I answered yes because it's certainly one of the MANY reasons I don't want kids. I would not want to be a SAHM, but I also would not want to miss a ton of work because of a kid.
That said, I am enjoying being unemployed at the moment!
(06-15-2010 06:29 PM)CF Scorpio Wrote: [ -> ]That said, I am enjoying being unemployed at the moment!
Well, you should have a baby!!!
PG, you are such a bitch! She should have two, and get it over with!
No impact here. I didn't want kids before I even knew what a job was. XD
I'm with NKB. I don't care about "a day job" any more than I care to be around children. It did not factor into my decision.
My decision was made before I was 10 years old.
Jen M.
I said yes because I knew what I wanted to be from a fairly young age (early teens) and couldn't imagine going through all the graduate school stuff with a kid. Of course, when I actually did it, not that many people were going to grad school and a minority of them had children. Nowadays grad school seems to be for anyone with enough money to pay tuition, and "traditional" graduate students are becoming the minority.
What's ironic is that being childfree now has a negative impact on work-life balance. Most of the parents I work with are good colleagues, but there are a few who play the parent card at every opportunity. Not staying late for meetings, begging off committee assignments, not doing the committee work assigned, bringing young kids to work--all these things happen regularly with those few. The bulk of the work in our department is shouldered by people who don't have kids and the parents who understand that work sometimes does come first.
But my boss thinks everyone in our department is equally great because "we all work hard" and tells us so at every opportunity. He feels sorry for me that I don't have kids, mainly because his main experience with women who don't have children comes from his friendship with one formerly childLESS woman in our department who desperately tried to get pregnant, managed to do so once, and suffered a miscarriage. She carried that chip on her shoulder around for 20+ years until an event in her family put her in a position to adopt an older child of another family member. Now guess who is on the cross about how hard parenthood is and leaves early at every opportunity?
I've definitely seen this in the workplace. I've told this before but I had a job where I worked on a project doing a statewide rollout of computers to every county in the state. The job description said that everyone had to do 9/12 weeks in the field.
The problem? I noticed that the people without kids were pulling 11/12 or 12/12 weeks while the ones with kids were only doing 3/12 or 4/12 weeks at most. Another interesting thing I noted was that the people without kids were sent to the counties in the middle of nowhere where watching paint dry was the biggest thing to do. The ones with kids got to go to all the tourist spots.
I actually mentioned this and the supervisor did do something about it, but the project was about over anyway so it didn't matter.
(06-20-2010 02:02 PM)dune67 Wrote: [ -> ]What's ironic is that being childfree now has a negative impact on work-life balance. Most of the parents I work with are good colleagues, but there are a few who play the parent card at every opportunity. Not staying late for meetings, begging off committee assignments, not doing the committee work assigned, bringing young kids to work--all these things happen regularly with those few. The bulk of the work in our department is shouldered by people who don't have kids and the parents who understand that work sometimes does come first.
Oh yeah, I sooo hated that when I worked for a boss. It was so annoying how colleagues would deliberately make doctor's and other appointments for their kids in working hours even when it was possible to get an after hours appointment. They just wanted to do as much stuff in work time since they could get away with it.
What I always loved was how the "appointments" were always on Friday afternoons.