Moms in survival mode-benefits for working mothers

2014

Following are excerpts from an article on Bloomberg.com. As you may suspect,  this kind of thing gets me thinking. What is the root cause of all this? How did we get from where we used to be to where we are now?

Moms in ‘Survival Mode’ as U.S. Trails World on Benefits

Maternity Leave in the U.S.

Roxanne Vivanco just returned to her banking job in Ramsey, New Jersey, after spending 12 weeks with her newborn daughter without having to deplete her savings.

The 36-year-old community development manager at Toronto-Dominion Bank was able to tap a state-administered benefit that finances family leave through employee payroll contributions. “It was a blessing,” said the mother of three. The money “helped with taking care of our house bills as well as food for the newborn and my other kids.”

Must Choose

Most women in the U.S. must choose between taking an unpaid leave, trying to combine work with family duties or quitting the workforce.

Eliza Kane, 32, is among them. Shortly after informing her supervisors she was pregnant, Kane says she was told in April her part-time job at the French Cultural Center of Boston was being eliminated. Catheline H. van den Branden, president and executive director of the French Cultural Center, declined to comment on personnel matters.

After trying to find new employment without success, Kane says she now hopes to stay at home until her baby, born in September, is at least six months old.

“I’m just in a survival mode right now,” she said. “I think there needs to be a standard parental leave that is supported by some sort of public fund.”

Legislation introduced by Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, both Democrats, would do just that. It seeks to establish an independent trust fund within the Social Security Administration, financed by a new payroll contribution from employees and employers of 0.2 percent of wages, to pay benefits and administrative costs.

Falling Behind

The lack of paid maternity leave is one reason the U.S. is falling behind other advanced countries in the share of women in the workforce, says Blau of Cornell in Ithaca, New York.

The U.S. has gone from being “one of the leaders in female labor force participation among the developed countries to the situation where we have one of the lower” rates, said Blau, a co-author of the study, in a phone interview.

First, let me say I’m 70 and I do understand the need for most women to work in today’s world, but what a shame; the word “need” that is.

My wife and I were married in 1968, I was making $135 a week as an office clerk ($904.00 today). We had four (in five years) children by 1975. There was never, ever any discussion of her returning to work after the first child was born. I used vacation time to help her at home following each birth. We set our lives and what we could and could not afford based on one income. We bought an old house for $29,000 lived there five years and bought a second slightly larger older home across town in 1975 for $59,000 and still live there. Over the years my wife worked at home in the evening after the kids were in bed, I went to college at night for nine years. I started a part-time business from home to add a little income. My wife worked part-time after the youngest child went to high school. In other words we found ways to not only cope, but thrive. We were not special, but I have to say we were motivated and creative at times

So here is the real question, what happened to our society that apparently no longer allows this to happen? Did people change, did we undermine the family structure, did we become too greedy and materialistic or did we simple make ourselves believe that the true value or at least equal value for women was work outside the home?

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