September 21, 2015 • 46 mins
Why is the United States the only developed nation that offers no federally mandated paid maternity leave? Cristen and Caroline trace the origin of America's paltry postnatal care to World War II and the business behind the American Dream.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff mom never told you from House Top
works not Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And Caroline. This episode is coming
out nowhere near Mother's Day, but we're talking about maternity leave.
(00:24):
And the thing is, I'm glad it's not coming out
around Mother's Day because everyone always waits until Mother's Day
to talk about maternity leave. But you know what, Caroline,
not to get to soapboxy too soon, But this is
a year round issue, especially in the United States, that
we need to just never ever stop talking about. Oh.
I know it's it's uh not to not to give
(00:48):
a spoiler away, but it's an incredibly depressing, complicated topic. Uh.
I growing up as a young person, just assume that
maternity leave in our country was a thing that you
were assured maternity leave and you I didn't have. You know,
as a really young person, I don't have concepts of
like benefits and paychecks and all of that stuff. But
(01:12):
I assume, like, well, of course, like a woman who
works has a baby, she naturally gets maternity leave because
that's how the world works. She continues to get paid
for it, uh, And everybody is healthy and happy, and
she goes back to work in her job is secure.
Oh and didn't you imagine too, maternity leave being just
a glorious vacation where you're hanging out with a baby
(01:32):
all the time, like extended babysitting. Yeah, sure, we knew nothing,
we children, we knew nothing nothing. Yeah, it's not until
I got older and and had and and of course
I'm developing more awareness of like a maternity leave is
not like this utopia that exists period. But as I
got older and my friends and co workers started having babies, um,
(01:55):
it became painfully apparent watching them go through it, how
heart wrenching and difficult this whole process can be. And
I realized that, yes, this confession of mine of growing
up ignorant of maternity policy can make me sound just well, ignorant, um,
But it's because I just assumed that, as a younger person,
(02:19):
that we were better than that. Well. And I more
recently spent a an afternoon with a group of women
where I was the only one who doesn't have kids,
and maternity leave came up, and listening to all these
women who have are from have a diversity of professional
(02:41):
backgrounds at various levels in their careers, and just hearing
the stories of how their companies, some of their companies
whom you have heard of listeners that shall remain nameless.
Just the paltry maternity offerings some of these women and
were given, and how they had to essentially, you know,
(03:04):
piecemeal together at least a few weeks off to try
to manage it. And not to mention too, you know,
the question of paternity leave, which we're not even gonna
have time to get into in this episode. And even
if you are someone listening who has no intention of
ever getting pregnant whatsoever, this is still an important issue
(03:26):
I think for all of us to understand because it
touches on women in general and how they are seen
and their place in the workforce at large. Also issues
of race, class, and education that add deeper layers onto
this um and really unpacking how disturbing statistics come to be.
(03:53):
And for this episode two, I know we have a
lot of international listeners, we are going to be focusing
more on the United States simply be caused, as is
well known, the US has the most dismal maternity care
provisions I none UM in the developed world, and since
(04:14):
so statistics are trotted out every Mother's Day. Um, we
didn't want to just focus on the numbers but really
figure out how this came to be, how did we
end up in this mess? And first, so we want
to talk about why we are choosing to talk about
maternity leave or paid and paid family leave generally now
(04:38):
rather than as some kind of Mother's Day special, right.
I mean, it's been in the news quite a bit
the last several months, UM, kicking off really in January
when President Obama gave it a nod in the State
of the Union and he positioned paid leave as not
just a women's issue but a family issue, which I
hate to say, is really the only way that this
(05:01):
country has achieved any type of of sanctioned leave, paid
or unpaid for for people who work. Yeah, I mean,
and I don't think that this legislation is going to
pass honestly before he gets out of office. But he
wants to give federal employees six weeks of paid leave
(05:21):
after childbirth and allow workers to earn seven paid sick
days per year. Because when it comes to paid time off,
I mean, whether we're talking about sickly vacation, UM after
childbirth or adoption, whatever, it might be, and there's just
so little of it in the United States across the board. Yeah,
(05:42):
and I mean this summer, it's definitely been back in
the news for a couple of reasons. One is that
it's become a campaign trail issue, as you might expect.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are both advocating for it,
although uh Clinton said she doesn't think that we could
get mandatory family leave at this point in our nation's existence,
and after reading up for this podcast, I agree with that, Yeah,
(06:06):
we are. It's more it's not an uphill battle. It's
like directly like side of a building, uphill battle. I mean,
it's straight up and it's been historically a very partisan issue.
So for Republicans on the campaign trail right now, you're
probably not going to hear much about supporting federal you know,
(06:27):
family paid family leave policy. Well, yeah, and political divisions
aside as we were saying, it's so often has to
be painted as a family leave issue, not as a
maternity leave issue, because there's this attitude and generally always
has been that it's like women, you did this to yourself.
Pregnancy is a disability, it's gross, you should hide it away.
(06:47):
You're not going to be a good worker if you
get pregnant. We don't want to hire you. You're never
going to come back and fulforced like you're gonna expect
us to like give you all this stuff. It's gonna
kill our economy. I hate this fictional boss right now.
Well you should, and but it exists like in shades,
This fictional bosses rant exists in in shades throughout our country.
(07:11):
People in business are just generally like not down with
helping women come back to work due to a pregnancy
and also to enable men to be active and engaged
fathers from the get go, either by not providing for
paternity leave or not challenging a workplace culture where guys
(07:35):
are expected to not take their paternity leave and take
a couple of days off and then you get back
to work. But on the bright side, Caroline, Netflix, what
about Netflix. Everyone's been talking about how in August Netflix
announced unlimited paid parental leave for up to a year.
We posted it on our Facebook page for stuff Mo'm
(07:57):
never told you and saying this is fantastic, pastic way
to go Netflix. Yeah, except it's only for the salaried employees.
Oh yeah, it's only for the people who are on
salary working in the streaming division. You've got four hundred
to five hundred lower wage hourly workers over in the
DVD distribution section that don't get the benefit. They also
(08:18):
don't benefit from that whole Netflix unlimited vacation day policy
that salaried employees enjoy. And this is our first glimpse
into that socioeconomic layer of paid family leave as well.
And then more recently, Marissa Meyer, Yahoo CEO was back
in the news in September because she announced that she's
(08:41):
having twins. Congratulations, but she also mentioned in her announcement
she posted on tumbler quote, I planned to approach to
pregnancy and delivery as I did with my son three
years ago, taking limited time away and working throughout. And
this launched a thousand headline in blog posts. And I'll
tell you, Caroline, when I first read it, my thought
(09:04):
was simply, Oh, okay, she's simply she's not telling us this.
She's telling Yahoo investors this to not freak out. She's
going to be back on the job, okay. But it's
not okay for a lot of people. Yeah. People said
that Meyer was setting a poor example for the rest
of her Yahoo employees, they are offered up to sixteen
(09:25):
weeks of maternity leave, whether that's having a baby, adopting
a baby, fostering a child, um and they said, look, yeah,
it's fine for you to do you but really you
should be taking this maternity leave, taking this time to
show your subordinates that it's okay that they do the same.
You are fostering a culture where it's not okay for
(09:47):
people to take their family leave. And I totally see
where that argument is coming from. I also see where arguments,
you know, telling those people to quiet down and allow
Meyer and her her husband and family to determine what
is best for them to to do just that. But
I mean, the fact that this sparks so much conversation
(10:09):
and debate really gets to the maternity leave mess that
we're in. Because if there were more options, if there
was more provision for people expanding their families, would we
worry so much about what one person is doing with
her pregnancy. Well, that's that's exactly it. I mean, I
(10:31):
think so many people in the tech industry in particular,
are worried about this example that Meyer's supposedly setting because,
according to Fortune magazine, in October, more than ten percent
of women who had left the tech industry did so
because of maternity leave policy issues, other sided a lack
of flexible work arrangements or unsupportive work environments that basically,
(10:54):
indirectly we're telling these people tech isn't for you, This
industry isn't for you. So that's why so many people
are saying you're setting a bad example when really, like, yes,
we should be absolutely concerned and talk about the policies
that individual companies and employers set in the expectations that
they indirectly set for their employees. But this is obviously
(11:16):
a bigger issue. As Kristen was talking about toward the
top of the podcast, the United States is one of
the only countries in the world aside from what is it,
Papua New Guinea and is Sura not one of them
to that offers no federally mandated paid maternity leave. And
the US is one of just nine countries in the
(11:38):
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that have no policies
in place for fathers. And compare that to how maternity
time off isn't just across government policy that you see,
you know, enacted all over the world. Except for the
US basically, but it's also across cultural corner nur Stone.
