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Support for paid parental leave

Rachel

I was at my last job when I had my now 18-month-old, and yes, I had the nerve to complain that I only received six weeks paid maternity leave. Heh. They seem like glory days to me now. This fall, my little family and I are facing our own “poverty spell” when I go on maternity leave again in September*, as my current employer offers no paid maternity leave. Shoot, six weeks seems like a glorious dream. Make no mistake – I’m not blind to the fact that we’re more comfortable financially than a lot of people. But this only goes to my point – if we’re sweating, socking away every spare dollar, and I’m scrambling to figure out ways I can work through my leave – then damn, I can’t imagine the stress for other families.

So this is a little heartening to me: Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) has sponsored H.R. 626, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act, which would provide federal employees with four weeks paid parental leave. (I know, four weeks ain’t much, but it’s something. Compared to the zero weeks I got coming, I’d take it.) Here’s more from Moms Rising:

Why would Paid Family Leave help families? Right now, having a baby is a leading cause of “poverty spells” in this country (times when income dips below what’s needed for basic living expenses like food and rent).  Paid Family Leave helps families bridge the income gap caused by folks being unable to go to work because they have to care for a new baby or a sick parent or spouse.  In fact, nearly half of working people report that an illness or injury in their family caused them to get behind on their bills, including mortgage payments.  We need Paid Family Leave to help families stay out of poverty–especially in this time when so many families are already vulnerable.

Policies for Federal employees can lead the nation! With more than 2.7 million civilian employees, the federal government is the nation’s largest employer.  Passing a standard of Paid Parental Leave for people who work for the nation’s largest employer is a benchmark toward Paid Family Leave for all workers.  It’s time for the federal government to establish policies which support working families, and thus set an example for all other employers.

They note that in the U.S., 49% of mothers cobble together paid leave following childbirth by using sick days, vacation days, disability leave, and maternity leave. This is what I’ll be doing, combining vacation time, unpaid leave, and as much telecommuting as I can manage. You can make it work, but it isn’t really a great alternative to paid leave. Pediatrician appointments, unexpected sick days (the baby’s or the parent’s) – you’ve got to try and hang onto those paid days off if you can. And you can forget taking a sick day in those last few exhausting months of pregnancy. (Let me tell you about being nine months pregnant, in DC, in August. Whew. There aren’t enough kiddie pools or pints of frozen yogurt in the world to make that comfortable.)

But anyway. I could go on all day. Moms Rising has a petition. They’re urging Congress to pass H.R. 626, and I’m urging you to check it out.

*I hadn’t actually made it public yet, but there you go: I’m pregnant!

69 thoughts on Support for paid parental leave

  1. I would think the reason being, that no matter how you slice it, childbirth is a choice.

    At least in the US, where I presume you live, based on your references to US bills.

    It’s not a disability, you weren’t struck by another car and rendered pregnant, you didn’t develop a fetus after a slip-and-fall incident at work, it’s not a repetitive stress injury from using your keyboard at work, etcetera.

    I think it’s unreasonable to expect your employer to offer paid time off for a pregnancy. You’re asking them to pay for you to NOT work, while they also have to pay a temp to cover you NOT being there.

    In our currently very poor economy, that’s asking a lot of your employer.

    No matter which way you look at it, it comes back to (continuing a) pregnancy being a choice. No one forced you to be pregnant, it didn’t just happen out of nowhere, you know?

    All it would mean is employers raising costs of the goods/services they sell to counteract the cost of paying an employee to not work.

    Some of the excuses provided are that “new mothers cannot afford to not be paid in our current economy” and the like.

    Well, honestly, if you can’t afford to go unpaid for 6 weeks to have a child, how can you expect to afford to care for the child in the first place?

    I’m not trying to sound classist, but there are certain things you can afford, and certain things you cannot. You’re expected to know the difference, and act accordingly. (Note: I use the general “you”, not the specific.)

    Much in the same way that I don’t go out and purchase a 4000 dollar television, sometimes you have to make the decision to not reproduce if you cannot afford it. Children are not a *need*. They are not essential for your continued standard of living, such as food, water, shelter. They are a want, like that expensive television. A luxury item.

    That sounds reductionist and rather harsh, I admit, but that’s what it is, when it’s laid out.

    I’m just not keen on employers paying for their employees luxury choices. Especially federal ones, because that means it’s coming out of tax dollars. I don’t like the idea of my money going towards religion, which is why I support the separation of church and state, and I don’t support reproduction, which is why I’d rather not see my tax dollars going to support it.

  2. congratulations!
    hopefully we can get the time off we need. i’m getting married next summer, and the next step after that is children. i like to think that women can get the time off they need because childbirth is difficult, and can have complications that require time off to recover, and many people can’t afford even a few days off, let alone the weeks it takes before you’re ready to get back on your feet.

  3. Thanks!

    For me, getting back on my feet wasn’t as much the problem. I couldn’t imagine sitting in an office chair for eight hours a day.

  4. The lack of paid parental leave is a big reason why I’m leaving the USA to move back to Canada. There you get a minimum of 52 weeks (Yes, ONE YEAR) , not all of which is fully paid, but during which your job is held open for you. Most of this time can be divvied up between the two parents, not exclusively the birthing parent.
    As a 31-year old woman, I’m entering the stage of life where these are critical benefits for the next 10 years of my life. I’m sad to leave the US though — where I’ve built a community, friends, and contributed to social causes I believe in.

  5. it is fucking criminal that there are no federally supported parental leave programs in the U.S. of A. It is so sad that you have to be grateful for the possibility of a one month leave! Jesus H. Christ. And, Filthy Grandeur, yes childbirth is taxing on the body, but the longer term concern is what the fuck people are supposed to do with a newborn baby, when their employers are threatening to fill their much needed jobs within days after childbirth. I know, women aren’t supposed to work, what with their responsibilities for raising the nation’s babies. Blah!

  6. sorry, just to be clear, I wasn’t accusing Filthy Grandeur of thinking that…I was just venting about the antiquated logic behind a system that completely leaves parents out to dry…

  7. Congrats! I too was surprised that my employer doesn’t offer maternity leave. They (sort of) make up for it by having very generous sick leave that can accrue nearly limitlessly, but still.

