Why Isn’t Paid Maternity Leave a Right? Family Values, My @#$%
So, here’s a quick quiz: What does the United States have in common with Swaziland, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea?
I’ll wait. And no, it’s not because those nations’ governments have just named pizza a vegetable, as the U.S. Congress just has.
Got an answer? If you were thinking that the U.S.’s maternity leave policy (which is to say, lack of a cohesive, mandated one) is the answer, you win. We’re are in fine company with those three countries for offering working mothers no mandated paid maternity leave.
This, despite the fact that we talk a very good game about family values. Goodness, but do I distrust that phrase. What sort of family values are at play when a wage earner has the choice between hobbling back to work after six weeks’ “recovery” from childbirth in order to feed herself and her family — or quit her job altogether and risk either a temporary or permanent dip below the poverty line?
I rant about this today because I just read this piece on AOL Jobs, by Claire Gordon. The article starts with what’s supposed to be “good” news, that according to the latest Census Bureau data, a smidgen more than half of first-time mothers who worked would receive some sort of paid leave. (That “smidgen more” adds up to 51%). Then, of course, one has to take into account the fact that without mandated paid leave, these moms (I was among them, when I had my first son back in 2002) are at the mercy of their companies’ policies and precedents, and are statistically — big surprise here — more likely to get paid leave if they are professional women. Younger, less educated, and lower-paid workers are the least likely to have any sort of paid cushion, post birth. As the article notes:
Eighty-two percent of employed new mothers without a high school degree did not get paid leave, according to the census. These women are less likely to have jobs with good benefits, and they’re more likely to be very young. The lack of any mandated paid maternity leave also exacts a much greater cost on the single mothers who raise a quarter of this country’s children.
This is meant to be good news, right? The fact that the number ticked up from 42% at the last survey to that whopping 51% now? I’m not impressed.
To me, mandated paid leave would be one sure way of getting behind true family values. It would define family values, in a literal way, because if you value families, you help them get by as a family, right? But — again, as the piece points out — America is nothing if not conflicted over its definition of family values. In light of these kind of stats (that are supposed to be “good news” but instead mask the same-old bad news), it becomes clearer than ever that, in this nation, family values and working mothers are mutually exclusive. Enemies. Opposites. Two magnetic poles that repel each other. Overstating? I don’t think so.
I’ve been a working mother from the start. I’d have loved more paid leave, or more leave full stop, but I didn’t get it, and that’s a shame. For the record, I took 12 weeks off from a full-time job after the birth of my first son, four weeks on full pay, 8 weeks unpaid. After baby #2, I went freelance and “gave” myself a whopping 2 weeks “off.” Of course, women like me with professional careers can, at least in theory, dip in and out work, swap full- for part-time, ratchet back and then ramp up. We have that luxury. Other women have no such luxury. But to me this is far more than a class issue (though I agree that the class issue is often ignored or brushed aside).
To me it always comes down to this dichotomy between family values as broadly defined in this country, and the reality on the ground. Why shouldn’t my effort to keep my career humming — and to support my family — be the very definition of family values? Why, instead, should I feel guilty (I don’t, by the way; as I’ve said before, I think I was born without that gene, and thank goodness) in order to be a “good” mom? Why should I have to keep my mouth shut when others (on TV, in the media, casually all over the place) define moms who aren’t working outside the home “full time mothers.” News flash: Once that child is in your life, you are a full time mother, with “time” defined as “the rest of your life,” not 9 to 5, Monday to Friday.
No matter what we mothers do, we’re wrong, let’s face it (we hover too much, or not enough; we’re soccer moms or harpies in shoulder pads, etcetera and ad nauseum, through the ages). But working mothers are the majority of the workforce — when are attitudes going to catch up with reality? I’m not conflicted one bit about my role: I am a mother, and I work.
Those, my friends, are my family values. What are your thoughts?
November 16, 2011 @ 3:14 pm
I cannot agree more.
