Paid Family Leave

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...

MomsRising Together

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...

MomsRising Together

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 Often, unnecessary obstacles seem to stand in the way, like old-fashioned and outdated styles in the workplace, make our lives more about juggling than...

MomsRising Together

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...

MomsRising Together

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...

MomsRising Together

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...

MomsRising Together

Valerie Young

Paid Family Leave Health Care

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...

MomsRising Together

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.

MomsRising Together

Sharon Meers

Paid Family Leave Childcare & Early Education Open Flexible Work

October 30, 2009

I’ve been on a one-woman campaign to resurrect the phrase, paycheck job , used by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique forty years ago. Friedan was referring, of course, to jobs outside the home for which people receive money. She recognized that the unpaid job of caring for children and home was...

MomsRising Together

Nanette Fondas

Paid Family Leave Childcare & Early Education

October 30, 2009

Why is it so hard to tell our bosses we have to leave for family reasons? What if all the dads where we worked did it more often? Leaders like Valerie Jarrett show that being committed to your kids and your job are not mutually exclusive -- and employers win when they recognize that. Maria Shriver's report A Women's Nation offers fresh ideas for opening up more common-sense conversation - like adopting UK "right to request" rules that allow parents to get some control over their hours and still produce great results for their employers.

MomsRising Together

Sharon Meers