Childless women deserve maternity leave, too

While I wanted to strangle the author for most of the article, I am choosing to believe that most of this was just incendiary stuff meant to draw in readers so that she could make her ultimate point, which is not in and of itself unreasonable:

Ultimately, what I learned from my own “meternity” leave is that any pressure I felt to stay late at the office wasn’t coming from the parents on staff. It was coming from myself. Coming back to a new position, I realized I didn’t need an “excuse” to leave on time. And that’s what I would love the take-away for my book to be: Work-life balance is tough for everyone, and it happens most when parents and nonparents support and don’t judge each other.

Wow, a lot of angry responses but she has a point.

The point is, mothers do not contribute more to society than women without kids. There are already over 300 million people living in the US and growing. Housing is constrained - less people would fix this.

In that sense, mothers are selfish by having more kids than necessary. At the same time, they demand perks like paid leave and flexible/reduced working hours.

The other guy! wrote:

Wow, a lot of angry responses but she has a point.

The point is, mothers do not contribute more to society than women without kids. There are already over 300 million people living in the US and growing. Housing is constrained - less people would fix this.

In that sense, mothers are selfish by having more kids than necessary. At the same time, they demand perks like paid leave and flexible/reduced working hours.

The populations problems are not coming from professional adults in relationships who are having one or two babies. You know this is true. If responsible citizens stop having kids, we're in for it. Think about what will happen to our country if intelligent, hard-working people stop having kids... Have you ever seen Idiocracy?

The other guy! wrote:

Wow, a lot of angry responses but she has a point.

The point is, mothers do not contribute more to society than women without kids. There are already over 300 million people living in the US and growing. Housing is constrained - less people would fix this.

In that sense, mothers are selfish by having more kids than necessary. At the same time, they demand perks like paid leave and flexible/reduced working hours.

Given that populations only grow if women average over 2 kids each (excluding immigration from the equation), you could only begin to say "mothers are selfish by having more kids than necessary" if they have 3 or more kids. Women that have only one or two kids are merely maintaining the population or contributing to its decrease - so by your logic, should they be considered unselfish, and rewarded for it?

Boffin wrote:

The other guy! wrote:

Wow, a lot of angry responses but she has a point.

The point is, mothers do not contribute more to society than women without kids. There are already over 300 million people living in the US and growing. Housing is constrained - less people would fix this.

In that sense, mothers are selfish by having more kids than necessary. At the same time, they demand perks like paid leave and flexible/reduced working hours.

Given that populations only grow if women average over 2 kids each (excluding immigration from the equation), you could only begin to say "mothers are selfish by having more kids than necessary" if they have 3 or more kids. Women that have only one or two kids are merely maintaining the population or contributing to its decrease - so by your logic, should they be considered unselfish, and rewarded for it?

It pisses me off when my friends have more than 2 kids. It is one thing to have an "oops" third child, or to have twins when you already had one kid, but I had a friend who just consciously had a third child. I don't get it. If they really wanted a bigger family, why couldn't they adopt? There are many children out there in need of a stable family, and this friend of mine is in a stable marriage in a good area and seeming to be raising his first two kids right, so would be a fantastic situation for a child in need of a family.

But instead they choose to just create more lives when this world is already being pushed to the limit.

I plan to have 2, then adopt a third. I'm not so arrogant to think that I need to be replicated out of proportion. I wish the U.S. would eliminate tax cuts beyond 2 children.

Not a troll post.

Replacement birth rate is 2.1 (i.e. if women in a developed country have fewer than 2.1 kids on average, the population will fall). If we want to sustain the population, at least some women have to be having three kids.

I have three kids, and I pretty much agree with your tax cut idea. We both came from families of three and enjoyed the dynamic. We considered stopping at two and decided to have a third because we could handle it financially and wanted a larger family. I have SO much respect for people who adopt. I really want to do it myself and I am hoping that I can talk my wife into it once we get a little older. She doesn't think she wants to do it.

