I've been thinking about maternity leave lately -- and no, this is not a hint that I am in the family way. There's no little Dubelets incubating just yet. However, everyone I know seems to be either pregnant or has just had a baby -- seriously, if you're of childbearing age and reading this blog, you might want to use protection because apparently I'm emanating some sort of fertility-boosting rays.
When I lived in the U.S. I had the knowledge, as I think everyone does, that American maternity leave policies suck compared to basically everywhere else, especially Europe and Canada. But I never really thought about the specifics, or the ramification, until I moved here. Twelve weeks of unpaid leave in the U.S. versus a year of paid leave in Canada.
What I've found is the maternity leave policy radically changes the whole landscape for women in the workforce. In the U.S., it seems most of the people I know who have a baby then face some version of the Big Decision -- Do I go back to work, do I stay home with the baby, should I work part-time, what can I afford to do, what about day care, etc., etc. And these are usually pretty gut-wrenching decisions to make, or so it seems, because you're not only dealing with the life of the tiny little person you've brought into the world, you're also struggling with all these identity-charged issues about work and life and gender politics. And various pundits and authors seem to make quite a good living trying to convince women to feel very, very guilty about whatever choice they make (and conveniently forgetting that fathers have the same choices).
And in Canada, we really don't have all that. The normal course of events is, you work, you have a baby and go out on mat leave for a year or a little longer, and then you go back to work. No drama. It's apparently pretty rare to see women quit the workforce altogether when having children, simply because they're not forced to make that Big Decision. I think there must be a cumulative effect of this lack of disruption of women's lives in the workforce. Maybe in 10-20 years we'll see a huge gap in gender balance in the workforce in the U.S. versus the rest of the world? Someone might need to give me a big-ass grant so I can think deeply about this issue and come out with some brilliant book that forces the U.S. to institute humane maternity policies. Or at the very least, I might pitch this idea as an article somewhere.
When I lived in the U.S. I had the knowledge, as I think everyone does, that American maternity leave policies suck compared to basically everywhere else, especially Europe and Canada. But I never really thought about the specifics, or the ramification, until I moved here. Twelve weeks of unpaid leave in the U.S. versus a year of paid leave in Canada.
What I've found is the maternity leave policy radically changes the whole landscape for women in the workforce. In the U.S., it seems most of the people I know who have a baby then face some version of the Big Decision -- Do I go back to work, do I stay home with the baby, should I work part-time, what can I afford to do, what about day care, etc., etc. And these are usually pretty gut-wrenching decisions to make, or so it seems, because you're not only dealing with the life of the tiny little person you've brought into the world, you're also struggling with all these identity-charged issues about work and life and gender politics. And various pundits and authors seem to make quite a good living trying to convince women to feel very, very guilty about whatever choice they make (and conveniently forgetting that fathers have the same choices).
And in Canada, we really don't have all that. The normal course of events is, you work, you have a baby and go out on mat leave for a year or a little longer, and then you go back to work. No drama. It's apparently pretty rare to see women quit the workforce altogether when having children, simply because they're not forced to make that Big Decision. I think there must be a cumulative effect of this lack of disruption of women's lives in the workforce. Maybe in 10-20 years we'll see a huge gap in gender balance in the workforce in the U.S. versus the rest of the world? Someone might need to give me a big-ass grant so I can think deeply about this issue and come out with some brilliant book that forces the U.S. to institute humane maternity policies. Or at the very least, I might pitch this idea as an article somewhere.
posted by Rebecca at 10:43 AM
1 Comments:
I think you should submit an application for a book to the Onassis Foundation, since these people have a stupid amount of money and they couldn't find enough people to give it to this year (imagine that!). I also think you should write a magazine article on this for sure. Why don't you write a pitch to a magazine that pays $3 a word, like O (Oprah's magazine) and make a stupid amount of money yourself! Then you can give me a grant :)
(seriously: check out the mediabistro.com page, the how to pitch section, for ideas of mags that might be interested.)
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