Online Signature Legitimacy for Pregnancy Leave Policy in United States

How to eSign a document: online signature legitimacy for Pregnancy Leave Policy in United States

this is it the big day after months and months of eager anticipation you're bouncing bundle of joy is on the way home or maybe stuck inside of your cut in half globe you've watched all the parenting hack videos online you've decorated the nursery maybe you've even bought a color-coded cake to do a gender reveal party for the gram you should be all set and then you remember that you have to head back to work in a few short weeks so the question arises for many working parents what happens to an infant wants the shimmery Sheen of joy wears off and the practical concerns of reliable child care set in and what does world war 2 have to do with us historical and social puzzle part of the dilemma here is the debate over whether or not new working parents should have the right to paid parental leave since the majority of us out here have to work hard for the money so hard for it honey the length and timeframe of parental leave is of utmost importance to most new parents and they aren't the only ones concerned about babies big day out this also raises concerns for healthcare professionals insurance companies government agencies and employers they're probably second only to parents with fears about folks being kept out of the workforce for too long after receiving a visit from mr. stork there's also an interesting historical intersection between World War two and concerns over child care because the baby boom that gave the generation born after World War two its name wasn't just a metaphor it really was like a boom of babies the whole idea seems pretty adorable to me I mean pictures thousands of infant's shooting out of booming canons and little onesies but the entrance of millions of women worldwide into the workforce followed by the actual baby boom created a logistical dilemma for employers and working families alike and since we're coming up on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War two let's get to the root of where the urge for paid maternity and paternity leave originated it seems that World War two was a critical juncture for the introduction of seismic health care changes worldwide and there's no greater evidence of that than some of our older origin episodes after you finish watching this one go ahead and check out our episode on sex ed and what makeup sales taught us about employer-sponsored health care in the post-world War two ERA when it's easy to understand how all of these health care changes came to pass since the war itself caused huge cultural shifts like the rising spread of sti's soldier returning home with health issues mask global migration and all of those hard-working Rosie the riveters joining the workforce but today we're focusing on a specific invention of the post-war era maternity leave okay so from our research on the topic it seems that the easiest way to break down this mountain of thorns is into four categories of the major players behind paid parental leave because if the saying it takes a village to raise a child is right then we can also alter it to read it takes a village and several government regulatory bodies to raise a child when we're talking about paid parental leave so the four major players I discovered were first families primarily the parents of the bouncing new babe but maybe also other family members who become involved in childcare if the parents had called back into work oh and this also includes the kids themselves since without them there's really no major debates to be had second the government third employers and fourth health care officials all of these groups are concerned about the balance between baby care and working life but they approach it from pretty Stora CLE different angles let's start off with the most obvious group dear old moms and dads in the US the debates about maternity leave didn't start in earnest until after World War two and that's because before women were pulled into the workforce while their male family members engaged on the front lines there was no reasonable expectation that most women would a work full-time jobs or be keep working after they began to rear children women who worked in family-run businesses like agriculture or small stores did often play active roles and those businesses after the arrival of babies but the massive influx of women entering the formal workforce of factories and offices for wages during World War two marked a sharp difference in the quality of women's labor as a result of these new wage labor ladies flooding the job market and many of them staying in the workforce even after the end of combat employers now had to deal with a new question what should happen to employees when they become pregnant and should they be hired back once they've given birth well the resounding and super disappointing answer to this question was largely a big fat no in the intervening years between the end of World War two and the early 1970s many women lost their jobs outright once their employers discovered were pregnant and we're talking many women because don't forget after World War two there was a baby boom in many countries and during the Great Depression there was about 18 to 19 births per 1000 people in the US and in 1947 that number had risen to 26 and a half births per 1000 people in the US and if mothers didn't lose their jobs entirely then there was no strong guarantee of getting their employment back once they'd recovered after childbirth so the options for new families were risk your job risk your child's well-being or just don't have kids all of which seems like a pretty lousy set of options if you're interested in kids and not going broke but all that began to change in the 1970s in the u.s. so that's when our second major player in this whole game the government got involved countries around the world began to alter their policies pregnancy started becoming a protected category meaning employers legally couldn't discriminate against pregnant women but I'd also like to highlight that feminist activists played a major role in having this legislation come to pass because governments usually don't just up and decide to pass certain policies rather major policy decisions are often the effect of years of activist championing in 1972 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission required employers to treat disability for pregnancy the same as any other disability and the 1974 case Goodell did versus alo was brought to the Supreme Court on the basis that pregnancy should be treated as a protected category and that denial of insurance to pregnant women counted as sex-based discrimination and while the court at that time found that it did not this case served in some ways as a precedent for the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 the PDA amended title 7 of the Civil Rights Act so