Is It Discrimination Or "All In A Day's Work"?
Who pays for your pregnancy? And for the ensuing days, weeks, and years of divided responsibility between work and home? Lena Semaan writes in The Guardian about a guy who who came under fire for alleged gender discrimination when he asked a woman on The Apprentice about her child care arrangements. She wonders if this is really gender discrimination, or whether this just reflects new economic realities:
Then there was Harriet Wood, a lawyer who, upon telling her superior she was pregnant was asked, "What will this mean for my deal?" Now while this wasn't exactly the congratulations she might have expected, you can see the partner's point. Despite Harriet's assertion that they "piled on the work" to make her leave you get the feeling that she was just having to do what people in City law firms all seem to do: work stupid hours. This was not so much discrimination as an employer making a rational assumption that if someone was in the kitchen then they could stand the heat. You read on and Harriet herself comes to the conclusion that maybe that wasn't what she wanted or needed.And therein lies the problem. Fundamentally, the workplace in 21st century Britain is economically driven: it exists to fulfil the requirements of commerce; to make goods and services, not to help individuals fulfil Maslow's hierarchy of needs and satisfy their quest for identity - and children.
Brilliant. Right on. Semaan continues:
Forty years ago this wasn't so much of a problem since it was accepted that men went out and earned the money and women, for the most part, stayed home. The fact that people generally subscribed to a common view of how the world should look made things easier.Over time this has given way to the era of the individual and to more fragmented lifestyles. Yet the professional workplace is even more of a hothouse and less a place that can confirm our status as people. Something doesn't fit, at least in British society, because there are a lot of unhappy people. Not just the women who feel discriminated against, but the women who don't; the ones who feel that this middle class disease of "having it all" has sold them down the river.
At the same time, the idea that men have had it all- as Cochrane implies- is a convenient myth. Men have never had the choice of a big career or a complete family life; they still really only have career. How many men do you know get to lead fulfilling lives with their kids outside their job? What's more, all the indicators are that it's not going to get any easier for anyone as economic realities impinge even further. One City friend tells me that in the next 10 years it's going to be very hard for European bankers to compete against Indian and Chinese candidates who will be better qualified. More discrimination. Or just reality?
A bit of the hard, cold reality from the comments under her piece (from "BedfordSam"):
Someone I know runs a Veterinary Clinic employing three other vets, all women (he's male). By coincidence, two of those women took maternity leave at the same time. By law, he had to keep their jobs open for them and he then had the task of finding two people qualified to work as vets but only willing to work during the maternity period. For highly skilled jobs like this, this is nearly impossible. The business nearly went under as his workforce was cut in half, while he didn't have the right for him to permanantly fill these positions. The next time he is employing someone, is it unreasonable for him to ask whether a female interviewee plans to have children in the near future? Otherwise, he might as well unofficially just employ men to avoid having his business crippled again. This is another example where 'equality legislation' actually works AGAINST women. Employers need to know where they stand, many women would be happy to tell them straight what their plans are. However, because they're not allowed to ask the question, it is easier for some employers 'not to risk it' specifically because of this legislation.
Personally, as a woman, if I were looking for a job, I'd sure be standing up in the interview confessing that I not only don't have children, and don't want children, I refer to myself as "BARREN!" In other words, I'm going to be one of those workhorse nuts. In other words, yeah, I'm a woman, but "Hire me!"
The reality is, an employer with half a brain is going to pass over women candidates for male ones...and can you really blame them? They're running a business, not a nursery school. As Semaan points out, this is not about your needs, or your spawn's needs, but about making a profit.
Some will see it as worth their while to make room for women who have other obligations. Some will not. And remember, there are fathers who are the primary caretaker of their kids, but the bottom line is not really which sex is working less because they've got kids (at the moment, it's still women), but "Who pays"? And women in their 20's and 30's are, in general, much more of a kid-based financial risk for any business.
So...the big question: Is it really fair to force business owners to work against their company's best interest just because it's in society's best interest? Why is society's best interest the personal financial responsibility of that guy running the small veterinary clinic?
And finally, remember...an integral part of that "equal pay for equal work" slogan is actually "equal work."