    I do maintain, though, that part of the solution here needs to happen in the home. No, no, hear me out. The unequal distribution of parenting labor contributes to this situation, because employers can rely on men, whether they are parents or not, not to demand parental leave, whether at birth or later for things like doctors’ appointments or when the child can’t go to daycare/school. As long as that’s true, well, where’s the pressure to accommodate mothers? And of course, breastfeeding is a factor, but really, I think that one large, crucial step in this is more fathers becoming equal parenting partners, and demanding the time to do so.

  8. lisa,
    i get what you’re saying. i actually thought of that too. i mean, caring for a newborn is certainly stressful enough without worrying if you’ll even have a job to return to. besides that, if both parents work you have to consider who will care for the baby during the day. if you can’t afford day care you’re screwed. in my situation, i do not live in the same state as my parents, or my fiance’s parents, and though i have friends here they’re all people who work and couldn’t watch my potential baby…
    my employer doesn’t have a daycare either, and there are plenty of women in worse situations. we do not value life and childcare the way we say we do, otherwise we wouldn’t still be having this conversation

  9. The right does everything in its power to force women to have babies and does absolutely nothing to help them once the child is born. The fact that paid maternity leave is not a universal thing is absolutely terrible. What is this but sentencing a newborn to poverty for having the nerve to be born. In Canada you can take up to 52 weeks paid and a further 52 weeks unpaid. The payout is a maximum of 744 dollars every two weeks dependent on your income. For some this is a drastic pay cut however it is a far cry from leaving a young family with no little to no income in a time of need.

  10. I absolutely agree Lucy Gillam-this issue does need to be distributed more fairly between both parents.

  11. re: “And of course, breastfeeding is a factor, but really, I think that one large, crucial step in this is more fathers becoming equal parenting partners, and demanding the time to do so.”

    I agree that fathers should lend their voices of support for paid parental leaves. But the *State* also needs to be more proactive here because it has an important role to play in changing ideas about acceptable gender roles and in providing people with the basic (SO, SO, basic) rights that they deserve. Sorry, but the whole individual responsibility argument and the way it continues to creep up in discussions of American politics is depressing the shit out of me these days!

  12. No matter how equal you are, if you both work, you probably need someone to watch over a baby for up to 8h a day (if you have the same schedule). I’m fine with some day care, especially after a year, but shouldn’t you give babies more time with their mothers to form an attachment. Not to mention, babies seem like a lot of work, a full-time job. To work all day and then come home to a baby sounds…I don’t know. I can’t imagine.

  13. lyndsay,
    as others have said in this thread, and the reason this is called parental leave and not maternity leave, the time given should be shown as a way for both mothers and fathers to build that attachment. I’m a federal employee and this change would be great.

  14. Start looking into getting short-term disability now. At least for UNUM in MA an uncomplicated vaginal birth counts as six-weeks “disability” (longer if you have a C-section). That disability pay meant the difference between a 8 week and 12 week leave for me.

  15. Shoot…I forgot what I was going to say. Oh yeah..both parents should get paid parental leave. A women needs the support of her partner to adjust to this major and (to me) glorious event, but alas the ‘conservatives’ only want birth, not life. This is a MAJOR problem with the ‘crazies’, they want life, but don’t care how that life should be. Its a huge disconnect. I know I’m ranting, sorry.

    But really when I had my child my ‘other’ took vacation time to support me because he recognized (at the time circa 1979) that a man was important to the bonding process, not just the woman. Also, around that time there was legislation supporting a spouses right to parental leave (with pay?). I don’t know what happened with that bill.

  16. yeah, it’s a lot of work, whichever way you slice it. and i breastfed, so having that time for bonding and attaching was important to me and i cherished that year i took off from working. and, if other women breastfeed but have to go back to work, it must be terribly stressful!!! I can’t even imagine….because my kid wouldn’t drink from a bottle. but, if women don’t breastfeed (or, if they’re super human and pump enough while working), i think it’s just as plausible/important/possible for fathers to be the ones spending that time with the kid and bonding. although, I must admit that I myself would have to jump over a lot of emotional/intellectual/internalized mother guilt related hurtles before I would feel comfortable having my male partner play that role.

  17. Lisa, I wasn’t arguing that the state shouldn’t intervene. I said this was one factor, one step, albeit a crucial one. And it’s not about individual responsibility. It’s about effecting change on a large scale through collective action. Laws will help, yes, but they’re not going to solve everything, and as long as employers can assume that men will not ask for time off to take their kids to the doctor, they’re going to resist and subvert legal attempts. If we take that crutch away from them, we’ve got considerably more leverage.

  18. I agree with Lucy and others who emphasize parental leave over maternity leave. Disallowing paternity leave only reinforces the cultural notion of fatherhood as peripheral. Men and women should be equally responsible for the care of newborns–to bond with the child and because it’s simple ethical parenting. The lack of daycare and support for new parents is a whole other topic.

  19. Amber, I actually disagree that it is a whole other topic, because it’s all tied in together. On the one hand, we must provide that support if parents are going to be able to bond with their children and provide for them at the same time. And whatever our “friend” above says, society has an investment in the next generation, and should be providing that support. OTOH, as long as only half the population of parents is asking for it, it will be labeled a special interest or luxury item or a problem for women to solve through “balance” (God, how I loathe that term) rather than a social issue that we all need to address.

  20. I went back to work at two months because my husband was in grad school, I was our primary wage earner, and I had no paid leave. My husband was able to be at home with our son three days a week until he was about a year old. Having that one-on-one time with our son not only allowed him to bond more with our son, it also gave him the confidence and experience to be a much more involved parent. It helped keep us out of that trap of “the baby is crying and only mom knows what to do.” I think paid parental leave – and actively encouraging father’s to take that leave – is really important to creating more egalitarian parenting relationships. I also couldn’t agree more with Lucy that our current system casts parenting as a purely individual choice, with all the pressure on women to find “balance.” Paid leave would reflect a social commitment that everyone has an interest in the well-being of next generation.

  21. LIsa @ 16

    I think you mean well, but your overall tone is kind of condescending. Attachment and bonding are important to every parent, not just those who breastfeed or who don’t plan on going back to work and not just to mothers. That said, my post-partum depression lifted magically when I went back to work. When I came home to my baby, I felt eager to see him and refreshed. I would crash on the couch and nurse him while my husband got dinner ready.

