Posted by: Sarah Davis on May 14
The right to a paid maternity leave seems a simple topic to me, but a little investigation shows it to be as controversial as the health-care issue in general. (“Why should my tax dollars pay for a stranger to have more kids than she can afford?” is the type of argument you hear on the other side.) Two recent posts on the WSJ’s Juggle (here & here) and the comments that follow give a good sampling of how dissatisfied parents can be, even well-employed parents.
It didn’t occur to me to complain about my own experience. After the birth of each of my two children, I pieced together 6 weeks of paid maternity leave, saved-up vacation, and a handful of sick days so that I could be home for a full three months to get to know these new wobbly-headed creatures. I have a flexible schedule, so the return to my job was not a tremendous shock on the system. In fact, a strong record of family-friendly benefits has earned The McGraw-Hill Companies, which owns BusinessWeek, a place on Working Mother magazine’s 100 Best list for the past three years.
So I’m lucky, right? After looking into the support systems in place in other parts of the world, turns out I could be luckier. According to MomsRising, an organization that strives to improve conditions for working mothers, the U.S. is one of only four countries not to offer paid leave. The others? Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Lesotho. Fifty-one percent of new mothers in the U.S. have no paid leave at all.
I asked Janette Eng, a Canadian risk analyst who lives in Munich with her German husband and 10-month-old baby, how the system works there. In Germany, mothers are allowed three years of leave. Six weeks before and eight weeks after the baby’s due date, all workers receive full pay. After that, until the baby is one year old, the government pays up to two-thirds of the salary (up to a maximum of 1,800 euro per month). Mothers who return to their jobs within three years are guaranteed the same position and pay (or better). Daycare is subsidized by the state and costs, depending on household income, no more than 460 euro a month for a full-time spot. There’s much more: free midwife service before and well after the birth; “child money,” or 150 euro a month per child till age 25; and on and on.
Starting a family on the right track seems the least a government can do toward creating a productive, satisfied workforce--and happier, better-balanced families. This is clearly not a U.S. priority. Can’t we do better?
Posted by: Lourdes Lee Valeriano on May 13
For Mother's Day, my daughter gave me pink and orange snapdragons, my favorite walnut sticky bun, and space—space in our busy lives to just hang out.
In a gesture almost as heroic in its quotidian context as Moses parting the Red Sea, my teen pushed aside homework and blocked out cell phone calls, IMs, and text messages to spend Sunday with me. We sat in our sun-dappled living room and picked at our breakfast, read, and even napped a bit.
Of the three members of my household—my daughter, our dachshund, and I—it was I who had the hardest time relaxing into the room in our lives that my daughter created. The irony is I've been thinking a lot about space lately. About how our bodies are actually 99.99% emptiness between atoms, according to writer Eckhart Tolle, and yet how our lives can feel so dense that we can hardly breathe. About giving my daughter space to be who she is. About creating space between listening and reacting, so I can hear what others are telling me and be aware of the agenda I often rush to push.
Even while my daughter lay on our sofa under a throw, our dog draped bonelessly on her thigh, I sat on the carpet, uncomfortable with the time on my hands. I shuffled through the Sunday Times while actually looking for an excuse to jump up and get the dishes washed. I couldn't wait for us to get going on the next items (lunch, museum) on our Mother's Day plan. I've gotten so used to juggling things, fixing things, making things happen for my daughter, that I've fallen out of practice just being with her.
It was my daughter, the 13-year-old whose job is to push away from me, who was able to set aside that role for a spell and sit with me in companionable silence. As she gets older, she'll have even less use for my reflex organizing and problem solving on her behalf. But she'll need people to be with. With practice, one of those persons can be me.
Posted by: Cathy Arnst on May 13
Wow, the power of the blog! Last week, after a frustrating phone interaction with Time-Warner Cable, I complained on Working Parents about cable companies and other service providers that can not schedule servicemen to accomodate the schedules of working people. Within a day of my posting I got a call from the head of Time-Warner customer service, who insisted that she wanted to resolve the situation, not because I work for BusinessWeek and posted my complaints on a blog, but because they want to accomodate all their customers. Remember that, folks. I also got a call from their head of engineering telling me he that a repair team would be there at 8:00 am sharp on Saturday, not sometime between 8-12 as was originally scheduled.
