Americans Are Sharing The "Normal, Everyday" Aspects About The US That Are Actually Dystopian, And I Can't Believe We Tolerate Some Of These
Americans Are Sharing The "Normal, Everyday" Aspects About The US That Are Actually Dystopian, And I Can't Believe We Tolerate Some Of These
"I told my doctor that I wanted my tubes tied. The doctor said, 'You need to think about this more.' It baffles me that our society still doesn't trust women to know their own minds and wants."
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Not getting paid maternity/paternity leave unless you work in very specific sectors of the federal government.
Why does this complaint prevail? I get that not all companies offer parental leave, and it’s not government supported like if some other countries, but I have had full-time employment since 2000 and every company I’ve been at offered several (4-12) weeks of maternity leave and at least a week of paternity. Since 2018 or so every company has also started offering more, 2-4 weeks, paternity. And I live in a state that kind of sucks when it comes to worker’s rights.
Either my experience is rather rare, or this complaint is overblown, or people mean something different when they talk about parental leave such as a government sponsored program. Or is there something else I’m not considering?
"I haven't been on minimum wage for a quarter of a century, so I really don't understand why people are making such a fuss about it."
US ranked among worst countries to raise a family, study says
Pay rate and parental leave are very different things though. I didn’t say I hadn’t been on minimum wage, I said I’ve been in full time employment. A significant portion of that time was at it barely above minimum wage of the time and lower than my states minimum wage is today. I’m asking about parental leave, not wages.
Pay rate and parental leave are very different things though
In this context, no, they're both labour protection laws. Do you know why minimum wage exists? Because without it, most bosses would pay even less.
Perhaps you've been lucky and been in jobs in which you've gotten above the minimum. Which should be expected after working for more than two decades. Why would you think that matters? Do you not think that every mother (and actually parent in general) should have the right to have paid leave for months? So that only the rich with free time get to procreate and anyone working a menial job literally can't if they want to make rent ?
I hope you realise that most companies do the bare legally required minimum and a lot don't even do that, breaking the (already weak) labour laws the US has, and usually without consequence.
So in this context what’s really being said is not that there is no parental leave, but that there is no workers protection of parental leave. Thinking of it this way helps. I wish this was more explicitly stated as I tend to be too literal about things.
No, it's pretty explicit.
Just like you'd say "there's no minimum wage" in a country with no minimum wage, even if a large portion are getting around min wage pay.
The US and some island micronations (with no offense to them not the most highly developed countries) are the only ones who don't ensure parental leave.
Are you genuinely pretending you don't understand that there are thousands of people in the US who'd have kids right now if they weren't afraid of becoming homeless if they have to take time off work / quit, since there's no required pay?
You're genuinely ignoring the issue. Saying it's not a problem. Because it's not a problem for you. This is what causes the problems in the world. Lack of empathy.
Please take it down a notch, because I’m very much not saying it’s not a problem, nor am I ignoring the issue. I am trying to improve my understanding of people’s situations that are not my own.
I disagree on explicitness of the statement. Saying the US does not have maternity leave is not the same, at least by my understanding, as saying “x has no minimum wage” it’s would be more like saying “x has no wage”. Taking the phrase literally, anyway, and I apparently have a tendency to be over-literal.
And I’m not pretending anything. I know people are choosing not to have kids due to the lack of economic security. But I’ve always thought that extends well beyond what parental leave would help with. Kids are expensive and not just in year one. Even if one is guaranteed steady income in year one, it would still be a question of how assured their income will be for an indefinite amount of time.
You're disagreeing with facts.
We're not talking about your personal experience.
The US is in the group of seven countries which do not mandate maternal let alone paternal leave.
This is a cold hard fact: the US does not mandate that employers give the option to paid maternal leave. Unlike literally most of the planet.
4-12 weeks of maternity leave is depressingly low. 2-4 weeks of paternity is insultingly low.
People should be given a year. Paid. It's really impactful for the child and family.
People should be given a year. Paid
Agreed. And they do here in Denmark, by law.
Is that really what the complaint is? Not that we don’t have it, but that what we have is pathetically low? I agree that 6 months to a year would be far better, but it’s inaccurate to say we get none when it seems that most companies do offer it.
The US literally has no mandated paid maternal leave, let alone paid paternal leave.
The U.S. is the only OECD member country—and one of only six countries in the world—without a national paid parental leave policy. The U.S. is also one of the few high-income countries without a national family caregiving or medical leave policy.
Do you not see how shit the situation is in the US compared to the norm in the developed world?
