I'm most familiar with the parental leave policies at tech companies, and they seem to take the approach that you get a "parental" leave of 2-3 months for becoming a parent and then an additional "medical" leave of 2-3 months for giving birth. So for an adoption, each parent would get 3 months, but for a birth the father gets 3 and the mother gets 6. I think the division between "leave for becoming a parent" and "leave for giving birth" makes a lot of sense, and it values caregiving for its own sake while also acknowledging that giving birth takes a specific toll on mothers.
Our daughter just had her first baby. The value of stories like the one in The Washington Post, where the author meticulously tracked the “cost” of time spent feeding her baby is to set realistic expectations. With smaller families it’s less likely that today’s new parents spent any time around newborns. Stories like these help new moms know what to expect so they don’t feel like failures when they have days where literally all they do is feed the baby.
Hi Leah, thanks so much for the response to my comment (and in the newsletter no less!), I'm very excited to dig into your Families Valued report. For context, I work in a privately held company in a STEM field with 500+ employees, where all but one of the C-suite executives are male, and the one female executive does not have children, though she has been a family caregiver. That's why I feel so strongly about the proposal being as broad as possible (e.g. my choice to call it "paid leave" rather than "maternity leave" or even "parental leave") and why I think it should be tied to the existing federal standards that determine eligibility for FMLA leave. By virtue of our size we are already required to provide FMLA leave, so using those eligibility standards removes the need to establish our own requirements of who gets it and when. And as I've grown in my career I've realized that by virtue of seniority, most people who are advanced in the company will get their needs for flexibility and support met informally. I discussed my passion for this issue with a (non C-suite but still very senior) woman a few years ago and she said, "I never had leave when I had my three kids, I just talked to people and got what I needed." Great for you, but this is honestly what I perceive as the biggest hurdle - how do we prevent framing this as a need that is only needed by OTHER PEOPLE and is not "of value" to senior management who primarily think of it as a cost to the bottom line? How do we insure that our administrative assistants and construction inspectors and lab technicians get the same benefits as our senior level managers and executives?
I'm most familiar with the parental leave policies at tech companies, and they seem to take the approach that you get a "parental" leave of 2-3 months for becoming a parent and then an additional "medical" leave of 2-3 months for giving birth. So for an adoption, each parent would get 3 months, but for a birth the father gets 3 and the mother gets 6. I think the division between "leave for becoming a parent" and "leave for giving birth" makes a lot of sense, and it values caregiving for its own sake while also acknowledging that giving birth takes a specific toll on mothers.
Our daughter just had her first baby. The value of stories like the one in The Washington Post, where the author meticulously tracked the “cost” of time spent feeding her baby is to set realistic expectations. With smaller families it’s less likely that today’s new parents spent any time around newborns. Stories like these help new moms know what to expect so they don’t feel like failures when they have days where literally all they do is feed the baby.
Hi Leah, thanks so much for the response to my comment (and in the newsletter no less!), I'm very excited to dig into your Families Valued report. For context, I work in a privately held company in a STEM field with 500+ employees, where all but one of the C-suite executives are male, and the one female executive does not have children, though she has been a family caregiver. That's why I feel so strongly about the proposal being as broad as possible (e.g. my choice to call it "paid leave" rather than "maternity leave" or even "parental leave") and why I think it should be tied to the existing federal standards that determine eligibility for FMLA leave. By virtue of our size we are already required to provide FMLA leave, so using those eligibility standards removes the need to establish our own requirements of who gets it and when. And as I've grown in my career I've realized that by virtue of seniority, most people who are advanced in the company will get their needs for flexibility and support met informally. I discussed my passion for this issue with a (non C-suite but still very senior) woman a few years ago and she said, "I never had leave when I had my three kids, I just talked to people and got what I needed." Great for you, but this is honestly what I perceive as the biggest hurdle - how do we prevent framing this as a need that is only needed by OTHER PEOPLE and is not "of value" to senior management who primarily think of it as a cost to the bottom line? How do we insure that our administrative assistants and construction inspectors and lab technicians get the same benefits as our senior level managers and executives?
I think this responds to your assertions: https://jill.substack.com/p/what-we-lose-when-we-lose-women-at
Until men start doing at least half of the domestic crap, women absolutely must pursue public careers.