    Yes, I breastfed and pumped at work. I’m not super-human, and it really doesn’t merit this “Gosh, I can’t imagine ever having to do something so horrible” kind of language. It was an inconvenience and took planning ahead of time, but after the first few weeks, it was just part of my routine. My kid didn’t like the bottle at first and really stepped up the night-feedings, but he slept with us, so I didn’t even have to wake up that much for it. Over time, he got used to the bottle, and once he was eating food, it really wasn’t a big deal.

    Women who work while their children are infants (the majority of women) don’t need to be placed on a pedestal and we certainly don’t need to be pitied.

  22. First things first: congratulations!

    I live in Holland, and paid maternity leave is pretty common here. Come to think of it, we ask ourselves: “so when are you leaving?”, followed by “when are you coming back?” and “will you still work full time?”. Plus we have the legal right to pump at work. Employers are required to arrange a seperate room for it. Jeez, this place is paradise compared to the US!

    My political party and one of the labor union are lobbying to lengthen fathers parental leave, now a ludicrous two days.

  23. I really hope this goes thru and leads to more paid parental leave throughout the U.S. If other countries can do it, there’s no reason the U.S. can’t.

    I WISH I could cobble together paid leave after my upcoming birth, but I can’t even get that. I’m a temp employee (even though I’ve been with the same company for 3 yrs) and neither the company I work for nor my employment agency were willing to provide even a smidgen of paid leave. I’m due in a couple of weeks, and I will take two weeks off unpaid and then work part-time around my husband’s class schedule for a few months. Money will be very tight.

    I’ve done my best to make peace with the situation; at least the baby will be with me or my husband and not with strangers right away. But, what really pisses me off is the horrified looks I get from other people when I tell them how little time off I’m taking. They look at me like I’m an uncaring mother, how could I do that to my baby. Ugh! Believe me, if my family could afford it, I would stay home longer.

  25. As a dad, I would have loved to have paid leave, but we do not offer it. In order to spend time with my kids when they were very little, I was able to stretch out my vacation time, so I basically worked part time for 5-6 weeks, then had to wait about a year before I had any more vacation time. This too was against company policy, but managers have some discretion and mine has little kids and a spouse with a career, so let me do it. None of the male senior management that I know of has taken off more than a couple of days after the birth of a child. The executive staff is almost all male and old school. There are many decent people here and overall, it’s a good company to work for, but IMO the culture absolutely needs to change. The fact that the next level down doesn’t to use much vacation doesn’t encourage me. I think legislation is going to be needed.

    Oh, a word of advice those with paid leave. If you can help it, do not go part-time before taking leave. Your employer may calculate your 60% pay or whatever based on the part-time hours. We made this mistake the first time, where Spouse kept up part-time for month 9 until term, but then only recieved about 30% of her usual pay rather than 60. For the second, it made more financial sense for her to start her leave a little earlier but with full-time hours until then. It was hard for her though. Of course the pregnancy may make this point moot.

  27. Men definitely need to start taking parental leave for anything to change, but most individual men can’t or don’t want to because their worried that at best they might be mocked and at worst aren’t looked at for a promotion or are looked at when lay-off time comes because they took time off. I think what might work to change this is for the government to give tax breaks or other incentives to companies to give paid leave, but only if a majority of the men eligible for the leave take it. I think companies would like to offer paid leave if they didn’t have to take a big hit for it, because it’s a big plus when finding/keeping good employees, and by requiring men to take it would put employers in the position of pushing men to take it instead of looking down on them when they ask. I think that would go a long way towards equality in child rearing.

  28. Oh, and David? The world has changed, and most people who would like to be parents don’t have a spouse that can take care of children full time instead of making money and/or can’t do that themselves. However, I think the human race still should continue to have children. Maybe you disagree, and support the voluntary extinction project. But unless you want us to go extinct, we have to come up with new ideas. That’s what this is about.

  29. ULTIMATE FAIL.

    Wow. What a well thought out, mature, intelligent argument you provide!

    Honestly? Seriously?

    How disappointing. So, anyone that doesn’t mirror your views exactly is “ultimate fail”, with no counter whatsoever.

    I suppose that means you cannot actually refute my points. If you’re unable to live within your means, and choose to go after luxury items that are out of your range, that’s your own fault and responsibility. Being responsible is part of being an adult.

  30. If my wife and I decided to have another child, I would love to have both of us get paid time off from work. It would be great for us. If it ever happens, I’ll drop by here and you guys can take up a collection for us.

    And if you’re thinking “why would I donate so that some stranger can bond with his kid?”, welcome to my reaction to the idea of my taxes going for Federal employees, already lavishly benefited and possessed of a job security that 95% of Americans will never know, getting one more perk.

    Pay for your own childbearing.

  32. Seriously, David. And congrats on missing the point. Your disagreeing with me was not the “ultimate fail” — your so-called attempt to not be classist was. Indeed, perhaps the biggest fail I’ve ever seen.

    Yes, I can refute your argument in two simple bullet points:

    1. Until parenting is seen as real work that is integral to the continuation of our society and therefore worthy of concrete societal support, women will not only continue to do the vast majority of parental work, they will also be perpetually unequal to men. Period.

    2. This is a feminist blog. And those who think that only some people deserve to have children, and that those who are not rich deserve to sacrifice financial security to do so, need to get off of it. Now. Because as per the comment policy, they are not welcome here. And do not deserve serious refutation of their points, which by the way, also directly insult the blogger.

  33. Well, honestly, if you can’t afford to go unpaid for 6 weeks to have a child, how can you expect to afford to care for the child in the first place?

    You know, there was so much fail in the rest of this post, I’m not even going to touch it. I just want to focus on this part.

    Have you ever heard of a little thing called cash flow?

    I am currently living on my credit cards, and cannot afford to pay my mortgage. My husband and I make over $250K a year. The reason we are in dire straits despite making so much money is that our business was not paid for a month, during which time we had to make payroll twice. This was completely unexpected, and has resulted in our major credit card drastically cutting back our available credit at a time when we most need our available credit to catch back up.

