I agree that paid maternity leaves are certainly desirable, but I couldn't help but feel that your list of countries that lack paid maternity leaves was somewhat misleading, as in many countries, particularly strongly Islamic ones, women can barely even have careers at all. While the US may lag other industrialized countries in removing some parts of the glass ceiling for women, we are still far ahead of many countries in which all but a handful of women have no choice but to labor in the home.

And what about Rwanda and Sudan, and the Islamic countries that another poster mentioned, and Guatemala and other central American countries, and Bolivia, and rural China, and much of Southeast Asia?

I think it's a requirement that you be an unthinking idiot to be a liberal.

Why not read the footnotes below the charts for the answer to your existential question?

Neoboho

The source - twice removed - is "Maternity Protection ILO Convention No. 183, June 2001, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the Public Services International and Education International". I'd like to know where they got their stuff. Perhaps you can tell me?

I'm sorry.  I missed the part where you established with any kind of argument that it is "crap."

Neoboho

Mexico is a good place to start. Tell me why so many Mexican women are giving up that fine maternity leave in their home country and making the dangerous trip here to have their babies under our crappy system?

After you've finished doing that homework for me you can explain why I should believe the ILO info for any other countries...which was obtained in the same unthinking way.

PRE-HIRE PREGNANCY SCREENING IN
MEXICO'S MAQUILADORAS: IS IT DISCRIMINATION?

Another one, again relating to the maquiladoras. It's got to be worse in other parts of the economy. I mean isn't it evident that Mexico is filled with "economic refugees" as you lefties like to put it?

I think that women should have the opportunity for paid maternity leave, but a program that is solely dedicated to maternity leave has two problems:

First, it is a very expensive benefit for companies to provide. Therefore, women will be more expensive for companies to hire. This could lead to discriminatory hiring practices or general reductions in wages to cover the cost of the benefit.

Second, it benefits only women who have children and therefore could be seen as discriminatory against men and people of both sexes who decide not to have children.

My solution would be to offer employees the opportunity to buy "time-off insurance." Employees who choose to buy this insurance would be able to use it to take time off for:

Pregnancy (or paternal care)

Illness or disability

Elderly care

A vacation after X years of employment if the benefit had not already been used for one of the above events

The amount of time off available would vary based on the amount of insurance the employee was willing to purchase. Employers, obviously, could subsidize the benefit, just like they do other benefits. And employees who don't want the benefit can opt out and save the premiums. This seems like a fair solution to me that is not discriminatory or overly burdensome on employers or unfair to the childless.

Most other countries have meaningless laws...while we, without those laws, have superior care. However, if you feel that's not good enough then pay for pregnancy care for poor mothers with your own money and stop trying to force others who don't agree with you to do the same.

If you don't provide answers then as far as I'm concerned you're a liar, a fool, or both.

That works for me.  Have at it, my friend. 

Neoboho

You don't have any answers and you don't have the integrity to admit you're wrong so you play at being the magnanimous wise man...dispensing charity from on high. My guess is you're in the "helping professions" (probably unlicensed) with a following.

I don't know if I'd "privilege" leaves for having children over leaves for illness. After all, having children is (or should be) a choice--and one should enter parenthood with knowledge of its burdens and responsibilities and with a plan for coping with them. If you have a job where you can make your own hours and be out of the office or work fewer hours while still getting the job done and not putting additional pressure on your fellow workers--great. But if taking time away from work interferes with your ability to do the work or forces your colleagues to take on more work to pick up the slack, then you shouldn't expect your employer and fellow workers to shoulder that cost. You'll need to make the sacrifice of going to a part-time job, hiring child-raising help, or quitting work altogether in favor of staying home with your kids. Parents need to realize that having kids may require some sacrifice of money and career (or some difficult juggling to avoid those sacrifices). Employers can try to accomodate parents as much as possible, but ultimately there's a limit to how much an employer can do to pay employees full salaries while those employees are away doing a different job of caring for their children.

True, my working name is the Marshmallow Mariachi Yogurt.  I run an Ashram in Dirt, Texas.

But just for the record - you were building a strawman in relation to the original blog - so don't expect anyone to get drawn into it too deeply. 

"First, it is a very expensive benefit for companies to provide. Therefore, women will be more expensive for companies to hire. "

There's an easy answer to that: make it available for men who have just become fathers, too. That's what the federal government does, here in the U.S., as well as some private companies that offer this important benefit. I agree it is an expensive benefit, if it falls on the employer. That argument holds true of many benefits related to long-term wellness. Which is an excellent argument for getting private empoloyers out of the loop on health care and going to a single-payer system.

