Juggling family life - how leave doesn’t add up

Jolanda says:

09:38am | 20/10/09

I cannot believe that people want more time off?.  Do they want their time off paid for too?  How are businesses supposed to run and cope? Already a month off a year is alot and 3 months off like teachers get is crazy.  What we should have is more child directed schools less school holidays.  We do not need our children at home and/or on the streets for so many weeks out of the year.  They get bored and many are unsupervised and when children get bored and have nothing to do they get up to mischief.

Education - Keeping them Honest
http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/
Our children deserve better

Jo says:

10:29am | 20/10/09

@Jolanda: Life’s too short to think like that. Sure we need businesses to keep ticking for a healthy economy and for individual’s motivation but surely life’s more than sticking to a bunch of rules? How boring

thatmosis says:

10:41am | 20/10/09

When is the bleating going to end. First it was paid maternity leave and now it looks as though the “workers” and I use the term lightly want more time off to look after THEIR children. Excuse me but they are your children and your responsibility not the Employers or the Governments (read taxpayers)so get a backbone and take responsibility or dont have children. If one of you has to take time off then so be it, I know it may mean going without some of lifes luxuries like the latest TV or Blackberry but hey, lifes tough.

james says:

10:50am | 20/10/09

We are now in a faster age where technology has made it possible to work smarter, not harder. The days of long, nine til five daily grinds of monotonous work are long over, and many working days have been extended to included hours of travel time, draining meetings and off-site requirements.
The toll of such demanding days bleeds into the personal and family lives we used to have after work.
It was once recommended to get eight hours of sleep a night. Because of new lifestyles and the demands we live up to, it is now recommended that nine hours is taken.

We really are doing more work now, with many of us working more than one job (paid or otherwise) and being on call for emergencies, being prepared to work eighteen hour days needs to be met with appropriate time off for recovery.

If we are serious about providing parental care for our children at the time of their lives when they need it most, matching annual/parental leave to school holidays only makes sense. It’s not rational to cut school holidays, as then we’d be forcing children into a world with adult rules - and there has to be some sort of obviousness that this will fail, because they haven’t learnt enough to be able to adjust as yet, and physically they’re less capable of doing long-hauls without long rests.

Budz says:

11:23am | 20/10/09

@Jolanda: Are you serious? The best times of my childhood were school holidays when I would hang out with my friends, brother and sister. Why would you take such an enjoyable time away from them?

And in my life, I honestly can’t wait until I own my own business so I can take more holidays. I value my leisure time too much to want to be stuck behind a computer all day. If you have nothing to do with your time off, that’s your problem, not ours. I’d rather be a bit poorer money wise and a bit richer time wise, but that’s just me.

Jolanda says:

11:51am | 20/10/09

The reality of life is that we need money to pay the bills and we like to live well, we demand convenience and we need a healthy economy.  You cannot expect this to be just handed to us by our Government or by Employers. 

The reality of life is that things are not the same today as they were many years ago and with so many parents having to both work many children are not supervised during holidays and are left at home to fend for themselves.  Of course many others have to find carers and it is a constant battle and a huge financial and emotional strain. 

The reality of life is that education has become a competition and many students fall behind during holiday periods and they never catch up and keep up with their more educationally focused peers. 

The reality of life is that we all want to live well and if children were happy in school and schools were set up to cater for the students instead of the administration then students would want to go to school.  You still hang out with friends at school.

We need to realise that we live in todays word, not in yesterdays fantasy.

Steve says:

12:00pm | 20/10/09

Of course we all WANT more time off.. but surely few of us really think more leave is a reasonable argument.  Our employers already pay us to not come to work for nearly seven weeks a year (counting annual leave & public holidays).

Peter Lewis says:

12:23pm | 20/10/09

Jolanda, my point is that if we are smart we can structure our leave - and even enhance it with our own money - to access it at the stages in our lives when we need it the most. This is not about ripping off employers or taxpayers, just thinking a bit more creatively around the issue.

Public Service Pete says:

12:59pm | 20/10/09

The NSW Public Service has just introduced provisions to be able to purchase leave during the year.  Up to 4 weeks leave can be purchased and paid for pro-rata during the rest of the year.  Given the current practices of “freezing” the public service and tightening the screws financially on Government Departments by a cash strapped NSW Governement, it will be interesting to see how this works in reality.

Helen says:

01:34pm | 20/10/09

I do this. I am paid for 48 weeks of the year, not 52. So, instead of 48 weeks @ work and 4 on annual leave, I have 8 weeks of annual leave which makes the school holidays MUCH more easy to cope with. Before people start screaming about my poor workmates, this means that my salary is substantially less - I take the hit willingly in return for the extra time to cope with the school holidays.

For parents who can’t negotiate such a thing, there is a real problem because there are really few good options for school aged kids. The YMCA runs holiday programs and bless them for it, but most kids can take only just so much of the noise and bustle and non stop structured activities. There are camps of course, but good ones really cost and there aren’t a real lot of them. It’s a real gap in the childcare/education continnuum.

Stay at home dad says:

02:34pm | 20/10/09

When our daughter was at preschool childcare both parents worked as childcare covers most workdays - when she progressed to school we knew one of us would have to leave work to be at home, the holidays sick days pupil free days and the rest would have been impossible.  Sure the money is missed but we’re getting by and even though my main topic of the day might be “the fairies in the top of the Mango Tree”  I’m seeing some perspective on the anxious busy workaday rut I had worn.

E says:

02:59pm | 20/10/09

business and the economy exist to serve human needs, I need more time off, ergo its the economies job to give it to me. what happened to the Baby’s and the X-ers to make them such slaves?

SJ says:

03:20pm | 20/10/09

@ Jolanda - It’s pretty simple - you take the time off to look after your kids, your wages are reduced accordingly. When you return to work, you catch up on what you missed.

@ Steve - 7 weeks off a year? Wow, where do you work? It’s four weeks annual leave a year for most of us (occupations like journalism receive about 6 weeks in exchange for working every public holiday except Christmas Day and Good Friday and many weekends) and what equates to about 8 working days’ worth of public hols.

james says:

05:04pm | 20/10/09

It was always meant to be twelve. But after four weeks was instated, it because a business norm and was never looked at or reviewed again.

Mr Pastry says:

10:09am | 21/10/09

Studies show Cavemen worked 8 hours a week, its been downhill all the way since then.

forex robot says:

10:57pm | 19/11/09

nice post. thanks.