CHENNAI : Last week, I got chatting with a couple I met about their child’s school. The father told me that every month all the parents in his son’s kindergarten are called to class to copy down the curriculum focus that’s written on the blackboard. This session is not in the morning so that parents can attend and then head to work but slap bang in the middle of the working day. That’s twelve days of leave gone!I’m sure you have the same questions as I did on hearing this: ‘Why can’t they e-mail it?’ ‘Can’t you just take a photo of what’s written on the blackboard?’ ‘Why does your school hate parents so much?’ Parental involvement in children’s school life is perhaps at an all time high. Many older millennials will remember that this is not how it used to be.
When I was in school, there were no parent-guided art and craft sessions, no chaperoning on field trips (or even field trips!) or student-lead learning conferences to attend. Yes, that last thing is indeed ‘a thing’. But today, working parents need to consider setting aside at least two working days a term and two weekend days a term for school-related activities. Now, multiply that by the number of children you have. Ouch right?
Oh, and this doesn’t even include days off for when the kids fall sick. Much of this work inevitably falls on a mother’s shoulders. Mothers themselves feel a need to be present or volunteer at these events, and feel disproportionate levels of guilt if they can’t make it.Since I have greater flexibility in when and how much and from where I work, I’m usually the parent at mid-morning, mid-week events like parent’s day or poetry day or bring your pet to school day. I recently had to make an unplanned day trip that coincided with an event at my son’s school.
When I told him I wouldn’t be able to make it, he dramatically and untruthfully said, ‘You NEVER come to my events.’ His father who has attended one weekday school event in the last four years, however, is exempt from such accusations. I on the other hand will attend 15 out of 16 events in the calendar year, but that one event that I couldn’t make it to in class 1 is still hurled at me by my eight-year-old more often than I like.
It’s one thing for society to measure mothers and fathers unequally and unfairly on how they parent, and it’s an entirely different thing when your own children do it to you. I think that in addition to sick leave, paid leave, entitled leave, menstrual leave, maternity leave and paternity leave, companies should offer ALL employees a set of days off that are just to deal with the lemons life throws at you.
I say all employees, because while everyone might not have children and a tree planting event at their school on Wednesday morning. Many are care givers to ailing parents, pets or have a burst pipe in the bathroom that needs to be taken care of. Of course, that this might encourage more fathers to come for pets day is only a bonus.