When Ross Perot was running EDS, he only wanted to hire married employees with children, figuring they would be more loyal because of their increased responsibilities at home, in other words, they couldn’t afford to be out of job.
The “child free and proud” losers are free to work elsewhere.
Consider two employees in a department at a large corporation. One is a single mother raising two children. The other is a single male or female, same age, no children.
The single mother has her children in daycare. She walks in the door at the office at 9:00 am and leaves at exactly five in order to take care of her children. When there is a critical issue in the office late in the day (key customer needs immediate attention for example), the assignment is always given to the employee without children who usually works late into the evening, cancelling any personal plans, to resolve the issue.
The single mother will not travel overnight. Periodically it is necessary for an employee in the department to travel for 2-3 days to visit factories or customers. The single employee always gets the assignment in order to accommodate the constraints of the single mother.
Both employees do excellent work and are ambitious. The single childless employee produces more because he/she is able to work more hours. Both employees receive excellent performance appraisals.
A promotional opportunity occurs at the company, for which both are fully qualified. The childless employee feels he/she deserves the promotion more because he/she has contributed more to the success of the organization. The single mother understands the company accommodates her schedule, but feels she deserves the promotion because her performance has been excellent and the company’s HR policies champion diversity. HR is recommending the job be given to the single mother and the VP of HR has brought this particular situation to the attention of the CEO.
You are the director to whom the newly promoted manager will report. You are also ambitious. The position requires about 25% travel. The HR VP has advised you if the single mother is hired, someone else in the department will have to take on the travel in order to accommodate her special needs. Likely you personally will be that person. You know if you promote the single mother your superiors will smile upon you. You also know though that your superiors will accept no decrease in performance from your department due to the work restrictions of the single mother. If productivity in the department drops, or there is a significant customer problem because the promoted manager cannot be on site at the customer, you will be held responsible.
Who do you promote? Is your answer the same if the single mother is a person of color and the single employee is white (male or female)?
This happens every day in large corporations.
Throughout my career this always has been the case - childless employees getting fewer accommodations than parents.
I was more than OK with it, because overall their lives were much more complicated and chaotic. What I wasn’t OK with was parents lying to get special treatment by using their kids as excuses. That really pissed me off, especially when I was taking up their slack.
If you have kids you get allowances made for you. And it often is at the expense of the currently childless.
As an childless single employee I was often given work that employees who were parents "could not get to" because little Johnny or Jane had a ball game or a half dozen other things that needed taken care of. I was willing to pick up their slack but I wanted to be compensated for it.
The chance of that happening varied from company to company.
Some were willing to do so, like one company that if you worked a holiday you got a day off of your choice at some other time of the year. Others seemed astonished that you should think you should get anything extra. They were a "family friendly" (and single hostile) company.
You do not have to treat all employees alike but you do have to make some sort of attempt to treat them equally.
The NAMES of the WRITERS are WEIRD to say the least....BOYS or GIRLS??
I've also worked with many single mothers who were looking for a "safe" coworker to screw around with and it usually created a very hostile workplace between the women. Any such male coworker was also a prime candidate for false claims of sexual harassment.
I've seen company divisions transform into an "office of unwed mothers" and chase men and productive women away as it's tough enough for an office to carry one or two employees who arrive late, leave early, call out because of the kids, bring the kids in to the office, and never travel. In addition every little look, comment, or incident got blown way out of proportion and NO ONE in the company will ever call them out for their unprofessional behavior. I've watched a such few divisions even go completely under as productivity dropped to the point that corporate found it easier to realign the work internally, move the work to another location, or outsource the work completely.