I got interviewed a couple months back for a position in a company I was very interested in. They didnt hire me but said I was the second person in line for the job and if they could still keep in touch with me. A week ago I got an email and they asked me if I was still open for the position. I said yes and was interviewed again. The head guy there told me that the last person they hired was a single mom and they hadnt gotten a whole weeks work out of her since they hired her. They asked me indirectly about my status, but I made it very clear that I had no children and my biggest responsibility at the moment is a 12 year cat. I saw the calendar of the woman who previously held my job and it was riddled with appointments for her son. It is male dominated but all the women at my company are over 50 (no women my age). What does that say about things?
PurplePen at April 27, 2008 2:06 AM
It says an embittering, cowardly, narcissistic version of "feminism" is causing traditional masculine responsibilities to be fulfilled by other parties in society, e.g., hapless employers, customers and taxpayers.
Just thinking out loud here... I mean, we don't know that your predecessor was a single Mom. Anyone care to wager, though?
Crid at April 27, 2008 2:44 AM
When I got pregnant with my son last year, I was librarian at an elementary school. Within a few weeks I was told I had a high risk pregnancy, and knew I'd have 2-3 appointments a week by the time I was four months along. Because of the lack of available* neonatologists and perinatologists in my area, my appointments were to be a 4 hour round trip. I decided to quit. With notice, of course.
The school district was actually great about it, pointing out that if I got a Dr's note I could go out on disability, they'd work with what hours I could be there, etc. I didn't feel this was fair to them, however, especially since I wasn't sure I would want to continue working after my child was born, or if I'd want to take a couple of years off.
It was my decision to have a child, so I considered it my responsibility to do the right thing by my job once I knew I wouldn't be able to make half my shifts. Why should they have to bend around me?
It worked out for the school, as my coworker was thrilled to have my hours so she could quit her low-paying second job and simply work all day at the library. Which is good, because a week after I gave my notice, two weeks before my end date, I ended up on bed rest.
If more women took some responsibility for their pregnancies/families, fewer companies would feel the need to sneak in questions about children, or to hire only men or older women for available positions.
*Said specialists being unavailable due to the number of illegal immigrants who got first dibs on them in my area. I was informed of this by a nurse at local hospital and a scheduler at the far away hospital I had to go to the first seven months. That belongs on another thread, I suppose.
Kimberly at April 27, 2008 4:22 AM
One note: I BELIEVE that the U.S. Family & Medical Leave Act does not apply to employers with fewer than 50 employees. Not that these employers don't sometimes grant maternity leaves/hold open jobs, but they are not forced to do so by law. If someone with an actual knowledge of the law wants to comment here, please do.
On a larger note, while I certainly think that feminism plays a significant role in all this, I think there's also another factor - the constant lessening of the idea that one owes anything to one's employer. I understand employers wanting to avoid hiring women who will get knocked up and quit within a year. I'd argue they have the right to do so. But the single, bright-eyed 25-year-old guy they hire in her place may well be applying to business schools and planning to leave after six months if he gets in - I've known quite a few stories like that. Or he may be intending to use the job as a stepping stone to something better. Or...you get the idea. Employers have certainly played their role in this, and the nature of the ever-shifting modern economy has too, but the fact is that a large percentage of the workforce - male and female - sees themselves as only needing to look out for their own interests where their employers are involved. I will certainly grant the nature of maternity leave makes things much more difficult where pregnant women are involved, and I think that women who deliberatly take maternity leave and any attendant benefits knowing they're going to say at the end, "Sorry, I'm not coming back," are cheating their companies. But they're not the *only* ones out there who are.
I suppose I'm biased, because I've had several female friends who went back to work after having kids and *prioritized* going back to work and being just as good of an employee. When you're working in an office with employees who take lots of 15-minute coffee breaks while you work the day through and leave an hour early *having done more than they have in terms of workload*, and all that's focused on is you leaving an hour before they did (with managerial permission), I can see why people would start thinking, "Screw it, do I really need this tsuris?" (Note: It's not just parents who do this.)
marion at April 27, 2008 7:44 AM
the constant lessening of the idea that one owes anything to one's employer.
Well, the party that trashed that idea were the employers who decided in the 80s and 90s and 00s to just fire everyone and outsource, regardless of what that did to lives and communities.
In one famous case, IBM, who at the time was making lots of and lots of profit, decided to outsource to make EVEN more profit.
The legal setup of corporations says the ONLY people that the corporation owes anything to is the stockholders. Not their employees, not the communities that gave the company tax deals to locate their, or uses taxes to pay for roads and other improvements, or build schools, etc. for the company's employees.
