Mark Tyler and I have been talking about the ups and downs of being the at home parent. I asked him to write a post about his experience. After several weeks of writing between bouts of cooking, cleaning, hugging, story-telling, dressing, playing, undressing, bathing, brushing, combing, driving, picking up and putting away, he sent me [...]
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Mothers of the Moment
We’re poised at a sweet spot between the release of The Shriver Report in January, and the arrival of March as Women’s History Month. Momentum is growing for paid leave and paid sick days, candidates for the 2014 mid-term elections are shaping their campaigns, and think tanks in DC are churning out data on women [...]
Babygate: What You Really Need to Know About Pregnancy and Parenting in the American Workplace
To follow last week’s interview with authors Dina Bakst, Phoebe Taubman, and Elizabeth Gedmark, here’s an excerpt from their new book Babygate. Don’t forget to take a copy of their discussion questions to your next book club meeting! Are you pregnant or thinking about taking that step? Maybe your partner is pregnant, and you [...]
The True Cost of Paid Leave for Parents of Newborns
The first objection to a national paid family leave policy in the US is usually about cost. Who would pay for it? Why should the employer pay a worker who isn’t there? Given that such a program would, among other things, allow new parents time to care for their children, is it fair to workers [...]
Free Riding on Women - Part One
When you’ve got your finger on the pulse of the whacked-out wonk world which is Washington, you pick up on the wind shifts quickly. The topic of carework, what it costs and who’s paying, is popping up more often and in increasingly provocative language these days. Lately I’ve been looking at “Free Riding on Families: [...]
Paid Leave for the US
I’ve written here before about Jody Heymann’s work in Raising the Global Floor: Dismantling the Myth that We Can’t Afford Good Working Conditions for Everyone. The only reason we don’t have paid leave in this country as a basic minimum standard is because we have not yet insisted upon it. Here is Jody making the [...]
Can the US Afford Paid Leave? YES!
When the subject of paid leave comes up, someone will say: “Oh, no, we could never pay for that, it would be too expensive!!” It’s the Voice of Doom, and I hear it frequently. So often repeated, I know it by heart. It will destroy small businesses. It would push taxes over the cliff. The [...]
Cleopatra Isn’t the Only Queen of Denial
While you’re lying there, semi-conscious, a human petri dish of contagion, consider this: There’s nothing like a pandemic to highlight the holes in a nation’s public health policy.I am committed to getting women, family careworkers, and paid careworkers the credit they deserve. It didn’t happen during the mythic time when women were idolized for their [...]
It Only Looked Like Business As Usual
Another Hill hearing room, fresh-faced staffers buzzing in the background, Congressmen and women at their microphones, witnesses seated at the witness table. June 11 was just another day for the Nation’s Capital of the World’s Greatest Democracy. Except it wasn’t. The bills in question would make paid leave a reality for (at least some) American [...]
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Written by MOTHERS volunteer Kelly Coyle DiNorcia (ahimsamama.blogspot.com)I work from home (as a paid employee) for a youth sports organization. I have an almost four-year-old daughter and an almost one-year-old son. Though we have a sitter who comes once a week so I can have some undisturbed time to work, I am mostly juggling my [...]
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