or fund it with taxes it so all companies are under the same burden.

Major banks do a good job with this. They recognize that this is not just a matter of gender equality, but LGBT equality as well. They give equal parental leave to both sexes for both birth and adoption (for family bonding), which allows flexibility on how time off is handled in traditional male/female childbirths, but also in male/male and female/female adoptions/births as well. If companies like Amazon don't catch up soon, they're going to end up on the wrong end of some very serious PR attacks in the coming years.

The problems are:

1. Society expects women to do this work, and devalues men who do it. This means that mothers are often left responsible for children, and thus they lose out compared to men (or women who choose not to have children, or haven't yet). We're effectively punishing women for continuing our species.

2. Without these sort of support structures in place, managers will look at women as a liability; "but what if she has a kid and then she has to miss work all the time?"

Your argument is basically "these women aren't as dedicated, or otherwise they wouldn't have had kids". The reality is that having children is important, and women specifically shouldn't have to look at having children as the end of their career, or at least their career advancement, because Amazon refuses to provide something which other companies already do.

Essentially this is an Amazon problem because it's only a liability at companies who don't provide this sort of opportunity, which other companies do. Amazon is basically saying "We don't care about what women have to deal with, that's your problem not ours" and talented women are going to learn that lesson and go elsewhere where neither they nor their spouses have to make those sacrifices.

I don't understand this artificial distinction between home and work. Work is not sacred ground, we can change culture in the workplace the same way we can change culture at home, why do not both?

We spend as much time at work as we do at home, you endorse sharing burdens at home, so I assume you think that equality between men and women is a good thing. So why not argue for the same culture, one that supports people regardless of their sex, in the workplace? Especially when such a vital social function, raising future generations, is concerned?

You're not convinced that this is an amazon problem, but is anything ever an amazon problem, or facebooks problem, or any other companies problem?

People are waking up to the fact, mainly educated and aware knowledge workers, that they can negotiate how they want to work just like they can negotiate and shape how they want to live. If you want to convince others that companies are paperclip AI like entities with complete disregard for the humans who work in them, then that burden is on you.

Women in America are fighting for a fraction of what much of the developed world already has in place with regard to things like paid maternal leave, so yes, you can think like a manager and say “why is this my problem?”, but the future seems eager to realize the importance of looking at problems like this more holistically, and to suggest workplaces don’t have a larger role in the solution feels misguided when viewed through that lens.

Also, marital status has no place in this conversation, IMHO. Any corporation that would speak to the problems of “wives” being solved by/with their “husbands” is living in the last century. You can disagree, and corporations might as well, but that argument won’t wear well with time.

Exactly!

The level of productivity we could have would enormous if we just focused on cutting out inessential tasks at the source instead of the periphery. I have been trying to promote the idea of neural ablation in company forever, but my boss just keeps moving me to darker parts of the building.

Colour me crazy, but it might show a bit of maturity not wanting to dedicate an unreasonable amount of time to work.

I would likely trust that person's rational more than the go-getter-at-all-costs.

What's life for, anyway?

Let me flip this around, If Amazon is willing to hire people who are dedicated but not as qualified, why are they paying so much to senior managers?

I as a shareholder would like to know this

> If the wives are making more money and have more prospects and opportunities for advancement over their spouse - the spouse should theoretically be willing to agree to be the one who makes the sacrifice when surprise child-related stuff pops up.

Why are we assuming all these women are co-habitating or married? I don't want to sound like I'm attacking anyone, just curious.

For a long time, I don't think they even had a formal paternal leave policy or only had a just a couple of weeks for Dads. They are definitely a late mover in this area. They had to be shamed (Infamous NYTimes article, peers bragging their generic benefits etc) to provide better paternity and maternity leave policies. Current atmosphere of asking for these kind of benefits were almost laughable within the walls of Amazon 10 years ago; You would have either got yelled or scoffed at. Glad to see this effort. Hope they succeed. I know a lot of people in industry will be rooting for them, and many employees secretly hoping for them to succeed. It is good for Amazonians and industry in general. If the famously laggard company in providing good benefits is being put on spot to up its game to take care of employees, we should all cheer for Momazonians!

As a single father with sole custody of 3 children, yes, I take issue. But I am not surprised, it is a pervasive and socially acceptable bias.

I work in the student loan industry and there are loans specifically for single mother's... father's need not apply. It bothers me every time I see it.

Heck, why my daughter registered an American Girl doll, they sent me an "id card" declaring me the proud mother of my daughter and her doll. So I guess I should be happy to be a mom.

