You know, I’ve had to send mine back twice this year for recalibration.
Sheesh-and they won’t even cover the shipping.
Ok, I’ll be the bad guy here.
What’s with the concept of recieving money for not working? It’s called disability but disability seems to mean something like “Hey Johnny, sorry about cutting your leg off with the forklift. Why don’t you take a few weeks off.” as opposed to getting pregnant. (Unless, of course, you get pregnant at work :eek: ) I’m a software developer and if I told my boss that I was, let’s say, getting finger extensions in nine months and they wouldn’t heal for, oh, 4 months and I would need that time off with pay, he’d laugh at me.
If one makes the decision to have a child, what’s wrong with taking a leave and then when mom is ready to come back, her job should be held for here up to, I dunno, a year?
If the cost of maternity leave is paid for by insurance, nevermind any of the above.
Well, legally that is the situation. The FMLA says that maternity leaves up to a year are allowable–although IIRC you don’t have any guarantee that you’ll be getting the *same * job back after that long. Above that, any and all maternity leave pay is given out at the the employers whim.
The problem with this is, of course, that babies, pregnancy, and newborns are expensive. And the electric bill doesn’t get suspended just because you happen to be out of work with a new baby. Some people have the savings to make it through the down time. Some make just enough that through lots of scrimping they can save enough over the course of the pregnancy. Some people depend on relatives or friends. And some people don’t, so they either starve, get evicted, or go on welfare–which probably involves quitting the job or otherwise they wouldn’t qualify.
Of course childbearing is perfectly voluntary, so it’s not as if this is a situation women are being forced into. But at the same time, what the fuck? It’s very frustrating as a woman to see the wonderful progressive maternity plans that are set up in the rest of the civilized world only to turn around and basically be left by your own country to sink or swim on your own.
Exactly, belladonna. I know a lot of people think that an employer is being generous to give anything at all, and I know that they don’t have to. An employer doesn’t have to give any benefits, I guess. This to me just seems like a basic one, and by looking at other models around the world, the U.S. is far behind. For all the talk about the importance of the children and family and blah blah blah, they sure don’t back it up here.
Yes, I did plan this pregnancy. I knew I wanted to take time off, and I looked for a written policy before I got pregnant. There was none. So when I went to HR for clarification, then got word about the policy from my boss, I thought I could plan on what they told me. If I had known beforehand what the policy was, I at least could have planned differently. I feel that I took all reasonable steps to find out what the policy was and that I should be able to expect that when I am told that our policy covers 10 weeks paid, then I should not have to live in fear that maybe it really means 4 weeks pay. I now have 2 1/2 months to come up with 6 weeks pay instead of having 9 months.
About the insurance - maybe I didn’t make that part very clear. I can keep my full insurance through my 12 week leave. It will end the day I come back because I am not coming back at 40 hours. This is something I knew could happen, it just took me a long time to get anyone to confirm anything. ( I would expect it but there have been other people here who worked part time and got to keep the insurance, that’s the only reason I asked about it.) I could continue to get my insurance through COBRA, but I do also currently have secondary coverage through my husband’s employer. When my insurance drops me, his insurance will become my primary insurance. This is a better deal than paying for COBRA. I don’t intend to drop my insurance and then pick it up again later.
I guess I am lucky to get anything. I am lucky to even have a job if you want to look at it that way. We are lucky my husband has a job. We are better off than many other people. I still would rather have 10 weeks pay than 4 weeks.
About my leaving a 6 week old vs. 12 week comment - I think both are too young, frankly. 6 months seems like a more reasonable age if you ask me. There is no ‘magic’ age but 12 weeks is better than 6. 6 week old babies can’t even hold their heads up yet. As for who is watching him, I am still working out the details but we are lucky to have family and friends who can help out so that I think I might only need daycare 1 day a week, if it matters to anyone. If I could I would stay home full time.
But we as a society don’t constantly tout how much we value finger extensions or how important people with finger extenstions are to the very fabric of our nation-unlike all the lip service we pay to ‘family values’ .
That’s what I find especially irksome.
Actually um … when I wrote the comment about France I honestly didn’t know we were already in the Pit.
But France is another thread anyway. And I’m a WOMAN, jlzania. Hear me roar. Or something.
It’s very frustrating as a woman to see the wonderful progressive maternity plans that are set up in the rest of the civilized world only to turn around and basically be left by your own country to sink or swim on your own.
Totally. Both political parties claim how progressive and pro-family they are, yet NEITHER side is doing anything to help make it easier for a parent (mom or dad) to stay at home with the kids while they’re little. My NZ friends tell me that it’s weird to see a mom with a kid under age 5 working, and that some people over there actually make a living filling in for moms who are on maternity leave.
I stand corrected, oh roaring one.
Who picks up the slack while someone is out on maternity leave? Does the company have to hire a temp, or does it just get piled up on the workers who don’t have kids the same way it does where I work?
Around here, if someone has kids, they have all kinds of leeway to miss work while still being paid their full salary, including when they leave in the middle of the day to go to their kid’s school concert. When someone goes on maternity leave, there’s nobody else brought in to fill the space. Those of us without kids are expected to do it, even if it means working more than our scheduled hours unpaid.
I don’t understand how the idea of ‘take a year off and your job will be held open for you’ is supposed to work, nor do I understand how someone can voluntarily get pregnant knowing they want to take 3 months or 6 months off of work and expect to retain their salary during that time while not working.
If I took 3 months off to go teach underprivileged children in Tanzania science (thereby doing that whole ‘children are the future of the world’ thing), not only would I not expect my job to be here when I come back, but I certainly wouldn’t expect my employer to pay me my salary while I am not providing that employer with anything in return.