In Austria you get in between €1000 per month (if you only take one year off) and €436 per month (if you take three years off). This is paid by the state and stands in no relation to what you actually earn. However, you also have the option of getting 80% of your salary for one year – if this happens to be more attractive.
If two parents go on leave there is more time and more money, which is great since there is an increasing number fathers who take paternity leave for a couple of months or years.
8 weeks before and 8 weeks after the birth women in Austria are not allowd to work. They get their full salaries paid by the state, however. It’s only after these inital 8 weeks that maternity/paternity leave starts.
From birth onwards there are also children benefits which every mother gets. The amount increases from year to year.
I honestly believe that a society that prides itself of being family-friendly needs to get its priorities right. Anything else is hypocritical and mendacious.
Bee
November 16, 2011 @ 3:22 pm
The moms I know, including me, all got “some sort of paid leave” but yeah, it wasn’t sufficient.* I was a teacher when I had my first kid and because I didn’t know that “disability insurance” meant “paid maternity leave” (I was young, inexperienced, and dumb, I guess), I didn’t opt into disability so the only paid days off I got were what I had left of vacation and sick days after using a bunch for my OB appointments. The thought actually crossed my mind to come back to school after my paid days were up and bring the baby with me. It would have been 2.5 weeks postpartum.
Family values are a joke in this country and unfortunately have come to stand for ultra-conservative fringe-y religious beliefs, so if you even try to talk about it, people give you the stink eye.
People say having kids is a choice and so you should take whatever consequences come from that. I hear obnoxious statements like that more often than anything supporting families. Even my own SNAG (sensitive new age guy) husband was guilty recently. He travels a lot for work and was trying to get the marketing woman at his office to book a trip with him so she could see how the work she does ends up at the presentations to customers. It was an overnight trip and apparently she was hesitant about it because she wasn’t ready to leave her 6 month old baby for the first time overnight. My husband commented to me that it was completely unprofessional of her to have said that and she was never going to get ahead if she said and thought things like that. I pointed out the inherent sexism in his criticism because he b*itches all the time about how he hates to travel because he hates being away from the kids and me. I’ve heard him say it to people at work, so does that make him unprofessional? Of course not; it makes him a good dad.
Thanks for this post. There’s a lot to think about.
*My friend’s husband gets 12 weeks paid paternity leave every time they have a kid. Envious! My husband’s company gives him one day.
November 16, 2011 @ 4:50 pm
I am jealous of the poster from Austria, and I’m not too badly off here.
I am in New Zealand and I am pregnant with our first child. We are lucky that we can afford for me to stay home for the first year. We are part of the lucky ones, we are middle class and educated, so we have that choice.
The New Zealand governmental maternity leave is 14 weeks paid. The maternity rate paid is your wage or salary, up to about $460 a week, whichever is less and the remainder of a year I can take unpaid. All this is dependent on my having worked for my employer for 12 months prior to birth. My husband gets 2 weeks unpaid patenity leave on birth, or we can transfer my 12 months unpaid leave to him in whole or in part.
I am luckier than most in that I am a teacher and our union has negotiated reasonable maternity provisions. On the birth of a child I get a lump sum worth 6 weeks salary, and I get up to 24 months unpaid leave where I am guaranteed to be able to return to my position. Even better, If I take longer than 2 years, and up to 5 (When kids here start school), I get preferential hiring in my school for a position that is the same or lower than the one I left.
We are two weeks away from the national elections. It would be political suicide to reduce maternity provisions. None of the parties have plans to reduce paid maternity provisions, and a couple have policies of increasing the paid time.
We don’t have the same connotations to “family values” in the states. It means more supporting families how they need to be supported. Daycare is acceptable and there are 20 hours of Early Childhood Education funded a week for 3 and 4 year olds as part of this.
