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Policies have to make time for families with children
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ALTHOUGH my son, 13, can now go to school all by himself, I am fully sympathetic to Mr Chen Weixian’s situation.
In fact, managing my son’s school schedule has never been much of a problem, because we could always depend on the unconditional support of my in-laws. When things got tough, they would always rush to our rescue at short notice. They are still in thrall to the traditional notion that taking care of their grandchildren is entirely their responsibility.
Now that my son is no longer in need of quite so much attention, they have switched their focus to my brother-in-law’s daughter, now a second-grader. And since last year, they also began to devote considerable attention to my wife’s grandmother, an octogenarian as well as a partial invalid.
One of my colleagues once remarked that my mother-in-law was the youngest grandma she had ever seen. That was 13 years ago. During the recent Spring Festival though I noticed how much of her hair had turned gray.
A lot of working parents in China do not complain about having to juggle their work and family largely because, like me, they enjoy such “external” support. But Chen’s observations accentuate the contribution of senior citizens to our society. In many cases, they are much more than just pensioners, retirees or square-dancers.
Of course, escorting children to and from schools is only a small part of parenting (or grandparenting).
Over the past week, for instance, a frequent topic among my colleagues has been the alleged toxicity of plastic textbook wrappers. Despite misgivings about using them, my wife and I spent Tuesday night applying these wrappers once again — for my son.
Occasionally my son will have homework assignments that are ostensibly for him, but clearly impossible without help from parents.
Over the weekend my wife had to rush to a supermarket for some yuanxiao (dumplings) so that my son could pose with the products purportedly of his own making, have a photograph taken, and then printed at a photo shop.
Clearly, we need to acknowledge the contribution by parents and willing grandparents, if only for economic reasons. It would be hard for parents to be fully focused on their jobs if they are distracted by concerns over whether their child can be picked up on time.
Would it be possible to give parents more flexibility in their hours?
It is reported that the US is the only developed nation that doesn’t provide any paid time off for workers with a new baby or a seriously ill family member. The New York State Assembly recently passed a paid family leave bill (mentioned in a Shanghai Daily commentary on December 31) that would provide workers up to 12 weeks of paid leave for those taking care of a newborn or a sick relative. The writer of the article claims that “by letting an employee take care of a new child or ill family member without risking their wages or job, it lets employees remain focused and productive instead of constantly worrying about their families.”
Policy changes in China allowing all parents to have a second child suggests our policymakers no longer write off additional children as net liabilities. But parents definitely need more flexible working hours if they have to take care of a second child. When work and family life are in disharmony, workers will naturally become distracted.
It was recently reported that a new policy would allow Shanghai’s new fathers to get an extra week’s paid paternity leave starting next month.
This is an espousal of the traditional view that family encapsulates a set of strong and empowering relationship. It also suggests that it is possible to institute policies that acknowledge the considerable investment of time and energy needed to bring up children, and implies that this investment is not irrelevant to the health of our society.
Hopefully, our policy makers will do more to ease the scheduling anxieties of working parents. But there’s a long way to go before we can really balance work and family, now that many young working parents have to take care of their child or children without “external” help from their elderly family members.
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