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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]These same MBs would jump at the offer of paid leave for themselves with employers of over 50 people, but would fight against legislation that extended to us. [/quote]

MB here.  I support DC's proposal for city funded maternity leave for everyone and would happily pay higher taxes for it.  I do not in any way begrudge nannies or anyone else maternity leave - as a mom, I get how important it is.  As I posted earlier on this thread, I offered my nanny as much time as she wanted provided she gave us a date up front so that we could arrange for interim care.  However as an individual employer, I cannot afford to pay a nanny for that time as well as pay another nanny at the same time.  In fact it was tight to double pay for even a couple of weeks as we ultimately did in that situation (and it's not the same as covering vacation or other PTO which tends to be more spread out and can be covered by families in a lot of ways). If this was a cost I had to factor into childcare (double paying childcare for weeks/months), I wouldn't be able to choose having a nanny - and I think a LOT of other families are in the same situation.  It's not apples to apples comparing large employers (many of whom also don't offer paid leave anyway) and individual families.[/quote]

That is a reasonable position. What is unreasonable are all of the posters on this thread acting as though a nanny is out of their minds or entitled to desire the same (measly) benefits that other women receive. I would be happy if we were simply afforded the same 12 weeks of job protection! No one was asking for months and months of paid leave. How about just not getting fired because we're pregnant. You know, the same rights women in every other industry have?[/quote]

I am the PP you are responding to.  I actually don't disagree with you but I think this is a more complicated issue than you are suggesting.  For one, not all women get this protection.  Should they?  I would like that to be the case.  But do they? As others have pointed out there are a lot of additional requirements (over 50 employees, employee been there for more than a year) and that is because smaller employers need the same protections families do since they cannot always cover that time off.  Secondly, and I think this is the tough one, it puts the family in a really bad situation.  Having actually been there I can tell you, long term temporary reliable good childcare is either exorbitantly expensive (usually through an agency that charges you a large fee for the privilege of the service, which is not in everyone's budget) or frankly, not good or not reliable.  It's not like finding coverage for a week's vacation or a sick day - it's not so easy to cover the maternity leave period.  And at the end of the day, if I don't have reliable child care, it puts my own job at risk.  And if I don't have a job, I don't need a nanny.  But the biggest problem was - at least for us - it was really really really tough on my child. I don't want to go into all the details because - as I said - I believe every woman deserves maternity leave and I do believe everyone's interests have to be balanced here.  But after the whole thing blew up rather spectacularly in my face, I discovered that doing the right thing for my nanny meant I had done completely and totally the wrong thing for my child.  Not great.

Despite this, I still would never suggest nannies or anyone else do not deserve maternity leave.  Of course they do.  And I could not imagine firing a woman because she is pregnant in any context (despite basically getting forced out of my own job while pregnant, FWIW.)  But this is a much more complicated issue than you and others are painting it to be.  [/quote]

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