(12:01):
This was something coming from an investigative piece published and
in These Times UM where they talked to Maylan everhard
Grand who's a Norwegian public health scholar who's compiled across
cultural comparison of post natal practices, and she told in
These Times quote throughout history and all over the world,
(12:23):
people have tended to carve out a minimum of at
least six weeks in which women are exempt from responsibilities
other than childcare. And that can take all sorts of forms,
whether it is a woman going to live with her
mother or mother coming to live with her UM. I mean,
it's just something that we we have done, that we
(12:45):
have kind of established globally is is a good thing
for new baby and new new parents. So many cultures
in general, but countries and governments have indicated that pregnancy
and maternity it's it's not that it's a sacred time,
(13:07):
but it's a time that is absolutely necessary to give
families a chance to bond, recover, uh, learn about their
new lives with this new child that they've brought into
their homes. And in the US, we tend to think
of it as just like, Okay, we'll pull yourself up
by your bootstraps and get back to work. Because the
(13:29):
closest thing the US has to a federal policy for
this is the Family Medical Leave Act, which allows up
to twelve weeks of leave per year with restrictions that
will get into and that leave that you take is unpaid,
and fort of paid workers in the United States are
(13:51):
not covered by the f m l A because they're
working for a private business with a fewer than fifty
employees and have not been working and or have not
been working at that job for at least a year,
all of which are requirements even qualify for this unpaid
twelve weeks off. Yeah, and the end these Times article
(14:14):
sites Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers saying that about of
US private sector workers have access to any paid family leave,
and only one and twenty of the lowest earning workers
in our country have it. And these depressing numbers only
get more depressing when you contrast them with the situation
(14:36):
in Sweden, where parents get sixteen months of paid, not
even unpaid, but sixteen months of paid parental leave, or Finland,
where after nine months of paid leave, the mother or
the father can take or split additional paid again childcare
(14:57):
leave until the child's third birthday. I just used so
many italics in what I just said because it's mind
boggling and I don't know. I mean, we have this
attitude in this country that that's like what that that's
lazy and it's going to damage business. I don't understand
how these things develop. Yeah, we do that mindset. It's
exactly how we got into this situation. Um, and uh,
(15:21):
it's a quick side note, Caroline. I was tweeting a
little bit about this research and the dismal state of affairs,
and one of our international listeners tweeted back at us, saying, wait,
is this still the case in the US. Surely it's
not that has to be wrong. Nope, that is exactly
the way it is still. So if you're wondering, as
(15:43):
we were, how we got to this point, the answer
begins with World War One, and that's when attitudes really
start shifting in terms of paid leave for women, because
this is when you have the first big wave of
women going to work when the guys are off at war.
But then that really starts happening in earnest after World
(16:07):
War two. And this is also when you see the
split between European countries getting very generous with paid leave
and the US being like, oh, we don't need it. Yeah.
You have to keep in mind that in parts of Europe,
populations were decimated by war, and so a lot of
women stayed in their jobs that they entered during the war,
and so in the aftermath of World War two, European
(16:29):
countries really stepped up paid leave to incentivize population growth
and simultaneously rebuild the workforce. Meanwhile, in the US, men
were returning to their jobs and married women were basically
shuttled back home and paid leave provisions were de incentivized,
and as a piece, we found on NPR really hammered home.
(16:52):
You have that post World War two climate coupled with
business interest that really left maternity leave out in the cold. Historically,
groups including the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the US
Chamber of Commerce, and the Society for Human Resource Management
have consistently opposed these kinds of paid leave policies, arguing
(17:18):
that it would put an undo financial strain on businesses
and force quote one size fits all approaches, basically saying
you know you're gonna have all these entrepreneurs who are
gonna have to be paying you know, these exorbitant paid
leave for these women to go have babies, and then
once they come back with their babies, they're not going
to be as productive workers and it's just going to
(17:41):
crush our economy. But at the same time, too, you
have these deep pocketed business interests, like these kinds of
groups that have spent a lot of money lobbying officials
to not support these policies, and that's how it becomes
this bipartisan issue. I mean, maybe I m like living
in some weird sci fi utopia, but you are, Caroline,
(18:04):
and surprise, I know none of this is real, but
you would think that why wouldn't you take that money
and advocate for policies that work. If you're convinced that
maternity leave or or paid family of any kind is
going to hurt business, why not put your money into
things that actually can help ever free one policies that
(18:27):
work with business and help families at the same time.
Because women have so long been considered a niche interest
and so diametrically opposed to professionalism and business. And Peter Capelli,
who's a professor of management at the Wharton School at
the University of Pennsylvania. I was talking to NPR about
(18:49):
this and attributes sort of the underlying philosophy to American
exceptionalism and this pattern of us identifying with the class
that we aspire to. And so, I mean, if you,
if you think about it, like there is this very
patriotic undercurrent of the idea of small businesses and entrepreneurs
(19:12):
and the whole bootstraps philosophy, the American dream, the American
dream has no time for paid maternity leave. Yeah, and
I think I believe it was him to who was
saying that. Whereas in another country somebody might be considered
a worker in the larger system, here they're considered small
time entrepreneurs who would be hurt by any type of
(19:35):
policy like this. So it's not as if we don't
have any provisions at all for leave. It's just that
their paltry and they're just haven't been that many and
they're relatively new. I mean into the nineties sixties, women
were just quietly expected to leave work once they were
(19:56):
visibly pregnant. Um. This is also when you have a
you states, California, Rhode Island, and New Jersey in particular
that began mandating paid maternity leave. But they're framing pregnancy
as a disability in order to make that happen. Well,
and didn't that have a lot to do with you
(20:17):
couldn't have men suing for the same type of time
off that If pregnancy is classified as a disability, well
then okay, well then that is just a woman thing, right.
Otherwise it becomes sex discrimination. Right And so speaking of that, uh,
In nineteen five, women begin bringing pregnancy discrimination cases to
(20:37):
the newly formed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which, as we
moved into the seventies, said women should be protected from
pregnancy discrimination. Yeah, and the seventies were a significant decade
for pregnancy discrimination legislation. UM. The Supreme Court, for instance,
(20:58):
ruled twice in this seventies that pregnancy discrimination is not
sex discrimination. And this is important for figuring out sort
of how we've developed this legal framework around pregnancy discrimination
in the United States. One of these cases, for instance,
upheld a California disability insurance program that did not cover
(21:21):
pregnant women, and in one of the court opinions, Scota said, quote,
there's no risk from which men are protected in women
are not likewise, there is no risk from which women
are protected and men are not. The program divides potential
recipients into two groups, pregnant women and non pregnant women.
(21:43):
So basically, the court was like, ladies, ladies, ladies, you'd
brought this on yourself and the cost of dealing with
it is kind of up to you to figure out. Which, again,
is so mind boggling. And I know I already talked
to about this earlier in the show, but like, oh god,
(22:04):
pregnancy is not just like a one person thing. A
lot of the time, Uh, it often is part of
planning your family. Yeah, I mean, and if we're talking
about the workforce, I mean, isn't that kind of how
the future workforce comes about? I don't know, it's starting
to sound awfully socialist christ I mean, you would think
that these judges would be very pro robot you know.
(22:27):
But then in nineteen seventy four, we have the case
Cleveland Board of Education, the La Fleur that determined that
it's illegal to force pregnant women to take maternity leap
on the assumption that they're incapable of working because of
their physical condition. Right. That was overturning a previous law
(22:48):
that the Supreme Court had upheld in that restricted the
hours that women worked in the interest of protecting them
from employer exploitation. So you've got women working in factories,
you've got long hours, maybe you don't have a weekend.
