No, it is not normal to be discriminated against in your work because you have children

While it’s always common to be treated differently at work when you’re parents, some initiatives advocate change and go in the right direction. Stop discrimination!

What if you were told that having children should no longer be a drag in your professional life? After all, being a parent has never stopped someone from being good at their job or being a vital asset in a business. However, it is customary to fear addressing the existence of one’s children during a job interview or to justify one’s “professional inactivity” of a few months or years in front of a recruiter. Asked by a stay-at-home mom who was having difficulty re-integrating professionally, the LinkedIn platform recently added new options to the available job titles, including those of stay-at-home mom, stay-at-home dad and stay-at-home parent. Progress, when you know that taking care of your children IS a full-time job, which unfortunately suffers from a glaring lack of recognition.

Read also: Mother of two young children, her company refuses her partial unemployment and advises her to work at night

The global pandemic has resulted in successive lockdowns, forcing people to stay at home. As of March 2020, nearly half of the world’s population was confined, leaving many parents at home with their children. If you were one of them, you probably remember what the enormous task of improvising yourself as a teacher was like. Even more so when your job was to telecommute at the same time.

Read also: Parental leave: why is it shunned by new dads?

A year later, know that more and more parents are adding this episode to their CVs to look for a job, arguing that if they were able to do this, they are capable of great things! Megan Drye Harper, an American mother of three, spoke about it on her Facebook account and detailed her CV update. “I did what I needed to do while homeschooling a kindergarten child, keeping a 3 year old busy and breastfeeding a baby between Zoom calls. All in my apartment in New York. Now, as we get back to a normal life and I can look after my children, imagine what I can do for your business in 2021. “ His decision made many laughs and inspired more than one.

To change the mentalities

Needless to say that the people mainly impacted at the professional level by the fact of having children are women. Men are indeed less than 1% to take full-time parental leave when they become fathers, despite a legislative reform in 2015, against 14% for women. And then, we are not going to lie to each other, women generally remain those who leave their work earlier to pick up the children, take leave when they are sick, are stigmatized at the announcement of a pregnancy … Consequently, they are the ones who suffer discrimination from their other colleagues and employers. It should not be so according to Rose Sheldon, American mother of two children with a high position.

The 11 questions to be on top of paternity leave

Video by Shawna Montout

On LinkedIn, she wanted to tell an anecdote that took place when she was not yet a manager. “A few years ago, I had to tell my new manager that I had to leave at 5 pm to pick up my daughter from daycare. I was nervous and had tears in my eyes because his predecessor really didn’t agree with this arrangement. To my surprise, she smiled at me and told me that I could even leave at 4:30 pm, because she knew that arriving late came at extra costs. ” Grateful and relieved that someone understands this imperative for which she was in no way responsible, Rose, team manager in her turn now, makes sure today to react in the same way with all the parents who express the need to leave at a certain time to take care of their children, just as this manager had done for her.

Discover our Newsletters!

We have so much to tell you: news, trends and all kinds of exclusions.

I subscribe

To all parents, don’t think that having children or resenting them is a weakness, rather see it as a strength. Those who stay at home to take care of it are extraordinary, as are those who have chosen to have a job on the side. Let’s say stop to stigma and derogatory remarks in the professional world. Parenting should never be a problem.

Barbara ejenguele

A journalism student, Barbara is currently doing a work-study master’s degree and writes on parenthood for the Aufeminin Maman, Parole de Mamans and Avis de Mamans websites. She is also …