As organisations focus on their family-friendly policies and benefits, an unseen, child-free minority are often taken for granted. Dr Holly Andrews examines the treatment of childless employees and how employers should create an inclusive workplace that avoids discriminating against those who choose not to have a family or are unable to.
While at age 30 the numbers of parents and non-parents in the UK are roughly the same, according to the Office for National Statistics, in 2020, only 18.1% of women in the UK remained childless at the end of their childbearing years. Data is more difficult to acquire for men, but estimates suggest that around 25% of men will not have biological children in their lifetime.
These are hardly insignificant numbers, but it does mean that childless employees are in the minority in the workforce, particularly after the age of 40.
As one of the ‘childless at work,’ being a woman in my 40s without family commitments, my personal experiences and research have highlighted this as an area of workplace inequality not often considered by employers, managers or HR professionals, nor researched by academics.
‘So, why don’t you have children?’
Exploring the experiences of childless employees, anecdotal evidence suggests that inappropriate questions and comments are frequently expressed to them – in particular, people report being asked why they don’t have children. This can be extremely upsetting to those for whom childlessness is not a choice.
Yet, the justification of reproductive status does not appear to be something expected of parents. If we accept that childless adults are a minority group, why is it that we are accepting of such comments about their childlessness when we wouldn’t accept equivalent comments about other minority characteristics, such as sexual orientation or gender reassignment?
Organisational discrimination
There has been some important research on the experiences of childless women in the workplace, which supports my anecdotal evidence. It found that while most research focuses on the experiences of mothers in the workplace, childless women experience ‘othering’ – they are excluded for not having a family and are more likely to be targets for workplace incivility and aggression.
Flexible working
Employees unaware of new flexible working rights
They are also likely to be negatively stereotyped and engage in coping strategies to deal with stereotyping that may be detrimental to them.
This suggests that as a minority group, childless employees can experience social discrimination in the workplace.
Whether childless workers also experience organisational discrimination is difficult to establish. There is some evidence that childless workers experience an advantage over parents in terms of being hired and early career advancement, however, there appears to be a number of barriers to career success and job satisfaction for childless workers that are less commonly talked about.
Covering for colleagues
Recently, founder of The Non-Mum Network Samantha Walsh hit the headlines with a piece in the Daily Mail about how, as a childless woman working in retail, she was expected to work extra hours, cover for parents when they or their children were sick and allow parents first choice of holidays. Her experience does not appear to be isolated.
A study conducted by ResumeLab about the treatment of parents and non-parents in the workplace revealed that 74% of respondents think those with children are treated better in the workplace than those without. And 87% believed that working parents had more benefits than employees without children.
Reasons for this included childless workers being denied leave, asked to do more overtime, being given greater workloads and parents taking precedence in the application of flexible working policies, booking of leave and child-related reasons for absence being seen as more valid. While this data is from the US, Samantha’s experience and the public reaction to it suggest that there is a similar sentiment in the UK.
Flexibility for families
The need to protect the rights of childless employees may stem from deep-rooted, ideological views of the family. As is the case for most Western societies, the UK is pronatalist, promoting the view that motherhood is natural and a moral, patriotic and economic obligation of women. This is reflected in policy. For example, the right to ask for flexible working arrangements was originally brought in specifically for parents and those with caring responsibilities and was only extended to all employees in 2014.
Although data proving that childless workers are less likely to benefit from flexible working policies is not readily available, a UK survey by Timewise found that parents and carers were more likely to consider requesting flexible working arrangements than those without these responsibilities (53% vs 45%). It is not possible to determine why this is the case, but it is plausible that childless workers don’t think that they will be seen as eligible.
Research suggests that women who are childfree are perceived to have less work-life conflict than mothers and fewer demands on their time outside of work, meaning that they are expected to prioritise work to a greater extent. This may translate into their requests for flexible working being seen as less ‘valid’ by employers.
However, more research is required to explore whether employees feel flexible working practices are genuinely available to everyone.
Doing better
What can organisations do to ensure that childless workers are not discriminated against? Dr Priscila Pereira Law, co-founder of the Inclusive Leadership Company had this to say about how organisations could be more inclusive to everyone, including those who are childless:
“Inclusive organisations don’t misrepresent communities they serve in decision-making and use the demographics of their clients and employee base to inform the composition of design teams responsible for creating processes, working practices, policies and products.
“Minoritised groups tend to be misrepresented in decision-making for most companies, which leads to dysfunctional designs where biases are ‘baked in’, and exclusion becomes systemic. Once biases and discrimination are baked in, you can’t fix them; you have an incubator of inequity, so you need to start your design again.”
When we think about designing our workplaces to create better work-life balance for staff, we need to consider the many and varied shapes that ‘life’ can take, not just the traditional nuclear family that is so often the focus of government and organisational policy. Without considering those for whom children are either not a goal or not achievable, we will continue to minoritise a substantial group within the workforce.
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