Women are just standing on their feet all day, and
so in that regard, it was almost like, you, pole,
helpless women, we have to protect you. Yeah, it was
(23:09):
very paternalistic and also detrimental for a lot of women
of color, especially in working class women who are like, no, no, no, no,
I have to earn a wage, Please don't cap my hours. Um. Then,
if we hop back to nineteen seventy six, the tax
code is updated to offer a break for working families
(23:31):
with a dependent child, So the government's being a little
more generous. And then finally, in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act
is past covering hiring, firing, promotion, and pay. And this
is actually a case of politicians kind of coming around
and you know, not stepping on the toes of the
(23:51):
Supreme Court, but clarifying things for the better. At least,
they classified pregnancy discrimination as a form of sex discrimination
and directed employees to treat pregnant employees like everyone else
with similar ability or inability to work. So basically, the
government looked at what the court had ruled and was like, okay, no, no, no,
(24:15):
pregnancy is no worse than losing your arm on the
assembly line, are any other kind of disabling condition. Um,
so we need to protect those workers in some kind
of way. But it's still left loopholes for businesses to
sneak around as long as they're discriminating on the basis
of ability rather than the pregnancy itself. Yeah, and so
(24:41):
classifying pregnancy as a disability rather than focusing on the
gender equality issue has been the quote unquote safest way
to protect those workers. Otherwise, like we said, men might say, oh,
well I deserve this time too, And I didn't know that.
I mean, I had been really curious as to why
legally pregnancy is considered a disability. That's pretty insulting, I know,
(25:06):
like really, um, but we had to do it in order,
I mean, I guess, in order to protect pregnant women,
even though at the same time it seems very catch
twenty two because it's not like classifying it as a
disability and you know, including it with provisions in the
f m l A, which we're going to talk about
(25:26):
in just a second has really helped out that many
pregnant women. But now I'm just getting ahead of myself.
Um so this really jumped out to me. A paper
in the Duke Law Journal by Debrah L. Break and
Joanna L. Grossman noted that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was
(25:47):
enacted to quote enable women to maintain labor force attachments
throughout pregnancy and childbirth. Which is so important, which is
so important, and yet and yet yet, Christian's shaking our hands,
my hands waving in the air. There is no further
provisions to make sure that while yes, we might be
(26:10):
able to stay in the labor force, maybe we aren't
being compensated at all. There's no there's no financial provision,
if that makes sense. We're like, we're making sure your
body can stay there, but whether you have enough money
to care for that new child or even to care
(26:30):
for yourself. Again, that's kind of to you. Yeah. Well
so in the nineteen eighties, as you know, it's Melanie
Griffith in Working Girl era, right shoulder pads and big hair.
More women are in the workplace, and more workplaces begin
integrating flexible work schedules and employer based childcare. Options. These
became big issues for workers once we do have more
(26:54):
women not only entering the workforce but staying there because
you've got at this time, housing price is going up,
men's wages stagnating, and so how are how am I
going to afford to live and stay in this house
and stay in the middle class and continue buying like
shoes and groceries. Well, you know, the wife's got to
go to work and workplaces doing that, integrating flexible work
(27:16):
schedules and possibly you know, providing childcare is totally fine
for that Reagan era individualism where it's like leave it
up to the businesses because it was seen as way
too big government for any kind of federal policy to
be enacted. Yeah, of course you still here echoes of
(27:39):
that now. It's not like that idea of big government
has gone away by any means. And then you get
another Supreme Court case that upheld at California law requiring
most employers to grant pregnant women four months of unpaid
disability leave and the right to return to their same job.
(28:00):
And then finally, finally, in we get the most significant
federal policy passed thus far with the Family and Medical
Leave Act, which again mandates up to twelve weeks of
unpaid leave for a childbearing or family care over a
(28:21):
twelve month period. Employees though, must have been working for
one year at that job at least one thousand, two
hundred fifty hours over the past twelve months to get
really precise, and the business has to have at least
fifty employees. So in other words, women who are working
part time or for a lot of small small businesses
(28:43):
are not going to have any access to it. We've
already talked about how a lot of people in the US,
a lot of workers don't even have access to f
m l A provisions. And if we take a closer
look though at how this policy was passed, we at
even more insight into again why there is such a
(29:05):
maternity leave mess in the US. And we'll talk about
that when we come right back from a quick break.
So let's take a closer look at the Family and
Medical Leave Act. This is coming from a paper from
(29:25):
the National Partnership for Women and Families. So there had
been a lot of fears about too many regulations permitting
paid or unpaid family leave. There were a lot of
concerns that it would have a huge detrimental effect on businesses,
their costs, their profitability, their innovation. But studies have shown
(29:46):
that the f m l A has had either no
or a very very small negligible effect on these things. Granted,
we need more data on the money saved by the
people being able to return to their jobs, but I mean,
I think that's a good place to start by saying, hey,
by the way, the f m l A is not
costing businesses their existence. And consider that too, against the
(30:12):
background of the nine years that it took just to
pass this, to pass this unpaid leave law, I mean,
this really started in nineteen four um, as that paper
Caroline mentioned notes, And this was when people first saw
the possibility of a quote comprehensive gender neutral family and
(30:35):
medical leave on a national basis happening. And it was
because of the Federal District Court striking down California's maternity
leave law as sex discriminating against men. And when these
people were started trying to craft this possible legislation, labor
(30:57):
support was lukewarm at best, and a lot of politicians
just scoffed at it as a quote unquote girly bill.
They considered it very trivial women were a niche interest,
why would we want to do this? And and too
when we're thinking about these labor forces, a lot of
the more traditional union reps were men. I mean, these
(31:19):
are a lot of men having to be convinced that
essentially like caring for their their wives and the mother
of their children is smart legislation. Yeah, it took a lot,
a lot of grassroots efforts and a lot of coalition
building and groups coming together to convince people that leave
(31:39):
is important, that medical leave, whether it's for maternity reasons
or for other family illness reasons, was important. And so
you had to get women within the trade unions being vocal.
They were instrumental in making this a relevant interest to
the unions at large. And this also is not Federal
(32:01):
Maternity Leave Act. It is a family, Medical, family and
Medical Excuse Me Leave Act, because they had to steer
it away from being seen as women's interest legislation in
the same way as we heard it echoed in President
Obama's Due to the Union address where he said, listen,
this isn't just a women's issue, This isn't everybody issue,
(32:21):
which yes, that's true, but it says something that we
need to emphasize or should I say, de emphasize its
direct impact on women in order to make it more
palatable to people. Um. So, for instance, they even got
the US Catholic Conference on board by positioning it as
something that could potentially reduce abortions because women could receive
(32:47):
better postnatal care um in terms of broadening it to
be family and medical rather than just maternal, they got
the A RP on board by requiring expanding possible coverage
two seniors and not just focusing it on babies who
always feel all of our attention. But of course this
was another way for people on the right to strike
(33:08):
back because they say, oh, well, now you want to
cover old people and young people. That's gonna be way
too expensive. And what jerks like at Christmas time? I'm
just imagining, is there like sitting around the tree with
like the grandparents and the babies, just like staring at
them like, seriously, mag are we that much of a problem?
Can we please have a piece of the Christmas pie? No?
(33:30):
By your own presence, I feel like we just narrated
a political cartoon. So um well yeah, So, as a
result of all of this working together, the coalition ultimately
included support from groups that represented yes, women and children,
but also organized labor, seniors, disabled people, progressive businesses, in
(33:50):
addition to religious organizations. So they're obviously a very multifaceted
group of people and organizations. And it really took that
to get any sort of leave past. Yeah, I mean,
and it also took the legislation being repeatedly vetoed. President
Bush the Senior vetoed it not once but twice, and
(34:11):
Republicans consistently decried it as government overreach and also a
burden on the taxpayers and also a potential burden on
these precious businesses. UM. But then President Clinton comes into office.
