Treat everyone equally

Diversity appreciation, engagement and inclusion, as well as granting equal employment opportunities that almost all companies claim to promote nowadays are not only about accepting everybody’s right to their religious beliefs, political views, cultural traditions and sexual preferences, but it’s also about respecting one’s personal life choices and circumstances, including those related to procreating, and consequently – one’s social status as a parent or a non-parent. A non-parent of both categories: no kids by choice (“childfree”) and no kinds not by choice but by circumstance (“childless”). 

We often speak about maternity in the workplace and the discriminational attitude (so called “motherhood penalty”) that pregnant women and mothers can experience at work. At the same time we almost never speak about the situation childless colleagues might find themselves in, nor we even consider their state of mind and a myriad of issues – personal and social – that they combat with due to their voluntary or involuntary childlessness. 

Here are just more general and evident ones: 

• Discrimination at hiring (anticipating pregnancy). 
• Overloading with work, extra hours, less flexibility towards their schedules. 
• Negative stereotyping.

There is definitely a discrepancy in the support that people get to have good work-life balance, depending on whether they have children or not, regardless of whether they are male or female. It’s rare that childless workers are thought to have a meaningful life outside work. There are professions that more than any other experience childless people discrimination. For instance, there’s a prejudice that those in childcare industry should have kids to be considered capable, and eventually, be trusted.

It’s crucial for any business to realise that a valuable employee is someone who has a high quality of life as a whole, so, there’s definitely a need that companies adopt a wider perspective to their family related policies, and promote the corporate culture where all employees are treated equally.