A Valley Reporter alumna is set to return to work today after her three months of paid maternity leave is over.
Half in jest and half seriously she said via text that it was her last day at home with the baby and she wrote, “Last day of maternity leave. Planning to cry most of the day.”
We feel her pain and the pain of all parents in our community and beyond who have to leave their 90-day-old babies at day care – once they’ve found a day care that will take infants, that is.
The challenge of child care is extremely complicated and extraordinarily intertwined with social justice and socio-economic issues. Day care can be scarce, it is expensive and, despite that fact, day care providers are not well paid.
Imagine how it might ease a new parent’s mind if day care were plentiful, safe and affordable – or even if it didn’t have to happen when babies are so young. Maternity and paternity leave around the world are vastly different than in the U.S. and Vermont where employees can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid family leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.
In Sweden, parents can take up to 480 days with 80 percent of wages paid for up to 390 days. In Norway, parents get 46 weeks of leave with full salary or 59 weeks at 80 percent salary.
In the United Kingdom, up to 52 weeks of maternity leave is available with 90 percent of wages paid for the first six weeks. In Serbia, mothers get 20 weeks of maternity leave and after that qualify for a full year of leave and receive 100 percent of their wages for the first 26 weeks, 60 percent of their pay during weeks 27 to 39 and 30 percent of their pay in weeks 40 to 52.
We know! We know! Socialism and socialized medicine and maternity leave are bitter pills for many to swallow. We understand that many feel a free market economy will right itself. But we’re pretty sure our former co-worker would be happy to pay higher taxes so that all young mothers like her could avoid having to take their infants to day care at the tender age of 3 months.
