Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This article was a little annoying - it painted a VERY rosy picture of being a working mother in Sweden and a VERY dismal picture of being a working mother in the U.S.

For comparison - my friends in Europe (a few different countries, including one in Sweden) say that as a woman in your late 20s/early 30s, it's hard to get a job because people are worried that you'll get pregnant and leave for a year, meaning they'll have to find and hire a temporary replacement which is really hard.

And most working women that read the Harvard Business Review are not in the US woman's situation. A lot of professional women are eligible for FMLA and get 6-10 weeks paid through disability insurance (not everyone, that's why I said a lot). A lot of women (even those of us in this area where childcare is a nightmare) are able to figure something out (but yes, for many, it IS prohibitively expensive). And the weird dumping work on the new mom thing also doesn't happen t everyone. I"m not saying that the description for her was not realistic, I know there are a lot of people who have it that bad or worse, but it's also a worst case scenario, don't you think?

Eligible for a whole 10 paid weeks!!!!

Listen, I would MUCH prefer to live in Sweden than here, and have those maternity policies over our shitty ass ones, I'm just saying that the article went to the extreme on both sides.

I'm not sure what bubble you live in to think that the US Sarah's experience was "extreme" and a "worst case scenario". I've read DCUM long enough to know it's not, and that there's plenty of working women who save, plan, research in advance, and are still knocked flat by the lack of support due to pure circumstance. I got 10 weeks of paid leave with my first, 16 weeks paid leave with my second, we had a good experience with our daycare, and I returned to a decent work environment. It was still so hard, and between keeping up with work, not sleeping, catching constant illness, and just plain missing my babies - we were burnt out. Yet my company's policies are considered generous, and the (minimum humane) amount of flexibility and accommodation I was offered in returning to work is held up as a shining example. So if I'm representative of a relatively positive experience, it's easy to extrapolate how shitty it can get for those who didn't manage to align all the stars of career, company policy, money, partner, care, health, timing etc. And yet people in this thread seem to think that's a character flaw as opposed to a cultural and systemic problem. It's f*cked up.

So what? So you had a "hard" couple of weeks. Eff off with thinking that other people should pay you to be home. I guess you should have saved more.

Anonymous wrote:About Canada: the "paid" maternity leave is actually a stipend that maxes out, and for professional women it maxes out well below their salaries--for these women, the US short-term disability would probably be a better deal. In addition, layoffs of women just returning from mat leave are reportedly common (no solid data here, but a friend in Canada faced this situation and fully anticipated it based on what she's observed before delivering.)

Also, paid family leave represents a step away from "equal pay for equal work". In the fed system (without paid family leave), family leave is taken as a combination of earned sick leave, earned annual leave, short-term disability if applicable depending on the type of delivery, and unpaid leave.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This article was a little annoying - it painted a VERY rosy picture of being a working mother in Sweden and a VERY dismal picture of being a working mother in the U.S.

For comparison - my friends in Europe (a few different countries, including one in Sweden) say that as a woman in your late 20s/early 30s, it's hard to get a job because people are worried that you'll get pregnant and leave for a year, meaning they'll have to find and hire a temporary replacement which is really hard.

And most working women that read the Harvard Business Review are not in the US woman's situation. A lot of professional women are eligible for FMLA and get 6-10 weeks paid through disability insurance (not everyone, that's why I said a lot). A lot of women (even those of us in this area where childcare is a nightmare) are able to figure something out (but yes, for many, it IS prohibitively expensive). And the weird dumping work on the new mom thing also doesn't happen t everyone. I"m not saying that the description for her was not realistic, I know there are a lot of people who have it that bad or worse, but it's also a worst case scenario, don't you think?

Eligible for a whole 10 paid weeks!!!!

Listen, I would MUCH prefer to live in Sweden than here, and have those maternity policies over our shitty ass ones, I'm just saying that the article went to the extreme on both sides.

I'm not sure what bubble you live in to think that the US Sarah's experience was "extreme" and a "worst case scenario". I've read DCUM long enough to know it's not, and that there's plenty of working women who save, plan, research in advance, and are still knocked flat by the lack of support due to pure circumstance. I got 10 weeks of paid leave with my first, 16 weeks paid leave with my second, we had a good experience with our daycare, and I returned to a decent work environment. It was still so hard, and between keeping up with work, not sleeping, catching constant illness, and just plain missing my babies - we were burnt out. Yet my company's policies are considered generous, and the (minimum humane) amount of flexibility and accommodation I was offered in returning to work is held up as a shining example. So if I'm representative of a relatively positive experience, it's easy to extrapolate how shitty it can get for those who didn't manage to align all the stars of career, company policy, money, partner, care, health, timing etc. And yet people in this thread seem to think that's a character flaw as opposed to a cultural and systemic problem. It's f*cked up.