    By *any* standard, we are rich. We may live in a crappy house that’s falling apart, but we normally never have to worry about paying the bills or affording pretty much anything. But because we are rich, we have high cash outflow — such as having employees — and thus we get nailed when the cash inflow goes to 0 for too long.

    The thing about a child is that they are only expensive over the *long* run. When a baby is first born it’s very cheap, if you’re insured and you’re breastfeeding. You’ll have hospital bills to pay, but you can pay them over a long term. The baby doesn’t cost more in food, and baby clothes can be bought cheaply in second hand stores, as can baby equipment, and even if you buy everything new you can outfit baby and buy all your supplies for less than $2,000. Most middle class people make more than that in 6 weeks. Especially because you can buy that stuff on credit… but you can’t pay your rent or your mortgage on credit, and 6 weeks is in eviction territory if you have rent to pay.

    Our cash flow problem will be solved, eventually, because the money is *there*, our clients just are being slow to pay. But losing 6 weeks of pay is permanent. You can’t easily catch up from that. This says nothing about your ability to pay for a child — *most* Americans cannot afford to lose 6 weeks of pay.

  34. Congrats, Rachel!

    Cannot agree more with Lucy Gillam. The focus needs to be on parental leave, with incentives for men to take it. With on site or nearby daycare and private pumping areas, BF-ing or pumping at work would be less of a challenge. As long as only women take leave, even if it’s paid, women will be viewed as more expensive and decisions will be made accordingly re hiring and promotion, even if none of this is vocalized.

  35. Indeed, congratulations; I’m off to sign the petition.

    My wife is getting paid leave from her company while our daughter is small — and that’s due to the largesse of the firm for which she works. It’s called random luck, and we’ll take it, but I’m quite clear that what is freely given in this instance ought to be required.

    It’s remarkable that countries like semi-socialist Germany (producing crap pieces of socialist manufacturing like, uh, Mercedes-Benz) can pay such generous leave even with a shrinking tax base, while we, with a growing one, won’t. Clearly, the Western European example is one in which reasonably generous social services and a highly developed economy work together just fine.

  36. And if you’re thinking “why would I donate so that some stranger can bond with his kid?”, welcome to my reaction to the idea of my taxes going for Federal employees, already lavishly benefited and possessed of a job security that 95% of Americans will never know, getting one more perk.

    Funny, that’s exactly how *I* feel about my taxes going to pay for a military that I, personally, will never use (yes, I know how conservatives like to go on and on about freedom isn’t free and blah blah blah, but somehow Canada and Europe and Australia all spend vastly less on their military than we do, yet somehow are equally free.) Or how I feel about my taxes going to AIG’s employees as bonuses.

    Federal employees getting perks is actually good for the rest of us, because it raises the bar. When private employers know that many of their employees could go to the public sector for better benefits, they raise their own benefits.

    Children are not a luxury item — they are, in fact, a net sum gain to society. The productivity of a human being is far greater than the sum that was spent on making that human being productive in the first place. The money you spend in taxes today on making sure that a couple can afford to have a child will come back to you in Social Security benefits, since the SS benefits current retirees are receiving come from *you*, not from the money they already paid into the system.

    You are short-sighted. You and your wife will benefit long-term from federal employees having this benefit, because it will incent more private employers to offer the benefit, which may make it available to you. You will also benefit in that qualified, talented women who could be working in the private sector doing nothing more important than making sure that Coca-Cola’s sales numbers go up may instead go to work for the federal government, working on projects that may improve your life or being part of the bureaucracy *you* have to deal with, because they can get paid maternal leave that way. Wouldn’t you rather that the federal government be able to attract the best employees, given that they are working for *you*? I certainly don’t want the government employees *I* have to deal with to be the people who couldn’t find a better job elsewhere; I want them to be people who could have had any job they wanted and chose this one.

  37. David: “I suppose that means you cannot actually refute my points. If you’re unable to live within your means, and choose to go after luxury items that are out of your range, that’s your own fault and responsibility. Being responsible is part of being an adult.”

    Not hard to refute this point. As Alara mentioned, it is often a timing issue. Many parents are in a different economic stage when first becoming parents than they will be over the child’s time spent at home. For example, I gave birth at 36, because this happened to be a couple years after I met my spouse. If I’d met the right person before say 32, we would not have been able to afford going even a month without pay. Now, we are well into the top tax bracket (not that one needs to be, to bring up a healthy child). If people aren’t encouraged to continue on in careers in which they may currently be struggling, they will never reach a point when they aren’t. Because whether or not you “support” reproduction, it’s not going out of style. And today’s struggling parents are tomorrow’s taxpayers, from a cold hard economic standpoint.

    Another purely economic justification (as it seems the “right thing to do” analysis is leaving you cold) is that employers who provide leave provisions and incentivize both men and women to take advantage of them are best able to recoup costs that would otherwise be accumulated in training employees who then quit because the employers lack flexible leave or part-time policies. It costs, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars to train employees.

  38. Children are not a luxury item — they are, in fact, a net sum gain to society.

    They are a luxury. We are not in danger of going extinct. At this point, having children only serves to be a net loss to society. The more humans we add to a planet that already struggles to carry the nearly 7 billion of us on it, the more we endanger said planet.

    Look up how much land is used on crops/farm animals in order to produce enough food to support the humans already here. How many forests are bulldozed to provide additional grazing land for more animals.

    The population is continually expanding with no signs of slowing or stopping. It’s not a good thing. Children are not benefitting society. Each one produced puts a little more strain on an already strained society/ecosystem/planet.

    There aren’t enough people like me that refuse to reproduce (and refuse to date/sleep with/associate with people who desire such) to counteract those having 3+ children.

    The money you spend in taxes today on making sure that a couple can afford to have a child will come back to you in Social Security benefits, since the SS benefits current retirees are receiving come from *you*, not from the money they already paid into the system.

    Actually, judging by current stats on the subject, I could very well easily be dead before I’m even old enough to collect SS. My year of retirement is the age of 67. My father never even made it past 62.

    I will literally work until I die, and probably moreso as time goes on, in order to pay into things that will never, ever benefit me.

    You are short-sighted. You and your wife will benefit long-term from federal employees having this benefit, because it will incent more private employers to offer the benefit, which may make it available to you.