President Clinton, the first possibly UM comes into office and
this is the first law that he signed, which I
(34:33):
did not realize, and it became effective August five. But
that's kind of still since the best that we've got.
It's not like this has revolutionized maternal care in the US. UM.
We are seeing more recently more focused on state level
(34:55):
paid family leave laws. California past there's in two thousand
and two, and Rhode Island and New Jersey have followed suit.
And as you know in These Times article pointed out,
research has found that businesses in those states have not
collapsed as a result. And this is incredibly important. I
(35:15):
mean beyond the fact that, yes, it's great that these
states are taking care of their people, but it's so
important because it's gonna take, as a lot of people
were writing about that we read, it's going to take
these states being incubators for this type of policy, this
legislation for the federal government to eventually one day the
giant federal government ship and should be like, Okay, maybe
(35:37):
we should do this. I'm not saying that that's going
to happen tomorrow. It's going to take a lot more
states doing this, I think, to change minds. But it's
incredibly important that these certain states are leading the way
because hopefully they're leading the way toward a future far
removed from the situation for far too many new parents
(35:59):
these days, because as if you live in the US
and you aren't a salaried employee who receives parental leave benefits,
then you're going to have to cobble together a maternity
leave ranging from maybe a couple of days to a
couple of weeks. And even if you are able to
(36:19):
qualify for fm l A benefits, if your baby is
born early, you might be scrambling to figure it out,
or if there are any kind of health complications. I mean,
they're just so many possible scenarios where things will not
go according to your leave plan. Yeah, and even if
(36:40):
you have maternity leave paid or unpaid at your company,
you're still going to be under so much pressure not
to take it or not to take all of it.
The Daily Beast included some data from the National Center
for Health Statistics, which found that from two thousand six
to two thou eight, nearly a third of employed women
did not report taking any eternity leave after their last pregnancy.
(37:02):
But the thing is, studies have linked abbreviated leaves to
postpartum depression to infant mortality. They've seen in studies international
studies that the countries over time that have given more
paid leave to parents and families, those infant mortality rates
have gone down. There's so many personal but also hugely
(37:26):
important reasons to make it okay to sanction uh parental
leave after pregnancy. But those difficulties too, are often more
pronounced among women of color. Um Women of color make up,
for instance, a huge, huge majority of domestic workers in
this country and domestic workers are excluded from the f
(37:48):
m l A. These are nanny's, house cleaners and elder
caregivers who can't take a sick day if they have
the flu. They can't take time off to take care
of the kid and still get paid, and that's certainly
means that they can't have any sort of paid or
unpaid maternity leave, right. I mean, it just seems like
this whole system is really you know, dividing the population
(38:12):
into the haves and the have nots. Because usually, as
in the case with Netflix for instance, it's those salary
jobs that tend to require more education that provide the
generous benefits. But when you get down to more of
the hourly workers, the people who might not have had
as much access to education, did not have as many
(38:32):
you know resources growing up, who are then struggling when
it comes time for them to be planning their families.
They don't have any kind of provisions whatsoever, so they
have to sort of figure out what their own, build
their own network, essentially to care for themselves and for
their kid as much as they can, and sometimes that
(38:54):
means having a child and going back to work the
next Monday. Yeah, the in These Times article seriously almost
had me crying at my desk reading about moms who
have to make incredible efforts to be at work or
at multiple jobs and have no time to even sleep,
let alone like really take care of their kids. And
(39:17):
that article was also one of the many that pointed
out that it's the people who earn the least and
have the least education who also have the least access
to maternity leave, paid or unpaid. We found that eight
of college graduates took at least six weeks off to
care for a new baby, but only of women without
(39:38):
college degrees did so. And that's coming from the Department
of Labor and from everything that we know about early
childhood development and how crucial those early years are for
brain development and learning and really getting off to a
good start. It seems like it is those workers who
(39:58):
need paid parental leave more than anybody else in a way,
you know, I mean, it just seems like we're feeding
now a generational cycle. Yeah, that's absolutely. That's what was
so disheartening about the In These Times article was it
just seems like we are trapping our own people in
cycles of not being able to give enough care to
(40:23):
their kids being overworked and underpaid at the same time.
And listen, we completely support the entrepreneurial spirit of people
out there, absolutely, but it would be great for all
of us if we could somehow, you know, support that,
but also support parents. Well. Sure, because you get paid
(40:45):
family leave, careers get to stay on track, as do
paychecks and career trajectories. That means that translates to a
lower poverty rate. That translates to a more stable family.
That's that translates to to that strong workforce and innovation
that people are clamoring for and using as an excuse
(41:06):
to not give paid leave. And now I just really
want to pack up and move to Sweden, Caroline. Seriously,
I'm gonna good jacket, I'll be ready to go. And now, listeners,
we really want to hear from you on this issue.
We know a lot of you have kids and are
curious to know what kind of experience you had positive, negative,
neutral when it came to parental leave. And guys too,
(41:29):
this is an issue for you as well, so we
want to know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address. You can also
tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you when we come right back from a quick break. Caroline.
As a chronic to do list maker, I can tell
(41:50):
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Before you do anything else, click on the microphone at
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(42:54):
stamps dot com. Enter stuff, and now back to the show. Okay,
I have a letter here from Kai. Kai writes, I'm
a longtime listener from Australia, but this is my first
time writing to you. I just finished listening to your
episode on peeing standing up. As a gender queer identified
(43:15):
person who lived as mail for a number of years,
I tried a lot of different STP or stand to
pee products. This was ever a decade ago, and the
options weren't great Back then. They were mostly homemade by
friends of friends or some guy my friend met online,
and I never managed to find one that worked for me.
I have very large labya manure, which always got in
the way of getting a good seal with the device.
(43:36):
No matter what I tried, I always found I had
far more yurine run down my legs and eggs at
the tube as it was supposed to. I resorted to
using disabled toilets most of the time, which was not ideal.
Now that I'm not attempting to pass his nail, I'm
tempted to try some of the fuds as the ones
I've looked at in response to your programs, seem to
have more scope to cope with my shape. They're not
(43:56):
all designed to have a tiny, discreete connection while passing
as a penis. So thanks for giving me the heads
up that it may be worth trying again. Love the show,
keep up the interesting topics, and thanks Kai. Well, I've
got to let her here from Jodi, who writes, I
was so grateful to you both for doing the Lavender
Menaced episode. I was raised by two women who raised
(44:16):
me in the eighties and nineties to have many of
the Lavender Menace principles of feminism. We didn't live in
a commune, but we lived very much in a world
without men, largely because as time passed and my parents
lost touch with their men friends, they didn't reintroduce any
new men into their lives. And she goes on to say,
I was somewhat disappointed that you characterized our separatist principles
(44:40):
as living away from men or excluding men, because that
wasn't how I experienced it. My experience was that my
parents just wanted to live with other women. Men weren't
being actively excluded. Rather, they simply weren't being invited to
join them. My family never sat around talking about how
we would build a world without men, or how we
hated men, or how we didn't need men. We said
(45:00):
blee never talked about men at all. The notion that
these women wanted to live away from men places men
at the center of the separatist movement, where men, in
fact just had no place at all. I am naturally
tentative to say that this was always the case. But
for the most part, the separationists I was raised knowing
focused on building spaces that were assumed for women and
(45:22):
just didn't invite men to enter. The name of the
bookstore my parents went to wasn't not for men land,
it was her land. The connection to the historical structure
that men can enter every space while women must be
asked permission to enter guides this principle. The goal was
to create spaces where women didn't need to ask permission
to enter and be, and where women could do whatever
(45:42):
they felt like doing. There are four men's spaces everywhere,
places where women simply don't go because we give men
their space to have agency, and that isn't a function
of women. Shouldn't the notion of for women's spaces be
just as normal, and Jodie, thank you so much for
lightening us on that. And that's a great point that
(46:03):
separationists weren't necessarily, you know, actively excluding, but rather just
not inviting sin thenda an invitation to the birthday party
or any party. So thanks for your insights, Jody, and
to everyone who's emailed us. Mom Stuff at House Stepwork
dot com is our email address and for links to
all of our social media as well as all of
our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this one with our
(46:26):
sources so you too can cry about maturity leave in
the United States. Head on over to stuff Mom Never
Told You dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Doesn't how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to stuff mom never told you from House Top
works not Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And Caroline. This episode is coming
out nowhere near Mother's Day, but we're talking about maternity leave.