I do, in a huge way.

I became a single parent when my youngest was still a baby. I was juggling my career, my family, and my home all by myself. It was brutal and I felt incredibly lonely and isolated. Every time I tried to find services or groups for single parents it was always "Women's support services" or "mums and bubs meetup". Parenting babies solo is a difficult experience, there is a reason that a ton of government-funded support services exist. I can't grasp why they're all exclusive, however.

On the other hand in my professional life, I was having inclusivity rammed down my throat. I was being banned from using certain words due to them not being inclusive in my professional life at the same time I was being shut out from everything in my parenting life.

Not one woman I spoke to about my issues seemed to see the double standard, the response would be "oh, but most mums do the parenting". I don't think these educated women would have been impressed if I'd replied: "oh, but most men do the work so why do you want a promotion". Of course, I'd never say that but I wanted to. I was simply stunned how educated women who have spent their entire adult life pushing for inclusion could be so blind.

EDIT: For the sake of presenting a fair argument I just googled support services in my area and it now appears that there are gender neutral ones available. This is a change from 3 years ago, which was when my experience was lived. Importantly the governments' official support services now have gender-neutral terms in their names. Most of the independent ones are still women exclusive but at least some change has happened.

I feel good about this. I personally wrote to government members and influential media about my issues when they were occurring. I might have had a horrible time during my experience but hopefully, the next generation of parents has it better.

I don't. The article mentions that there is currently a cultural bias for women to handle child care. For examples: a) "many senior executives had stay-at-home wives", b) "most men in the U.S. earn more than women, she says, moms are more likely to stay home when children are sick since the loss of the father’s income is more likely to be detrimental to the family budget.", and c) "Studies demonstrate that mothers continue to bear the brunt of childcare responsibilities and companies that provide day care support can reduce employee absenteeism by as much as 30 percent."

As such, women are the most affected by these policies.

The question I see is, are these Momazonians advocating for policies that support all genders equally, or are they advocating for policies which only help women? Your comment suggest the answer is "no" or "only accidentally", but nothing in the article supports that.

My reading of the article suggests that they want "backup day care benefit for employees ... providing help for parents", that is, it would apply to all parents, including single fathers and families with two married fathers.

You mentioned gender neutral terms like 'firefighter'. I think there are better examples which show how a group can use a seemingly discriminatory term to support equal rights.

One example is the National Woman's Party. They had an important role in passing the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, which provided suffrage - women didn't have special voting rights compared to men, but equal voting rights.

They then proposed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1921: "No political, civil, or legal disabilities or inequalities on account of sex or on account of marriage, unless applying equally to both sexes, shall exist within the United States or any territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Again, equality of genders, not preferential treatment. Indeed, this was a sticking point against the ERA. Women had special treatment. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment :

> Their debate reflected the wider tension in the developing feminist movement of the early 20th century between two approaches toward gender equality. One approach emphasized the common humanity of women and men, while the other stressed women's unique experiences and how they were different from men, seeking recognition for specific needs. The opposition to the ERA was led by Mary Anderson and the Women's Bureau beginning in 1923. These feminists argued that legislation including mandated minimum wages, safety regulations, restricted daily and weekly hours, lunch breaks, and maternity provisions would be more beneficial to the majority of women who were forced to work out of economic necessity, not personal fulfillment

The NWP continued to support equality between the genders in the civil rights era of the 1960s.

Thus, just like the "National Woman's Party" didn't seek special treatment for women, I don't think it's correct to look at a term like "Momazonians" and conclude they want special treatment for moms.

As another example, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" seeks "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination", not the advancement of African-Americans over other races.

Not sure that the article does a good job explaining this.

In my company, they do provide this (or a similar perk). As an employee, you are responsible for "regular" day care, which I don't think is being discussed here. What is being discussed is backup/emergency daycare. As an example, my kid goes to some kind of school/preschool. But things happen (bad weather, etc) that causes the school to close on a given day. One option is that I stay home and take care of the kids, but then it becomes a gray area: How much of my time at home am I actually working? Should I use vacation time for this? So the "perk" is that I come to work, and arrange for some kind of "emergency" day care just for that day. My employer will pay for that.

I think at my company, this is mostly optional. However, depending on your job function, you may simply really have to be at work for some reason on that particular day, so the company pays for the daycare for that day.

Short-term day care that's available with minimum notice.

As opposed to "default" day care that's expected to cover most days for months or years, and where it's possible to make arrangements long before you actually start.