Anyway, I've mentioned this before here, that women interested in working after they've had a kid, should look to very large office environments. Those companies by now have been lawyerized to the extent they can't/won't discriminate against women with kids, and they are big enough and profitable enough to be able to be family friendly in general, and have the resources to replace you temporarily when you have a kid.
And definitely get a degree and a job in engineering or software. Engineers love women co-workers we really do. And large engineering companies these days are very family friendly and often involve little travel.
To risk annoying Amy and everyone commenting here so far even further, as a father who loves to be with my kids, I am actually grateful to feminism AND to unions for bringing me: 40 hour work weeks, paid vacations, paid sick time, excellent health benefits (though I definitely think that employers should not pay for health benefits, but that's because I am pro-single payer in large part to help our companies compete.) When feminism was making companies hire equally, and getting rid of the worse sexual harassment, and trying to make companies more family friendly, that was good and before it jumped the shark.
And unions too. Unions are why the company I work for with over 100,000 employees have excellent benefits for us professional, non-unionized workers. We benefit whenever our machinists and others go on strike. And let me tell you, us salaried, exempt professionals think we are so much smarter than the high school graduates on the assembly line, but they are the ones that get paid for each and every hour while we get no overtime, they are the ones that leave work and have 16 hours of free time while we work 60 hour weeks and take laptops home.
In general, if you want to take part in your family, you can't expect to be the fast climber at work. Big engineering companies love women engineers and are usually family friendly (And engineering companies are of course about the only actual productive segment of society) Unions and old time feminism are responsible for taking us out of Dickens. And it was employers trashed employee loyalty, and they didn't do it it survive, they didn't do it at a time of weakness, they did it to make even more money for the CEO. Most employees would love to work for the same company for 20 years or more.
jerry at April 27, 2008 8:27 AM
Many people think that women must be shielded from opportunity costs, but such protection is unnecessary, impossible and undesirable. Opportunity costs are the values of the courses of action you forgo to follow another. For example, if you decide to see a movie, you cannot at the same time be present in a live theater down the road. The theater is an opportunity cost.
It's a simple fact, when you are caring for a child you are necessarily not attending to commercial work. Much of modern feminism argues that the government (meaning everyone else who doesn't have children) should compensate women for opportunities lost due to child care. This is a consistent theme in defenses of alimony, defenses of asset allocations in divorce, and yes, even in charges of discrimination in the workplace. One even encounters justifications of lesser productivity from men who have children.
What's really happening is that people who value family life over a career want the benefits of commercial life without the costs. In other words, it's just the plain old desire for unearned rewards. Some of us call it theft.
Opportunity costs cannot be eliminated, anyway. They are merely shifted onto another party. This is undesirable, because it alters the true costs of a good, in this case labor. By distorting costs, the market incentives themselves become distorted. The more productive come to bear the costs for the less productive, until they quit. What's left is less and less productivity chasing less and less profit. Charges of discrimination inevitably follow.
Jeff at April 27, 2008 11:21 AM
What's really happening is that people who value family life over a career want the benefits of commercial life without the costs. In other words, it's just the plain old desire for unearned rewards.
Exactly.
Amy Alkon at April 27, 2008 11:34 AM
This leads us right back to a question, that is often avoided...
can you treat men and women equally when we are physically different? This isn't a small question, nor trivial. As a function of society, men and women don't really look at work/career the same way. When I got out of college, I expected to work 60+ years, or until I croaked. I did look with some curiosity at staying home with children, but there was no family or spouse support for that, so? :shrug:
My ex, and many women, on the other claw, have this thing that they do. They Physically produce children. It is time consuming, it is materiel consuming, and without it, the human race goes extinct. It is also inherently UNEQUAL. Instead of trying to treat it as such, we seem to have been long trying to find something equivalent, some way to act like it isn't unequal.
IMHO that IS the problem. We look at the genders in relation to each other, rather than internal to themselves. That is why you can't ask the questions, because it becomes discriminatory, to look at gender. The remdies that have been done legally to fix NEGATIVE discrimination, have been so broad ranging that they have foreclosed discussions that look at other gender issues.
Like the discussion over what's the downside to stopping your career to have kids. We simply tell girls they can have it all, when they can't. Instead of telling them there are tradeoffs to be weighed, and a decision to be made. I've had the conversation wherein I was told "but guys don't HAVE to make that decision." to which I said: 'which also means we don't have the option.' I doubt the person who I was talking to had EVER thought of it that way.
