Maternity leave in America

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

Let's try this again, as I feel it is an important matter to discuss.

America stands almost alone without legislation for paid maternity leave. American mothers, under the Family and Medical Leave Act are allowed only 12 weeks of unpaid leave before returning to work. To make it worse, those who work for companies with fewer than 50 employees or have worked less than 1,250 hours in the past year are not covered under the Act and are entitled to no time off. While some companies have provided their own paid maternity leave policies these jobs are scarce. A 2008 report found that only 16% of companies with more than 100 workers provide 100% paid maternity leave for the legislated period. Women can not rely on the goodwill of their employers, legislation is sorely needed to ensure the rights of working mothers.

Almost every other country in the world, including Afghanistan, Somalia, Cuba and Iraq have paid maternity leave legislation of some sort. Most nations have laws providing for time off ranging from 14 to 96 weeks in a mixture of paid and unpaid time and varying levels of pay. In the Czech Republic mothers can take up to 4 years off, paid for by the state. Sweden provides 16 months, with the cost shared between the government and the employer at 80% of the the mothers salary. The UK laws provide for 39 weeks paid, by the employer with an additional 13 weeks unpaid. Canada provides 52 weeks, paid for by the government at 55% of your salary with an additional 35 weeks of parental leave to be shared with your partner, covered under our Employment Insurance program.

The benefits of maternity leave are vast for both the mother and child. Mothers without maternity leave or shorter periods are, not surprisingly, more likely to become depressed. Returning to work after childbirth makes breastfeeding, with all it's health benefits, all but impossible. Studies have shown that fewer than 12 weeks maternity leave have behavioral effects on the child in the long term. They have lower cognitive test scores, reach milestones later and exhibit behavioral problems as they age. As they reach school age lower tests scores are noted. There are even results being shown in new studies in the field of epigenetics that may prove that early social interaction influences the marks that effect serotonin levels which may lead to adult depression. Longer maternity leaves have been shown to decrease early childhood mortality rates due to better monitoring of the child's health or accident prevention. These benefits clearly demonstrate the the short and long term beneficial effects of longer maternity leaves for the betterment of society.

Many of you probably believe the government should not be forced to pay maternity leave salaries. However if you look at the programs in place all around the world you can see that this is not mandatory. There are programs ranging from full state paid, payment divided between the state and the employer or full employer paid. Any of these are acceptable. What is not acceptable is to continue to force American mothers to choose between bonding with their child and making money to cover the needs of their families.

Comments

[korean-guy-01.livejournal.com]

I haven't received sufficient proof why I should bear any cost (whether that be taxation, less benefits from a determined pool of employee compensation from my employer, and/or increased cost of goods) to support other people's decision to have children.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

long term benefits to society in the form of happier workers and children with less behavioral and health problems?

[korean-guy-01.livejournal.com]

Focus on the first part of my comment.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Things only have value if they can be accurately quantified in monetary terms. Public policy, life, and indeed the very state of being a consciousness in the cosmos can be fully reduced to economics.

I thought this was intuitively obvious.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

I support maternity leave for mothers. It should be funded with a direct tax on people over 50. Anyone who says otherwise clearly hates children.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

People over 50 will be getting their old age pensions from paid from the taxes paid by the younger generation, so it's only fair.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

There is no logical connection between this comment and mine.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Your assertion suggested that if we didn't have federal rules mandating paid maternity leave then it meant we didn't care about kids.

As if there was only one way to go about it. I'm in favor of mothers raising their kids. I just don't see the reason for arguing that employers or taxpayers need to be the ones paying for it.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Your assertion suggested that if we didn't have federal rules mandating paid maternity leave then it meant we didn't care about kids.

No, my comment asserted nothing of the kind. It was mocking the notion that policy decisions are entirely contingent upon economic proofs.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Economic decisions are contingent upon economic proofs.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

The corporations, of course.

They get money for themselves out of employing people,yanno.
They don't give me a job as a favour to me.

So, all those moms who come in and juggle homes and families and their working lives - why not help them a little and put in som e day care? Parental leave? pensions?

Sure, let them write it off as a tax loss, after all it saves the government having to pay directly for it.

I'll take social darwinism for $400

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

He wants proof that he will personally benefit from this. In other words, perhaps ignoring the Lone Gunman types would be more productive since they don't respond to anything other than naked self-interest.

Re: I'll take social darwinism for $400

[telemann.livejournal.com]

*he will personally benefit from this.*

Bingo.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

Shhhh... you'll breach the vacuum he exists in.

