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What is parentism?

Par­en­tism is a less dis­cussed cousin of racism, sex­ism and clas­sism. On my inter­pre­ta­tion, par­en­tism con­sists in dis­crim­i­nat­ing against peo­ple on account of their parental sta­tus, or in indi­vid­ual actions and atti­tudes or insti­tu­tional arrange­ments that favor per­sons of a par­tic­u­lar parental sta­tus unjustly.

While surely there are cases wherein peo­ple are unjustly treated because they do have chil­dren, I am more inter­ested in cases wherein peo­ple are unjustly treated because they don’t have children.

I got inter­ested in par­en­tism of this kind dur­ing a period in my life when I was think­ing alot about whether I want to have chil­dren, and why or why not. I read espe­cially about the “child­free” move­ment, whose mem­bers pre­fer to view them­selves as hav­ing made an active and legit­i­mate choice to pur­sue val­ues in their lives other than those asso­ciate with chil­drea­r­ing, and who seek to avoid the pity gar­nered by the usual label of “child­less.” While I’m still not sure whether my hus­band and I will have any chil­dren, I am glad to have explored this issue on my own before we married.

These per­sonal explo­rations helped me to real­ized how biased some think­ing and prac­tices are towards the major­ity of peo­ple who do have chil­dren. This is some­thing of a strange real­iza­tion because, as a newish fem­i­nist, I simul­ta­ne­ously real­ize that in the US there is a seri­ous lack of insti­tu­tional sup­port for par­ents, and moth­ers in par­tic­u­lar (stingy leave poli­cies, dif­fi­culty in tak­ing even man­dated leaves, con­tin­ued wage gap, etc). I think this must be a case where com­mit­ment to a value is more estab­lished in prin­ci­ple than in practice.

Any­way, I was read­ing the New York Times and came across a fla­grant exam­ple of par­en­tism. Take a look at this seem­ingly innocu­ous arti­cle on the non-family friend­li­ness of work­ing at the White House:

“Fam­ily Friendly” White House is Less So for Aides

(free but login is nec­es­sary, you could try bugmenot.com)

The arti­cle is devoted to telling the sym­pa­thetic tales of White House employ­ees whose jobs are so demand­ing that they don’t have time for their kids. Here’s an excerpt:

White House advis­ers often work 60 to 70 hours a week and bear the scars of missed birth­days and bed­times, can­celed din­ners and play dates, strained mar­riages and dis­grun­tled chil­dren, all for pres­ti­gious posts that offer a chance to make an impact and unpar­al­leled access to the pres­i­dent. At a time when the nation is in reces­sion and at war, the pub­lic expects no less, many argue.

Still, the Oba­mas, who also have young chil­dren, remain com­mit­ted to mak­ing life more man­age­able for their aides who are par­ents, offi­cials say.

First, let me say that I applaud the author of this arti­cle for expos­ing the fact that the lives of White House employ­ees and their chil­dren are not the same as the lives of the first fam­ily, despite pub­lic procla­ma­tions by Pres­i­dent Obama that he is com­mit­ted to fam­ily friend­li­ness. This is a legit­i­mate issue and, while I’m sure the President’s words are sin­cere and his inten­tions in this regard are good, achiev­ing fam­ily friend­li­ness is eas­ier said than done.

How­ever, I am dis­mayed that this arti­cle makes absolutely no men­tion of the White House employ­ees who do not have “fam­i­lies” (read, chil­dren). Unfor­tu­nately but pre­dictably, it does not seem like equal con­sid­er­a­tion is given to them. Surely these child­free employ­ees also have lots of things they’d like to be doing with their evenings and week­ends — such as see­ing their par­ents, sib­lings and friends, or doing all the valu­able things that can fill a healthy and well-rounded life other than chil­drea­r­ing (attend­ing cul­tural events, devel­op­ing non-work-related skills, par­tic­i­pat­ing in var­i­ous asso­ci­a­tions, rest­ing, etc etc).

Sto­ries of missed time with chil­dren tug at many read­ers’ heart­strings, but sto­ries of child­free peo­ples’ missed dates, par­ties, yoga classes, sleep… not so much. And this is par­en­tism in action.

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