America’s Flawed Approach to Maternity Leave

I was fairly new to my job when I got pregnant the second time around. Two of my male coworkers were having babies while I was silently in my first trimester and I watched in horror as they took off one day to be with their wives. One day. Let that sink in. The first wife had a C-section and her husband was there for the big event, but wasn’t by her side when the baby came home. The second came in to work hours after the baby was born but said he wasn’t really there to work. Whatever.

Then when my belly started to pop, a young, single guy asked me how many days I was taking off for maternity leave. Days. Let that soak in. I told him 12 weeks and his jaw dropped. I then got to explain to him how I picked 12 weeks because it’s the maximum amount of time covered by the FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act). If I want more than that, my employer could let me go… And that it’s 12 weeks unpaid, so I would be cobbling together short term disability (which covers a fraction of your check for only a portion of the 12 weeks) and vacation time in order to get paid. Because I need to get paid or I wouldn’t have the job in the first place. I told him how most daycares won’t even accept a child until 6 weeks, so many working moms have to scramble to fill the gap for at least that long. How, even at 12 weeks, I’d be coming back sleep deprived and pumping every few hours and how my child would probably get sick at daycare every few weeks, requiring me to take off at least a day. Oh but wait. I’ve used up all my leave… I think I succeeded in scaring him.

When I worked at NASA, we had close relationships with our international counterparts. That was my first exposure to the European-style paid maternity leave. I couldn’t believe that other countries offered 6 months or 1 year paid leave. At first, I thought the stories I was hearing were the exceptions; I slowly came to realize that we are the exception.

My sister recently posted this story on Facebook. Go read it, I’ll wait here.

I can’t really wrap my head around a movement to offer paid maternity leave. Facebook is wonderful for keeping in touch with friends and it’s also “wonderful” because they share their political views with you. My friends are apparently all anti-welfare and I can just see how paid maternity leave would be lumped into that category. They’d say “either women should stay home or they should rush themselves back to work to do their job”.

The link my sister posted goes into some economic benefits but I went off and did a little more research. Here are a few interesting points to consider:

1. North Korea apparently offers 11 weeks of paid maternity leave. Yup.
2. Taking additional leave is associated with improved maternal function. Mom is more energetic and less anxious. Do y’all really want to be around the sleepy, on-edge new mom that drug herself back to work just to get paid?
3. Taking less leave is  associated with impaired motor and social development in children less than two years old.
4. Longer maternity leaves equal higher breastfeeding rates. Breastmilk provides antibodies to help children get over illnesses more quickly. Since a parent usually has to take off work (paid) for a sick child, it seems to me that we are just robbing Peter to pay Paul.
5. Apparently children will grow taller if mom takes off longer. This should totally be our top motivator. America could be, like, land of the giants and we’d never have to worry about losing the Olympics in basketball again.
6. Somehow, extended maternity leaves even affect high school graduation rates.

From some of the above, I’m gathering that an increased maternity leave (which only happens when women can afford to stay home) has lifelong impacts. But let’s remember that increased leave only happens when moms can afford it.

If you are a stay-at-home mom advocate, you should still support paid maternity leave. Why? Item #3 above is probably your very reason for staying home with your children, right? To give them the best start in life. Not every woman that goes back to work wants to go back to work. I know I don’t. The mommy wars have made us believe that every woman has a choice and that the position you see her in (working mom vs. stay at home mom) is all she’s ever dreamed of. That’s not how it is at all. I’m living proof.

So I would support legislation for paid maternity leave. Absolutely. But only because I’m quite sure corporate America (save for some places like Google) are never going to make any changes that they don’t have to. After all, these corporations are the same folks who pay women less just because they are a woman. They aren’t jumping up and down to even give you 12 weeks off, but they do it because it’s the law.

Oh, America. I love you so. I love capitalism. But sometimes I don’t think you love women very much.
 

