In Australia workplaces must offer twelve months of maternity leave. However, there is no requirement to pay their employees during this time nor is there a paid maternity leave scheme set up by the government. I was extremely lucky to receive fourteen weeks of full pay from my employer when entering maternity leave. Most employers offer nothing.
The thing is, providing the fourteen weeks of paid leave (six weeks before birth and eight weeks after birth) sets women up for the expectation that they should (and should be able to) return to work within eight weeks after birth. Child care centres take babies from six weeks of age and according to a friend who works in a child care centre the number of six week olds in her centre is increasing each year. More and more young babies are being put into child care. I am unsure of the reasons. If it's a financial reason then I think the answer is to save before having a baby (these savings can then be a woman's salary) and giving up things that don't matter (like keeping up with the latest fashions and pay TV). If it's because the woman values her job and career over her child I really don't know why she would have a child.
Of course there are unplanned pregnancies and single mothers and I am not talking about those tough circumstances. I am talking about circumstances where there is a supportive partner, who has a stable steady job. Also it doesn't have to be the mother who stays home. There are many stay at home dads whose wives are the breadwinner.
In some countries it is a different story where employees are offered twelve months paid maternity leave. There are also some countries with more than twelve months paid leave. These countries obviously value having mothers stay home with their babies for at least the first year of their life.
I must admit before I left on my maternity leave I did worry about becoming financially dependent on Greg. After being financially self-sufficient for years it seemed like a vulnerable position to put myself in. I was lucky that I was eased into it with my fourteen weeks paid leave but Greg and I decided that we would live off his salary alone from the moment I started my leave and I managed to put the fourteen weeks pay away in savings. This helped twofold. Firstly I realised we could survive on his salary alone and secondly it got me used to being financially dependent on Greg.
Still I did spend the first couple of months feeling like I wasn't contributing to our household like Greg was. I guess what I was doing wasn't tangible enough. It took Greg pointing out (a few times) that I was doing a much more important job than he was - raising our child - for me to eventually see what I was doing as a valuable contribution.
I am so glad I am able to spend this precious time with my daughter. The first few months were very tough and there's no way I would have been able to combine work and being a mother anyway. Even now I still have so much work to do. Plus I wouldn't want to miss out on her first smile, first crawl, first steps... Her first year is a huge year in her life and I want to be there every step of the way. She will learn more and grow more in this year than any other year of her life. I also wanted to breast feed her and combining work and being a mother would have led to me giving up the breast feeding.
Being with my daughter, teaching her things, learning with her are much more important and valuable than money. Life is so short and time with Maya really is going so fast. I wouldn't want to look back and realise I missed out on this important, precious time with her because I valued money or work more highly.
3 comments:
I think that cultural/peer pressure plays an important role. New mothers are quite vulnerable due to drastic changes in their circumstances, hormones and lack of sleep to outside influences and without other people supporting their decision to stay at home it could be very tough to see the positives outweigh the negatives.
I was never in a position for any paid maternity leave so it was never an issue for me. We made sure we could "live on love" long before Jude was born.
Women AND men seem to think that mothers should return to work. There's a general feeling out there that all women should be career driven and would sacrifice their sense of self if they didn't return to work.
What about the men and women who don't care about careers? Society seems to dismiss them and poo-poos such attitudes towards work. My husband and I value lifestyle and happiness above any financial gain.
I am with you, I find the satisfaction of spending time with Jude much more rewarding and fascinating than any paid work I've ever done. I don't have any desire to return to paid work and I don't have a career to return to.
I also agree with you, although your opinion is unfashionable, that people shouldn't have babies if their career is so damn important and people should plan a bit better and be prepared to give up pedicures, new clothes and expensive haircuts so they don't have to rush back to work.
I disagree, though, that the government should pay maternity leave because everything the government does costs tax payers infinitely more than the actual value of the service.
With paid maternity leave I also didn't think the government should pay. But I have a friend who is in Canada and he had a child around the same time as we had our babies. They get twelve months maternity pay at 50% of their salary AND they can use it between the two of them. So he took one month (or maybe it was two months) off at 50% pay and she is taking eleven months off at 50% pay. Plus her employer is giving her 25% of pay. So she gets 75% of her pay for 11 months, then 25% of her pay for another 1 month. Not only did this allow him to take the first month off to be with his child but it also allows her to stay home for 12 months without any financial concerns. Paid maternity leave is available in a lot of countries. So while I agree that it shouldn't come from tax payers money at the same time I think the government should stop funding child care as much as they are and put that money into paid maternity leave instead. I think parents should be encouraged to stay home rather than encouraged to return to work.
Saying all that I also think it's good for women to keep their toe in some sort of career or paid work but not before their baby is a year old. Just thinking of my mother's generation where a lot of women stayed home for a very long time and then were unable to return to the paid workforce in their previous occupations.
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