how to hack off two major interest groups

If there’s one thing that the Brits like, it’s animals. Especially cute fluffy animals, but all animals really. They take animal cruelty seriously. In fact, only recently, tough new laws on animal care have come into force. And since the rather heavy handed Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) will be the ones knocking down my door if its revealed that I don’t take good enough care of my cats, this actually strikes a little fear in my heart. It’s not enough just not to beat the critters, you’ve got to provide a good standard of care now if you take on animal ownership.

There’s another charity, too. Not nearly as popular, but still well known – the NSPCC – the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. They can’t take your kids away, fine you or put you in jail (like the RSPCA) but they can rat on you to social services, who can. The NSPCC is famous for adds that tug at the old heart strings – like a sad-eyed, quiet toddler and a voice-over “Mikey is quiet because he’s learned that nobody comes when he cries.” (Hmm – is there a book with tips?) Or ads that try to encourage parents to stop and think about their behaviour before it becomes abuse. Although, one of their campaigns last summer featured a 10 year old boy, repeatedly kicking a ball against a holiday caravan (vacation trailer home – yeah, I know, Brits like the strangest things) and the mum, who is washing up inside while dad reads the paper – and then finally she goes out there and yells at kid. Oh no!!! She yells at him. But she looks lower class and her voice is shrill and quite angry, so it must be verbal abuse. (If you ask me, the little blighter had it coming.)

Anyway, with this photo (an update to this post about baby sweaters) I’m courting disapproval from both lobbies.

Other Cat has learned that nobody comes when she meows.

And yes, I will put that sweater on baby Cletus.

Family focused policy

Over at the Tennessee Guerilla Women, there’s a call for minimum paid maternity leave in the US. The crapness of maternity benefits in the US reminds me in many ways why I’m lucky to be having my baby here.

Everyone in the UK who’s been employed for a minimum length of time (and I think it’s basically so you weren’t pregnant when you were hired) gets 6 weeks paid leave at 90% of their salary plus and additional 34 weeks (it’s around that) at £108 a week (that’s about $200).

I get more because my employer offers more – and I’ve been working for them for quite some time. They aren’t the most generous and they aren’t the most stingy. They are a bit lazy – and haven’t come out with a new policy since the law changed – but they tell me that the proposed policy will be that I receive my statutory 90% for the first six weeks and then I’ll get the 34 weeks at half my salary plus that £108 a week. So essentially I’ll get 9 months with not bad pay considering I’ll not be doing any work for them. I can take an additional 3 months off with no pay, but they have to hold my job for me – and then I can take my remaining vacation days – which will accrue as normal while I’m off, and well, I get a fair bit of leave. Twenty-eight days in fact.

I can also take parental leave of a fairly generous amount of time up until my kid is 5. You don’t get paid though – so I haven’t looked into it. But basically you can use that time if your kid gets critically ill and your job is protected – in some ways it’s probably not much different from the Family Medical Leave Act.

They also have to at least consider my request for part time work after I go back to work – and any refusal must be in writing and needs to be based on a solid business case. My husband has the same rights. My employers are pretty flexible, so I’m sure I won’t have any trouble going to part time – or even working 5 days over 4 – which isn’t impossible on my short contractual working week. (Although as a professional I usually work quite a bit more than my mandated 35 hours a week – but if you’re an American reader – I’d bet good money I don’t work as much as you do.) I will be urging the Vol-in-Law to do the 5 days over 4 thing though since he’s an academic- this would mean he’d be guaranteed to have a lecture free/ meeting free day and that would be one less day we’d have to pay exhorbitant London day care costs.

Demographic decline

The UK has one of the less generous maternity laws in Europe. Places with declining population (or fear of a declining white population – like France) tend to have better maternity coverage. It’s not a chicken and egg thing – policy makers are trying to convince women like me (reasonably well paid, well-educated) to breed by paying us off. The policy doesn’t actually work. A big deterrent for us breeding was making sure that we could keep our house after the maternity leave was over and we had to pay for child care. Child care in the US – my sense is – is more accessible and cheaper than it is in the UK. We also had to clear the regressive taxation in the lower reaches of tax scale. For the aspirant middle classes, breeding young is very expensive indeed.

The US is one of the few advanced countries that are still breeding at at least replacement rate. And I suspect that there will be little pressure on policy makers to improve maternity pay and leave until there is. This despite the struggle emotional and financial of young mothers who have to go back to work all too soon.

Little tot chic

VolMom says she might have to join grandmother’s shoppers anonymous. Apparently, she has been hitting the sales racks looking for clothes for Baby Cletus. She assures me that she hasn’t spent a lot of money. Good. Today’s Tennessean features a letter to the editor on expensive baby fashion:

Chic wasted on tots

To the Editor:
Do babies and toddlers actually care what their clothes look like? I was shocked to read that mothers actually spend $100 on their toddler’s jeans and $28 on a T-shirt!Such young children do not care what they look like or if they are wearing the new “in” style look this season. Not only that, but children grow so fast, they would not even get good wear out of their costly clothing.

Also, why would one risk the chance of having their child’s costly attire ruined by allowing him or her to play outside or eat food that has any chance of ending up on his or her outfit? I say stick with hand-me-downs and consignment sales and find a better use for the extra money. Maybe a college fund?

Lisa Elder

Unlike Ms Elder – I exhort the mothers of Tennessee to spend reckless amounts of money on baby fashion. The grandmother-to-be has been hitting the consignment shops and has found some good deals, but unless you Tennessee parents buy (and then re-sell) your expensive baby-gear there will be nothing left to buy. Could I request though that you avoid items with excessive designer branding (a personal dislike of mine) and perhaps get (and pass on) some more orange items?

