HOW do US women physically manage to back to work so quickly after birth?!

[boboismylove]

I was watching The Good Fight the other day and one of the characters said she was planning on returning to work THREE DAYS after birth. I know this is fictional but I looked it up and apparently 1 in 4 American women return to work within 10 DAYS.

This is obviously awful. But I don't actually understand how it's physically possible?! I couldn't sit up properly for a month after birth, and was limping for around the same time. I didn't have a C section, and technically had a relatively smooth birth - so I can't imagine going back earlier! How do women in the US manage it physically?! What about prolapse risk? Looking after stitches? Extremely heavy bleeding? - and again, this is only with a "normal" birth.

I know even in quite a few developing countries they have 6 weeks leave - maybe connected to the idea women should rest and be housebound for 40 days.

I am extremely grateful to be living in Ireland and not America. There is no way I could have returned so soon.

My neighbours son lives in America and they had to return to work when the baby was a few weeks old but no daycare locally would take a baby so young, so she had to go over to America for 4 months and mind the new baby for them (twice).

When I finished up work, I left a message on my email saying eg: ‘I am on maternity leave and will be back in 2019’ and my husbands aunt in America said her entire office were around her desk, she was laughing but said the whole office was dumbfounded that I had almost a year off! They are still going on about it 10 years later.

I was wondering about prolapse as well, bobo. There doesn’t seem to be much info on prolapse rates around the world because no one cares about women’s health issues, so I couldn’t compare the states to elsewhere. I would think that returning to manual work soon after birth would be a major risk factor though (thinking of the chef here!).

Saying that, the current trend here is to carry babies in slings to toddler age, which probably isn’t great for your pelvic floor either!

I do think that there is generally a complete lack of appreciation of how damaging birth can be to your body and just how much recovery you need to get back to normal. A lot is expected of new mothers at a time when they should really be giving their bodies a break.

glug You are right about people not understanding maternity leave here in the US.

Everyone having a baby qualifies for disability if they are working. Disability payment is determined by the state you work in. NJ it's 2/3rd of your income up to a max of about $500 a week. It's paid for by the state. If you aren't working you don't qualify for disability but will qualify for welfare if your household income is under a certain threshold.

What also kicks in through FMLA is job protection. Basically this protects a women from losing their job during the time of having a baby (pregnancy and first twelve weeks).

Exactly want2be: so much ignorance on this thread!

Why should predominately UK posters be knowledgable about US maternity rights?

Also, disability via the state is paid for up to 26 weeks. So if you have PND or another illness you aren't required to return to work for at least 6 months. The ADA protects your job during this time not FMLA.

$500 a week is about $2000 a month, plenty to get by if you don't have debt. The big issue is that most have student debt. One of the reasons I'm so very opposed to tuition fees is the burden it puts on women during child rearing years. It removes choice of working or not. If anyone believes tuition is going to remain as it is I've got a bridge to sell you. It's a matter of time until full repayment becomes mandatory.

Well yeah, I don't get it, that's why I'm asking.

Apparently not everyone is eligible for that 12 weeks unpaid time off and job protection. I don't know about disability but if everyone is eligible than why don't they claim it? Why do 1 in 4 women go back to work within 10 days?

Also this:

"A 2007 analysis that found out of 173 countries, only four lacked paid leave: Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and the United States. That same report found that 98 countries require working women to receive at least 14 weeks of paid time off when giving birth to a child."

Glug44 - I don’t think everyone doesn’t understand the US system - due to family living in the US i’m aware but I think the issue is that for a developed country, such a short period of time is taken off work after having a baby.

I’m in a Scandinavian country and no state daycare will take under ones where I live. One parent is expected to be off for that first year and the leave is encouraged to be shared equally.
It (along with a million other less misogynistic things here) means that there is less of a gap between men and women in the workforce - it’s still not perfect, there is still a gap but things are starting to change.

The problem DH and I have had is that Work (US companies) expect him to have a wife at home and me to have a nanny - however although we are both reasonably paid it’d wipe out most of one wage to hire a nanny as it’s so expensive to hire people here and I do actually rather like my child and want to spend time with him.

The women I work with in the USA take FMLA, disability, just quit and take a few years off or come back in weeks. I don’t know how they do it tbh. They are paid well over double what we are over here, and taxed much less too, so I assume the extra goes towards taking sabbaticals, hiring help etc.

The last pumping room we had when I worked in the UK was expected to double as a prayer room... idiotic management.

I was still in hospital five days after birth - I physically could not have safely worked at ten days. It took me a few months to get back to any kind of physical health,

The length/career thing is a red herring. It’s not the length that’s the issue, it’s the gendered differences in how men and women are treated by society and work in general. I was pretty shocked by how my work reacted to me being pregnant as opposed to DHs work. Men are still expected to have a facilitator and women are expected to be that facilitator. There was a very good thread on feminist chat about this a month th or two back. Of men and women shared leave more equally a lot of this would improve.

The maternal morbidity/mortality rates in the USA are frankly shocking. This is one driver, but the main one is poverty (which also has aspects of racism) and lack of insurance, and also just lack of care options which have been gradually restricted by religious and social conservatives.

bobo Its quite easy to qualify for FMLA. I started a job when I was 7 months pregnant and qualified. I squeezed in just enough number of weeks.