I recognize how bad it is in so many areas, but I don’t have the experience of parental leave being non existent, which is why I’m trying to get others opinions and experiences. Like yes, it’s not mandated, and because of that it’s shorter than in countries that do mandate longer leave, but saying it’s worse than other countries is very different than saying it doesn’t exist. Unless we’re saying a lack of mandate anyway. I’d love to see it be a year-long requirement. Not even an option, else people will be pressured by being asked if they really need that much time, or veiled threats of missing out on promotions or raises because they took their time.
I’m not trying to defend the current system either, though it seems I’m being taken that way. I’m just actually curious how many people actually get absolutely no parental leave.
But it literally doesn't exist.
This is about mandatory parental leave (as in mandatory for there to be the option for paid parental leave), because we know labour protection is necessary, because even with it, we hardly get to that level.
The Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and the United States are the only seven countries in the United Nations that do not require employers to provide paid time off for new parents.
How can you pretend your personal experience has anything to do with this? It's like someone pointing out extremely high cancer rates linked to something in my country and I go "well I don't have cancer so it can't be that bad."
No one ever says “mandatory” when discussing this though, which is why I’ve been a bit confused about the issue. Would have saved me a lot of confusion.
You’re not confused, you’re being obtuse.
No one ever says “mandatory” when discussing this though
No? Or could it be that once again, you're extrapolating from your biased personal experiences?
Why doesn't the US have mandated paid maternity leave?
Mandatory for it to be provided.
It is mandated for the employer to give paid parental leave.
The US does not have this mandate.
The original article doesn’t mention mandatory, nor does most anyone commenting on social media platforms say mandatory. The original article goes out of its way to mention exception for specific federal government jobs, but never mentions mandatory. They just say that there’s no parental leave in the US except for some fed jobs. In fact, rarely do people specify paid as you have. Which makes me second guess a few former employers as to if it was paid or not. I know for sure it was paid leave at the vast majority of my previous employers
The article you linked (thanks for that, good information in there) says 80% of employers don’t offer leave, which seems crazy because even my first jobs for part time minimum wage offered paid leave for full-time employees. Possibly because I worked for a big chain, maybe it’s the small businesses that don’t offer leave, but is 80% of the US labor force working for small businesses or as contract/gig jobs? Or is this another case of major employers not allowing people to work full time to avoid having to provide them benefits?
Regardless, it’s clear that the right move is mandatory paid parental leave. I know anything companies provide that isn’t legally required can be canceled at a whim.
You're disagreeing with facts.
The US is in the group of seven countries which do not mandate maternal let alone paternal leave.
This is a cold hard fact. Stop crying over living in a shithole and get out of that denial. The US does not have legally mandated maternal leave. No-one in the US has the default legal right to that. Because it's not enshrined in law. As a mandatory thing for employers to do.
Kinda how it's mandatory to pay taxes.
"Story doesn't even use the word" are you on crack?
The original article doesn’t mention mandatory
It's the literal title.
That's how the word is used.
Just the other day I was talking about how ironic it is how often I end up teaching Americans English.
You also have to burn your sick/vacation days for it too most of the time if you plan on getting paid. So, if you require time off to care for your newborn afterward, good luck. We won't even get started on how much child care costs once your CEO decides WFH is not viable. Bottom line, we dint care about you and your baby.
This is just my experience at maybe ten companies, but it was always paid, not using PTO. It was only if you wanted to use more than the allotted time you’d need to start using PTO. Childcare is a whole different level of insane expense that really should be subsidized. When I was too young to consider children, I worked at a call center that had an on site preschool, but that phased out pretty shortly after I started as a cost cutting measure. Nothing has gotten anything but more difficult when it comes to raising kids.
Your experience is rare.
Retail and restaurants are unlikely to give you 4-12 weeks of even unpaid time off. No way would they pay anyone for that much time off unless they were forced to. Not saying this to defend them, but restaurant margins can't absorb that kind of cost unless it's a large non-franchised chain.
What do you think about the system in Mexico? I’m not an expert, just saw in some paperwork that everyone pays a maternity tax, like social security, which makes it seem that maternity leave is a government program. We’d need to get our shit together as a country first as the GOP crowd would immediately want it defunded, but it seems like a better use of tax dollars than weapons of war.
I think that may be similar to what we have in Washington state. All employees pay something like $2 from each paycheck into the FMLA program and you can use it for maternity leave as well as other family health emergencies. It's a state program so I don't think the employer has to pay anything. I don't know how many other states have programs like this but it would be nice if there was a federal one.