After my son’s first school drop-off, it only took a few days before I was burned out, trying to find eight hours for my working day, when the school day was only six hours long, and my commute was at least 30 minutes each way.
I’d apply for annual leave to cover his care in the school holidays, but my 20 working days entitlement didn’t come close to covering the 60 working days he had off.
Then there were teacher-only days, sick days and school events; no matter how I balanced it, I felt like I was letting my son, my work, or my bank account down, never having enough hours in the day.
I felt defeated, and instead of getting to enjoy my son, whom I was working so hard for, I was figuring out where to “put” him and negotiating the logistics and costs of additional care.
That’s when I discovered UK presenter and parental activist Anna Whitehouse on social media, better known by her handle ‘mother pukka’. Whitehouse recently fought and campaigned to have flexible working arrangements for parents made law in the UK, and she won.
And she painted a jarring picture of why laws so desperately needed to change, and parents need employment flexibility.
Whitehouse calculated the time deficit for working UK parents, based on the number of school holidays vs annual leave, the average workday hours vs the average school day hours, and the average days a child is sick in a year vs the allowance of sick leave.
The issue was back in the news this week in Australia. Georgie Dent, CEO of advocacy group The Parenthood, went viral for her speech at the National Press Club, where she highlighted the deficit parents face in numbers. The video has been viewed more than 5 million times.
When I did the same calculation for Kiwi parents working full-time, the numbers shocked me, with between 55.5 and 111 invisible days parents had to find. Here are how the calculations break down.
“No matter how I balanced it, I felt like I was letting my son, my work, or my bank account down, never having enough hours in the day,” writes Jenni Mortimer
School holidays
In New Zealand, schools are required to be open for about 190 days per year. So the average school holidays at primary school are 60 days spread across four term breaks. Meaning around 16% of the year is school holidays.
For a full-time, 40-hour-a-week working parent, annual leave is 20 days after 12 months of service.
For a solo parent, that’s a deficit of 40 days, and when shared between two full-time working parents, assuming they never take annual leave at the same time, that’s a deficit of 20 days.
The average working day
The normal primary school day is 9am-3pm, not including additional after-school care that most schools provide at a cost. The average eight-hour workday in New Zealand is 9am-5pm, leaving a two-hour discrepancy.
New Zealand also has an average daily commute time of 30 minutes each way, so add in another hour per day.
That means parents working full-time and doing pick-up and drop-off have a three-hour working deficit to navigate across the 190 or so days per year schools are open.
That leaves a 71-day deficit for solo parents, and 35.5 days for two working parents who equally share drop-off and pick-up.
After-school care, while available in New Zealand, is costly for many and can result in a financial deficit for parents, who can find themselves spending more on childcare than they earn.
Sick leave
The average allowance of paid sick leave from a New Zealand employer is 10 days a year.
School attendance data in New Zealand says ‘short-term illness’ accounts for 5.7% of the time kids should be at school in the last year. That’s around 10 days a year or 2.5 days a term.
So if you are a single-parent family with one child, that’s all your sick days gone. If you have more than one child or get sick yourself, all extra days would be a deficit.
In a two-parent household with two children, you’d use the full allowance of sick days on the kids alone, and no days would be left for parents or any extra children.
The total
One hundred and eleven days for a solo parent and 55.5 days for a two-parent fulltime worker household per child.
Add to this any additional sick leave the parent may require, as each child will, on average, use the parent’s entire allowance.
So, what now?
Without changes to government policy, working parents will always have the cards stacked against them.
Our current declining birth rates are unlikely to change without making it more affordable and attainable to raise a family and have financial stability.
Here in New Zealand, our annual leave policies haven’t changed since 2007 – a different economic time.
Those policies did not take into consideration living costs that are now so high that both parents have to work to keep the household afloat, and, for most, it is an unattainable privilege for one parent to stay at home to raise the children.
Some careers may also not be conducive to flexibility, but those in jobs that are, do have the right to ask for flexible working arrangements, but employers do not have to grant it.
The Government’s employment website says, “employers must consider in good faith, but they do not have to approve it if there is a good business reason for declining”. So, parents are relying on good faith, not law.
Other countries, however, are setting the standard, making flexibility legally binding.
In Portugal, parents with children under 8 are allowed to work remotely without prior negotiation, and employers are even prohibited from contacting employees outside of working hours.
In Finland, employees are allowed to set their own hours, with most workers having the right to adjust their start and end times by up to 3 hours.
And in Belgium, the law allows employees to request a four-day work week. Employers can refuse the request, but there must be a strong rationale in order to do so.
So do we, like Whitehouse, demand that policymakers here in New Zealand listen and follow the lead of countries like Portugal, Finland and Belgium, so that long overdue changes are made to our policies and caregiving structures.
Because it shouldn’t be left up to already struggling employers to give us parents concessions, permission and “good faith” to raise the next generation; it should be the law.
Jenni Mortimer is the New Zealand Herald’s chief lifestyle and entertainment reporter. Jenni started at the Herald in 2017 and has previously worked as lifestyle, entertainment and travel editor.