For the first time in the history of the United States the majority of new mothers get paid maternity leave. The U.S. Census Bureau followed for 3.1 million first-time mothers who worked during pregnancy between 2006 and 2008 and found that 51 percent received paid leave. It jumped 42 percent between 1996 and 2000, the highest since the Bureau began collecting such figures in 1981.
Two thirds of mothers during pregnancy has been working during this period, the study found. Only 13 percent of graduate mothers to leave their jobs during or shortly after pregnancy. But half of the women without a university degree has, no doubt, for a much higher proportion of them have no paid leave.
Paid maternity leave is an issue strictly divided along class lines. Eighty percent of employed new mothers without a high school diploma did not receive paid leave, according to the census. These women are less likely to jobs with good benefits, and are likely to be very young.
The lack of a paid maternity leave mandate also requires a much higher cost for single mothers, which travel a quarter of children in the country. Thirty-eight percent of single mothers struggling to pay for food in 2010, reported the Institute for Policy Research of Women / Rockefeller Study of Economic Security.
"Having a baby is a major cause of poverty spells, and people who need this time are less likely to have access to it," Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director of the momsrising. Org advocacy group, told Bloomberg News.
Family values
Many media have spun these figures as a victory for women. At 51 percent, we have crossed a border. But that still means that 49 percent of women use sick days or vacation to recover from childbirth and care of newborns. Or take a slash in their paychecks, or leave their jobs altogether.
There are only three other countries in the world that does not guarantee paid maternity leave for all women: Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.
"Despite the enthusiasm of the" family values "of the U.S. is decades behind other countries to ensure the welfare of working families," said Janet Walsh, deputy director of women's rights division at Human Rights Watch.
But it is precisely the understanding of the country of "family values" that may explain his opposition to paid maternity leave. For many Americans, family values and working mothers continue to be an oxymoron. Although women constituted the majority of the workforce last year, the image of a successful working mother still makes many Americans uncomfortable. It is reduced to caricature, scrutinized and abused: But what about your children?
"Tiger Mother" is the latest iteration of this. Account of Amy Chua for parents their children the successes of the prodigal son awakened a corner fierce reaction. Some called inspiration. Some called child abuse.
This image of pushy, career-driven mother is a super major change from the fear that accompanied the married women first foray into the workforce. In the 1990s, the "mother wars" up to the politicians, sociologists and even mothers are even afraid that by working they cause prolonged mental harm to their children, as well as long-term structural damage to the American family .
When Hillary Clinton defended her career in 1992, commented, "I think I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas", has been widely recognized as the responsibility for the campaign of her husband. New Yorker short cartoon depicted a woman ask the seller for the jacket and tells him: "Nothing too Hillary."
Soccer Mom
Three years later, Susan Casey, Ph.D., manager of the presidential campaign, he successfully ran for local office in Denver, entitled: ". Soccer Mom City Council"
The "soccer mom" tag was there to reassure voters that despite his credentials and full-time career, Casey was a doting guardian who was away all the football games on Saturday morning. The Americans seem to need this reassurance. Even in 2005 when the journal Developmental Psychology published a study concluding that children do not suffer when their mothers work, beat back the conservative press.
The mothers gave permission to "stash their children to daycare ... This way, you could board a poodle, "warned columnist Tony Snow, who became the next year the White House press secretary.
Sarah Palin has managed to obtain the following candidate for the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska with his mother recommended update moniker football, when it was branded as a "hockey mom". Palin fans believed to be a wild animal political affiliations, without sacrificing her maternal duties. Grizzly Mama was queen.
Helicopter Parents
When the country finally seemed convinced that working women could still be attentive mothers, our concern swung the other way: they were all too aware.
When the first generation of children raised by a majority of working mothers under the age of college admissions officers have been confused by all the phone calls. "How your school can reject our cute, young talent?" They called them "helicopter parents."
Mothers and fathers were too involved in their children's lives. I'm with driver for the Boy Scouts, and tap dancing, tutoring, and Mandarin. They are obsessed with their college co-crafted essays. And when they are completed and became the workforce, their parents were on the phone with their new employer, negotiating salary and benefits.
"It 'heads the guilt, to prove that they do not lose their children to any kind of attention," suggests Sonya Michel, Director of American Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, experts, and policies to support' children and women's rights. "And often they can not stay home with them, so they want to make sure that you enjoy."
"Battle Hymn of the Mother Tiger" came out of this fearful atmosphere. How a professor at Yale Law School who has written successful volumes of the empire and democracy, who still have energy to stay up all night while her daughter was practicing piano? If my child does not guarantee a place at Harvard, I was not pushy enough?
Choking floating
Concerns about the way women should be given much more attention to their children even before the entry of women into the labor market. The "helicopter parents" of 2000 is actually a parallel to be confused with the "smother mother" almost 70 years.
In his bestselling 1942 book "generation of vipers," Philip Wylie called "VAT" (as opposed to the beautiful "mother") as a "third sex Thunder", which is responsible for "mealy appearance of the men of today. " "VAT" condemned Peril in the nation, "announced the New York Times in 1945, in a review of a stormy speech by Dr. Edward Strecker, one of the leading psychiatrists.
We have come full circle. At mid-century, we had concerns about the dull, domineering mother. He then became lax working mothers. And now it comes to working mothers, who can be dominant.
"It's a damned-if-you-do-do bad if the situation," said Kathleen Gerson, author of "The Unfinished Revolution."
As a nation, we remain very concerned about the working mother. But we have not introduced compulsory paid maternity leave like almost every other country in the world agrees is a basic means to help new mothers for safe and loving home for their newborns.
Maybe it's because working mothers are actually the main goal is to be white (or Asian) and the middle class. Soccer moms, moms and moms Tiger helicopter imagination are not blacks or Latino, and can afford private piano lessons. But it is a low-income women, especially black and Latino women with low incomes, which can be immersed in poverty, motherhood. And this week, the Census Bureau statistics may be of great importance that they are.
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