According to Working Mother magazine the United States is one of four countries (the others are Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland) that doesn't have a national standard for paid maternity leave. Sure there is FMLA and some organizations offer portions of maternity leave paid but that doesn't seem like enough.
I'm lucky in a way in that with my job I accumulate leave and sick time in hours every pay period. By the time I get close to my due date I will have close to 14 weeks worth of time built up that I will be able to use to pay for the 12 weeks that I will be off (if not longer). But if I were working for J's company I would only have 2 weeks of paid vacation that I could use and then be stuck in leave without pay for the remaining 10. I think that sucks.
Also according to the magazine the countries with the best paid maternity leave are Canada (50 weeks), Japan (58 weeks) and Norway (90 weeks!).
Must be nice.
1 comment:
Good thing you have enough leave accumulated. I didn't even qualify for FMLA this time around because I hadn't worked enough hours since having Katie. That is why Carly has to go to daycare when she is only 2 months old...makes me sad. Plus most of my time off was with leave without pay. I had no idea we are only 1 of 4 countries who doesn't offer paid maternity leave.
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