This is the latest in a series of Saturday GINK videos about population and reproduction (or a lack thereof).
Just in time to stir up angst for the holiday season, CNN and The Fiscal Times look at how childfree people can get stuck working longer hours and less desirable days and shifts.
“[I]t’s often the childfree employees who pick up the slack because of a coworker’s flexible schedule, holiday plans, or maternity leave,” writes Katherine Reynolds Lewis in The Fiscal Times. She quotes Two Is Enough author Laura S. Scott (whom I interviewed earlier this year): “There’s an assumption that the childfree don’t have lives outside of work.”
CNN picked up the theme and invited Reynolds Lewis and a childfree man she quotes in her article, Richard Levy, to talk with anchor Don Lemon:
I’ve heard other childfree people talk about this kind of unfair treatment (and in fact Elinor Burkett wrote a whole book about it a few years ago). Have you experienced it yourself? Me, I’ve been lucky — my Grist colleagues with kids work just as hard as the rest of us, if not harder, and we all enjoy a reasonable amount of flexibility. This holiday weekend, my thanks goes out to them.