November 16, 2011 @ 5:08 pm
The whole system is awful!! And I work for a large company who gave me , so called, paid time off. Having a C-section gave me 8 weeks paid leave, and then I used my own vacation time for the other 4 weeks to get 12 paid weeks off. In order to do that I worked like a dog during my whole pregnancy for fear that I might not get paid my full salary while I was out with my baby. During the so called 8 weeks of paid leave, I was raped of every “sick time hour” I had accrued while working. During my yearly evaluation I was told that my raise for that year would be a quarter percent less because I was out for part of the year. Excuse me!!? I used all my own time to be off – why am I being punished for having a baby!! If a man has, lets say a little knee surgery or something – and takes some time off to recover – is he penalized with a lower raise for the year? Probably not. Its descrimination. I can’t even write, this topic has me all heated. Family values, shmamly values – they could care less!
November 17, 2011 @ 9:43 am
Julia,
Your very first comment! So glad you chimed in. I think it’s horrible that you have to mine your own sick and vacation time to spend time with your infants. That’s the crux of my point right there — as a whole, we don’t “value” working mothers.
Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion!
Denise
November 16, 2011 @ 8:12 pm
Wait a second, here. I’m sure we’d all like oodles of paid maternity leave. I took unpaid leave from a teaching job (6 weeks) and an hourly retail job (12 weeks) for my babies and expected nothing more. Who do you think pays for maternity leave in those countries? Taxpayers. You. Out the ear, I might add. I’d rather have a productivity-based capitalist economy where I earn when I work than to work in a socialist country and pay huge amounts of taxes for 40 years, perhaps use one or two of those years staying home with a baby.
Let’s compare an individual filer making $50K US dollars (all numbers are according to taxrate.com.cc) In the US, that person would pay approx. 20% to the government, including social security and Medicare. Approximate net monthly paycheck of $3300. This can obviously vary widely with deductions and such.
An Austrian worker making $50K US has an effective tax rate of 33.73%. Net monthly paycheck would be $2761, or $539 less than the US worker. This doesn’t factor in their social security (not sure how it works). Also, Europeans pay a value-added tax (VAT) of 20% on nearly everything they buy. What’s your state sales tax rate? 6%? Maybe 8.5%? So everything an Austrian buys will cost 10-15% more in taxes alone. Which devalues his paycheck dollars by a formula that I don’t pretend to understand.
Anyway, so the Austrian mom-to-be works from age 20 to age 30, when she has a baby (at a consistent $50K salary for the point of this illustration). That is 120 months of paying an extra $539 in taxes, which is $64,680 paid into the system. If she gets 80% of her salary for a year as Bee mentions, she will “get back” $40,000 of that in her year of maternity leave.
Great deal for her, but as she goes back to work for another 30 years, it is a stupendous amount to pay into the system to get a year or two of paid maternity leave. I’d rather have that $258,720 (40 years at $539/month) in my pocket (actually, in my vacation cottage) than in the government’s! No wonder Europeans live at home until age 30 and can rarely afford to buy a house/flat.
I’m just pointing out that the maternity systems in Canada, Austria, or Australia aren’t all rosy breastfeeding in the sunlight, you know?
November 17, 2011 @ 9:41 am
Lindsay, thanks for your comment. Very interesting discussion! The main thrust of my post, of course, was not to compare U.S. versus European systems, but to point out that our country’s focus on so-called family values are belied by policies that make it hard for families to live and work. It always seems to me that we, collectively, seem stuck in some false 50s ideal of working fathers and at-home mothers, which is and probably always has been pretty far from reality. But I do appreciate the discussion of the realities “on the ground,” so to speak, as well as the differences of opinion.
It’s true that many Europeans pay a far higher tax rate than Americans, but Bee is right — they get services for that money throughout life. I lived in England for a while — it was well before I had children, but I saw how things worked with medical/healthcare, with schools and universities, and with pensions. When I think what I’ve paid through the years for my own and my family’s healthcare (very few of us, anymore, have comprehensive employer plans!), the births of my children (again, not-great health insurance, which is more the norm than the exception), childcare (I am loathe to try to add up what I’ve paid!), and what I will eventually pay for college, well, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to pay higher taxes for a good reason.