Gay adoption

The UK is bringing in anti-discrimination legislation – which basically means that you can’t treat gay people any differently than straight people. On the face of it, that sounds ok to me. I certainly don’t want the government that I support through my taxes to discriminate against anyone.

Oh wait, the law applies to everyone… private businesses, individuals, churches, synagogues and mosques. And we know how much churches, synagogues and mosques want to hire or serve gay folks (as a general rule).

One of the examples raised by Christian evangelicals of how damaging this would be is the Christian couple forced to lodge a gay couple in their Bed and Breakfast (which are run out of private homes). Now, I do have sympathy with the idea that you should be able to choose who comes into your home, but you’ve made it a place of business… Personally, I would be devastated if any gay friend of mine and his/her partner were turned away from a B&B, say after having made a reservation, just for being gay. I would be horrified and disgusted and hurt on their behalf.

Another area of the law is gay adoption. Christian and Jewish adoption agencies will no longer be able to turn gay couples away from applying through their agencies (in the past when this happened, gay couples were referred on to agencies who would place children with gay couples). This is causing a furore – or as described in the UK press – a gay adoption row.

I’m not sure how I feel exactly about gay adoption. Personally, I don’t think that anyone has a right to adopt a child. I don’t think any adult has this right, because adoption ought to be about the best interests of the child. But I don’t think that gay couples should be forbidden from doing so just because they are gay. However, with two equally suitable couples – I would tend to prefer the married heterosexual couple to the married homosexual couple (technically civil partnerships in the UK) – just because I think it would make for an easier life. But I would also tend to prefer the married homosexual couple to the unmarried heterosexual couple – all else being equal. (I simply cannot understand why a couple seeking to adopt would not get married to demonstrate the stability of their relationship. And since they apparently can’t be bothered to do that, I’d worry about what else they might not be bothered about.)

The Catholic adoption agencies are asking for an exemption to the law. I have mixed feelings about this. If you can’t discriminate between people in terms of adoption – I don’t know when you can. For example, it’s still widely accepted in this country that black children are better off with black families. And a Catholic adoption agency – to my mind – ought to be seeking to place children with Catholic families who seek to follow the precepts of the Catholic church. So does that mean that they should discriminate against me and the Vol-in-Law, say – a couple of deeply lapsed Protestants? Yes. Yes, they should. It seems to me that a Catholic adoption agency should always prefer a Catholic couple to us – if we seem equally suitable. And let’s face it – there are far more couples seeking to adopt healthy young kids than there are healthy young children to adopt. They will always be able to turn up a Catholic couple who are at least as suitable as raising children as we are.

And if a Catholic adoption agency should be able to turn us away – a stable, well-educated, married heterosexual couple – then they ought to be able to turn away gay couples who by living together in a homosexual relationships are clearly violating the precepts of the Catholic church.

On the other hand, it sounds like these religious adoption agencies are not functioning as separate bodies, but as an extension of the state. The Catholic church merely provides an administrative function of Government. There are many such arrangements between the faith and voluntary sectors in the UK. This makes their position demanding an exemption weak – very weak. The Catholic church is now threatening to remove themselves from the adoption agency market. Perhaps that’s the best solution, if they can’t operate as a private adoption agency seeking to be an agency where Catholic birth mothers can place children with the assurance that they will end up with Catholic families.

Stunted

The parents of a severely disabled girl have had her undergo treatment so that she will never grow up. She won’t be tall or get too heavy to carry or place in a wheel chair. She won’t develop breasts, have periods or ever get pregnant.

Having received some harsh criticism on discussion forums, they decided to write about their decision. On a My Space blog.

I can’t even imagine their situation enough to judge them. But I just think it’s interesting that they were prompted to go public by a discussion forum and chose to tell their story via a blog.

Expert me

I don’t normally blog about work matters, but a recent experience I felt was rather blogworthy.

I sat in on an expert group. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, Ive served on or convened several steering groups. But usually I know a little something about the topic at hand. Recently though, I was in a group of eminent parenting experts. Academics, leaders in the voluntary sector, think tank gurus, high-up muckety-muck civil servants and me. And we were all gathered round the table to talk about the design of effective parenting interventions.

HA! I don’t know nothin’ about raisin’ no babies.

Fair enough, I was there as a last minute substitute and it was important that someone from my organisation was there to oversee proceedings.

I deal in BS – it’s part of my trade. Plus – I love expounding, so while for the most part I just listened to the “real” parenting experts* – when it came my turn to recommend policy prescriptions for better parenting initiatives I had a few things to say about interventions for oiks (Britspeak for the lower orders):

Are there no workhouses? Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Down the mines and up the chimneys for the ugly kids – cute ones can become child actors or match sellers – that should reduce the level of crime on the streets.

And as for the parents, I blame them. Control those children – it’s not as if you’re doing anything like work. Take a momentary break from daytime tv to get those kids signed up with a work gang master. We’ll all be better off without your urchin roaming the streets unsupervised and playing by the light of a roaring car fire – and you’ll have more money for Silk Cuts and chips.

(Actually, I think I said something about communication styles and community based skills enhancement.)

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*Apparently, the real parenting exerts have moved away from child-centred approaches and self-actualisation (I.e. Let the little tykes run amok) and are now favouring something called Webster Stratton – one of the academics saw my confusion – and said aka Super Nanny. Hey, I love to watch Super Nanny – so let me get behind that public policy.
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