One staffer has children, the other is single and getting over a breakup through vigorous water-polo practices. Who gets the Sunday off work?
Steven Bereznai, a 37-year-old Toronto journalist and perpetual single, knew who his boss was likely to choose. So he ended up serving notice that he wasn’t available for Sunday shifts any more, leaving out the water-sport detail.
“That’s not the kind of thing that an employer wants to hear: I’m not going to work because I’m going to play water polo,” says Mr. Bereznai, author of Gay and Single...Forever? 10 Things Every Gay Guy Looking for Love (and Not Finding It) Needs to Know.
“Try getting your workplace to recognize that in the same way as they’ll recognize a relationship with a spouse. … As soon as you talk kids, everyone gets goo-goo eyes. It kind of trumps everything.”
The situation had Mr. Bereznai contemplating the ways in which children and spouses can get employees certain perks at work, while singles languish with overtime, night and weekend shifts, ostensibly because they have little to go home to.
“You internalize this notion that you don’t have as much a right to a life as somebody who’s married with kids,” he says.
Mr. Bereznai is one of a burgeoning number of activists calling for a recognition of “singlism,” the stereotyping and stigmatizing of people without partners or kids. Those flying solo have long been tacitly demeaned in the social realm, they say – think of eating alone at most restaurants, and you get the idea. On blogs such as Onely, Singlutionary and First Person Singular, they document a world dismissive of solitary souls, people who may want a relationship if the right partner comes along eventually but are truly content with being alone in the meantime.
Increasingly, singles are setting their sights on discrimination in the workplace. They complain not only that marrieds with children score prime shifts, but that maternity and paternity leave rewards child-rearing and spousal benefits are inherently discriminatory against the singleton.
They’re calling on companies to introduce broader “menus” of benefits for employees who don’t have children or spouses to share them with. Think sabbaticals for self-development in lieu of mat leave, or money toward retirement or eldercare of family members instead of spousal benefits.
Bella DePaulo, author of the new book Singlism: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Stop It, advocates for “cafeteria” options “where everyone gets the same amount,” be it dollars or time.
“The idea would be you create equivalencies so no worker is privileged over any other worker. It shouldn’t be about ‘Are you married?’ or ‘Do you have kids?’ but what are you contributing to the workplace.”
The North American trend of delaying, and in some cases forgoing, marriage and children means employers need to “get out of the traditional family box,” says Laura S. Scott, author of Two is Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice.
“Maybe it’s not going to the child’s recital, it’s going to the dog agility class. There are different values,” Ms. Scott says.
While she doesn’t think an employer should be forced to subsidize staffers taking leave to “sit around and watch TV for 12 weeks,” Piper Hoffman suggests sabbaticals should be granted, beyond mat and pat leave, to include pursuits that are “significant to the person’s life.”
Ms. Hoffman, an employment lawyer who blogs about workplace issues and “the childfree,” first made that case during a classroom discussion when she was in her third year at Harvard Law School. She suggested that leave “privileges breeding.”