I think it's a myth that Americans are taxed less. There are federal and state payroll taxes, self employment taxes are high. Then there are taxes on all purchases including food of all kinds, petrol, services like phone. On top of that there are local property taxes that support services like libraries, public schools, parks and rec, and there are water, sewer and garbage collection charges levied by municipalities as well. The higher your home's tax valuation the more you pay. There are residents in the suburb where I live who pay $50k and up annually in property taxes on top of personal income tax.

math I don't disagree with you on taxes. By the time you include cost of medical and property taxes it's a wash with what most people pay in the Uk.

What are lower are taxes for the self employed. With all of our deductions and tax credits we pay about 5% tax.

Yes, I'm always baffled by the idea that American taxes are low compared to European/Canadian/etc taxes - I think it's just that Americans are very aware of their tax and prefer it to be separate and obvious whereas we seem happier to let it be handled in the background and never really worry about it.

And certainly especially if you factor medical costs in, though even without this I don't think it's a huge amount less.

In the US the government pays more per head into healthcare than in the UK, they’ve a huge military spend and they spend more on education than the UK too. I don’t think they have much lower tax, they certainly have poorer value. I think inequality is expensive.

FMLA is not that simple.

fmlaonline.com/fmla-pregnancy/

There are many people working for small companies - family companies, small scale franchises, etc who do not qualify. I know a woman who worked as a cake decorator in a very chi-chi local bakery who was replaced the day after she went into labour.

Tough cases:
fmlaonline.com/fmla-pregnancy/fmla-pregnancy-maternity.html

fmlaonline.com/fmla-pregnancy/fmla-pregnancy-performance.html

It's a bit of a legal crapshoot.

And if a pregnant women and her partner both work for the same firm they are legally only entitled to a combined 12 weeks off under FMLA.

BertieBotts, Americans get to vote for tax increases in their municipalities and also to vote for the county assessor (property taxes). Local residents can vote against a proposal to spend money expanding a high school or providing updated playing fields, or building a new municipal library, etc. So they are more aware of where their money is going, and have more power to decide. They really don't get to decide about military expenditure, farm subsidies, etc, which are handled on a federal level, because each vote is a drop in the ocean. But in a municipality of 55,000 people including about 15,000 under 18, with a turnout for a referendum on high school facilities of about 25% of eligible voters you are looking at a very small group of people making decisions.

Some self employment tax payers don't have a lot of deductions or credits available while others do.

The lack of employment rights in the US is scandalous, however the people seem to be brainwashed into not only accepting this but actually thinking it is a positive thing. It is madness.

That makes sense math.

I think it's a myth that Americans are taxed less.

I live in Sweden so I’m fairly confident they’re taxed a lot less than me ;) our taxes are eye watering

Although yes, your points are all valid re:uk.

Property taxes in USA are only high if you live somewhere with expensive property. So NYC & California yes. Missouri, not so much.

USA has higher birthrate than most of Europe, so they must be doing something that people find workable. Given most people have sedentary lives, I don't think 'overdoing' it involves much actual activity.

I find the employment rights in UK can be restrictive, tbh, and the accompanying expectations. DH's (small, English) company jumped thru bizarre hoops just to get rid of one very under-performing employee. USA job market is a LOT more flexible in good ways.

I live in canada and right now you're entitled to 35 weeks parental / maternity leave which you're also able to split between parents if you wish. Although it is unpaid by your employer as long as you work 600 hours before the leave you can claim EI (unemployment insurance into which all salaried workers pay into a bit like NI in the uk). EI is capped though so if you're a high salary it wouldn't even touch.
Some employers "top up" your salary while on leave for some or all of the time. It is considered a benefit of working for said employer. Some employers add terms to that topping up such as you must return to work or have to pay some of it back for eg. It seems to work pretty well

The lack of employment rights in the US is scandalous, however the people seem to be brainwashed into not only accepting this but actually thinking it is a positive thing. It is madness.

^
This

Am baffled by the debate here about 1 year being too long.

It’s not compulsory. In the uk you have to take 6 weeks, after that do what you like. If you are concerned a year is too long, return to work.

As for the notion that it places woman in the dynamic of being the carer and home maker, absolving the male partner from stepping up, I agree. So slip parental leave - for more than two years in the uk this has been possible. With the exception of the first 6 weeks, you can split 12 month between you and your partner however you want.

Where’s the problem?

Property taxes are levied by each county in the US, and each municipality also levies local taxes. States do not levy property taxes.

While a state may be considered poor, there are counties in each state that are very affluent, though often with a wide range of income and property prices within each nominally well off county. Jackson County MO for instance has neighbourhoods that are gobstoppingly affluent and also very run down areas where residents' income is very low. Cook County IL (Chicago and many suburbs) has a huge median income disparity from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, and also from suburb to suburb. Where real estate prices are high, residents tend to pay high property taxes both to the county and to their local municipality. (It all comes from the same escrow if you are paying a mortgage).