First up, let me just put it on
record that the terms ‘parent-friendly’ and ‘workplace’ are antithetical by
nature. Parent-friendly would be anything that would make my life as a parent
easier. And one of the core requirements would be its ability to enable me to
spend more quality and happy time with my child. If you are an office-going
parent living in India like me, you are probably spending 50 to 60 percent of
your waking hours at work – and for six days a week, if you are really unfortunate. So simply by the ‘virtue’
(for want of a better word) of keeping me away from my child for 50 hours every
week, I am in a relationship with my office; and it is inherently
parent-unfriendly.
That said, just because the
workplace has a default handicap, doesn’t mean that it cannot become more
parent-friendly. 2017 has been a landmark year of all new, expecting and
prospecting parents. The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 has given at
least the mother, a bit of reprieve in the form of 26-week paid maternity
leave. Despite being a father, I’m not a
big proponent of extended paternity leave. This is because I still feel
that the Indian male needs to evolve more as a care-giver before staking claim
to a 3-month or 6-month paternity leave. For starters, let’s just help the mothers play their part better, shall we?
It remains to be seen how
effectively the Maternity Benefit Act is implemented, because it is a bitter
pill for many employers to swallow. Quite a few employers and reporting
managers (and considering the current gender ratio in the workforce, let’s
assume that a majority are male) still seem to perceive maternity leave as a
paid holiday. If you have spent enough
time with a freshly consecrated recuperating mother, you would know that it is
anything but a joyride.
Now it would be unfair of me to
paint all men and employers with a broad stroke. Despite working alongside a
number of women and working mothers for close to a decade, I never understood the monumental fallacy of a 12-week maternity leave
until I became a father. I am sure there are many men out there, who might
not know much about maternity (or even menstruation for that matter). My
hypothesis is that it is a result of generations of gender compartmentalization
(where even husbands and brothers don’t know what is up with their wives and sisters)
and taboofication (real) as well as deification (on paper) of all things related to
female anatomy. When you don’t understand something, you are either afraid of
it, or worse, take it lightly. But I digress. There is enough fodder here for a
separate blog altogether.
I also know of a number of
progressive, smart organisations that proactively introduced a 26-week
maternity leave even before it became a law. I use the term smart because many
understand that this is not only a humane thing to do, it is also good PR. Being progressive and proactive, gets more
brownie points on the ‘better place to work’ index, attracts more talent and
helps retain them as well.
But an organization cannot become
parent-friendly simply by adhering to a regulatory act or by paying lip service
to it as a PR exercise. The organization
needs to be friendly across the lifecyle of a parent, and not just the
beginning of it. What is required is systematic sensitization and compassion
from the employer and the colleagues. At the same time, I must play the devil's advocate and ask for a more responsible behaviour by the new-parents as well. So, on one hand,
while the reporting manager must empathize with a paranoid young parent who is rushing
home early over a sneeze that the precious bundle of joy just had, the paranoid
young parent must also learn to stop freaking out over every sneeze. Because
when you misuse or abuse the trust reposed in you, you not only provide
disservice to your organization; you also give it one more reason to stop being
nicer to more parents.