    I’m divorced, and assure you, will never make that particular mistake again.

    In our poor economy, I see private employers cutting back on benefits, not adding TO them.

    Wouldn’t you rather that the federal government be able to attract the best employees, given that they are working for *you*? I certainly don’t want the government employees *I* have to deal with to be the people who couldn’t find a better job elsewhere; I want them to be people who could have had any job they wanted and chose this one.

    I deal with employees in the private sector on a daily basis. I very rarely encounter government ones.

    At the end of the day, when someone is deeply against something, it’s a slap in the face to take their tax dollars to encourage it. Which is why the government cannot sponsor religion. I will never reproduce, I will never be provided some 52 weeks paid off work for a personal choice, etcetera.

  39. You are short-sighted. You and your wife will benefit long-term from federal employees having this benefit, because it will incent more private employers to offer the benefit, which may make it available to you.

    Except that my wife and I are entrepreneurs, so what it does is raise expectations of what WE are expected to provide on the (increasingly rare) occasions that we hire outside workers. It seems like everything in our society is something that the “employer” is expected to magically provide. And then we wonder why unemployment is through the roof and the economy is crashing!

  40. David, you want someone to refute you? Here you go…

    D: I think it’s unreasonable to expect your employer to offer paid time off for a pregnancy. You’re asking them to pay for you to NOT work, while they also have to pay a temp to cover you NOT being there.

    CG: Since I live here, I’ll use Canada as an example. Employers pay nothing when you take up to 52 weeks of leave to care for your new child. Your income comes from drawing from the Employment Insurance program: a program that all employed persons pay into. That plan has been in surplus for more than 10 years and continues to be even with it being used for this program.
    Employers do not have to grant 52 weeks leave. They are only held to the first 12 (maternity leave). The remainder weeks are considered parental leave and at the discretion of your employer. If the company would falter without your contribution, they can negotiate your return to work date. However, if they grant the full leave to you, they must keep a job of equivalent standing, salary, and benefits for you upon your return to work. It is at their discretion to hire a temp or re-allocate your work load. The upside is that you can easily get 1 year contract jobs in a lot industries, and there is actually more employment because of that.

    D: No matter which way you look at it, it comes back to (continuing a) pregnancy being a choice. No one forced you to be pregnant, it didn’t just happen out of nowhere, you know?

    CG:So?

    D:All it would mean is employers raising costs of the goods/services they sell to counteract the cost of paying an employee to not work.

    CG: That’s a giant leap. Explain that.

    D: Well, honestly, if you can’t afford to go unpaid for 6 weeks to have a child, how can you expect to afford to care for the child in the first place?

    CG:I would ask that question of men: if you can’t afford to take time off to look after your child, why are you having sex in the first place?

    D: I’m not trying to sound classist,

    CG: but it is hard when you actually are classist

    D: I’m just not keen on employers paying for their employees luxury choices. Especially federal ones, because that means it’s coming out of tax .I don’t like the idea of my money going towards religion, which is why I support the separation of church and state, and I don’t support reproduction, which is why I’d rather not see my tax dollars going to support it.
    dollars

    CG: is the expense of mat lv coming from employers or tax dollars david? you seem confused.

    Rachel – Congrats (again) and I’m sorry you don’t have paid leave at all. Perhaps David might like to start a collection to help you out (har har)

  41. David, has it never occurred to you that the next generation of productive workers/taxpayers will be needed to pay for your pension? You won’t be able to retire if there aren’t any younger people producing wealth for you, you know. Maybe that’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make in order to eliminate the evil that is “reproduction” but if so you’re a bit of a fringe fanatic. Even quite mild demographic crunches aren’t much fun for older people in the societies that go through them.

    In other words, children are an economic resource needed by the whole of society. Not just by parents. Parents are in fact massively undersubsidised for the amount of work they do in producing such a valuable resource. And economic investment in children always, always pays off in the long term, more than any other kind of economic investment.

    Those of us who aren’t parents owe it to ourselves as well as to parents to make parent’s lives as easy as possible, and to make sure that education, daycare and other resources that children benefit from are well subsidised. And this is coming from a strictly economic point of view, we don’t even have to go into the moral/class/equality implications.

    It never ceases to amaze me that so many people don’t understand something so very basic.

  43. There’s a lot to unpack in that “children are a luxury item” nonsense, but it’s a fairly common view amongst the upper middle class. This view started coming about after labor activists got child labor laws pushed through—-then the well-heeled stopped seeing children as low-paid labor and started seeing them as luxury items (this was concurrent with the “Cult of Motherhood”, which mandated that well-off women were supposed to live vicariously through the lives of their children, and mothering practices (you didn’t think I was going to say “parenting practices”, didja?) were proscribed by (male) experts and eventually became what we call the “helicopter” version of parenting today….).

    What goes unspoken in that view is “you are what you own”; that one’s human worth is literally predicated on net worth. It informs bigotry against older people, disabled people, poor people, unemployed people—when “you are what you own”, then questions of what it is to be human, what it is to live in community, what is “contribution”, etc. are conveniently excised from consideration.

    Anyway, it should go without saying that parental leave should be enacted on a large scale (and could easily be done through the existing unemployment system—-we don’t really need to re-invent the wheel, or leave it to individual employers), and this passage of this bill is a good start. This is how modern economies are structured. So much of public policy, funding, and budgets in the United States are structured as if the mid-to-late 1800s are alive and well in the 21st century. We structure our entire school system under the assumption that we are a majority agrarian society, with Ma and Pa Kettle needing the help of the kiddos down on the farm—from our school day, school year, and local sources of funding. We build roads as if most of the country is dirt paths, rather than fund high-speed and/or light rail (and don’t kid yourelf—the move from rail to road was started in response to the power of organized labor in the railroads). We structure out health care system as if this nation were a collection of small towns with Marcus Welby still making house calls.

    It’s high time to recognize that tremendous changes have taken place in the past 150+ years. Changes from which there is no turning back (not that I want to—I like antibiotics! Refrigeration! Electricity—-obviously!). We aren’t landless peasants anymore, toiling on our feudal landlords’ estates. If you want a modern economy, then you have to have the institutions of a modern economy. End of story.

