Are we a family friendly country?

Lately I have been writing quite a lot, but can’t seem to get any of my posts to a concluding point where I would actually want to post them.  I currently have about 5 open Word documents on my computer and keep bouncing back and forth between writings on war, Nelson Mandela, Millennials, genocide and Hope.  None of them are really going anywhere, so I started writing this.  As I sit here in Copper Mountain, Colorado at a coffee shop trying to write, my little girl sits next to me in her stroller sleeping and carefree.  I have loved these past 6 months with Neyla and it has truly been a blessing not to have to work and be able to spend so much time with my wife, Janae, and our little daughter Neyla.  We took numerous walks on the beach in Chicago and countless hikes in the mountains in Colorado.  All three of us have cherished this time together and it is a shame that this is not something that is prioritized in our culture. 

            In Sweden new mothers get up to 420 days off paid at 80% of their salary and full benefits and in Denmark women get 1 year paid at 100% of their wages.  These are countries that clearly have their priorities on their families and find it important for parents to be with their newly born children.  At the other end of the spectrum is the United States that grants a pathetic 12 weeks to new mothers with no benefits, though some states to allow women to claim “disability.”  How sad is that?  There are so many reasons to be proud to be an American, but this is one area that I am ashamed at my government.  Our priorities are way out of balance.  The United States spend $711 billion each year on military spending, that is 41% of all money spent each year by governments around the world on the military expenditures.  We spend more on the military each year than the next 10 countries combined.  I’m not saying that we go the way of Costa Rica and outlaw the military, but this has gotten way out of hand. 

            Our superpower status has gone off the deep end and given us a national ego and arrogance that is extremely unhealthy.  To spend over $770 billion per year trying to find new and better ways to efficiently kill people and spending $0 on helping parents raise their children through those all important early years is a social sin if I’ve ever seen it.  We have let our wealth and power go to our head and created yearly spending that is unsustainable and ridiculous.   Everyone in our country knows that government spending has to decrease, but the problem is that nobody seems to want to cut anything.  This is not necessarily a political failure in my view, but endemic of a cultural flaw.  We are seemingly ok with the government spending what it spends on the military and corporate welfare, but the government shouldn’t help our families become stronger.  We were ok with spending $6-$8 billion a month on a War in Iraq that has had no victor and no evident reason for even fighting, but we dare not spend more money making it easier for people to support their families. 

           

(The sad truth in the USA today)

  I have given a lot of thought to this over the past 6 months.  My wife took 3 months off after giving birth to our daughter and was paid a fraction of her salary from the state of New York for “disability leave.”  Any company that does not take it upon themselves to pay for maternity leave for a new mother for at least 3 months should be ashamed of themselves.  This is exactly why we can’t leave this up to the free market, but we should have a national law, like every other developed country, that mandates that women must receive a large portion of their salary and full benefits when they go on leave.  Furthermore, if we want to be a family friendly country, then we ought to give men full paid leave as well for at least 2 months to assist while their wife/partner is recovering from a traumatic medical procedure. 

            After my experiences of the last 6 months I have no idea why the United States of America is lagging so far behind on this critical issue.  I’m not sure if there is just no political will or if it is our ridiculous reliance on the private sector and capitalism to make bad cultural and moral decisions for our country.  Why do we continue to have blind faith in a system that has created such a discrepancy in our government policies?  I’m not advocating getting rid of a free market system, but I am saying that we should make sure that our system in simpatico with our morals and ethics.  What do you think?  Should we have a national policy giving paid time off for mothers and fathers?