A Good Decision by the ECJ Over Who Should Pay for Bringing Up Baby

Civitas, 5 October 2006

In a landmark decision this week, the European Court of Justice has ruled employers may pay their more experienced staff more than less experienced ones from a belief that extra job experience increases productivity, without needing to justify that belief first.
The Court was called on to decide the matter after employers of a 44 year old female health and safety inspector from Manchester appealed to it against her successful challenge in an employment tribunal against their having paid her less than male colleagues on account of their greater years of service. She argued the practice to be discriminatory, since it was invariably women like her who took time off work to look after their children who fell behind male colleagues as a result.
Thank goodness for this sane ruling. In an age when lesbians and single women are equally as able as married women to have children, whether a woman has a child is entirely up to her. Men hardly come into the reckoning, save through the decision of a woman to involve a man in the upbringing of her child.

In demanding to be paid the same as more experienced staff as a result of taking time off to look after her children, what in effect this woman was demanding was that women like her who have children receive a subsidy from those who don’t. The specific gender of whichever parent takes time off work to look after their young children is irrelevant. If a woman decides to have a child with a male partner whom she is happy to recognise as father of her child, then it is and should be entirely down to them how they divide up child-care responsibilities between them.
To suggest employers pay the same to employees who take time out to look after their young children as they pay those who don’t is to ask for adults who have children to be subsidised by those who don’t. Why should they be entitled to such a subsidy from the childless?
In asking this question, I am not suggesting that those who don’t have children are not benefited by the children others have. After all, who would look after the childless in their dotage unless someone else had children? But why should these childless be charged in advance for the services they will receive in old age? And why should it be the parents of their future service providers whom they should reward for these services they receive rather than those from whom they will receive them?
It seems to me wholly right that, other things being equal, someone who works continuously in paid employment, without taking time off to have or look after children, should receive more than someone who spends less time in paid employment as a result of the demands made on them by having chosen to become a parent. Children should be considered a blessing by those who have them, else why bother to have them? If parents regret becoming one after they have chosen to, why should they be able to saddle others with the costs of their folly?
It is reported that the president of the European Women’s Lawyers’ Assocation responded to the ruling by suggesting the situation would only become fairer for women when more men take up the option of paternity leave than do at present. She is quoted as having said: ‘The fact that women take maternity leave is a great burden on their career.’
True. But then their decision to have children imposes a great burden on the combined earnings capacity of a couple. That does not warrant forcing the childless to share their extra earned income with those who choose to become parents.
If the suggestion is that men gain unfairly over women by enjoying the benefits of parenthood without sacrificing their earnings capacity in a way mothers do by taking time off to care for their children, well… maybe, just maybe, that time-honoured sexual division of labour reflects the mutual preferences of most parents, rather than being the product of male chauvinism.
In any case, as previously mentioned, these days, if they so want, women can have choose to have children with men hardly coming into the equation anywhere along the line, to put the matter rather crudely if not entirely accurately.
Once men are granted a parental role by the mothers of their children, it is for these parents to decide what their respective parental roles should be vis-a- vis bringing in the bacon and bringing up baby, not that of the courts. Nor should the childless be forced to subsidise parents. Their baby’s smiles should be compensation enough for all the hard work involved in bringing the little blighter up.