  44. Except that my wife and I are entrepreneurs, so what it does is raise expectations of what WE are expected to provide on the (increasingly rare) occasions that we hire outside workers. It seems like everything in our society is something that the “employer” is expected to magically provide. And then we wonder why unemployment is through the roof and the economy is crashing!

    If you have a small business, you don’t even have to give *unpaid* family leave and you are already competing with all the large businesses that do have to, so what are you worried about? And if you hire outside work only rarely, hire it as temp workers or 1099 and then you don’t have to give any benefits.

    Actually, since you own a business, you have a lower tax burden than anyone with a job working for someone else, or else you have a lousy accountant. I own a business myself. Businesses can make expenses disappear that the employee cannot even if it’s equally job-related, because the employee has cutoffs to deal with that the business does not have. So whine whine bitch moan, but those federal employees are paying more taxes than you are.

    As for David… America and the entire West is currently at zero population growth or less from birth. The rest of the world is where the population growth is. So you are essentially suggesting that the West outsource childbearing (at zero pop growth, we already get all our “growth” benefits from immigration… at less than zero pop, we would start to suffer collapse unless we bring in immigrants.) But if you’re genuinely concerned about the well being of humanity as a whole re overpopulation, then you have to realize that THE biggest threat, THE reason for overpopulation, is women being devalued, not permitted to work outside the home, not permitted to get an education, and not given rights to control their own reproduction. None of this goes away if women are underrepresented in a work force.

    By paying women who do choose to be pregnant (and men who do choose to be involved with their child), we create a social environment which is friendly to the notion of women having jobs. Women having jobs, important jobs with social status attached, is *the* reason why the West and Japan have zero pop growth and places like China, India and the Mideast still have overpopulation problems. If a woman has a choice between never be a mother because they can’t afford it and be the mother of ten kids because it’s all they do, and *all* the women have the same choice, the majority of them will take the ten kids option, and many who would have chosen to never be a mother are forced by social pressure (or literally forced, by rape/marriages) into the ten kids. But if all the women have the choice between never be a mother because they choose not to be mothers, and be the mother of enough kids that they can fit in around their job (which, for most, is 1-3), the ones who choose to be mothers (again the majority) have a lot fewer kids, the ones who choose not to be mothers have higher social status and can enforce their choice better, and all the kids do better so the society functions better.

    Policies that punish women for having children and working produce perverse incentives that result in *more* children, not less, because given a choice between never having kids and not having a job… the weight of history and our entire culture resting on women tells *most* of them to not have the job, and if you don’t have a job you need to justify it to yourself by having more kids. So even from a perspective of trying to control overpopulation your idea is stupid.

  47. “So whine whine bitch moan, but those federal employees are paying more taxes than you are.”

    We are a small business with two partners and two employees and I think your statement is nuts. Our workerman’s comp, for example just quadrupled – and we’ve never made a claim! and that’s just part of our business expenses. Small business keeps getting hit, at least in this state and if it keeps up we may have to close our doors. But I’ll tell you what mandatory paid maternity leave will do – it will make more opportunities for women past menopause!

  48. And I’ll repeat what Alara already wrote – businesses with fewer than 50 employees aren’t even required to give parents unpaid leave. But thanks for playing.

  49. David, you haven’t refuted the training-expense point. In the legal environment, for example, the cost at a large firm is $300,000 per third year associate lost and replaced.

    Even though the training cost may not be this much in the government context (or may even be more, I don’t know, but it’s not peanuts), guess who ultimately pays those traning and replacement costs?

    You guessed it! People whining on the sidelines about how they don’t support luxury decisions.

  51. Congratulations Rachel!

    I intended to make a comment bragging about how we do it in Canada, but I see others have beaten me to it. I should also add, though, that some jobs with great benefit packages (ex. government) “top up” your maternity leave so that you may get 12 months leave coverered by employment insurance (they usually pay up to 55% of your wage up to a maximum amount), plus your employer may top you up so that you make 80 to 90 percent of your wage during that year off.

    Can I just also say that I admire greatly all those commentors who were able to put together reasoned rebuttles to David’s arguement? I have such problems arguing with the ridiculous in this world and wouldn’t have been able to do it myself. Good on you all.

  53. this is probably too late for chigona (@21) to notice, but I just wanted to say that I was responding originally to someone up thread who mentioned the importance of mothers bonding in the first year. My basic point was that it didn’t necessarily have to be mothers. And, with regards to breastfeeding and bonding, I did try to make my comments specific to my own experience and what was important to me. I’m sorry if I sounded condescending towards mothers who went back to work and pumped. I really didn’t mean to. I don’t pity women who have to go back to work when their children are infants; I respect them a great deal. And, my overall criticism (further up thread) is really not about mothers or parenting arrangements. My criticism was directed at the state and it’s lack of support for parents, especially mothers who are the ones generally taxed with the stress of working and taking care of children.

  54. “businesses with fewer than 50 employees aren’t even required to give parents unpaid leave. ”

    So are business with 51 or more employees exempt from quadrupling workman’s compensation taxes, higher insurance fees and other business expenses?

  55. When women went into the home during the industrial revolution (at least that was the ideal if not the norm) it created a public/ private divide. And for men to devote their lives to their careers they needed a housewife at home to handle the details of their private life. This separated work from home life more than it has been at any time in history. Many Americans believe that one should leave their private life at home when they go to work. Although these ideas are only a bit over a century old, we think of them as natural and right. Which is why David probably does not question them at all. To him, it is the way business has always been done.

    The only thing is, there isn’t anyone at home anymore. And unfortunately, when women entered the workforce, we measured our equality against what men have. We will be equal when we can devote our lives to our careers. But none of us should be living our lives this way. Men and women should be able to have jobs or careers and spend time with their family. There is no longer anyone at home. So work policies are going to have to become more flexible. Men and women need to be equally responsible for leaving work to pick up the sick child. And it shouldn’t have a detrimental effect on one’s career.

    One of the reasons we shouldn’t be toiling away at our careers anymore is we don’t get the benefits anymore. Nobody can earn a family wage. Less and less companies are providing health insurance. With globalization, there is no job security. Seniority no longer matters. Going from school to work to retirement is not what people do anymore. There is no housewife at home anymore, yet work policies still don’t reflect the actuality of people’s lives.