that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy childbirth or pregnancy related illnesses was forbidden the PDA if you think about it that's kind of a funny name for an act about pregnancy but while the US government in the 1970s was grappling over how to classify and protect pregnant women other nations around the world were going one step further and passing paid maternity leave laws in 1974 Sweden made maternity leave into gender-neutral parental leave and was quickly followed by other nations in the region including Norway and Finland the UK passed their first paid maternity leave laws through the Employment Protection Act of 1975 although just because a precedent was that doesn't mean it was immediately followed worldwide the 1980s saw a sprinkling of maternity leave progress both stateside and abroad the UK extended the employment Protection Act in 1980 but the strict working requirements of law meant that only approximately 50% of women were eligible thankfully by the early 90s the law was extended to include most working women and men were added to the bill with paternity leave in 2003 meanwhile during the same time frame in the u.s. efforts to enact paid maternity leave nationwide stalled stopped and started again before a resolution was reached the Family Employment Security Act of 1984 asked for 26 weeks per year of job protected leave but it combined birth and other illnesses and was a request for unpaid leave when this law failed to pass representative for justice Schroeder introduced the parental and disability leave Act in 1985 it was edited and reintroduced in 1986 and finally became the FMLA or Family and Medical Leave Act which was passed in 1993 so yes there is a 12 week long job protected Family Leave but it's unpaid meaning many families don't use the full leave or they struggle financially because they can't afford to do without their income for that long and let's face it babies are pretty pricey what with the cost of all those diapers and doctor's visits and adorable micro fashions to wear on Instagram you can't just stick a baby in a cut in half globe it's hardly the cheapest endeavor but lawmakers balance the challenges of providing relief for individual families and the concerns of employers because the US remains among eight nations in the world that doesn't provide any form of guaranteed government regulated paid parental leave so the cost of paint leave as it now stands falls to individual employers and while 12 weeks of job protected unpaid leave are guaranteed for workers at companies with at least 50 employees meaning you can't be let go if you leave to take care of an infant the question still remains about who should be footing the bill for many small businesses that remains completely unfeasible although larger companies sometimes offer maternity and paternity leave as part of their employee benefits that's why employers are our third player in the parental leave conversation but the case-by-case system leaves large swaths of Americans uncovered and one study in the Journal of experimental social psychology found taking maternity leave could be a damned if you do damned if you don't dilemma for women so check out this reasoning the study found that employees who took maternity leave were seen as less dedicated to their job less competent and therefore less worthy of receiving rewards and benefits at work than women who decided not to take leave and women who didn't make it known whether or not they took leave at all but those who continued to work were judged negatively as prioritizing their work over their families and less desirable as a result than both the employee who took leave and the ones who didn't state a choice even though they were deemed more worthy of receiving rewards at work does your head hurt because mine definitely does now imagine making this decision with a crying baby suction to your hip and you can see why a lot of new parents are positively at their wit's end over parental leave policies because these decisions have big and lasting impacts not only on your job prospects but also on the health of you and your newborn that brings us to the fourth and final major player in the debates over paid parental leave health care officials because while the conversation is often framed as a struggle between employers government officials and new parents there are larger real world health concerns that come along with this decision for example the World Health Organization recommends six months of breastfeeding for new infants and this process is obviously easier to accomplish several times a day if parents are given adequate paid time off with women who return to work later usually being able to breastfeed regularly for longer periods of time a 2015 study states that there could be a positive correlation between paid maternity leave during the birth of a first child and lower instances of late life depression for women over the age of 50 this is based on data from countries that participate in the survey of health aging and retirement in Europe and other studies find that there's a benefit to lengthier maternity leave for pediatric health care as well so be sure to check out some of those fascinating findings down in the work cited list so the post-war baby boom led us to the question what happens to working families after the babies start booming but even though most of the generation that were the first wave of infants that caused global concern over child care are now either parents or grandparents themselves the debates over paid maternity leave continue to rage worldwide in nations with paid maternity leaves like the UK questions about the duration of the leave and the amount of compensation remain in the public discourse and in the US where no paid maternity leave decisions have been reached activists continue to agitate for change that benefits working families and the babies in their care so what do you think my only regret about this episode is that I didn't have a bunch of babies on set like I wanted to and only one baby but the information is still worth knowing even if I can't look into their beautiful chubby cheeked faces while I talk if you're a music fan which I'm guessing most of you are you should definitely check out sound field a new show from PBS Digital Studios sound field breaks down our favorite songs and artists from all genres from Bach to Beyonce the show is hosted by two amazing musicians nari salt and Ellie Buckner who even come up with an original song in every episode check out sound field at the link in the description below Harwich knots this is just a reminder that you can become a member of our patreon page starting at $3 a month you can gain access to a patrons only feed with all types of cool behind-the-scenes footage as well as 24 hour early access to every new video and as some of our higher tiers you can also get other great benefits so check out the link down in the description and I'll see you soon [Music]