All that said the discussion for opportunity costs seems moot to me. As a species it is required of us that we procreate, therefore it trumps anything in commercial life de facto. If you think it doesn't look at the countries in the world whose growth is negative. In Japan they don't have a clue who is going to pay for the old age of their society, because they aren't reproducing, and they are also loth to allow immigration. On an individual level they have made that commercial work/life decision. For an individual it works, but over time, it is a losing bet for a society...
Which means the old world will eventually die off, to be consumed by the developing world, and the discussion will happen again and again. I don't think we are asking the right questions about gender... but that's just my opinion.
SwissArmyD at April 27, 2008 6:57 PM
I have a couple of friends, married who are getting up there in years. She is about 47,(don't know for sure) he is about 55. I just heard yesterday that they had a baby. Evidently they have been trying to have a baby for several years now, (sometimes we just don't know when to take mother natures hints.) I can't imagine what it's like changing diapers when your 55. What in the hell were they thinking? I'll tell you because I have ask them. She wanted to have her career after college and decided that having children would just have to wait until she was ready to have them. So her parents are well off, they keep her in college long enought to get her a PHD in basket weaving. She is currently teaching at a small college. Now, the only reason she waited until now to have a baby is, (I'm assuming here), because she wanted to be in a position where she could shirk work for several months and still get paid before having a kid. It just so happened that by the time she decided that she had had enough of her life for herself before she sacrificed anything for her kid, she waited until she and her pretty damned old husband are not going to be in any position to be energetic, enthusiastic parents. How much tossing around the baseball do you think a ten year old boy is going to get with a SIXTY-FIVE year old father? I know this guy very well, he is not the kind of person who warms up to kids. He doesn't really warm up to anyone, and he's not in the best of health. These two had a kid so they could parade it around in front of their kids like a pedigree shitzu. They are all about appearences. As a matter of fact, most of their friends refer to them as the **** and **** show. I pity that kid.
On a somewhat off topic note: Congratulations to Ashley Force, the first woman to win an NHRA Drag racing title today in the Southern Nationals and the first woman to lead in the Funny Car points standings. And the guy who she beat who was looking for his milestone 1000th win....her daddy, John Force! Touching moment, I shed a tear. By the way, if she gets pregnant, she just doesn't race and doesn't get paid.
Women are getting close to achieving parity in auto racing!
Bikerken at April 27, 2008 8:47 PM
Anyway, I've mentioned this before here, that women interested in working after they've had a kid, should look to very large office environments. Those companies by now have been lawyerized to the extent they can't/won't discriminate against women with kids, and they are big enough and profitable enough to be able to be family friendly in general, and have the resources to replace you temporarily when you have a kid.
Yup. At large, fluid companies, maternity leave can be a great way to "test out" up-and-comers in a given role. If they work out, great! They get transferred to a similar role OR they get to keep the new role while a similar role is assigned to the returning parent. If not, well, back comes the new mom from maternity leave to take over the role.
I think my opinion on the matter is heavily influenced by the fact that the bulk of my work experience was spent at a very large multinational at which many people didn't stay in a given role for years and years AND in which there were a lot of "equivalent" jobs in terms of pay, prestige, and responsibility at any given level. Someone's going out on maternity leave? Okay, here's someone else who's ready to move up. We'll test him/her out. If it works, we can transfer him/her to an equivalent role OR he/she can stay in the new role and the returning mom can get a similar job (allowable under FMLA). And most women *did* return from maternity leave, which didn't last years and years as it does in Europe/Canada, but also wasn't as short as 4-6 weeks, either. The benefits at that place were *great* - so few women were going to be in a situation where they were paying out more in child care costs than they were getting back, financially, by working - and maternity leave was long enough that people didn't feel they were abandoning helpless blobs. Now, obviously this wouldn't work with a smaller employer, which is why I'm glad FMLA doesn't apply to people such as Amy! But big employers *need* some fluidity lest they stagnate, have people ready to move on from one role to another at any given time, and need to retain people they've trained in order to make intensive training cost-effective.
What's really happening is that people who value family life over a career want the benefits of commercial life without the costs.
