Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Maternity Leave - or lack thereof

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:

MamaG said...

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.