I also agree with the naysaying comments that find it silly to compare U.S. benefits to those in countries where your chances of getting a good job are much more remote (from Mexico to Russia). The author would do better to stick to first world comparisons - compare the U.S. to countries in Europe, where a smaller amount of GNP is spent on health care a smaller amount of GNP is spent on health care , and the health outcomes are much better .

You can find my own Mother’s Day editorial here, my take is a little more global than Prof. Williams'.  

Boraxo

--

"Bother," said Pooh as Satan pointed out the small print.

Devon . . . I think you're on to something here. I'm not sure I agree that the problem is that employers feel like they have less of an obligation to facilitate family life because they now see having children as an individual choice. (I don't think employers ever felt much of an obligation to facilitate family life--remember they forced people to work 14 hour days until the labor unions reigned them in.)

What I do think is right though, is that traditional societies did not provide much leeway for individual choice when it came to family matters. Men and women had defined and separate roles, which they were expected to fulfill. The role for women included doing most of the child care. In traditional societies, women often had help from extended families and close-knit communities--but women were expected to bear most of the burden of child raising.

In today's society, we no longer have those defined roles--and the support structures of extended family and community have largely disappeared. In some ways--with products like dishwashers and washing machines and electric vacuums and disposable diapers and convenience food--traditional "women's work" has become easier and less time-consuming. But it has also become far less challenging and therefore far less rewarding. Women want the stimulation of a career--and fortunately our society has evolved to allow that. In the process, however, we haven't figured out how to handle child-rearing duties--particularly when children are young. Sure we have elementary school and (if we are wealthy enough) daycare or nannies to watch over our children while we work--but working outside the home leaves only a few hours free to interact with our children. Most people feel very stretched balancing the demands of career and kids. What's the solution? A more flexible work environment is desirable--but it will come at a cost. Employers aren't going to pay two people full salaries to do one job. If you want to work fewer hours, your employer is going to reduce your pay by the amount necessary to bring in a second worker to fill in for you when you're gone. If you expect to be paid for 40 hours when you're working only 30--forget it. The employer has to pay someone to cover the 10 hours you're away--and also has to keep the person who is actually working 40 hours happy. Why should a childless person who works 40 hours accept being paid the same as a parent who works only 30? A publically funded benefit may ease the burden on the employer--but it places a greater burden on the taxpayer. And remember childless taxpayers are already subsidizing children's education. If we go to a single-payer health care system (which we should), the childless will probably be subsidizing children's health care as well. And why should poorer childless taxpayers be subsidizing time off for higher-paid middle class parents?

I guess what bothers me about the idea of paid time for childrearing is that parents seem to be asking to get time away from work without bearing any financial cost (and instead transferring that cost to others). Sure, make work flexible to allow people to work fewer hours. Provide parents with the opportunity to purchase some kind of affordable insurance to help them maintain income while they're away from work having babies. And do something for poor single parents, who are really struggling. But why should we all subsidize middle class couples who want to have kids and get more time off to raise those kids--but don't want to sacrifice any income or career opportunity?

I also agree with the naysaying comments that find it silly to compare U.S. benefits to those in countries where your chances of getting a good job are much more remote (from Mexico to Russia). The author would do better to stick to first world comparisons

This is a good point - up to a point.  One thing I would add is that the assumption that, because such a law is on the books, that law is obeyed is not always one that can be made in every country.

However, the developed/developing world distinction here may not make a lot of sense.  Do you have any evidence that it's so hard to get a job in Mexico, Malawi, or the Philippines, say?  That is, are you sure that, because these countries are poor, that many people aren't covered by the law because they can't find work?  I don't think this is something that one can simply stipulate of the entire developing world.

Second, first world comparisons may not be any better.  Speaking with a German friend of ours recently, she said that by law, all Germans have a right to change their employment status to part time.  But in practice, employers don't like it, so rather than agree to P/T status for employees who want it, they often offer to buy them out of their contracts - offer a generous severance package instead.  Which might seem like a decent compromise except that it's a lot harder to get jobs in Germany than it is here, and many people cannot afford to take the deal.  In the end, in other words, this is a way that companies can get around the law.  

So it seems to me that developing world comparisons aren't necessarily bad ones, on this topic, and developed world ones aren't necessarily any better than developing world.  But it's a very big world out there, and comparisons in general may not really hold.