They came, they saw, they conquered. The repair guys actually showed up at about 7:45, ascertained that part of the problem was that the signal from outside was too high, and when they couldn't get into my neighbors backyard (because it was so early), came back at about 10:30 to finish the job. They also discovered that my service had not been installed properly, probably when I moved in, and corrected that as well. They couldn't have been nicer, or more diligent (in fact I e always find repair people to be diligent once they finally arrive--I think they truly do take pride in their work). Since then I have gotten a follow-up call to make sure everything is working, and even got an email from the office of the president of Time-Warner Cable.
All well and good--except what about all the people who don't have well-placed blogs? My upstairs neighbor, for example, who was having the exact same problem with her phone and Internet service, for the exact same reason. Her technician was scheduled to arrive between 10 and 2 on Saturday, and for reasons I don't understand, the job was not assigned to the team that responded to me. Her guy showed up at 1:50, no call of course telling her he wouldn't be there until the end of the allotted four hours, and then she had to stay home even later while he addressed the same issue as my group a few hours earlier.
So, Time-Warner, if you're reading this, things break, we get that. It's the repair process that drives us crazy. We don't want to wait around four hours, usually on a work day, with no idea when or even if the repairman will show up. We don't want to hold on the phone for an hour. We want you to have the diagnostic capabilities to fix or at least figure out a lot of these problems remotely.
It's not just Time-Warner that gets this bad rap of course. Satellite dish services can be just as annoying, and the whole reason I switched to Time-Warner for phone service is because I was fed up with AT&T. But out of curiosity I went to Google's blog search and typed in "hate time-warner cable." Here's just a few of the results (and I'm sure you could get the same results by substituting Verizon, Comcast, or any other service provide) :
Chronicles of the Lads, a baseball
lover who can't watch the games he wants
Dandelion Picker, angry about the rates she's charged
Gone With The Wind, who is really mad
Vinny's Carpenter Blog, a software geek who seems to know what he's talking about
Musings and Meanderings, problems with her DVR
Dan's Rant Corner, major problems with his service
PhilaTexan's Corner, problems scheduling a service appointment
Because I Like Talking, eager for Verizon's competition
David Dust, really angry over service interruptions and phone waiting time
The Clog, who hates DirectTV even more than he hates Time-Warner
There are lots more, but you get the idea. I hope the cable company does as well. And that they spread the word to their fellow service providers. We are fed up and as soon as someone offers a (better) competing service we are not going to take it any more.
Posted by: Diane Brady on May 12
I read an interesting piece in The Globe and Mail today. Authorities seized custody of an 11-year-old boy with leukemia, after his father refused to put him into another round of chemotherapy. The boy doesn't want it; nor does his dad. But chances are high that he will die without it. They both want to try alternative therapies and, if need be, let him pass away in peace at home. Does the government have the right to interfere?
Posted by: Diane Brady on May 09
There's an interesting piece in The New York Times today about people being put on the waiting list for their zoned public schools. The problem seems to be coming to a head in areas like Tribeca.
As I mentioned on the Comments page, one thing I notice in my Brooklyn neighborhood is a remarkable number of people gaming the system. By "remarkable", I mean that I have met several people who probably would have had a hard time getting a variance to attend the school. One pretended to rent a person's basement; another had their name put on someone's Con Ed bill. There are also several cases--completely legitimate--of renting in the district for a year and then moving out. I also know of one babysitter who got her child in (for convenience which, I have to admit, seemed fair to me) and then was so annoyed with the over-crowding that she switched to a place down the street.
What do you think of this? Is it fair game in the war to get your children into a decent public school? I have to admit that I would be torn if I lived in an area where the general reputation of the school wasn't that strong.
