Released: September 17, 2006

Kid-friendly policies don’t help singles

Source: By Amy Joyce

If Barbara Rose could, she would love to have three to six months off from her full-time job as a critical-care nurse in San Diego to finish her doctoral dissertation. But since she never had children, and never intends to, she knows she won’t get the same sort of leave many of her new-mom co-workers have received.

Her boss did, however, offer her every other Friday off in January, which she took. It was a nice help, she said, but it’s not the same leave or benefits available to parents.

She celebrates births and adoptions. She appreciates that her co-workers are producing the next generation of nurses. She knows they need that leave and is glad they have it. But, she asked, “must I have to give birth just to have my time be viewed as of equal value as the time my colleagues spend on their families?”

Since corporations started paying attention to “family-friendly” benefits in the late 1980s, child-free and single workers have wondered where their benefits were. They have expressed dismay that they felt they were asked to work more when employees with families needed time away from work.

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