At the very worst, we become self-sufficient so that we are not living under a bridge or on welfare.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the latest and most loathed demographic: Welfare Singles.

At least, by focusing on work, we won't be a charge on our familied "betters."

Oops. No, that's not my anger issues. That's contempt for people who think that way. As my previous entries have shown, even in NYC, I've run into a batch of them.

Singles have to do for themselves. For every single person making SEX AND THE CITY-kind of money, there are at least five that are not. So most singles who don't use their leave to care for family are most likely going to use it to find better career opportunities. And if that means founding a business or trying to make a living from their creative talents, why is this less important than being a parent? After all, no one can depend that putting in years of service to a company is going to be rewarded, so why should singles be expected to put their entire lives into a company?

What about the fact that people with kids benefit from things/services done by childfree people? That sword cuts both ways, hon--or are you suggesting that the childfree just suck up inequality even though the childed are the ones using up most of the resources?

"You don't really NEED extra time for self-fulfillment in the same way as a parent may NEED to take their kid to the doctor."

1) Do parents NEED to have kids?

2) There goes that triflin' "singles just want time off for spa treatments" shit again. Why is it when parents want to take off it's always justified because their reasons are _always_ on the level of a national emergency, but when singles want to take off, it's because they just want to goof off? Again, why are single people's lives regarded as trivial and non-contributing-to-society? (And kitchengirl, you claimed no one on here had said this kind of trivialization--see above. I could go back and pull the earlier posts--but since mcfan so kindly gave me an example, well...) If parents want help getting expanded fair leave treatment , they better start realizing that they aren't going to get it unless they partner up with single people and stop acting as if their own lives are the only ones that count.

"Oh reason not the need!" says King Lear to his daughters. "Our basest beggars are in the meanest thing superfluous."

Now that I've gotten that out of my system in a verbal hairball, I'll get to Mcwhatever his name was who pointed out that a mother may NEED to take her child to the doctor more than I NEED personal fulfillment.

Health takes precedence, even for singles. I could have saved several thousand dollars if I'd had a boss that recognized that.

But this question of NEED. I tend to worry whenever I see NEED in caps or when I hear it stressed. The more "e's" I hear in it, the more I distrust it and check my wallet.

Need is need. NEED, and especially NEEEEED, is a preemptive moral strike across someone else's boundaries.

It is all right for me to decide that someone getting to attend a kid's soccer game promptly warrants my being late for the opera, say. It is all right for someone to ask me and say "I'll make it up to you."

It is not all right for people to assume it and/or mandate it. And it is DEFINITELY not all right for people to criticize me if that happens and I point it out.

I really don't see why that is so hard to understand.

"child-encumbered" really says it all.

Most parents in Western societies aren't "encumbered" by children. They CHOSE to have children. Children don't just happen to you, you make them.

I think it's unreasonable to lump parents in with people with disabilities or people who can't work. Those are things that really can just happen to you. Totally different situation.

And NEEDING to take a child to the doctor is merely an outcome of the quest for self-fulfillment through parenting. Why is one kind of self-fulfillment judged more worthy of accomodation and special benefits than another?

I haven't expressed a desire to opt out of ALL government programs that do not benefit me directly. I just think we need to re-evaluate the automatic granting of paid time off for certain personal choices and not others.

After the tenth time you've lost vacation because it's "family vacation," or you were stuck in on a High Holy Day because your non-Jewish manager had to watch her Jewish husband honored during services, or a stroller or SUV almost creamed you and YOU Got glared at because of the Chil-Dren, OR when the mommies had time off to go to doctors (which they needed), but you got an abscess because you were guilted every time you needed a dentist, you don't have "anger issues."

Leave? Everyone worried about a woman on maternity leave. I had to quote the law to get two weeks to get my (now-deceased) mother through hip-replacement surgery. And this was a major company, but my supervisor was an Aunt, in the sense of the Republic of Gilead. When her mother passed, she lost it, inherited a million, and retired, and that was fine. When I lost it, shortly afterward, I lost my job. I don't think they were connected, but it can't have helped. Oh, my supervisor at the time was out because HIS father had passed, but that was okay. He had a Wife.

You have no vacation, no religious holiday, and sore ankles at the very least. You're on your own with illness and bereavement, despite protection of the law. Things like that tend to make people genuinely angry. Even shrinks say so. So, if you're going to use that kind of line, expect me to have Anger Issues about -it- and feel quite justified.

I earned my Ph.D. without inconveniencing anyone but myself, by the way. But I've been inconvenienced plenty by mommy princesses and daddy princesses. Equity, I understand. Special privilege, I don't accept. If you're defining special privilege as parity, your definitions need work, not my psyche.

KitchenGirl, I think you're backing up real fast. You came on too strong with this, and a lot of single people (with sore ankles and sore backs) are tired of it. Just a fair share of the pie, please, and recognition that what Saint Family has one another to produce, single people produce on their own. We do it very well. We are -- or I am -- proud of it. It's not a character deficit, and I won't be fined or snooted because of it.

(And if you say "no one's trying to snoot you" or I hear about Anger Issues, oh dear, oh dear.)