(00:24):
And the thing is, I'm glad it's not coming out
around Mother's Day because everyone always waits until Mother's Day
to talk about maternity leave. But you know what, Caroline,
not to get to soapboxy too soon, But this is
a year round issue, especially in the United States, that
we need to just never ever stop talking about. Oh.
I know it's it's uh not to not to give
(00:48):
a spoiler away, but it's an incredibly depressing, complicated topic. Uh.
I growing up as a young person, just assume that
maternity leave in our country was a thing that you
were assured maternity leave and you I didn't have. You know,
as a really young person, I don't have concepts of
like benefits and paychecks and all of that stuff. But
(01:12):
I assume, like, well, of course, like a woman who
works has a baby, she naturally gets maternity leave because
that's how the world works. She continues to get paid
for it, uh, And everybody is healthy and happy, and
she goes back to work in her job is secure.
Oh and didn't you imagine too, maternity leave being just
a glorious vacation where you're hanging out with a baby
(01:32):
all the time, like extended babysitting. Yeah, sure, we knew nothing,
we children, we knew nothing nothing. Yeah, it's not until
I got older and and had and and of course
I'm developing more awareness of like a maternity leave is
not like this utopia that exists period. But as I
got older and my friends and co workers started having babies, um,
(01:55):
it became painfully apparent watching them go through it, how
heart wrenching and difficult this whole process can be. And
I realized that, yes, this confession of mine of growing
up ignorant of maternity policy can make me sound just well, ignorant, um,
But it's because I just assumed that, as a younger person,
(02:19):
that we were better than that. Well. And I more
recently spent a an afternoon with a group of women
where I was the only one who doesn't have kids,
and maternity leave came up, and listening to all these
women who have are from have a diversity of professional
(02:41):
backgrounds at various levels in their careers, and just hearing
the stories of how their companies, some of their companies
whom you have heard of listeners that shall remain nameless.
Just the paltry maternity offerings some of these women and
were given, and how they had to essentially, you know,
(03:04):
piecemeal together at least a few weeks off to try
to manage it. And not to mention too, you know,
the question of paternity leave, which we're not even gonna
have time to get into in this episode. And even
if you are someone listening who has no intention of
ever getting pregnant whatsoever, this is still an important issue
(03:26):
I think for all of us to understand because it
touches on women in general and how they are seen
and their place in the workforce at large. Also issues
of race, class, and education that add deeper layers onto
this um and really unpacking how disturbing statistics come to be.
(03:53):
And for this episode two, I know we have a
lot of international listeners, we are going to be focusing
more on the United States simply be caused, as is
well known, the US has the most dismal maternity care
provisions I none UM in the developed world, and since
(04:14):
so statistics are trotted out every Mother's Day. Um, we
didn't want to just focus on the numbers but really
figure out how this came to be, how did we
end up in this mess? And first, so we want
to talk about why we are choosing to talk about
maternity leave or paid and paid family leave generally now
(04:38):
rather than as some kind of Mother's Day special, right.
I mean, it's been in the news quite a bit
the last several months, UM, kicking off really in January
when President Obama gave it a nod in the State
of the Union and he positioned paid leave as not
just a women's issue but a family issue, which I
hate to say, is really the only way that this
(05:01):
country has achieved any type of of sanctioned leave, paid
or unpaid for for people who work. Yeah, I mean,
and I don't think that this legislation is going to
pass honestly before he gets out of office. But he
wants to give federal employees six weeks of paid leave
(05:21):
after childbirth and allow workers to earn seven paid sick
days per year. Because when it comes to paid time off,
I mean, whether we're talking about sickly vacation, UM after
childbirth or adoption, whatever, it might be, and there's just
so little of it in the United States across the board. Yeah,
(05:42):
and I mean this summer, it's definitely been back in
the news for a couple of reasons. One is that
it's become a campaign trail issue, as you might expect.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are both advocating for it,
although uh Clinton said she doesn't think that we could
get mandatory family leave at this point in our nation's existence,
and after reading up for this podcast, I agree with that, Yeah,
(06:06):
we are. It's more it's not an uphill battle. It's
like directly like side of a building, uphill battle. I mean,
it's straight up and it's been historically a very partisan issue.
So for Republicans on the campaign trail right now, you're
probably not going to hear much about supporting federal you know,
(06:27):
family paid family leave policy. Well, yeah, and political divisions
aside as we were saying, it's so often has to
be painted as a family leave issue, not as a
maternity leave issue, because there's this attitude and generally always
has been that it's like women, you did this to yourself.
Pregnancy is a disability, it's gross, you should hide it away.
(06:47):
You're not going to be a good worker if you
get pregnant. We don't want to hire you. You're never
going to come back and fulforced like you're gonna expect
us to like give you all this stuff. It's gonna
kill our economy. I hate this fictional boss right now.
Well you should, and but it exists like in shades,
This fictional bosses rant exists in in shades throughout our country.
(07:11):
People in business are just generally like not down with
helping women come back to work due to a pregnancy
and also to enable men to be active and engaged
fathers from the get go, either by not providing for
paternity leave or not challenging a workplace culture where guys
(07:35):
are expected to not take their paternity leave and take
a couple of days off and then you get back
to work. But on the bright side, Caroline, Netflix, what
about Netflix. Everyone's been talking about how in August Netflix
announced unlimited paid parental leave for up to a year.
We posted it on our Facebook page for stuff Mo'm
(07:57):
never told you and saying this is fantastic, pastic way
to go Netflix. Yeah, except it's only for the salaried employees.
Oh yeah, it's only for the people who are on
salary working in the streaming division. You've got four hundred
to five hundred lower wage hourly workers over in the
DVD distribution section that don't get the benefit. They also
(08:18):
don't benefit from that whole Netflix unlimited vacation day policy
that salaried employees enjoy. And this is our first glimpse
into that socioeconomic layer of paid family leave as well.
And then more recently, Marissa Meyer, Yahoo CEO was back
in the news in September because she announced that she's
(08:41):
having twins. Congratulations, but she also mentioned in her announcement
she posted on tumbler quote, I planned to approach to
pregnancy and delivery as I did with my son three
years ago, taking limited time away and working throughout. And
this launched a thousand headline in blog posts. And I'll
tell you, Caroline, when I first read it, my thought
(09:04):
was simply, Oh, okay, she's simply she's not telling us this.
She's telling Yahoo investors this to not freak out. She's
going to be back on the job, okay. But it's
not okay for a lot of people. Yeah. People said
that Meyer was setting a poor example for the rest
of her Yahoo employees, they are offered up to sixteen
(09:25):
weeks of maternity leave, whether that's having a baby, adopting
a baby, fostering a child, um and they said, look, yeah,
it's fine for you to do you but really you
should be taking this maternity leave, taking this time to
show your subordinates that it's okay that they do the same.
You are fostering a culture where it's not okay for
(09:47):
people to take their family leave. And I totally see
where that argument is coming from. I also see where arguments,
you know, telling those people to quiet down and allow
Meyer and her her husband and family to determine what
is best for them to to do just that. But
I mean, the fact that this sparks so much conversation
(10:09):
and debate really gets to the maternity leave mess that
we're in. Because if there were more options, if there
was more provision for people expanding their families, would we
worry so much about what one person is doing with
her pregnancy. Well, that's that's exactly it. I mean, I
(10:31):
think so many people in the tech industry in particular,
are worried about this example that Meyer's supposedly setting because,
according to Fortune magazine, in October, more than ten percent
of women who had left the tech industry did so
because of maternity leave policy issues, other sided a lack
of flexible work arrangements or unsupportive work environments that basically,
(10:54):
indirectly we're telling these people tech isn't for you, This
industry isn't for you. So that's why so many people
are saying you're setting a bad example when really, like, yes,
we should be absolutely concerned and talk about the policies
that individual companies and employers set in the expectations that
they indirectly set for their employees. But this is obviously
(11:16):
a bigger issue. As Kristen was talking about toward the
top of the podcast, the United States is one of
the only countries in the world aside from what is it,
Papua New Guinea and is Sura not one of them
to that offers no federally mandated paid maternity leave. And
the US is one of just nine countries in the
(11:38):
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that have no policies
in place for fathers. And compare that to how maternity
time off isn't just across government policy that you see,
you know, enacted all over the world. Except for the
US basically, but it's also across cultural corner nur Stone.