How come maternity leave is supposed to be so different?
It’s amazing how all those family friendly corporations get so unfriendly when it looks like “family friendliness” might cost 'em a nickel.
:::channeling a free marketer::: Besides, if you were any kind of real employee you’d sparp that kid out in your cubicle without missing a beat of work. People in India and China are willing and able to do that, your unwillingness just shows how lazy and slack American workers have become. You DESERVE your economic problems, you lazy breeder. :::/free marketer :::
And therein is the problem.
Paid maternity leave is not free. Someone pays for it. Often its a clause in a companies short term disability benefits. The company pays a premium, the insurance company makes a profit (because that’s what companies do). More leave, higher premiums.
Another option is to self fund. But that money has to come from someplace, too. I worked for a manager who didn’t want to hire or promote women because they “got pregnant and left,” He’d have birthed kittens if he had to pay them maternity leave out of pocket. Well, actually, he wouldn’t have - he just would have hired even fewer of them. I can hear him now “men are more productive - I don’t pay them to not work and have babies.”
The final option is to do it through some government sponsored program (as is the common method is other civilized nations). But Americans have a huge problem paying taxes to fund another individual’s entitlement.
Paid maternity (and paternity!) leave would be very cool, but its more realistic to save before you have a baby and self fund your leave.
A society makes choices about the values it wishes to enshrine in law & policy. While the US is more libertarian than most, it has still elected to place a relatively high value on children (you know, the future). That’s why maternity leave gets “special” treatment. You don’t like it? Try and find a nation in the world that doesn’t give a damn about encouraging healthy future generations, and move there.
Canada does in fact have a more generous maternity policy. Parents are entitled to 52 weeks of “parental leave,” 17 of which can only be taken by the mother. The balance, 35 weeks, can be shared between the parents as desired. After the initial 17 weeks (15 of which are paid), parental leave is paid out of [un-]employment insurance by the government, not the employer.
Since I am coming back part time, my position is becoming a job share. We are in the process of looking for another part-time worker who will be trained before I go. S/he will cover my leave, then we will share duties when I return. Since they can pay her less and not give either of us benefits, it wasn’t hard to get my employer to agree to this plan.
It’s a nice position for someone who wants to work about 20 hours a week, pretty much whatever hours / days they want.
When another woman took maternity leave last year, it was covered by people already here, though. There are very few women at this company and we have mostly administrative positions, when one goes we all help out and cover each other. So far no one has complained.
Maybe you feel that way because you either have kids or knew you were going to have kids and knew your “turn” would come around. I myself don’t have kids and don’t want kids and I greatly resent having to do someone else’s job in addition to mine while they are out on maternity leave or taking days off for their child’s sickness or going to the PTA meeting.
I don’t begrudge parents these benefits. The more time someone can take off and get paid, the better. I congratulate whoever can work this out. What I resent is MY having to pick up the slack.
I’d bet that nobody has complained out loud because either they are also pregnant or planning to be pregnant. But I’d guess that the single childless women who are forced to “cover” at no pay for other people are complaining plenty in the privacy of their own homes.
Well I guess that would make them pretty petty, wouldn’t it. Really, do people seriously begrudge a new mother the time she spends with her newborn? It’s not like she’s in a tropical port sipping margaritas as the sun goes down. She’s doing hard, thankless, dirty work in order to keep our society going. I know that’s a cliche, but it’s true. Who do you think’s going to be repairing the roads and collecting the trash and paying the taxes when your (generic your, nobody jump on me please) old childless butts are soaking up the sun in some retirement home? The children of today, that’s who. Doesn’t it behoove us all to make every effort to see they are reared in the best manner possible?
Really, if there’s a huge burden being placed on the other workers due to the mother’s absence, it seems like the target of your bitching should be the management who hasn’t adequately compensated for a vacancy that they’ve know was coming for nearly a year.
The only job I’ve had where I had disability coverage, disability did not mean " Hey Johnny, sorry about cutting your leg off with the forklift". That was worker’s compensation. Disability was for non work related injuries and illnesses- heart attacks, car accidents, surgery, legs broken while sking.
Personally, I’m hoping it’ll be robots.
That’s not quite accurate. People don’t ‘make a living’ from filling in for mums on maternity leave – jobs are filled for the year that a woman can take off when she has a child. In some cases you can even extend the leave to 2 years although you are not guaranteed the same job when you return.
My experience of being a mother in NZ was that the majority of women did return to work when the year was over. It’s even more common here in Australia probably due to the excellent government subsided long day care.
If that happens make sure you have Old Glory Robot Insurance 
Personally, I am amused at how many people use “Maternity Leave” as the name for it but it falls under “Short Term Disability” for most companies. Why should someone who is having a child have more benefit than someone using the same COMPANY PAID benefit for illness? Are they sipping drinks on the beach or home in pain from surgery/disease/accident?
I’m all for having children reared in the best manner possible, but I believe that responsibility is that of the parent. When you choose to bring a child into the world, you choose the financial responsibility and well as the responsibility of actually raising the child. “It takes a village” is something only parents say.
Back to the OP, I think that’s a pretty cheap disability package for sure. Not only for the mother on maternity leave, but for the people who have long term diseases like cancer. Those people are not only fighting their finances but fighting for their lives. Benefits packages are just as important as salary when weighing job options. Too bad the company can’t get their disability package information straight enough to let their employees know UP FRONT what they’re in for.
As a temp, I’ll let you know that I damn near depend on women to take maternity leave. I just got through with a job that was filling in for maternity leave, I took on ALL of her responsibility, no one else had to do a shred more work because she was home with her child.