And again, to circle back to my original point about attitudes and perceptions, this uniquely American notion that we’re all out there on our own runs counter to how I feel, generally, about the way a nation can and should move forward.
Great conversation!
Denise
November 17, 2011 @ 7:40 am
Well put.
BUT
maternity leave is only one tiny fragment of the many benfits every Austrian taxpayer gets throughout his/her life. We have an excellent health care system (I have never met a single person who has a private health insurance!), free schools and universities, social subsidies, a good pension system, etc.
Yes, obviously we pay for all this. All this doesn’t come from nowhere.
But, obviously for the last 60 years (no matter whether we had a socialist or a conservative government btw) we have felt and still feel that this is great. :-)))
Bee
November 17, 2011 @ 10:41 am
A PS from Europe:
You’re right, Denise, in that the American notion of everyone fighting his or her own fight has its drawbacks but as someone who has always loved so many things about America and American values I have to say that the bright side of this notion is – and alway will be – the American Dream, which, at it’s best, means that people trust in their own abilities – without relying on society to take over if necessary.
In my last comment I have made it clear that, to me, the welfare state is a blessing but, still, there are two sides to everything.
Bee
November 17, 2011 @ 12:11 pm
Chiming in with the Canadian perspective here. Like Bee above, I feel blessed and very lucky to be part of a “socialist welfare state.” Yes, I may pay more taxes, but like Bee said, for that money I receive a year of paid maternity leave, health care, and cheaper education (our Universities aren’t free, but substantially cheaper than the US).
Denise said: “And again, to circle back to my original point about attitudes and perceptions, this uniquely American notion that we’re all out there on our own runs counter to how I feel, generally, about the way a nation can and should move forward.”
This is exactly what I was going to reply to Lindsay, whose point was well-made if you only consider one person’s needs. In Canada every mother gets paid leave if you have been working the minimum number of hours for unemployment benefits (400 hours if it hasn’t changed since I last qualified). So even if you work for minimum wage you get 60% of your salary up to a maximum of 400$ per week. This may still not be enough for some women to survive on if they are single moms, so the reality is that some still have to work.
We also have the option that is not possible in the States as far as I know, of being able to share our leave time. The first 12 weeks are considered the “maternity portion,” and only the mother can take those. But the following 39 weeks (9 months to add up to a full year) can be taken either by the mother of father or shared. For my first two pregnancies, I was working full-time when I got pregnant so I took the full leave. For my third, I was only working part-time freelance so I didn’t have enough hours to qualify for maternity leave. My husband, however, did have the hours, and he works for an employer who tops up the 400$ a week to full salary for the parental leave. So my kids had the benefit of having both parents at home for 9 months.
I paid taxes when I was working full-time, and my husband does as well. As far as I see it, the money I pay in taxes doesn’t belong to ME; it is my contribution to society as a whole and belongs to everybody, or anybody who needs it. I don’t mind sharing with those less fortunate than me so that they can have access to things like health care and maternity leave.
It’s all a matter of a different perspective. Truthfully I find it hard to understand the American perspective on these types of issues!
November 18, 2011 @ 9:39 am
This is such an interesting post. It brought back some memories of how it was 19 years ago when I had my first son. That was back when they started requiring that both mother and father could at least take “family leave” whether paid or not. My husband works for the Federal Government and the rule is that family leave is paid using your sick leave. He had to fight his boss when he wanted time off. His boss for some reason was not aware of the new law/program. He later had another boss (a woman who had a child of her own) who wanted him to go on a business trip during a time when a special school event was happening. She asked why I couldn’t just video tape it for him. She could not see any difference in being there or watching it later on TV.