Here's the thing: I agree with you and with Amy that people who are willing and able to devote themselves 24/7 to their jobs should be rewarded for doing so. If you choose a 9-5 schedule and your coworker chooses an 8-8 schedule, I'd argue that, barring some truly superior and distinctive ability on your part, your coworker should move up faster through the ranks that you should. On the other hand...not everyone can be CEO or CFO. *Most* people, in fact, cannot, at least not at a large company. Trying to maintain a workforce of tens or hundreds of thousands of people who will all be devastated if they don't reach the top would be impossible. Workplaces over a certain size need some layers of people who work hard and well but who don't want to be CEO. Those people will probably end up working fewer hours than those who do. As long as they do what their position requires, they're an asset to the system, not a liability. If they're always fobbing work off on coworkers to leave early to attend their kids' soccer games and get unhappy when they don't get promoted, that's another matter.
I don't think we are asking the right questions about gender
That's kinda where I come down on the issue too...
marion at April 27, 2008 8:51 PM
FWI. I read a study once, it was very long and very confusing and was definitely intended for someone with an actual background in economics (not me), but the long and short of it was that they crunched the numbers and even when allowing for the non-productive time of maternity leave and all that business women still get paid significantly less than men in the same job etc. I don't have a point to that.
As far as requiring individual business owners to bear the responsibilities for society's values, yes it sucked for that particular vet office and other businesses that small, but who exactly makes up society then and IS responsible for carrying out whatever supports its values?
That said, I totally agree with that cost-opportunity thing that was said. Although not having any children myself I think it would be nice if i got 4-6 weeks paid vacation....in addition to my PTO.....it would not, of course, be fair, but it would be nice....sort of how being allowed 47 smoke breaks during my shift would be nice, even though I don't smoke.....
kt at April 27, 2008 10:24 PM
women interested in working after they've had a kid, should look to very large office environments
For what it's worth, my wife runs a small company that offers mainly part-time positions. She has found that some of the best employees are women whose children are entering school age. They are eager to get back into the work-force, but their family obligations prevent them from doing to full-time. By offering them the flexibility to work around their kids schedules, she wins lots of employee loyalty.
The anecdote above, about not getting a full week's work out of a mother of small kids: that's exactly right. But a part-time job works out well, as long as the mom is realisitic about how many hours she actually has available for the job.
bradley13 at April 28, 2008 3:50 AM
Re studies that women earn less - take these with a large grain of salt. The most honest of these studies admit that women are concentrated in different fields than men, that women's careers suffer if they give their priorities to their families, etc, etc.
Find a study that compares apples to apples: career-oriented, childless women and men in the same career field. I have only ever seen one such - I believe it was for engineering - and they authors concluded that any difference in income was vanishingly small.
As soon as they added women back in who took a few years out for child-raising, the difference reappeared. What a non-surprise.
bradley13 at April 28, 2008 3:57 AM
If you are going to be a reasonably decent parent, you will likely not also be the corporate go-getter who works too much, schemes too often, and throws others under the bus as necessary. You just won't have the time, interest or energy for all that. (Sorry, you really cannot have it all...)
I often wonder, though, why parents are thought to be economically shirking in some way relative to childless coworkers. After all, parents are raising children at enormous personal financial cost, both in direct outlays and opportunity costs. The rest of society, including childless coworkers, obtain the benefit of that expenditure by parents in the form of higher tax revenues (kids usually grow up to be productive citizens). In light of mandatory government retirement programs and the whole hire-nurses-to-wipe-your-bedridden-behind-as-you-lay-dying, the parents are providing the future wage earners and service providers who will eventually care for the childless workers in their dotage.
Truth be told, maybe we should consider the stiving, childess corporate drones the economic shirkers.
Spartee at April 28, 2008 5:12 AM
As a striving, childless corporate drone, I think it is ridiculous to label me as an "economic shirker" just because I'm not having a kid. If I had six kids and was on welfare, perhaps; but businesses are not charities and are not policy arms of the government - they are profit-making enterprises. They don't "owe" society anything re: ensuring survival of the species. And companies already discriminate against childless singles via benefits packages - my salary is lower so that the company can subsidize the health care for YOUR kids. My taxes are higher so I can pay for the education of YOUR kids. My car insurance is higher because your stupid teenaged boys are out there killing themselves. And so on; it works both ways.