[bex.livejournal.com]

I don't really understand this attitude. Well, I guess I understand it, but I can't really understand how people feel this way. Your "tax dollars" or government money of some kind goes towards all SORTS of things you may never use. It pays for roads you'll never drive on, for toxic sludge cleanup in areas you'll never visit, the support of national parks you'll never see. It pays for social support systems that you may never find yourself needing. It pays for these things because they are for the social good. It benefits you not to have huge hordes of starving people roaming the streets. It benefits you to live in a society where the next generation is healthy and strong - less likely to burden the health care system, less likely to be criminal, more likely to be productive members of the community. Do you really not see how supporting the children of others benefits everyone?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

The national park system is a prime example of creeping socialism.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

and the libraries.. don't forget those bastions of liberal socialist indoctrination

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

You know where Marx conceived communism, right?

[dwer.livejournal.com]

Define what's sufficient proof for you. Because I'll wager there's no way to provide it.

[malakh-abaddon.livejournal.com]

It is the good ~insert your religious preference here~ thing to do. Helping your fellow man. Two sufficient reasons to help carry the cost. While I feel that having a child is each persons choice, every choice has consequences. This would not be a problem with jobs that paid well, and if people actually knew how to wisely spend their money, and items did not cost an arm and a leg.

I once heard in the US, that each child in a household, had a cost of 18,000 dollars a year. Not remembering the details of the conversation with a co-worker, I looked it up. "According to the report, costs for food, shelter, and other child-raising necessities total from $11,650 to $13,530 per year, depending on the age of the child." (http://usgovinfo.about.com/b/2010/06/16/cost-to-raise-a-child-in-us-tops-220000.htm)

u 1st

[korean-guy-01.livejournal.com]

People would be helping their fellow man (in this case me) by not having children until they are ready to support them according to the current status of American society.

Re: u 1st

[malakh-abaddon.livejournal.com]

I have taken that road, and let me tell you, at 30 years old, I am missing a great deal of things in my life. I always have been of the mind that a parent should have enough to take care of their child(ren) with some ease, but not so much that this kid cannot learn the value of hard work and effort. In simple terms, the child should never do without the basics because the parent cannot afford them, but that trip to Disney does not come every year, when they turn 16 they do not get a brand new fully loaded car. The problem here is not people wanting to have children, or even the costs of raising a child, but the current status of our society, the values that it holds. In many ways, I really do not want to bring a child into this world, because there is no real care for our fellow man, it is all about "me". What "I" have, owning the latest greatest car, the biggest bestest house on the block, etc, etc, etc...

In any event, we already pay taxes for things we may or may not use, I have no children in school, but a portion of my property taxes fund them, I have never used the fire department, but I fund firefighters. Do I like funding a crap school, not really, but I still look at it as something important. Personally if I was still and employer, and had women working for me, I would find a way to grant it, but then again I would make an effort to pay better than minimal wage, or offer health coverage, maybe even some type of retirement.

I tend to agree with Smokngoat, which is an interesting name, would love to hear the story behind it. The truth is, the longer you wait to have children the more degraded your DNA becomes, and the more likely for complications. Oh yes we hear about 60 year old women having children, but lets give it ten or twenty years to see just how screwed up these kids are. To me it is not ust being financially independent enough to pay for raising a child, but being able to do so without working constantly.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

For this reason , I don't have any kids at all.
anda lot of women in the west are giving up on the idea of fullfillment through having kids.

And so now, when I retire, there is gonna be nobody to replace me in the workforce. This might not be a problem , but we are millions of people short in the UK - we had a baby boom and are heading for a baby slump.

You are about to see what a baby shortage means , buddy, and I hope you are watching carefully, a baby slump now means a drop in school intake in 5 yrs time, then a drop in school leavers in another 18 yrs or so. Less people looking for jobs, filling in the shifts at everything from yr local supermarket to the hospital, less people earning money and paying taxes, less demand for consumer goods.

Come back in another 20 years and see if you have managed to work out why we ought to be providing day care and parental leave right now to anyone who wants to have a child.

[malakh-abaddon.livejournal.com]

If you have to have children for fulfillment there is a problem. Using someone (even a child) to fill a hole in your life is never a good idea. But I can see people doing like you and I, putting off having children because we know we cannot afford the essentials for that new life that we have brought into this screwed up society and world.

Naturally without new youth to take the place of older people, you are going to have problems. Less people looking for work is bad, but also good, as it will reverse the current trend of more people looking for less open jobs. This will cause a raise in wages, but this raise in wages will likely cause a major raise in costs as well.

It is sad to say, and really it makes me physically ill, but some people will never change their mind, no matter how badly they are shown to be mistaken. But to illustrate your point you do not need to wait twenty years. I am far too lazy at this moment to do any research, I leave it to people whose minds are functioning, look at Japan. Yeah, the island nation, who has declining birth rates for a little while now. See where they are with the who work force decline deal.