paid family leave

paid family leave paid sick days open flexible work

February 10, 2010

For generations, our country has been free-riding on families. Our economy is built on the invisible and free labor of millions--many of them women--who provide essential care to their families, whether it is the education and socialization of the next generation of workers or the comfort and care of the elderly. We have taken for granted that women will shoulder the lion's share of unpaid care work, even as they dedicate increasingly more hours to paid work. Although 70% of children are growing up in families headed by either a single working parent or two working parents, our workplace...

Phoebe Taubman

paid family leave Realistic & Fair Wages

February 7, 2010

Most parents are overwhelmed when first entering into parenthood. This can cause emotional frustration and financial worry. To relieve this emotional burden, all parents should receive paid maternity and paternity leave for the first two years of their children’s lives . By providing this supplementation to a family’s income, a government acknowledges, and honors, the important role of parenting in the lives of its citizenry. Parents who have the option to stay home, with pay, for the first two years of a child’s life, will be less worried about how to balance work and family. Relieved of...

Janna Waldher

paid family leave healthcare

January 25, 2010

Paid parental leave is a human right, one guaranteed by virtually every country. But not the United States! When you gave birth or adopted your kids, did you take leave without pay? How did this affect breastfeeding, your health, your baby’s health, or your family’s finances? How did this affect the timing of your return to work? How else did the lack of paid parental leave affect you and your family? Human Rights Watch, a nongovernmental human rights group, is hoping to interview parents about their experience with unpaid maternity and paternity leave, and the impact on their families. The...

Janet Walsh

paid family leave paid sick days

January 21, 2010

We work long hours. We work multiple jobs. We can barely afford healthcare, or we’re doing without. We’re stitching together childcare, or we’re sending our kids to school with H1N1. We exert ourselves to be good spouses, sons and daughters, parents, members of our community, friends - in snatched moments from being good but insecure employees. And while we may talk amongst ourselves about hard it is to manage it all, perhaps we feel that this is just life and try to muddle through as best we can, on our own… …leaving the professional media to define the outlines of America’s work/life story...

Gloria Pan

paid family leave

January 13, 2010

You can make a difference in 2010 to open up opportunities for our children – and ourselves – to move as far as our talents and passions take us. Often, unnecessary obstacles seem to stand in the way, like old-fashioned and outdated styles in the workplace, make our lives more about juggling than balancing. Keeping all the balls in the air forces us to make hard choices between what is good for the family and what is good for a career. It can leave us feeling like change is impossible. I’m convinced it doesn’t have to be this way. The impossible to imagine – a country where we actually value...

Linda Tarr-Whelan

paid family leave paid sick days

December 18, 2009

From Your (Wo)manInWashington blog MOTHERS changing the conversation @ www.MothersOughtToHaveEqualRights.org I've written here before about Jody Heymann's work in Raising the Global Floor: Dismantling the Myth that We Can't Afford Good Working Conditions for Everyone . The only reason we don't have paid leave in this country as a basic minimum standard is because we have not yet insisted upon it. Here is Jody making the case as it appeared in a blog she wrote for the Washington Post . For author Jody Heymann's radio interview about paid leave and good workplace policy, click here . Listen to...

Valerie Young

paid family leave

December 14, 2009

A single mom needs work; she’s literally thinking about applying for welfare. As she writes on her blog , “I had been looking for a better job, but there were none to be had in the low-income/high-unemployment area where I lived. And I couldn’t get a full-time job anyway — I was still on the waiting list for a spot in daycare.” She starts working freelance, from home. This suits her schedule as a mom. But “I was treated like crap , too. Bossed around, degraded, condescended to, with jibes made about my having to work from home. I quickly learned not to mention I had kids. I quickly learned...

Morra Aarons-Mele

paid family leave paid sick days

November 27, 2009

From Your (Wo)manInWashington blog When the subject of paid leave comes up, someone will say: "Oh, no, we could never pay for that, it would be too expensive!!" It's the Voice of Doom, and I hear it frequently. So often repeated, I know it by heart. It will destroy small businesses. It would push taxes over the cliff. The government is already too far in the red. So, while everyone agrees in theory that maternity leave, paternity leave, sick leave for yourself or to care for an ill family member, school leave, and breastfeeding breaks at work might possibly be a good thing, the conversation...

Valerie Young

paid family leave healthcare

November 16, 2009

Breastfeeding rights is a big topic with MomsRising members. In fact, as we were developing this blog to update our members and allies on the current status of breastfeeding legislation, the issue again came to the attention of the MomsRising team when several MomsRising members expressed concern that showing a photo which included babies with bottles in a recent Halloween email ( http://www.momsrising.org/babyhalloween ) undermined the promotion of breastfeeding. As we as a Momsrising team deliberated about how to respond to this concern, many of us shared how breastfeeding our babies with...

Dionna Humphrey

paid family leave

November 8, 2009

I was amazed to learn how much research there is -- at business schools -- saying 24/7 work culture is counter-productive and not the necessity it is often seen to be. Even in the most demanding jobs, re-thinking time use gives us BOTH better results for clients and more dinners at home. A newly published Harvard Business Review piece (on a 4-year study at Boston Consulting Group) offers very inspiring ideas we can all apply where we work.