Budget ADHD

In yesterday’s post I said I was so excited about paying off our debts that it’s keeping me up nights. It’s actually all-consuming. Here’s how my day progressed yesterday:

1. Wake up, pat myself on back for having a budget that kinda, sorta works.
2. Realize for the 100th time that we need to find more money somewhere, somehow for necessities like food, gas, and medical issues… Oh and to put something toward debts.
3. Pack diaper bag to take youngest daughter for meet-and-greet session at her daycare that she will start on Friday. Thank my lucky stars that I used cloth diapers with our oldest child and that I don’t have to buy any kind of diaper this time around.
4. Coordinate with my birth center for a shot at a “very” part time job opening. I might be able to make $50 a month to put toward debt without missing out on too much at home.
5. Get to daycare and find out that cloth diapers have recently been banned.
6. Choke back tears.
7. Realize I now have to come up with $30 extra in a budget that was already short to cover disposable diapers.
8. Hope that my full-time gig will allow me to take “very” part time job, because I’m going to have to do it to cover diapers.
9. Have husband remind me that my full-time gig already wants me to work unpaid overtime, which I’m resisting, and is unlikely to give permission for a part-time gig unless I’m doing that overtime, too.
10. Hate my husband for being right.
11. Realize I could stop packing my daughter’s lunch for preschool. Yes, I’d rather her eat my vegan fare than the carnivorous fast-food crap that is served, but I could probably save $30 a week if I didn’t have principles.
12. Darn my principles.
13. Negotiate with myself that she’s not really vegan, anyway. She had “dead deer” and loved it “even though it’s mommy misses it and it’s so sad”.
14. Remind myself I have principles. But darn them anyway.
15. Realize that I have a bonus coming my way in January if I can manage to not to tick off my employer and keep my job. It will cover one of our three small loans.

And then noon rolled around…

Mission Impossible: Budget

OK, call me Captain Obvious, but the first step in getting debt free has got to be to do a budget. We’ve had one lying around that I kinda update here and there, but we do a terrible job living by it, and with a second kiddo going into daycare soon, I knew I needed to see how things worked out on paper. When the older kiddo is occupied and if the baby is napping, I have been slowly plugging away at a new budget. The process of putting together a brand new budget has been eye opening.

Here are the things I learned about our circumstances:

1. I could afford to stay home if we didn’t have any student loan debt, and it wouldn’t be all that tight. Perhaps it really is time to consider using the 401(k)s toward our debt, but we’d need a plan for getting our retirement funds immediately back on track.
2. Remember my post about living on 14k a year? Yeah, I proved it would be almost doable here, if we didn’t have student loans, daycare, or a mortgage. We’d still be a bit shy because of the increased costs associated with the harsh climate.
3. With a second child in daycare, things are tighter than they would be if I stayed home with the student loan debt paid off
4. We will not be able to afford to put anything toward savings or debt reduction
5. The new budget makes almost no room for vacations. At best, it looks like we can do a “staycation” and do 1-2 cheap family activities – if we save a few month’s worth of activity budget
6. I feel better about this budget than previous attempts because it’s accounting for home repairs (important when your home is 100 years old) and vehicle repairs. Before, I just pretended these would never be needed.
7. On the other hand, I do not feel great about this budget because it doesn’t take into account our car payment. As I mentioned in a previous post, my in-laws have pledged the payments for a couple of years, so they either need to keep paying it, we need to sell the vehicle, or we need to earn an additional $5k a year. Ugh.
8. One note for us to consider is our FSA. Brian has $5k taken out of his checks each year and placed in an FSA, which reimburses us for daycare expenses. I did not account for the reimbursement in our budget, so we actually do have money to cover the car payments if we need to. Otherwise, we can put that money straight toward debt reduction and/or savings.

The budget still needs to be reviewed by my husband, but I think we can safely start rolling with this and make tweaks as we need to. In a sick way, I’m looking forward to challenging ourselves. We will have to stop hopping in the car and running out for just one more tool for a project or just one more item for dinner. We’ll have to find ways to enjoy our family time without driving all over (we live pretty far out from the main attractions) because gas doesn’t get a huge allotment in the budget. And I’ll certainly be challenged to make our grocery bill smaller, but given how much food I throw out at the end of the week, I think it’s doable with smart meal planning (I already meal plan, but I don’t do a great job of sticking to the plan).

Wish us luck, we definitely need it!

Do you have a budget? If so, do you actually stick with it?