POSTS WITH TAG: maternity leave

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    After all the fuss about Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's five-second maternity leave and total ban on working from home, she made some shocking news today. Yahoo will double its paid maternity leave from 8 weeks to 16. That's 16 PAID weeks for parental leave. Dads will get eight weeks of paid leave.

    Just to put this in perspective, Google employees get 18 to 22 paid weeks, and at Facebook, moms and dads get 4 months. New Yahoo parents also get $500 to go toward related costs. But still, can you imagine getting a perk like that? I think parents would be more likely to take that leave if it were paid.

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    Once again, science has gone through an awful lot of trouble to prove something totally obvious that we already knew. New moms on maternity leave feel totally inadequate about returning to work. If we're at home, we go for days without talking to another adult. When we return to work, we have less confidence. I mean, the whole study just paints the saddest, most demoralizing portrait of working motherhood you could ever ask for. Gee, thanks!

    Okay, so we really didn't need these researchers to tell us it's insanely difficult to get our career mojo going again after we have a baby. Here's what we DO need: Some fresh ideas for HOW to get our career mojo going again.

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    The CDC is reporting that more moms are breastfeeding -- the stat increased by over four points from 2000 to 2008. Moms who at least tried to nurse in 2008 "increased among blacks to 58.9 percent and among whites to 75.2 percent". Hispanics stayed steady at 80 percent. That number seems encouraging, but by the time babies get to be 6-months-old, overall less than 45 percent of mothers are still breastfeeding.

    I do believe the campaigns in recent years will help those numbers go up but the "longer term" breastfeeding rates are still going to show a significant number of mothers not breastfeeding much past those early weeks. And that's because of the major challenges most working mothers face when it comes to pumping. This isn't about mothers failing at breastfeeding. This is about our country failing mothers when it comes to maternity leave.

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    Someone just turned 20 today. Guess who???? It's the Family and Medical Leave Act, signed into law 20 years ago. This law protects workers who want to take a parent leave after the birth or arrival of a new child, and it protects workers who need to go on medical leave either for themselves or for a family member. Before that, a business could fire or replace you if it wanted to if you went on leave for either of those reasons.

    The FMLA only protects full-time employees at companies with over 50 employees. So not everyone benefits from the law. But for those of us who have benefited from the law, it's been a huge relief. I can't imagine how different my life as a mom would be without it.

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    Don't think new motherhood is tough enough? Get ready. A group of uber-moms (or uber-idiots ... you decide) has thrown another log on the fire. They're taking what they call a "power maternity leave."

    So how does that differ from the regular old weeks of trying to bond with this little person who is constantly crying or pooping or sleeping? Well, honey, these ladies don't just use that time off from work to do a silly little thing like learning to be a mom. They learn a new language! They start a new business! They do something, anything, that will boost them up the corporate ladder.

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    The most powerful new mom in the U.S. showed up in my mailbox yesterday -- the morning after she gave birth to her first child. So I couldn't help but do a double-take when I saw Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer on the cover of Fortune for its annual '50 Most Powerful Women' issue. Mayer looked gorgeous and fit -- and yes, powerful -- in a slim black dress and belt. What she did NOT look was 39 weeks pregnant.

    Given how the issue date (October 6) coincided with Mayer’s due date (October 7), you have to wonder what happened here. Fortune clearly used an old photo of Mayer, who was named the 14th most powerful woman, for their cover. Did Mayer refuse to have a photo of herself pregnant appear on the cover? 

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    Four pregnant women sit next to each other at a busy airport. Cara, is from Canada, Mary is from Mexico, Anne is from the U.S., and Irene is from Italy. Like most women that have just met, they are able to form an instant bond about their pregnancies. They shared how much weight they have gained, stories about morning sickness, and more. For the most part, their stories are typical. It’s not until the conversation turns to the topic of maternity leave do their stories start to differ.  

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    Procreating in the United States is a right, but paid maternity leave is not. That is, if you want a baby, by golly, you can have a baby. You don’t have to pass any tests, you don’t have to be married, heck, you don’t even have to get pregnant thanks to surrogates or good old-fashioned adoption. Want to be a parent? Awesome. Go do that.

    But it’s not your right to ask other people to support you while you fulfill your baby dreams.

    There. Now that we have the tough love portion out of the way, let’s talk about why a federal law requiring paid maternity or paternity leave is a bad idea for the United States: Because we’re different.

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    The number of families opting for dad to stay home with the kids while mom brings home the bacon has more than doubled in the last decade. In 2001, dads made up a scant 1.6% of the at-home parent crowd, but by 2011, they made up 3.4% of the demographic. Still a small portion, but it’s a significant increase within the time frame.

    It might be tempting to blame the recent recession for the uptick in stay at home dads, but researchers postulate that shifting gender roles and widespread acceptance of women in the workplace as the more likely culprits for this trend. Most couples that live this lifestyle do so by choice, citing economic or pragmatic reasons.

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    A police officer in Florida was overjoyed when she found out she was pregnant -- but her excitement quickly turned to devastation when she found out that having a baby would ultimately mean she had to give up her badge.

    Krystal Nix was a patrol officer for the city of Brooksville, and when she went in to tell her police chief that she was expecting, she figured he'd put her on light duty assignments until she delivered her baby and was finished with her maternity leave. After that, she assumed she'd go right back to being on patrol to carry on the career that she'd worked so hard for.

    But instead of congratulating her on her pregnancy and doing whatever he could to accommodate her, the chief told her to talk to human resources instead to see what she should do next.

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