So what? So you had a "hard" couple of weeks. Eff off with thinking that other people should pay you to be home. I guess you should have saved more.

Anonymous wrote:About Canada: the "paid" maternity leave is actually a stipend that maxes out, and for professional women it maxes out well below their salaries--for these women, the US short-term disability would probably be a better deal. In addition, layoffs of women just returning from mat leave are reportedly common (no solid data here, but a friend in Canada faced this situation and fully anticipated it based on what she's observed before delivering.)

Also, paid family leave represents a step away from "equal pay for equal work". In the fed system (without paid family leave), family leave is taken as a combination of earned sick leave, earned annual leave, short-term disability if applicable depending on the type of delivery, and unpaid leave.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone is not an upper income family. Everyone will need hospital services at some time
Every pregnancy will end in a birth, parental leave is a necessity to recover from birth. Infant is not a lifestyle choice. They have to have a lot of care. Children are born into all kinds of circumstances. We are in this world together

A few weeks of parental leave is not much to ask for. You will work a lifetime, society provides your kid with 12 years of public schooling anyway.

Having kids is a choice. If you can’t afford to have kids and maintain the lifestyle you want, then don’t have kids. You don’t have the right to have everyone else pay for your choices. Grow up.

Anonymous wrote:Yes it’s absolutely impossible for any functioning country to provide maternity leave.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone is not an upper income family. Everyone will need hospital services at some time
Every pregnancy will end in a birth, parental leave is a necessity to recover from birth. Infant is not a lifestyle choice. They have to have a lot of care. Children are born into all kinds of circumstances. We are in this world together

A few weeks of parental leave is not much to ask for. You will work a lifetime, society provides your kid with 12 years of public schooling anyway.

+1 it’s amazing that people get so huffy about funding a few weeks of maternity leave and forget that we as a society fund an extensive system of free public school. Kids are at their most vulnerable and needy as infants.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's very hard to get hired as a woman in Sweden for this reason.

Exactly. Taxpayers don’t want to pay for that. People should pay for their own lifestyle choices.

+ 1

I would be embarrassed to be some of these other posters in here asking (no DEMANDING) other people to pay for my lifestyle. It's so tacky and low class. Get a better job. Go back to school. Don't have kids before you are financially prepared for them! Abortion exists so don't @me about unplanned pregnancies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This article was a little annoying - it painted a VERY rosy picture of being a working mother in Sweden and a VERY dismal picture of being a working mother in the U.S.

For comparison - my friends in Europe (a few different countries, including one in Sweden) say that as a woman in your late 20s/early 30s, it's hard to get a job because people are worried that you'll get pregnant and leave for a year, meaning they'll have to find and hire a temporary replacement which is really hard.

And most working women that read the Harvard Business Review are not in the US woman's situation. A lot of professional women are eligible for FMLA and get 6-10 weeks paid through disability insurance (not everyone, that's why I said a lot). A lot of women (even those of us in this area where childcare is a nightmare) are able to figure something out (but yes, for many, it IS prohibitively expensive). And the weird dumping work on the new mom thing also doesn't happen t everyone. I"m not saying that the description for her was not realistic, I know there are a lot of people who have it that bad or worse, but it's also a worst case scenario, don't you think?

Eligible for a whole 10 paid weeks!!!!

Listen, I would MUCH prefer to live in Sweden than here, and have those maternity policies over our shitty ass ones, I'm just saying that the article went to the extreme on both sides.

I'm not sure what bubble you live in to think that the US Sarah's experience was "extreme" and a "worst case scenario". I've read DCUM long enough to know it's not, and that there's plenty of working women who save, plan, research in advance, and are still knocked flat by the lack of support due to pure circumstance. I got 10 weeks of paid leave with my first, 16 weeks paid leave with my second, we had a good experience with our daycare, and I returned to a decent work environment. It was still so hard, and between keeping up with work, not sleeping, catching constant illness, and just plain missing my babies - we were burnt out. Yet my company's policies are considered generous, and the (minimum humane) amount of flexibility and accommodation I was offered in returning to work is held up as a shining example. So if I'm representative of a relatively positive experience, it's easy to extrapolate how shitty it can get for those who didn't manage to align all the stars of career, company policy, money, partner, care, health, timing etc. And yet people in this thread seem to think that's a character flaw as opposed to a cultural and systemic problem. It's f*cked up.