AFTER THEY'VE TRIED EVERYTHING ELSE, MAYBE THEY'LL TRY EQUAL PROTECTION.

Inside Higher Ed kibitzer Craig Wynne posts a "Letter From a Child-Free Cat Guy."  The "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" this isn't:  "Craig Wynne calls for adding childlessness—and childfree-ness—to DEI conversations."

I'm tempted to mock it to the heavens, although perhaps there is a way to reintroduce order into those diversity conversations.

Parenthood is much revered, at least in theory. Think about all the money that goes into baby showers, and the many state laws that (rightfully) give parents paid time off to care for children. The diversity, equity and inclusion committee I’m a part of had a discussion about whether to advocate for building lactation stations for the many single parents our university has among its student population.

I’m all for it; I think single parenting is the most badass thing a person can do. And even with a partner, parenting is hard (maybe harder for some). I respect the challenges parents face. But as a childfree-by-choice person, I see inequities in the ways employers treat parents compared to those without kids.

Arguably, one way to achieve equal protection under the laws might be to expand the set of protected classes of employees in such a way that any employee is included in at least one such class.  Inevitably, though, that overlays more work for the human resources bureaucrats and the aristocracy of pull will emerge.  I've long maintained there must be a better way.   "Add to that the nasty habit of complex adaptive systems doing what they d**n well please, and you can bet on any one-size-fits-all policy reform advocated by a vanguard leading to nasty unintended consequences and disappointments."

So mote it be, whenever one cohort of workers receives an accommodation under the rubric of Diversity and Inclusion, or any rubric other than Merit.

I’ll share one example. I commented on how tired I was one morning, and a colleague said, “I was up at five this morning because of my kid! You don’t know what tired is!” So I wasn’t allowed to be tired, even though the cause was not a crying baby?

I’m not the only childfree person in higher education. And in a world where DEI is a major part of our institutions, being without child, whether by choice or by circumstance, should be included in DEI conversations. To this end, I put out a call on the Higher Ed Learning Collective, a Facebook group, for: 1) institutional policies that allow parents certain privileges that people who are childfree/childless don’t receive; and 2) any microaggressions childfree/childless folks have received, whether on the card or not. These are some patterns I noticed.

Oftentimes, parents get preference in the times they teach because they “have families”—which speaks to the assumption that the childfree/childless don’t have lives outside of work or that their personal lives aren’t as busy or as important. Many faculty reported some variation of this experience.

Inside Higher Ed do not report Mr Wynne's institutional affiliation. It's unlikely to be a hive of overachievers.

Where opting out is opting off the 24/7 treadmill (more on that here). The kicker, however, is in that "work together well." A nest of high achievers, such as the economics department at the University of Chicago, is unlikely to be a place where work is 'over' will catch on as the norm, at least in the immediate future. And wherever the rewards go to the person who is willing to outwork the other person (whether that's reading the journals late into the night or catching the red-eye to recruit the blue-chip player or working the phones until the polls close) on-the-job is likely to continue to expand into personal time.

Or perhaps Inside Higher Ed are trolling us.  Taking up a collection for a pregnant colleague is a micro-aggression?  Seriously?

A few people wrote about this, which made me very happy. I’m all for giving a few dollars as a congratulatory gift. After all, giving birth is a major milestone for some people. But why didn’t I get a party when I got tenure? When I received promotion (without tenure) at my previous university, a colleague gave me a $25 gift card to the Cinemark. But when our department secretary announced her pregnancy, everybody was expected to contribute a monetary gift and attend a potluck shower. I was relatively junior at the time, so I didn’t say anything about the inequity. With tenure, I might be more inclined to do so.

Sure, grouse about doing a kindness for a department secretary.  That's the kind of collegiality we can do without.  You wouldn't even find that thinking in an Ayn Rand dystopia.