US maternity/daycare question

[Laytwir024]

Ok so I've been bingewatching Superstore and I know it's just tv, but the lack of maternity leave is shocking - and general support for low paid workers in general. I've always known it was bad, but I read a stat online saying that about a quarter of women go back to work when their baby is around 10 days old! Do daycares actually take babies this young? Has anyone had to experience this in real life?

(As a mum I can't watch things like this and not look up the reality 😩)

Just curious really!

Enhanced maternity leave is becoming more common there but typically (unfortunately) in more professional/higher paid jobs.

I’m American and my siblings and I were all in daycare full time from 4-8 weeks old. A lot of friends in the states now have taken 3-4 months (mostly unpaid) and consider themselves lucky to have that.

Yes daycares take new new babies.

My 2 American grandchildren were in full time daycare from about 8/10 weeks old as that is all the parent gets their job held for . No maternity pay

Yes, it’s unfortunately very common. My friend works for Google and got 6 months off and it was like she’d hit gold, she was so thrilled. All other friends back after 8-12 weeks. I don’t know how they manage (I no longer live in the US and would never move back). I went to daycare at 12 weeks, which I think was pretty good for someone with a professional job in the 80s.

This is one of the reasons I’d never live in the US. You can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its elderly.... and its pregnant women / new mothers I feel.

I took 1.5 years off my professional job when my twins were born, 6 months on full pay, and went back part time after. Now they’re older I’m back to almost full time but I have progressed (albeit more slowly) in that time. I’m grateful for this and was loyal to my employer (just left last year for another firm but I was there for over 10 years)

The protections we have via a redundancy process are pretty much non existent in the US too, and holiday allowance is a lot less than what we're used to.

My American friend gave birth a week after me. She’s been back to work for a few weeks now. My baby is 11 weeks old.

I’m about to go on mat leave, I’m taking a year off, 6 months full pay then SSP. The USA has the worst protection for mothers and pregnant women in the developed world.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/27/maternity-leave-us-policy-worst-worlds-richest-countries

I used to work with a US team in the same company. We had a call and my boss told them I wouldn’t be available as I was going on mat leave and I was deluged with congratulations as they assumed baby had arrived and I was dialling into a call...they were also utterly discombobulated by the fact that I’d be back in a year. And then jealous!

@DelurkingAJ that’s nuts isn’t it. As if anyone in the UK in a relatively normal job would dial into a call when they’d just given birth!

I know an American woman who dialled into work calls during labour. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yeah it really is that bad. It’s disgraceful.

A friend in the US had a baby last year and was allowed 2 weeks off work after a traumatic premature c section. Her baby was still in the hospital when she had to go back to the office.

Another friend told me the women in her team each gave one or two days of their annual leave allowance to a woman who’d had a baby so that she could take a total of 4 weeks. They asked the men to contribute days off too but none would, because they felt that she should just get on with it and get back to work.

America is a deeply weird society.

I think some women are eligible for 12 weeks unpaid leave aren’t they under FMLA aren’t they? And some states have some kind of paid leave as will some companies.

Do a lot of American women not go back to work after having a baby?

I have 3 American cousins about my age each with 1-2 kids.
One of them has a wealthy husband and despite studying for years and years for her career, never went back after her first child.
One of them went back after 8 weeks after each child. Has a nanny and her parents also do a lot of childcare.
The other also went back after a few weeks mainly because while she was pregnant her husband became seriously ill and they needed her medical insurance to pay for his rehabilitation

We don’t know how lucky we are in this country but sadly I feel it won’t always be this way.

@Donotfeedthebears my US colleagues (decently paid professionals) all said their wives had given up work. And that they reckoned society was poorer for it because there was a pool of highly qualified professional women who simply gave up because they wanted six months off. My cousin is in the US and commented how lucky she was because as a teacher they’d hold her job for her (unpaid) for a term.

It is crazy. I remember having an American lady working for me and she couldn’t get her head around the fact that she had annual leave and paid sickness. She had been freaking out because she’d been poorly for a few days. I’d never mentioned it to her because you do just take it for granted in many jobs that if you’re sick you’ll be paid.

I think it is barbaric that so many women in the states have to go back after a few weeks. With both of mine my Lochia didn’t stop until 6-8 weeks. How anyone does a decent job with a newborn- I can’t imagine many women are particularly productive so it seems extra stupid.

I agree - was bleeding and had infected C section scar for weeks and weeks

So so sad. If you'd gone through anything else as traumatic that didn't involve a baby you'd get sick leave right?

I dont know how you'd even cope at work! Is there any sort of legal protection e.g. you can't come in a week after birth? Cannot be good for the woman's body! And your hormones are so crazy. I remember sobbing just because I wasn't holding him when mine was first born.

Is there such a thing as paternity leave at all?

It's funny what you take for granted. And some people think UK maternity rights are poor.

(Aren't school holidays really long too?)

I think they do go back to work. My American daughter in law has a wide group of girl friends, not one of them is a stay at home parent.

However most of them are in highly paid jobs so can afford the childcare.
They have all of those special days off eg Labour day, etc but only 2 weeks holiday a year.
From age 7, my grandson goes to 6/7 week summer camp! Seems so young to me but normal practice in USA

What I dont get is surely in those really low paid jobs (thinking back to Superstore) doesn't daycare cost more than what you earn? Or is daycare just really cheap over there? Shows how desperate people are to keep their jobs and how hard it must be to get another. 😩

Well in superstore Cheyenne’s mum looks after the baby at first - although by the time she gets married her mum is in jail so not sure who’s minding the baby then. But yes I’d guess there are a lot of cheap and very low quality childcare places there.

I was horrified by those episodes too (we've only been watching it for a few weeks) plus no healthcare because they don't work over 40 hours a week 😱

I was also pissed off at the implication that only bigots don't want men in women's bathrooms.

Our company pays parental leave for 12 weeks in the States which I understand is generous. I believe it can be taken by either parent, but not both (a bit like ours).

That said, I think often it’s less about the maternity pay (people can budget for it etc) and more about the fact that there is no legal requirement to keep someone’s job open longer than (I think) two weeks.

@NoGoodPunsLeft - yeah I almost stopped watching after that episode, it was so ridiculous. I think that was filmed in 2016, so I like to think (probably optimistically) that it would be slightly more nuanced now.