(12:01):
This was something coming from an investigative piece published and
in These Times UM where they talked to Maylan everhard
Grand who's a Norwegian public health scholar who's compiled across
cultural comparison of post natal practices, and she told in
These Times quote throughout history and all over the world,
(12:23):
people have tended to carve out a minimum of at
least six weeks in which women are exempt from responsibilities
other than childcare. And that can take all sorts of forms,
whether it is a woman going to live with her
mother or mother coming to live with her UM. I mean,
it's just something that we we have done, that we
(12:45):
have kind of established globally is is a good thing
for new baby and new new parents. So many cultures
in general, but countries and governments have indicated that pregnancy
and maternity it's it's not that it's a sacred time,
(13:07):
but it's a time that is absolutely necessary to give
families a chance to bond, recover, uh, learn about their
new lives with this new child that they've brought into
their homes. And in the US, we tend to think
of it as just like, Okay, we'll pull yourself up
by your bootstraps and get back to work. Because the
(13:29):
closest thing the US has to a federal policy for
this is the Family Medical Leave Act, which allows up
to twelve weeks of leave per year with restrictions that
will get into and that leave that you take is unpaid,
and fort of paid workers in the United States are
(13:51):
not covered by the f m l A because they're
working for a private business with a fewer than fifty
employees and have not been working and or have not
been working at that job for at least a year,
all of which are requirements even qualify for this unpaid
twelve weeks off. Yeah, and the end these Times article
(14:14):
sites Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers saying that about of
US private sector workers have access to any paid family leave,
and only one and twenty of the lowest earning workers
in our country have it. And these depressing numbers only
get more depressing when you contrast them with the situation
(14:36):
in Sweden, where parents get sixteen months of paid, not
even unpaid, but sixteen months of paid parental leave, or Finland,
where after nine months of paid leave, the mother or
the father can take or split additional paid again childcare
(14:57):
leave until the child's third birthday. I just used so
many italics in what I just said because it's mind
boggling and I don't know. I mean, we have this
attitude in this country that that's like what that that's
lazy and it's going to damage business. I don't understand
how these things develop. Yeah, we do that mindset. It's
exactly how we got into this situation. Um, and uh,
(15:21):
it's a quick side note, Caroline. I was tweeting a
little bit about this research and the dismal state of affairs,
and one of our international listeners tweeted back at us, saying, wait,
is this still the case in the US. Surely it's
not that has to be wrong. Nope, that is exactly
the way it is still. So if you're wondering, as
(15:43):
we were, how we got to this point, the answer
begins with World War One, and that's when attitudes really
start shifting in terms of paid leave for women, because
this is when you have the first big wave of
women going to work when the guys are off at war.
But then that really starts happening in earnest after World
(16:07):
War two. And this is also when you see the
split between European countries getting very generous with paid leave
and the US being like, oh, we don't need it. Yeah.
You have to keep in mind that in parts of Europe,
populations were decimated by war, and so a lot of
women stayed in their jobs that they entered during the war,
and so in the aftermath of World War two, European
(16:29):
countries really stepped up paid leave to incentivize population growth
and simultaneously rebuild the workforce. Meanwhile, in the US, men
were returning to their jobs and married women were basically
shuttled back home and paid leave provisions were de incentivized,
and as a piece, we found on NPR really hammered home.
(16:52):
You have that post World War two climate coupled with
business interest that really left maternity leave out in the cold. Historically,
groups including the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the US
Chamber of Commerce, and the Society for Human Resource Management
have consistently opposed these kinds of paid leave policies, arguing
(17:18):
that it would put an undo financial strain on businesses
and force quote one size fits all approaches, basically saying
you know you're gonna have all these entrepreneurs who are
gonna have to be paying you know, these exorbitant paid
leave for these women to go have babies, and then
once they come back with their babies, they're not going
to be as productive workers and it's just going to
(17:41):
crush our economy. But at the same time, too, you
have these deep pocketed business interests, like these kinds of
groups that have spent a lot of money lobbying officials
to not support these policies, and that's how it becomes
this bipartisan issue. I mean, maybe I m like living
in some weird sci fi utopia, but you are, Caroline,
(18:04):
and surprise, I know none of this is real, but
you would think that why wouldn't you take that money
and advocate for policies that work. If you're convinced that
maternity leave or or paid family of any kind is
going to hurt business, why not put your money into
things that actually can help ever free one policies that
(18:27):
work with business and help families at the same time.
Because women have so long been considered a niche interest
and so diametrically opposed to professionalism and business. And Peter Capelli,
who's a professor of management at the Wharton School at
the University of Pennsylvania. I was talking to NPR about
(18:49):
this and attributes sort of the underlying philosophy to American
exceptionalism and this pattern of us identifying with the class
that we aspire to. And so, I mean, if you,
if you think about it, like there is this very
patriotic undercurrent of the idea of small businesses and entrepreneurs
(19:12):
and the whole bootstraps philosophy, the American dream, the American
dream has no time for paid maternity leave. Yeah, and
I think I believe it was him to who was
saying that. Whereas in another country somebody might be considered
a worker in the larger system, here they're considered small
time entrepreneurs who would be hurt by any type of
(19:35):
policy like this. So it's not as if we don't
have any provisions at all for leave. It's just that
their paltry and they're just haven't been that many and
they're relatively new. I mean into the nineties sixties, women
were just quietly expected to leave work once they were
(19:56):
visibly pregnant. Um. This is also when you have a
you states, California, Rhode Island, and New Jersey in particular
that began mandating paid maternity leave. But they're framing pregnancy
as a disability in order to make that happen. Well,
and didn't that have a lot to do with you
(20:17):
couldn't have men suing for the same type of time
off that If pregnancy is classified as a disability, well
then okay, well then that is just a woman thing, right.
Otherwise it becomes sex discrimination. Right And so speaking of that, uh,
In nineteen five, women begin bringing pregnancy discrimination cases to
(20:37):
the newly formed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which, as we
moved into the seventies, said women should be protected from
pregnancy discrimination. Yeah, and the seventies were a significant decade
for pregnancy discrimination legislation. UM. The Supreme Court, for instance,
(20:58):
ruled twice in this seventies that pregnancy discrimination is not
sex discrimination. And this is important for figuring out sort
of how we've developed this legal framework around pregnancy discrimination
in the United States. One of these cases, for instance,
upheld a California disability insurance program that did not cover
(21:21):
pregnant women, and in one of the court opinions, Scota said, quote,
there's no risk from which men are protected in women
are not likewise, there is no risk from which women
are protected and men are not. The program divides potential
recipients into two groups, pregnant women and non pregnant women.
(21:43):
So basically, the court was like, ladies, ladies, ladies, you'd
brought this on yourself and the cost of dealing with
it is kind of up to you to figure out. Which, again,
is so mind boggling. And I know I already talked
to about this earlier in the show, but like, oh god,
(22:04):
pregnancy is not just like a one person thing. A
lot of the time, Uh, it often is part of
planning your family. Yeah, I mean, and if we're talking
about the workforce, I mean, isn't that kind of how
the future workforce comes about? I don't know, it's starting
to sound awfully socialist christ I mean, you would think
that these judges would be very pro robot you know.
(22:27):
But then in nineteen seventy four, we have the case
Cleveland Board of Education, the La Fleur that determined that
it's illegal to force pregnant women to take maternity leap
on the assumption that they're incapable of working because of
their physical condition. Right. That was overturning a previous law
(22:48):
that the Supreme Court had upheld in that restricted the
hours that women worked in the interest of protecting them
from employer exploitation. So you've got women working in factories,
you've got long hours, maybe you don't have a weekend.