FWIW, I am teaching my kids to be good humans. Hopefully they turn out right. We need more good humans who are kind, hard working, compassionate and humble. #Goals

I think it is time that non-mothers get maternity leave (and I am sure that President Sanders will support this movement). In fact I think it is also more than appropriate that healthy people are granted sick leave because it is the healthy that have to take up the slack produced by the sick ones. In fact there really is no reason for people to be on the clock at all, we should just ALWAYS be on some sort of leave. This is America and we deserve the time off!!!

Well if you would like to spend 12 weeks out of the year feeling like garbage for 50 years of your life, be my guest.

The other guy! wrote:

Wow, a lot of angry responses but she has a point.

The point is, mothers do not contribute more to society than women without kids. There are already over 300 million people living in the US and growing. Housing is constrained - less people would fix this.

In that sense, mothers are selfish by having more kids than necessary. At the same time, they demand perks like paid leave and flexible/reduced working hours.

But you are arrogant enough to say how many kids other people should have. What a jerk. People having more than two kids that are well-cared for and go on to be productive members of society aren't the problem. They might even be the solution. Might very well be a third, fourth or fifth child of another couple that grows up and cures the cancer or other fatal disease that your kid is going to be afflicted with. Or invents a society changing product. Or becomes a lawyer and saves your reprobate kid from prison. Tell you what, if your so concerned about population growth, don't have any kids. Heaven knows, we don't need any more like you on this earth.

I agree with all of this - all of the problems she was describing were due to a combination of a bad work environment and her own inability to balance her work and personal lives. You shouldn't need to take a sabbatical to figure that out but, if you do choose to, your employer (or society) shouldn't be footing the bill

I'll admit to be a little jealous that my co-workers with kids get to use their "sick" time to be with their kids for appointments, etc -- or even if kids get a snow day and there's no child care option. I get 10 sick days a year, and can accumulate up to 120. I have 120 now, so every year I get 10 days, I might use 1, and then I lose 9. The parents around here routinely use ALL their sick days, and most are on childcare issues.

OTOH, staying home with a sick kid probably isn't much fun, if they really end up doing that.

Lorenzo (Larry) Liberal wrote:

OTOH, staying home with a sick kid probably isn't much fun, if they really end up doing that.

Get a dog (it doesn't even have to be real). Then you get to take sick days taking him to the vet.

I want my own handicapped bathroom too. No reason that should be only a perk handicapped people get.

You are wrong on a couple accounts:

1. native mothers don't reproduce enough to sustain population, population increases are mainly coming from 3rd world, and India. Certainly increased emphasis on profession of women, living wage, abortion, less job certainty, homosexuality, increased societal demands, divorce rate, etc are all contributing factors to the decrease in births.

2. Adoption is not that simple. I have a relative that wants to adopt and is still waiting after 3 years. The fact is with abortion, and lack of birth rate, there are few opportunities for adoption.

sdfsdfsfsdf wrote:

It pisses me off when my friends have more than 2 kids. It is one thing to have an "oops" third child, or to have twins when you already had one kid, but I had a friend who just consciously had a third child. I don't get it.

We consciously had 4. I mean who are we to deny these little people from coming into the world? As long as you're pissed off enough to have none then we're good, right?

Blahbaba wrote:

2. Adoption is not that simple. I have a relative that wants to adopt and is still waiting after 3 years.

Yes it is. Your relative probably wants a white or Asian.

Those who are more open minded and include black and latino kids into consideration usually finish the process in less than 6 months.

Random dude bro wrote:

Blahbaba wrote:

2. Adoption is not that simple. I have a relative that wants to adopt and is still waiting after 3 years.

Yes it is. Your relative probably wants a white or Asian.

Those who are more open minded and include black and latino kids into consideration usually finish the process in less than 6 months.

No, NO, NO!!!

No it is not that simlpe at all. You are crazy. You might be able to be a foster parent within 6 months... to a teenager who has been in and out of juvenile detention centers and has a drug problem (God bless them), but you absolutely cannot get a baby in 6 months. I don't know why you would propagate such a myth.

We need to make it easier to adopt, but I don't see that happening.

I agree, it is strange how businesses pay so much for women with babies to have a long holiday (or several in a row) and then everyone else picks up the slack and is basically penalised for not breeding

But you can still take sabbaticals in some industries which is close enoughb

Actually wait isn't the USA very poor on maternity leave? So it doesn't matter much anyway