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America: not doing as well as we like to think.
Save the Children just published their annual ranking of the best places in the world for mothers and “the U.S. ranked 31 out of 43 developed countries,” as LearnVest noted in a post today. They say there are four main reasons why the U.S. lags behind former Eastern Bloc territories like Lithuania, Croatia and Slovakia: Continue reading »
Sisters are doing it for themselves, but they want help from their employers.
As I noted earlier, Working Mother magazine recently interviewed nearly 4,000 mothers nationwide to determine what their worries and needs are. We know now that both mothers who work outside the home and stay-at-home moms carry the weight of retro expectations on their shoulders when it comes to their domestic life, but what about life outside the home? What do career-oriented mothers want and need in order to both flourish in the workplace and feel as if they’re providing fully for their children?
According to Working Mother, the 5 most important benefits for working moms are: Continue reading »
Whee! Let's take a day to celebrate!!
Anyone who has had a baby and gone back to work knows that the three months of maternity leave that is federally allowed in the United States passes by way too quickly. And no company is required to pay wages during a parental leave, it is a benefit that may or may not be offered. Thus making it difficult for families to take the full three months or extended leave because of the economic hardship caused by not working.
I figured that European countries would have more generous parental leave programs than the U.S., but was really surprised to find out that most other countries in the world have better policies than us, offering fully or partially paid leaves, 45 days or longer.
The problem with the stay-at-home-mom vs. working mom “debate” is that, like many arguments nobody can really win, the issue is so often presented in black and white: either a mom works full time, or she stays home full time. Either a woman returns to a demanding job by the time her baby is six weeks old, or she “opts out” entirely.
Neither position generally represents the real lives of women somewhere in the middle, who take an extended leave and return to work later, work from home, or work part-time.
So I was intrigued by an article in Time called “Why Maternity Leave Is Important” covering a new analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Researchers looked at outcome data on everything from maternal stress to “quality of parenting” and studied mothers and children together in a laboratory setting to score how well they interacted. Based on the study’s findings, the Time article makes two distinct points: first, it is, in general, good for mothers to work; however, trying to balance a full-time job with a three-month-old baby is a recipe for stress and depression. Continue reading »
Happy mom, high-powered career -- do these have to be at odds?
Granted, I have not read the book, Undecided: How to Ditch the Endless Quest for Perfect and Find the Career — and Life — That’s Right for You. Judging from this Q&A with the authors, Barbara Kelley, a journalism professor, and her daughter Shannon Kelley, who works in public relations, I don’t think I will.
I’m as interested in work-life balance issues as the next mom-with-ambitions-and-not-enough-childcare, but it doesn’t sound like this book offers any new insight. Particularly off-putting is that it, again, it appears to attribute work-/life-balance misery to women themselves, as if, deep down, we’d all like to make cupcakes if only there were more hours in the day.
Really? Continue reading »
How maternity leave affects breastfeeding
Yesterday, Pediatrics published an article online about the effect of maternity leave on breastfeeding rates. The results were not surprising, but a good reminder of one huge road block this country has if it wants to meet the public health goal of having more nursing moms.
The CDC sets goals every 10 years as part of the Healthy People initiative and last year we fell short when it came to breastfeeding — the rates are stagnant and low. As I said last week in my post on hospital formula practices, even though 75 percent of moms breastfeed in the hospital, less than half are doing so at six months and only 13 percent are exclusively nursing at six months.
The new study looked at how breastfeeding rates relate to the amount of time moms have for maternity leave: Continue reading »
Paternity leave is becoming more common
A dad is suing the law firm where he used to work as an associate for retaliating after he took a parental leave. Though his leave was protected by FMLA, he lost his job four months after returning to work.
He says the two are directly connected, and that the “macho culture” in his law office created an atmosphere that led to his being punished and eventually fired for putting his family first.
Ariel Ayanna says the senior people in his workplace regularly bragged about how little time they spent on family obligations, while Ayanna took time off to care for his newborn child and mentally ill wife.
The case has grabbed attention from work/life balance advocates, who point out that men are an increasingly important part of the conversation. Cases like this one demonstrate that work/life balance isn’t strictly a women’s issue. Men have childcare obligations as well, and increasingly need to balance their family needs against their careers.
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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