Women are just standing on their feet all day, and
so in that regard, it was almost like, you, pole,
helpless women, we have to protect you. Yeah, it was
(23:09):
very paternalistic and also detrimental for a lot of women
of color, especially in working class women who are like, no, no, no, no,
I have to earn a wage, Please don't cap my hours. Um. Then,
if we hop back to nineteen seventy six, the tax
code is updated to offer a break for working families
(23:31):
with a dependent child, So the government's being a little
more generous. And then finally, in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act
is past covering hiring, firing, promotion, and pay. And this
is actually a case of politicians kind of coming around
and you know, not stepping on the toes of the
(23:51):
Supreme Court, but clarifying things for the better. At least,
they classified pregnancy discrimination as a form of sex discrimination
and directed employees to treat pregnant employees like everyone else
with similar ability or inability to work. So basically, the
government looked at what the court had ruled and was like, okay, no, no, no,
(24:15):
pregnancy is no worse than losing your arm on the
assembly line, are any other kind of disabling condition. Um,
so we need to protect those workers in some kind
of way. But it's still left loopholes for businesses to
sneak around as long as they're discriminating on the basis
of ability rather than the pregnancy itself. Yeah, and so
(24:41):
classifying pregnancy as a disability rather than focusing on the
gender equality issue has been the quote unquote safest way
to protect those workers. Otherwise, like we said, men might say, oh,
well I deserve this time too, And I didn't know that.
I mean, I had been really curious as to why
legally pregnancy is considered a disability. That's pretty insulting, I know,
(25:06):
like really, um, but we had to do it in order,
I mean, I guess, in order to protect pregnant women,
even though at the same time it seems very catch
twenty two because it's not like classifying it as a
disability and you know, including it with provisions in the
f m l A, which we're going to talk about
(25:26):
in just a second has really helped out that many
pregnant women. But now I'm just getting ahead of myself.
Um so this really jumped out to me. A paper
in the Duke Law Journal by Debrah L. Break and
Joanna L. Grossman noted that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was
(25:47):
enacted to quote enable women to maintain labor force attachments
throughout pregnancy and childbirth. Which is so important, which is
so important, and yet and yet yet, Christian's shaking our hands,
my hands waving in the air. There is no further
provisions to make sure that while yes, we might be
(26:10):
able to stay in the labor force, maybe we aren't
being compensated at all. There's no there's no financial provision,
if that makes sense. We're like, we're making sure your
body can stay there, but whether you have enough money
to care for that new child or even to care
(26:30):
for yourself. Again, that's kind of to you. Yeah. Well
so in the nineteen eighties, as you know, it's Melanie
Griffith in Working Girl era, right shoulder pads and big hair.
More women are in the workplace, and more workplaces begin
integrating flexible work schedules and employer based childcare. Options. These
became big issues for workers once we do have more
(26:54):
women not only entering the workforce but staying there because
you've got at this time, housing price is going up,
men's wages stagnating, and so how are how am I
going to afford to live and stay in this house
and stay in the middle class and continue buying like
shoes and groceries. Well, you know, the wife's got to
go to work and workplaces doing that, integrating flexible work
(27:16):
schedules and possibly you know, providing childcare is totally fine
for that Reagan era individualism where it's like leave it
up to the businesses because it was seen as way
too big government for any kind of federal policy to
be enacted. Yeah, of course you still here echoes of
(27:39):
that now. It's not like that idea of big government
has gone away by any means. And then you get
another Supreme Court case that upheld at California law requiring
most employers to grant pregnant women four months of unpaid
disability leave and the right to return to their same job.
(28:00):
And then finally, finally, in we get the most significant
federal policy passed thus far with the Family and Medical
Leave Act, which again mandates up to twelve weeks of
unpaid leave for a childbearing or family care over a
(28:21):
twelve month period. Employees though, must have been working for
one year at that job at least one thousand, two
hundred fifty hours over the past twelve months to get
really precise, and the business has to have at least
fifty employees. So in other words, women who are working
part time or for a lot of small small businesses
(28:43):
are not going to have any access to it. We've
already talked about how a lot of people in the US,
a lot of workers don't even have access to f
m l A provisions. And if we take a closer
look though at how this policy was passed, we at
even more insight into again why there is such a
(29:05):
maternity leave mess in the US. And we'll talk about
that when we come right back from a quick break.
So let's take a closer look at the Family and
Medical Leave Act. This is coming from a paper from
(29:25):
the National Partnership for Women and Families. So there had
been a lot of fears about too many regulations permitting
paid or unpaid family leave. There were a lot of
concerns that it would have a huge detrimental effect on businesses,
their costs, their profitability, their innovation. But studies have shown
(29:46):
that the f m l A has had either no
or a very very small negligible effect on these things. Granted,
we need more data on the money saved by the
people being able to return to their jobs, but I mean,
I think that's a good place to start by saying, hey,
by the way, the f m l A is not
costing businesses their existence. And consider that too, against the
(30:12):
background of the nine years that it took just to
pass this, to pass this unpaid leave law, I mean,
this really started in nineteen four um, as that paper
Caroline mentioned notes, And this was when people first saw
the possibility of a quote comprehensive gender neutral family and
(30:35):
medical leave on a national basis happening. And it was
because of the Federal District Court striking down California's maternity
leave law as sex discriminating against men. And when these
people were started trying to craft this possible legislation, labor
(30:57):
support was lukewarm at best, and a lot of politicians
just scoffed at it as a quote unquote girly bill.
They considered it very trivial women were a niche interest,
why would we want to do this? And and too
when we're thinking about these labor forces, a lot of
the more traditional union reps were men. I mean, these
(31:19):
are a lot of men having to be convinced that
essentially like caring for their their wives and the mother
of their children is smart legislation. Yeah, it took a lot,
a lot of grassroots efforts and a lot of coalition
building and groups coming together to convince people that leave
(31:39):
is important, that medical leave, whether it's for maternity reasons
or for other family illness reasons, was important. And so
you had to get women within the trade unions being vocal.
They were instrumental in making this a relevant interest to
the unions at large. And this also is not Federal
(32:01):
Maternity Leave Act. It is a family, Medical, family and
Medical Excuse Me Leave Act, because they had to steer
it away from being seen as women's interest legislation in
the same way as we heard it echoed in President
Obama's Due to the Union address where he said, listen,
this isn't just a women's issue, This isn't everybody issue,
(32:21):
which yes, that's true, but it says something that we
need to emphasize or should I say, de emphasize its
direct impact on women in order to make it more
palatable to people. Um. So, for instance, they even got
the US Catholic Conference on board by positioning it as
something that could potentially reduce abortions because women could receive
(32:47):
better postnatal care um in terms of broadening it to
be family and medical rather than just maternal, they got
the A RP on board by requiring expanding possible coverage
two seniors and not just focusing it on babies who
always feel all of our attention. But of course this
was another way for people on the right to strike
(33:08):
back because they say, oh, well, now you want to
cover old people and young people. That's gonna be way
too expensive. And what jerks like at Christmas time? I'm
just imagining, is there like sitting around the tree with
like the grandparents and the babies, just like staring at
them like, seriously, mag are we that much of a problem?
Can we please have a piece of the Christmas pie? No?
(33:30):
By your own presence, I feel like we just narrated
a political cartoon. So um well yeah, So, as a
result of all of this working together, the coalition ultimately
included support from groups that represented yes, women and children,
but also organized labor, seniors, disabled people, progressive businesses, in
(33:50):
addition to religious organizations. So they're obviously a very multifaceted
group of people and organizations. And it really took that
to get any sort of leave past. Yeah, I mean,
and it also took the legislation being repeatedly vetoed. President
Bush the Senior vetoed it not once but twice, and
(34:11):
Republicans consistently decried it as government overreach and also a
burden on the taxpayers and also a potential burden on
these precious businesses. UM. But then President Clinton comes into office.
President Clinton, the first possibly UM comes into office and
this is the first law that he signed, which I
(34:33):
did not realize, and it became effective August five. But
that's kind of still since the best that we've got.
