5 thoughts on “Problem Memo – Paid Maternity Leave”
I can’t access your memo, but I want to read this! Such a huge issue!
Oh got it!
I love this topic. It is something that bothers me regularly, even without a child. It has impacted my decision to have children, as it has many others I am sure.
This topic has a lot of potential for research. There has to be data comparing perceived quality of life of parents across countries with and without PML. I think that it would be great to compare the amount of money paid to mothers on leave in California, New Jersey and New York to a the cost of living and the cost of caring for a child. You could also describe how the lack of policy affects households. Elaborate on single parent and lower income family households. The use of statistics for this topic can be great for shock value and evidence!
The writer did a great job at providing the reader with the seriousness of the problem. Unpaid maternity leave is a serious issue for women who are living check to check, for single parent house-holds and any woman considering having a child. The most convincing piece of evidence in this article is “The decision to offer – or not – paid leave for mothers and fathers has been left to private sector employers that, in many cases, have no incentive to offer this kind of benefit for fear of incurring in large expenses that would hurt their bottom line. ” This sentence is showing how this issue is being left to private sectors that are looking out for their own financial well being. Lets face the facts, if I was a business owner and I had a choice between paying for someone to be on maternity or not, for the benefit of my business I would choose not to. Why spend extra money that I could pay to the replacement or temporary replacement for the position. However, from the perspective of the parent to be, this may be the only way to feed the child and other children at home. However, if I was a business owner who was provided possible tax incentive, I would probably be more inclined to provide those benefits.
I think it would also benefit this article to compare the birth rates in the countries that do provide paid maternity leave to the U.S that does not. I think a very valid point made was applying for temporary disability will barely cover the expenses of taking care of the new child, that is also not taking into consideration the co pays, deductibles and other costly medical bills that come associated with having the child. This is a really great issue and one that really needs a policy update.
I completely agree, The fact that the US does not offer paid leave prevents many women and families from having children because they won’t have money to live off of while staying at home to care for the baby in that most important first year.
I think Maria provided evidence to back up her claim. Some evidence of how other western countries pay for leave and where that money comes from would have been helpful as well. It would be interesting to know how the majority of countries pay for it and if the require private companies to pay the employed women or if the state pays the money directly to the woman.
Another thing to discuss would have been the impact that breast feeding has on the baby in the first year of life, especially studies that show the importance of it the first 6 months, and because we have no paid leave here, mothers are forced to be away from their children and how that psychologically can affect children. Perhaps also exploring evidence of when women stop producing as much milk when forced to immediately rejoin the workforce so soon after childbirth.
This was a clear and concise memo making a case for addressing a serious problem impacting all families. The writer chose strong comparisons with other countries and limitations of the only two state in the US to have mandated parental leave policies. It would helpful to look at this issue alongside the high cost of childcare and lack of state provisions for childcare, which may make the comparison to other developed countries’ policies even starker.
I can’t access your memo, but I want to read this! Such a huge issue!
Oh got it!
I love this topic. It is something that bothers me regularly, even without a child. It has impacted my decision to have children, as it has many others I am sure.
This topic has a lot of potential for research. There has to be data comparing perceived quality of life of parents across countries with and without PML. I think that it would be great to compare the amount of money paid to mothers on leave in California, New Jersey and New York to a the cost of living and the cost of caring for a child. You could also describe how the lack of policy affects households. Elaborate on single parent and lower income family households. The use of statistics for this topic can be great for shock value and evidence!
The writer did a great job at providing the reader with the seriousness of the problem. Unpaid maternity leave is a serious issue for women who are living check to check, for single parent house-holds and any woman considering having a child. The most convincing piece of evidence in this article is “The decision to offer – or not – paid leave for mothers and fathers has been left to private sector employers that, in many cases, have no incentive to offer this kind of benefit for fear of incurring in large expenses that would hurt their bottom line. ” This sentence is showing how this issue is being left to private sectors that are looking out for their own financial well being. Lets face the facts, if I was a business owner and I had a choice between paying for someone to be on maternity or not, for the benefit of my business I would choose not to. Why spend extra money that I could pay to the replacement or temporary replacement for the position. However, from the perspective of the parent to be, this may be the only way to feed the child and other children at home. However, if I was a business owner who was provided possible tax incentive, I would probably be more inclined to provide those benefits.
I think it would also benefit this article to compare the birth rates in the countries that do provide paid maternity leave to the U.S that does not. I think a very valid point made was applying for temporary disability will barely cover the expenses of taking care of the new child, that is also not taking into consideration the co pays, deductibles and other costly medical bills that come associated with having the child. This is a really great issue and one that really needs a policy update.
I completely agree, The fact that the US does not offer paid leave prevents many women and families from having children because they won’t have money to live off of while staying at home to care for the baby in that most important first year.
I think Maria provided evidence to back up her claim. Some evidence of how other western countries pay for leave and where that money comes from would have been helpful as well. It would be interesting to know how the majority of countries pay for it and if the require private companies to pay the employed women or if the state pays the money directly to the woman.
Another thing to discuss would have been the impact that breast feeding has on the baby in the first year of life, especially studies that show the importance of it the first 6 months, and because we have no paid leave here, mothers are forced to be away from their children and how that psychologically can affect children. Perhaps also exploring evidence of when women stop producing as much milk when forced to immediately rejoin the workforce so soon after childbirth.
This was a clear and concise memo making a case for addressing a serious problem impacting all families. The writer chose strong comparisons with other countries and limitations of the only two state in the US to have mandated parental leave policies. It would helpful to look at this issue alongside the high cost of childcare and lack of state provisions for childcare, which may make the comparison to other developed countries’ policies even starker.