5 Most Insane Facts About Maternity Leave in the U.S.

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/gender/5-most-insane-facts-about-maternity-leave-us

1. The Framing of Our Federal Maternity Leave Policy Is Totally Arbitrary

The bedrock of our national parental leave policy is the Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993 after a years-long battle with conservative legislators and business lobbyists who insisted the law would imperil American companies. The FMLA, which guarantees that companies with 50 employees or more provide new parents with 12 weeks of unpaid leave, is hardly a radical proposal. But as it turns out, it still fails to protect almost half of working moms in the U.S. One reason is that the law only applies to women who have been working at their company for at least a year. Part-timers, contracted workers and people employed at small companies are entirely left out.

2. The Only Other Countries That Don’t Guarantee New Moms Some Form of Partially Paid Time Off Are Oman and Papa New Guinea

In many regards, the U.S. is years behind the rest of the world on adapting flexible parental leave policies. Most countries offer new moms at least three months of fully-paid leave, and many offer fathers parental leave benefits as well. In Europe, where leave policies tend to be particularly generous, many parents receive even more time. In Sweden, for example, new parents receive an astounding 480 days of paid time off, while German parents get 14 months. Our socially progressive neighbor to the north also has forward-thinking policies. Canada passed its first maternal leave law all the way back in 1973, and in 2000 it extended the amount of available paid leave from six months to a year, at 55 percent of parents’ salaries.



3. Our Maternity Leave Policies Exacerbate Economic Inequality

The Family and Medical Leave Act was supposed to be a blanket policy that would support mothers from all socioeconomic backgrounds in the weeks after childbirth. But the law’s specifics about company size and length of employment drastically reduce the pool of women who are qualified for unpaid leave. While full-time employees at companies with more than 50 staff members are covered, two out of five women of childbearing age are not. Female employees working in the most vulnerable, low-paid industries, from retail to food service, must return to work almost immediately after giving birth and risk losing their jobs entirely if they take a week or two off. Freelance, contracted and part-time workers are equally unprotected. These employees can’t afford to go weeks without bringing in an income, as women are the sole or primary breadwinners in 40 percent of households with children. A 2012 Department of Labor survey found that because of financial concerns, only half of the 59 percent of U.S. workers who are covered by FMLA end up taking time off.



4. Maternity Leave Policies Have a Profound Effect on Career Trajectories

Today, women comprise about 47 percent of the U.S. workforce, and they are delaying marriage and childhood until later in their lives. The average age for an American woman to have her first child is now 26, meaning that women’s peak earning years now coincide precisely with their peak childbearing years, as TNR’s Rebecca Traister notes. This has both immediate and long-term effects on women’s earning potential. According to the Bloomberg piece, there is hardly any wage gap for young men and women when they first graduate from college. But this gap widens as they get older, “and the first bump in the road seems to happen right as they start to have children.” Traister cites University of Massachusetts sociology research that found that “an American woman’s earnings decrease by 4 percent for every child she bears.”

[Orrex]

1. We're #9! We're #9!

USA! USA! USA!

[BlueJazz]

2. But Oh..sob...sob...We love our children, Save the children, Think of the Children, NO ABORTIONS!

Motherhood is Sooo sacred, Look at the "Woman with child" Isn't she beautiful?
The FAMILY comes first!!
God, Apple pie and Motherhood!

::Can I take off time to have a baby?
::Fuck you, get back to work.

[AwakeAtLast]

3. I taught school five days before I had my daughter

Mainly so I could use as much of the sick time I had saved up. The only way to get any kind of paid leave is to either not get sick, or come to work sick so you don't use up all your days.

I would have LOVED to have an entire month off before to prepare and rest.

This country is really messed up about a lot of things.

[bettyellen]

4. Many here have argued the impact on careers is perfectly fair....