    And yes, parental leave will raise the cost of doing business. But that does not mean it will raise prices for products or services. That is the same failed argument against raising the minimum wage. Companies are still going to need the same amount of people to do the work. And companies have already found the balance between the highest price they can charge and the amount of people that will buy their product or service.

    So when we raise the cost of doing business without layoffs and raising prices, we get less shareholder profits and executive pay. There will be less of a discrepancy between the lowest and highest paid employees, and we will end up with a less stratified society.

    We assume it is okay for companies to take as much as possible without giving any of the profits from added productivity to the employees. Humane family leave policies are not some favor or hand out from the government. We earn it and deserve it. It is time businesses recognize that we have private lives, and that if we are going to take work home, we are going to take home to work.

  56. One more thing. Having children is not a privilege or luxury for the few families with men still making a family wage. It is a biological instinct. Saying only those who can afford children should have them is like saying only those who have bathrooms can take a dump. And there is a huge problem in a society where a large portion of the population can not afford to have children

  57. “And yes, parental leave will raise the cost of doing business. But that does not mean it will raise prices for products or services. That is the same failed argument against raising the minimum wage. Companies are still going to need the same amount of people to do the work.”

    Maybe. But every business has to take a look at the workload and the potential of taking on more work, look at the expenses involved and make the decision on whether or not its worth it – and many times it’s not. And BTW, don’t know where you got the idea that raising the minimum wage didn’t hurt businesses because it most certainly did. I know of several businesses that cut back or just quit after a mandatory mw hike. The businesses that could take it simply hiked their prices up.

  58. All the bragging about how great Canada is for parental benefits forgets one thing: one does not qualify for parental benefits unless one also qualifies for regular EI. So, if you’re like me, and work only part time, and haven’t worked enough hours in the last 52 weeks, you get NOTHING. Nada. Zilch. Even if you’ve worked at that job for 5 years or 20 years. My employer is a church, so they’ll hold the job as long as I want, but I get no paid leave at all.

  59. # Marle says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 10:08 am – Edit

    Oh, and David? The world has changed, and most people who would like to be parents don’t have a spouse that can take care of children full time instead of making money and/or can’t do that themselves. However, I think the human race still should continue to have children. Maybe you disagree, and support the voluntary extinction project. But unless you want us to go extinct, we have to come up with new ideas. That’s what this is about.

    I don’t support the human race becoming extinct, but seeing as there are many billion of us, we could stand to lose quite a few.

    Here: Were we extinct, or even close to it, in 1800?

    no?

    Because, you know, there were almost a BILLION of us then. Or, if you prefer, “only” a billion; one for every 6.7 or so humans currently walking around our planet.

    Shoot, have whatever opinions you want on leave. But tying it to extinction is idiotic.

  60. I was thinking the same thing, Luna. the same goes for entrepreneurs and other self employed folks and other people with irregular work schedules, like actors and such. There still remains to be a very narrow view of who qualifies for EI and parental leave benefits in Canada.

  61. If you can’t afford to pay your employees more than a poverty wage, then you don’t deserve to be in business.

  62. Ellen,
    One would ask,,who ‘deserves to be in business’ by your lights?Only businesses with a large profit margin?And most folks are, in the best job they can find.How does it benefit you to lose your job because you aren’t well enough paid?Presumably,you would have left had you a better option.

  63. Just to add further international perspective, in the UK there is 6 weeks’ paid maternity leave, followed by the ability to take up to 6 months’ maternity leave with Statutory Maternity Pay (around £100 a week – ie not much), and then you can take a further 6 months unpaid and your employer has to keep the job open for you.

    It has its faults – i.e. you can only really afford to take the whole lot if you are fairly high up the socio-economic scale to begin with – but compared with the US – sheesh.

    Men also now get 2 (woo hoo) weeks paternity leave at Statutory Paternity Pay.

    Thing is, many businesses offer maternity leave at a much better rate than that statutorily required because they recognise the benefit of staff retention. This is especially the case with white collar professionals (as ever, the already well off get to be better off). This may well start to happen with paternity leave as men start taking it, and demand more allowance from their employers for their families. My partner, for example, arranged to have a 3 months unpaid “sabbatical” with his employer.

  64. My point is that most companies, even small businesses can pay their employees more than a poverty wage. It is unbelievable to me that some businesses don’t see that as part of the cost of doing business. Businesses already operate (or should) with the lowest amount of employees possible. They already find a balance (or should) between the highest prices they can charge and the optimum amount of customers. So if paying employees a decent wage destroys that, you probably don’t have a good business model. Paying employees more usually does not come out of profits, but it does slow down growing profits. But I am sorry, I don’t thing growing profits should come with the cost of exploitation. Yes, there are young businesses, that don’t make a lot of profits, yet. But if they didn’t come up with a proper plan and model, with forecasts for when they would make a profit, unless they got lucky, or into a business with a very small overhead, they are going to have trouble. Either way paying employees a decent wage shouldn’t make or break you. If it does, you weren’t likely to succeed to regardless.

  65. And one more thing, going back to the topic. It is time Americans learn how much of the economy that is dependent on the unpaid labor of women. We are the only country that keeps that so hidden. Women are much more likely to go into poverty than men. This is one of the reasons why.

  66. I am a government employee and the first comment is so disgusting to me I can’t even wrap my tiny little woman brain around it! You are right; we have chosen to populate the Earth, our biological duty. Pregnancy isn’t always a choice believe it or not, ever heard of an “accident”? And obviously we are asexual and no man helps us create that baby, right? Yes, men are never to blame! It is all on us!! Seriously, what do you suppose women do? Do you just suppose that we abort every “accident” we create? Sorry, God does not agree with your outright foolishness. It is very clear you do not have children nor have you been faced with parental leave. How do you think you got here, David? A cabbage patch? Go back to the cave from which you came!!!!

    And what if it is our choice to start a family? We, women, should suffer even though it took a man’s appendage to assist us? Do you suppose we stop populating our country like what has happened in Japan? Look at the negative social impacts over there Mr. Smartee Pants! You are just outrageous!