So I am coming from a position of feeling that my family comes first, however, I can also relate to Lindsay’s comment. I just don’t think it is as easy as it may appear. Why not hand out maternity leave, free college educations, and health care? I do believe in providing health care to all because it can be a matter of life or death but I think beyond that, it is a very slippery slope. I do NOT think that we should compare our country to other countries. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t consider ideas from other countries but we need to understand that our country is different from other countries. The people who risked their lives to settle our country were different than the people who stayed behind in their home countries. I’m not saying that either type is better, just different. In the same way, immigrants now come to our country because they like the idea of the American Dream. A big part of our history is ensuring that we have freedom from excessive government control. If we compare ourselves to other countries I think we need to think about why people settled here to begin with and why we have so many immigrants even today. I think these are the reasons why we cannot compare ourselves to other countries…again, let me make it clear that I am NOT saying that we shouldn’t consider ideas from other countries but we shouldn’t just assume that people in other countries have it better. I do understand, Denise, that you didn’t mean for this post to be about comparing to other countries but since you mentioned it, the comments seem to be centered around that.
Getting back to the intention of your post. I understand that our country may appear to only pay lip service to family values but I’m not sure that handing out paid family leave is the solution. MAYBE it’s a step in the right direction but I don’t think that is really going to make a significant impact on family values. In fact, I think that we may be stuck in a catch 22. People in our country have so much freedom. This means that we are free to make choices whether they are good or bad. I am not allowed to make better choices for another person. We need to be very careful when we grow our government. Can we really encourage better family values by giving people paid maternity leave? I know that a big part of your point may have been about helping underprivileged people. I guess it’s only fair that I point out that although I spend much more time than the average person giving back to my community by volunteering, my general philosophy tends towards the tough love direction. I rarely feel that throwing money at a situation is the best solution. I come from what most would consider a hard childhood but you’d never know that today. I believe that I was able to become what I am today because I live in our country. As Bee put it ” the American Dream, which, at it’s best, means that people trust in their own abilities – without relying on society to take over if necessary.”
The more mandates the government makes, the less choice I have…whether those choices are good or bad are up to me. You found a way to make things work for you. Would you have better family values if you had a government that had laws that had made it mandatory for you to be paid for staying home? Would it have made others respect your family values more? Is this an area that we really want to follow other countries leads? These are the hard questions I think need to be asked because although it would make life easier for many, it might not be the best way about it.
November 23, 2011 @ 1:09 am
I strongly agree with what you’ve written. When I had my child, my leave was completely unpaid. Luckily, my husband and I were in a position to manage this financially, as my job was primarily providing the medical benefits that we needed to cover the birth. What I found to be most frustrating was that I was only able to take 6 weeks of maternity leave or I would have lost my job. In fact, because I went two days over six weeks, my manager was pressured to fire and then re-hire me, which luckily he refused to do. This would have affected my leave accrual as well as pay rate had he done so. I was unable to use FMLA because although I worked for a large retail chan at the time, the nearest store was more than 50 miles away. 6 weeks is barely enough time to become functioning again, and leaving your not even 2-month old baby with a day care provider is one of the harder things I’ve ever had to do.
Families are not valued in the corporate world, they are not valued by the state. I’m wondering who these 51% of women are who have paid maternity leave, because I’ve never run across it. Currently I work for the state, and when my husband and I can (hopefully) have another child, any leave I take will be unpaid. I don’t think most women are asking for much…just enough to be able to keep our heads above water while we navigate the sleep-deprived haze of breastfeeding, waking every two hours, and figuring out this new little person we have care of. Heck, I’d even like the option of time without the fear of losing my job. The fact of the matter is that those that preach family values so vehemently don’t help to provide parents with the ability to form that firm foundation of care. Six weeks? That’s when puppies may be taken from their mothers, not when children should be.
April 20, 2012 @ 11:56 am
As a single working woman (never married, no children), I made a choice in my life. I realized that to have a child on my income would be stupid, unless I wanted to have society support my child/children. If a woman wants or needs to work, fine. However, if you want to bring children into your life and are not able to support them yourself without society making all kinds of concessions ie paid leave, etc. , then maybe you shouldn’t have the children! I’m tired of my taxes going to support woman, many single, who continue to have children and then rely on us to support them! Having a child is a right, but not having your employer pay in part for you having the child.