It’s Mother’s Day and that sort of pisses me off. Not just because I think that being a good mother is an incredibly hard and terribly underappreciated job and that if yours did right by you then it’s only courteous to show her your appreciation in ways both subtle and obvious and unconfined to a day created, managed, and largely promulgated by the greeting card, flower, and candy industries or that if yours did wrong by you then going through the motions and getting dressed up for an expensive brunch during which you hold your tongue and give yourself an ulcer all for the sake of conforming to some bullshit 1950s Ozzy and Harriet vision of the American family that never really existed anyway is kinda dumb. No, Mother’s Day pisses me off because it is the perfect chance to point out a subtle yet pervasive way in which American culture is totally fucked up.
It could very easily be said that American culture is phallocentric. One need only point toward the number of corporations headed by women (mighty few) or the wage disparity faced by college graduates upon entering the work force (hint: women are still making about $.76 for every $1 that their equally wet behind the ears and inexperienced in the work force male counter parts are making).
A case could also be easily made to say that American culture is heterocentric. What other explanation could there be for the fact that a gay or lesbian person has to go to a lawyer and spend hundreds of dollars to have his or her wishes set out in a set of documents that might very well be ignored by the State anyway simply to procure the same rights that some drunk off their asses straight people can get by wandering into any one of the hundreds of all-night wedding chapels in Las Vegas and slurring a few “I dos” in front of witnesses who get paid by the ceremony? If you can think of one please, let me know.
What everyone seems to ignore on both Mother’s and Father’s day is this: America is parentcentric.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe whole heartedly that it is an inalienable human right to reproduce. No one should be told they can’t have children because of the color of their skin, their religion, their economic or social class, their sexual orientation, where they were born, their marital status, their IQ, or any of the other reasons why The Powers That Be have throughout history attempted to or successfully denied reproductive rights. But having children is a choice not a biological inevitability.
Whether you biologically reproduce or you choose to adopt and raise someone else’s offspring, being a parent is a choice you make. You take on the responsibility, theoretically, of your own free will. Granted, there is enormous societal pressure to become a parent but the last time I checked there were no laws (religious prohibitions against birth control aside) requiring any person to do so.
So why is it then that corporate America is allowed to discriminate against people who choose not to become parents?
Mother’s Day, and sometimes Father’s Day, brings a slew of articles about companies and their parental (not maternity, thank you; we now give fathers time off too) leave policies. Today’s Washington Post did an interesting piece on adoption policies and how many companies are now treating the adoption of a child in the same way they treat an employee’s biological reproduction when it comes to time off. One fairly large company gives its employees four weeks of paid leave, in addition to the employee’s accrued vacation and sick leave and any leave without pay available under the Family and Medical Leave Act, so that parents can “bond” with their adopted child. Another offers three months of leave, six weeks of which are paid, plus monetary compensation based on some actuarial table of what it costs to deliver a biological child.
So someone tell me when the fuck do I get my six weeks of paid time away from work for making an optional life choice?
Can I get my six weeks because I need to “bond” with my adopted shelter dog? Maybe I could have that six weeks to concentrate on perfecting the query letters for the novel I just finished? What about if I decide that I want to take that time to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity? How about because I’ve decided that I need to spend some time “bonding” with myself while destressing on a beach in Bora Bora?
What Mother’s Day and Father’s Day really make me wonder, though, is what would happen if all the people who have chosen not to be parents simply stopped putting up with this bullshit and demanded the right to leave early because they have to spend time with the pet (you try getting a dog into cleats and a batting helmet; the little league game excuse only goes so far) or if we refused to be imposed upon because we’ve got a hot date with a book of erotica and a bottle of wine, two things which can be just as important as the families our colleagues with kids scoot home to on time, waiting for us and we’re oh so sorry but no, we really can’t work late…again.
Being a good parent isn’t easy. It’s your job to make sure that not only does the kid physically survive but that she gets educated, grows up with decent morals, and is set on a path to becoming a responsible, thoughtful, contributing member of the our now global society. No two ways about it: it’s a damn hard thing to do. But in the end, it’s still a choice and every choice has consequences. Isn’t it time that figuring out how to incorporate the kid into your life on your own time be factored in as one of them?
This article cross posted to Amphetameme