In English this week, we have been reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, a (very, very long) essay about the patriarchy in early 20th century society. Along with analyzing the book, we have been spending a lot of time talking about effects of the patriarchy in our society. One topic we spent a lot of time talking about was maternity leave. I was surprised to learn that the school does not offer paid maternity leave. I knew that it was not required by law and that teachers only got two months, but I always figured it was paid. I thought that mostly only entry level jobs did not pay maternity leave, but the school does the bare minimum as well.
I was also surprised to learn that the school offers absolutely no form of paternity leave at all and that teachers cannot even use their sick days because the school requires a doctor’s note if they are out for more than 4 days in a row. This is almost worse than the school’s policy on maternity leave because teachers could be fired for taking just one week off when their children are born. How are they supposed to spend any time with their kids if they have to return to work immediately? I think that there should be at least 3 to 4 weeks of paternity leave even if it is unpaid. Plenty of countries do offer paternity leave and the US offers one of the least amounts of paternity or maternity leave out of developed countries. For example Norway offers 35-45 weeks of maternity leave at at least 80% pay and 14 weeks of paternity leave at at least 80% pay. If America offered even half of that, it would be more than double what we currently have and would be at least mostly paid.
The idea of paid paternity leave is stupid. Why should men get weeks of paid vacation for having kids? I also do not see why anyone would want to spend more time with their newborn child. Going to work would be a welcome break from the constant stress of no sleep and comforting a crying baby. On top of that, it reduces the amount of money that the company has to spend. In the case of government workers, this means lower taxes, something that everyone can be happy about.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do agree that both maternity and paternity leave should be required facets of a job, I'm not surprised at the lack of standalone maternity leave at RMHS, and I am definitely not surprised at the lack of paternity leave. From what I understand, using sick days for maternity leave is a common thing, and paternity leave is very uncommon. RMHS also doesn't seem like a very progressive place in terms of this, and on top of that it is a public school, so it is funded by taxpayers and raising taxes for paternity and maternity leave would not fly in Reading.
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