    As government employees we do not get any disability offered through the government and no paid maternity/paternity leave. So, yes, even if I were struck by a car I would be just as screwed as I am with a baby. But, I suppose in your mind that is just fine, right? For those complaining about taxes, don’t you think we pay taxes just as well? Think of how much more we spend on welfare programs for people who don’t want to work and “choose” time and time again to pop out those babies for a welfare check? And you complain about those working to better your government?

    Other countries, even 3rd world countries, offer better benefits to their working mothers and fathers. It is a shame, a crying shame. It will be interesting to see how they retain employees with little to no benefits when the baby boomers all retire. The largest employer in the country with NO maternity/paternity benefits, disability benefits or other paid leave benefits? How shameful! Then, God forbid you or your family gets sick after you use your leave for a disability or maternity/paternity leave. Newsflash, there won’t be any leave for you to take…the cycle continues…you will never be able to catch up on your leave or save for emergencies. Ah, but to David, this is the way it should be!

    DAVID, DO SOME RESEARCH ON JAPAN AND THE BIRTH TO DEATH RATIO OVER THERE, BUDDY! Then try to formulate your pathetic argument again about how we are not in danger of going “extinct”. What are we dinosaurs anyway?! God, this man!??!!

  67. Pregnancy isn’t always a choice believe it or not, ever heard of an “accident”?

    I believe I pointed out that *continuing* one IS a choice. Not just getting pregnant in the first place. Abortions are available, and accidents can be largely prevented via the MAP.

    And obviously we are asexual and no man helps us create that baby, right? Yes, men are never to blame! It is all on us!!

    When it is 100% your choice to continue a pregnancy or to terminate it, once you ARE pregnant, yes, it does rest all on your shoulders.

    You cannot say it’s a woman’s choice, and then suddenly go back on that when it holds you to blame for deciding to keep a pregnancy. Yes, he helped put it there, but once it IS there, the choice is all yours. He has no say in it, only you do.

    Sorry, God does not agree with your outright foolishness. It is very clear you do not have children nor have you been faced with parental leave. How do you think you got here, David? A cabbage patch? Go back to the cave from which you came!!!!

    I don’t really see how any sort of deity is relevant to this discussion.

    Of course I do not have children. I’ve repeatedly stated that throughout my comments. I detest them, and cannot tolerate them in any way.

    I am well aware of how I got here, but does that automatically mean I somehow MUST approve of reproduction and/or desire to do it? Absolutely not.

    And what if it is our choice to start a family? We, women, should suffer even though it took a man’s appendage to assist us? Do you suppose we stop populating our country like what has happened in Japan? Look at the negative social impacts over there Mr. Smartee Pants! You are just outrageous!

    There will be vastly more negative consequences from overpopulation. As I said earlier, there is a massive amount of land wasted, and forests clearcut in order to make room for more livestock grazing areas, or edible crops.

    Not to mention providing housing, jobs, and everything else for more people than your community/city/state/country can support.

    It will be interesting to see how they retain employees with little to no benefits when the baby boomers all retire.

    Considering our economy, people are taking what jobs they can get.

    It’s hard for me to listen to complaints of government employees, whom often have much better job security/wages/benefits than the rest of the private sector.

    Then try to formulate your pathetic argument again about how we are not in danger of going “extinct”.

    We aren’t. The human population of Earth has steadily risen, nonstop. We’re in danger of extinction from overpopulation, not under.

    Do you think this place will support an infinite number of humans, recklessly breeding? We’re the only animal on this planet that has no capability to achieve equilibrium with our environment.

    We just fill all available space, and then push out looking for more space to fill.

  68. So basically you did no research on the birth to death ratio before you left your ignorant rant did you? And clearly you’ve never been with a woman and this is why you are angry, huh? No woman in her right mind would even entertain the notion of being near you and this upsets you doesn’t it? Maybe mommy issues? Which is it? And if you hate women so very much, why are you on a feminist website?

    I expect you have never had sex either. This is obvious because your opinions do not allow you the right to replicate the act of reproduction.

    This rant should be published for all the woman from where ever the hell you came from to read. Ah, I would love to see and hear the reaction! WOMEN beware, David wants to KILL YOUR BABY!!!!!!!!!

    And are you FUCKING kidding me? Every woman should have an abortion? You sound like a sociopathic murderer to me. Go to Hell! And rest assured, David, there is always plenty of space to “fill” in Hell for ignorant assholes like yourself! Then you’ll think deity! To your misfortune you don’t only answer to yourself in this world. ROT!

  69. Wow. Just…wow.

    So basically you did no research on the birth to death ratio before you left your ignorant rant did you?

    I did, and posted it earlier. We have more births than we do deaths.

    And clearly you’ve never been with a woman and this is why you are angry, huh?

    I have absolutely no idea how you can relate an individual’s sex life, with their distaste for overpopulation and reproduction.

    No woman in her right mind would even entertain the notion of being near you and this upsets you doesn’t it? Maybe mommy issues? Which is it? And if you hate women so very much, why are you on a feminist website?

    Amazingly enough, there are plenty of women that don’t like the idea of reproducing, too.

    So, I guess you’ve just insulted a bunch of women, by saying they’re not in their right minds.

    Also, being against reproduction doesn’t mean one “hates women”. Unless you think reproducing and women are inextricably tied together, and that you think that’s all women are for.

    I expect you have never had sex either. This is obvious because your opinions do not allow you the right to replicate the act of reproduction.

    I have. When it comes to it, I make certain I’m only sleeping with women that don’t want to have children.

    This rant should be published for all the woman from where ever the hell you came from to read. Ah, I would love to see and hear the reaction! WOMEN beware, David wants to KILL YOUR BABY!!!!!!!!!

    Again, wow. I have nothing to say to this, because it’s so laughably ridiculous.

    And are you FUCKING kidding me? Every woman should have an abortion?

    You know, I don’t really believe I ever said that, did I? It’s pretty obnoxious to attribute statements to someone that they never said.

    You sound like a sociopathic murderer to me. Go to Hell! And rest assured, David, there is always plenty of space to “fill” in Hell for ignorant assholes like yourself! Then you’ll think deity! To your misfortune you don’t only answer to yourself in this world. ROT!

    Keep your religion to yourself. Not everyone believes in it, nor cares to hear about it.

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