I make sure to mention my childlessness in job interviews, though in a tastefull and subtle way. I make sure the issue of business travel comes up, and I reassure the company that I am free and willing to travel, always adding, "Since I'm not married or tied down with kids, I'm always able to pick up and go on short notice." This allows me to inform them that I am there & willing to work and answerable only to myself and my corporate masters. The slight negative "tied down" is as far as I'm willing to go, in that situation, to convey my desire not to have children, but it's enough that someone ought to be able to pick up on it. I'm careful not to deploy that if I'm interviewing with a woman, though, because I had a friend who mentioned something similar to a female interviewer and got a righteous feminist lecture about selling out and undermining her "sisters" by underhanded means instead of continuing to suffer jobless while men got hired for every position she was interested in. Whoops.
Jennifer at April 28, 2008 8:32 AM
"They don't "owe" society anything re: ensuring survival of the species."
...maybe the survival of the human race is only important to some people. I'll concede to that point.
But who the hell do you think is going to pay for roads, police, fire/rescue, your medical care, SS (this one is iffy, painfully enough), keep our grossly inflated government afloat to help pay off enormous debts from this "war" when you retire?
Sure, you might have retirement accounts but a lifetime of working to pay taxes just isn't enough b/c people can live another 15-25 years. It also isn't going to pay for your end of life needs. Guaranteed. Having kids ensures that there is a workforce so YOU can relax after helping subsidize those reckless drivers and kids' health care. Having kids isn't for everyone, but for fuckksakes, I'm glad SOME people are glad to do it! And not because I have some idealistic fantasy about the importance of procreating for the human race; it's pure economics.
Btw: kids are by far the cheapest to insure. A person's medical expenses are the highest during the last year of life. So, instead of complaining about funding someone else's kids, complain about keeping our elderly grandparents/parents/aunts/uncles whomever alive...or your coworker him/herself. Meet Bob: age 50, over in finance. He is far more likely to drive up insurance costs than Suzie Q.'s 7 year old.
X-ray and cast (or amoxacillin for an ear ache, etc.) vs. bypass surgery or insurance funded IVF (
"my salary is lower so that the company can subsidize the health care for YOUR kids." -> it just isn't a fraction of what you portray.
"My taxes are higher so I can pay for the education of YOUR kids."
Again - who is going to keep the country moving along when you're 80 and shitting in a bedpan? I'm 23, work out 3-5 times a week, watch what I eat, don't carry extra weight, get regular check ups...but I can't predict what my body will be like in 60 years. Nor can you. When shit hits the fan those money-grubbing young'uns who suck up your tax dollars NOW to attend one of America's finest sub-par schools will hopefully be intelligent enough to, at the very least, flip burgers and pay a little into the system LATER.
In the end even Nozik, libertarian to the Nth degree, admitted (during his later years) that some taxation for certain public services were necessary and "A GOOD THING," to steal Martha's phrase. I hate taxes and hate paying for moochers but you just can't bitch about public education...it helps YOU.
Did your parents send you to private school? How good for them and you...
Gretchen at April 28, 2008 9:43 AM
Up here in my neck of the woods, we can't find enough skilled workers to fill the jobs. As such, companies seem to be going above and beyond what's required by the letter of the law to hire & retain quality employees.
Why do some companies compete to be in the top 100 employers, etc. if there is no economic value in being there? One of the categories that is always measured is that work/life balance thing.
As someone pointed out earlier, we have a whole generation who saw their hard-working, dedicated & loyal parents laid off in the 80's. It's not just women having kids that can leave a hole in your work force.
It should be fair game to ask anyone how big & long of a commitment they are willing to make to a company. I also don't believe anyone who wants to pursue things outside of work should expect to climb the ladder or earn the big bucks anytime soon. However, companies must be seeing value in hiring people like this or they wouldn't be offering extra programs to accommodate them.
Company's are there to make money, not for the benefit of society...why do we impose environmental laws on them which clearly decrease their profit?
moreta at April 28, 2008 10:19 AM
I agree that discrimination in the workplace is not good however anyone can see that keeping a job open for an individual who isn't really "doing" the job due to constant absence or distraction is not really fair either. I feel it really comes down to keeping the family unit in tact, and NOT LIVING BEYOND OUR MEANS requiring a second income when it's really not a practical reality. Had I to do it over I would have waited on our second child until the first was in Kindergarten so that the cost of childcare (we are a two income family) was not so difficult. These are the choice we made though so we are making it work. Ideal, no possible? So far. Difficult? YOU BET.
VA bail bondsman at August 1, 2011 11:14 PM
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