It's not like this has revolutionized maternal care in the US. UM.
We are seeing more recently more focused on state level
(34:55):
paid family leave laws. California past there's in two thousand
and two, and Rhode Island and New Jersey have followed suit.
And as you know in These Times article pointed out,
research has found that businesses in those states have not
collapsed as a result. And this is incredibly important. I
(35:15):
mean beyond the fact that, yes, it's great that these
states are taking care of their people, but it's so
important because it's gonna take, as a lot of people
were writing about that we read, it's going to take
these states being incubators for this type of policy, this
legislation for the federal government to eventually one day the
giant federal government ship and should be like, Okay, maybe
(35:37):
we should do this. I'm not saying that that's going
to happen tomorrow. It's going to take a lot more
states doing this, I think, to change minds. But it's
incredibly important that these certain states are leading the way
because hopefully they're leading the way toward a future far
removed from the situation for far too many new parents
(35:59):
these days, because as if you live in the US
and you aren't a salaried employee who receives parental leave benefits,
then you're going to have to cobble together a maternity
leave ranging from maybe a couple of days to a
couple of weeks. And even if you are able to
(36:19):
qualify for fm l A benefits, if your baby is
born early, you might be scrambling to figure it out,
or if there are any kind of health complications. I mean,
they're just so many possible scenarios where things will not
go according to your leave plan. Yeah, and even if
(36:40):
you have maternity leave paid or unpaid at your company,
you're still going to be under so much pressure not
to take it or not to take all of it.
The Daily Beast included some data from the National Center
for Health Statistics, which found that from two thousand six
to two thou eight, nearly a third of employed women
did not report taking any eternity leave after their last pregnancy.
(37:02):
But the thing is, studies have linked abbreviated leaves to
postpartum depression to infant mortality. They've seen in studies international
studies that the countries over time that have given more
paid leave to parents and families, those infant mortality rates
have gone down. There's so many personal but also hugely
(37:26):
important reasons to make it okay to sanction uh parental
leave after pregnancy. But those difficulties too, are often more
pronounced among women of color. Um Women of color make up,
for instance, a huge, huge majority of domestic workers in
this country and domestic workers are excluded from the f
(37:48):
m l A. These are nanny's, house cleaners and elder
caregivers who can't take a sick day if they have
the flu. They can't take time off to take care
of the kid and still get paid, and that's certainly
means that they can't have any sort of paid or
unpaid maternity leave, right. I mean, it just seems like
this whole system is really you know, dividing the population
(38:12):
into the haves and the have nots. Because usually, as
in the case with Netflix for instance, it's those salary
jobs that tend to require more education that provide the
generous benefits. But when you get down to more of
the hourly workers, the people who might not have had
as much access to education, did not have as many
(38:32):
you know resources growing up, who are then struggling when
it comes time for them to be planning their families.
They don't have any kind of provisions whatsoever, so they
have to sort of figure out what their own, build
their own network, essentially to care for themselves and for
their kid as much as they can, and sometimes that
(38:54):
means having a child and going back to work the
next Monday. Yeah, the in These Times article seriously almost
had me crying at my desk reading about moms who
have to make incredible efforts to be at work or
at multiple jobs and have no time to even sleep,
let alone like really take care of their kids. And
(39:17):
that article was also one of the many that pointed
out that it's the people who earn the least and
have the least education who also have the least access
to maternity leave, paid or unpaid. We found that eight
of college graduates took at least six weeks off to
care for a new baby, but only of women without
(39:38):
college degrees did so. And that's coming from the Department
of Labor and from everything that we know about early
childhood development and how crucial those early years are for
brain development and learning and really getting off to a
good start. It seems like it is those workers who
(39:58):
need paid parental leave more than anybody else in a way,
you know, I mean, it just seems like we're feeding
now a generational cycle. Yeah, that's absolutely. That's what was
so disheartening about the In These Times article was it
just seems like we are trapping our own people in
cycles of not being able to give enough care to
(40:23):
their kids being overworked and underpaid at the same time.
And listen, we completely support the entrepreneurial spirit of people
out there, absolutely, but it would be great for all
of us if we could somehow, you know, support that,
but also support parents. Well. Sure, because you get paid
(40:45):
family leave, careers get to stay on track, as do
paychecks and career trajectories. That means that translates to a
lower poverty rate. That translates to a more stable family.
That's that translates to to that strong workforce and innovation
that people are clamoring for and using as an excuse
(41:06):
to not give paid leave. And now I just really
want to pack up and move to Sweden, Caroline. Seriously,
I'm gonna good jacket, I'll be ready to go. And now, listeners,
we really want to hear from you on this issue.
We know a lot of you have kids and are
curious to know what kind of experience you had positive, negative,
neutral when it came to parental leave. And guys too,
(41:29):
this is an issue for you as well, so we
want to know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address. You can also
tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you when we come right back from a quick break. Caroline.
As a chronic to do list maker, I can tell
(41:50):
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(42:54):
stamps dot com. Enter stuff, and now back to the show. Okay,
I have a letter here from Kai. Kai writes, I'm
a longtime listener from Australia, but this is my first
time writing to you. I just finished listening to your
episode on peeing standing up. As a gender queer identified
(43:15):
person who lived as mail for a number of years,
I tried a lot of different STP or stand to
pee products. This was ever a decade ago, and the
options weren't great Back then. They were mostly homemade by
friends of friends or some guy my friend met online,
and I never managed to find one that worked for me.
I have very large labya manure, which always got in
the way of getting a good seal with the device.
(43:36):
No matter what I tried, I always found I had
far more yurine run down my legs and eggs at
the tube as it was supposed to. I resorted to
using disabled toilets most of the time, which was not ideal.
Now that I'm not attempting to pass his nail, I'm
tempted to try some of the fuds as the ones
I've looked at in response to your programs, seem to
have more scope to cope with my shape. They're not
(43:56):
all designed to have a tiny, discreete connection while passing
as a penis. So thanks for giving me the heads
up that it may be worth trying again. Love the show,
keep up the interesting topics, and thanks Kai. Well, I've
got to let her here from Jodi, who writes, I
was so grateful to you both for doing the Lavender
Menaced episode. I was raised by two women who raised
(44:16):
me in the eighties and nineties to have many of
the Lavender Menace principles of feminism. We didn't live in
a commune, but we lived very much in a world
without men, largely because as time passed and my parents
lost touch with their men friends, they didn't reintroduce any
new men into their lives. And she goes on to say,
I was somewhat disappointed that you characterized our separatist principles
(44:40):
as living away from men or excluding men, because that
wasn't how I experienced it. My experience was that my
parents just wanted to live with other women. Men weren't
being actively excluded. Rather, they simply weren't being invited to
join them. My family never sat around talking about how
we would build a world without men, or how we
hated men, or how we didn't need men. We said
(45:00):
blee never talked about men at all. The notion that
these women wanted to live away from men places men
at the center of the separatist movement, where men, in
fact just had no place at all. I am naturally
tentative to say that this was always the case. But
for the most part, the separationists I was raised knowing
focused on building spaces that were assumed for women and
(45:22):
just didn't invite men to enter. The name of the
bookstore my parents went to wasn't not for men land,
it was her land. The connection to the historical structure
that men can enter every space while women must be
asked permission to enter guides this principle. The goal was
to create spaces where women didn't need to ask permission
to enter and be, and where women could do whatever
(45:42):
they felt like doing. There are four men's spaces everywhere,
places where women simply don't go because we give men
their space to have agency, and that isn't a function
of women. Shouldn't the notion of for women's spaces be
just as normal, and Jodie, thank you so much for
lightening us on that. And that's a great point that
(46:03):
separationists weren't necessarily, you know, actively excluding, but rather just
not inviting sin thenda an invitation to the birthday party
or any party. So thanks for your insights, Jody, and
to everyone who's emailed us. Mom Stuff at House Stepwork
dot com is our email address and for links to
all of our social media as well as all of
our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this one with our
(46:26):
sources so you too can cry about maturity leave in
the United States. Head on over to stuff Mom Never
Told You dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Doesn't how Stuff Works dot com
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