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?
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