Next Year, Give Mom The Gift of Maternity Leave

Today, we have a special guest post from an avid reader and commentor here at Change.org - Criss L. Cox. Criss has jumped into the conversation at the Change.org Women's Rights blog many times and I felt it was time for her to get her own post. Criss is a teacher by day, blogger by night and freelance translator in between, who can usually be found procrastinating on Twitter. She was born and raised in Chile and feels strongly about reproductive rights, immigration issues and her conflicting views with the Catholic Church. You may read her ranting and rambling at http://blog.crisswrites.com or follow her on Twitter @CrissWrites.

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Mother's Day has come and gone, and while I'm sure moms loved the flowers and cards and macaroni necklaces, wouldn't it be nice if we could we give them something a little more... substantial? Like, decent, paid maternity leave?

Thanks to the Family Medical Leave Act here in the US women can take up to 12 weeks of leave a year without losing their jobs, but that's also without pay, unless you happen to have 12 weeks of vacation time saved up. Some employers do offer paid maternity leave, but those are few and far between, and I can assure you this perk is not available in lower-paying jobs.

Some women get around the unpaid issue by taking out disability insurance the year they plan to get pregnant - this was actually suggested to me by the insurance company's rep when I asked about maternity leave. Because that's what childbirth is, a disability. Isn't that a lovely message to send?

Now, I haven't birthed a child yet myself, but for the past two years I've watched my sister go through the ordeal. It's not a walk in the park, and she didn't even have any complications from her pregnancy. My nephew did cause a few problems after he was born - when he was three days old he had jaundice, and had to be in the hospital for three days. He probably doesn't remember much of those days, but they were utter hell on his mother.

When he was two months old, he had to go back to the hospital for an entire week thanks to a urinary tract infection. My sister's lucky enough that she was not working at the time, but most mothers can't afford that luxury (I won't be able to, when I have my little ones). If you've done the math, you've realized two months is past the traditional six-week maternity leave time frame.

A friend of mine is currently in the hospital on mandatory bedrest until her triplets are born. She's been there 2-3 weeks already, and the doctors are hoping she and the babies make it another 3 weeks before they're born... so that's six weeks of maternity leave gone before the babies are show up.

Six weeks of unpaid maternity leave is a joke. If the United States is such a progressive country, how can we be treating our mothers this way?

I didn't think much of it until I came across this blog post, asking the readers if pregnant women deserved special job protection (a touchy subject in this economy), and the first commenter mentioned that Chile, that skinny little country all the way down there in South America, has some extremely mom-friendly labor laws concerning maternity leave.

According to the Chilean Embassy, maternity benefits in Chile include:

• State subsidized maternity leave for six weeks prior and twelve weeks subsequent to birth; in the case of death in childbirth or during postnatal leave the father has the same rights.

• Special subsidized leave for mothers in case of specific illness of a child less than one year old; transferable to the father at her option.

But folks, that's not all! In Chile, women do have special job protection:

"Chilean women are further protected by Article 186 of the law that prohibits employers from firing pregnant women and making it illegal to fire a woman who has taken maternity leave for up to a year after she has finished this leave. Article 187 prohibits pregnant women from doing any heavy work or taking on a night shift."

That's six weeks before the child is born, plus twelve more after it's arrived. 18 weeks of paid maternity leave, offered by a country your average American (USian, I should say) would classify as "third world" because it's in Latin America. Latin American culture is generally considered male-dominated and chauvinistic, and "behind the times" when it comes to women's rights... but Chile's pretty much left us progressive US citizens in the dust, hasn't it? (PS: they also have a woman president.)

So, my friend with the triplets? She should have moved to Chile before getting pregnant. I haven't asked the details of her maternity leave arrangements, but I'll bet you a year's worth of diapers (yes, for all three kids) that it's not as cushy as what a mom in Santiago gets.

And as if that weren't enough, she doesn't have to worry about losing her job because of cut-backs of lay-offs or because she's taking too much time off to sit with her child in the hospital while he's receiving IV treatments for a UTI. If she does get laid off, the company must pay her salary for a year after she returns (or would have returned) from maternity leave.

The United States needs to realize that while we may have been ahead of other countries when it came to women's rights and other issues, we have not kept it up. Other countries are catching up and leaving us in the dust. If you really meant what Hallmark printed on that card you gave Mom last Sunday, let's do something about it and ask our government to take care of our new moms