Posted on 05/14/2018 3:22:37 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Many new moms this Mother’s Day won’t get what they most want: time to recover from childbirth and care for their newborns without great financial sacrifice.
The United States is essentially the only developed country in the world that does not guarantee mothers paid leave.
Most conservatives already support the principle of paid leave. According to the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of Republicans think mothers should receive some paid time off.
It is time for conservatives to back a sensible policy for America’s mothers.
The principles behind paid family leave are deeply consistent with conservatism, and our movement is already showing that we are best equipped to move passable legislation forward. Done right, there is something there for all of us to like.
For fiscal conservatives, for example, there is the Rutgers study that found that women who return to work after taking paid leave are 39 percent less likely to go on public assistance and 40 percent less likely to need food stamps the following year. Or the Paychex survey of small and midsize businesses that found nearly half support the notion of paid family leave. Or the endless studies that suggest a positive correlation between female participation in the labor force and overall national economic growth.
For social conservatives, paid family leave is deeply consistent with the pro-family, pro-life ethic we champion. At its core, supporting and celebrating the irreplaceable role of mothers and their crucial work in bringing up the next generation in an increasingly gender-neutral world is inherently conservative. Much of conservatism’s maternal reverence is informed by religion; perhaps no faith elevates motherhood more than Roman Catholicism with its exaltation of Mary, the mother of Christ.
Unsurprisingly, Pope Francis, who once said that Mary is more important than the Apostles, bishops, deacons and priests, has a thing or two to say about maternity leave for women. He told business executives in 2015 that women have both “the right to work and the right to motherhood.” “The challenge,” he said, “is to protect their right to a job that is given full recognition while at the same time safeguarding their vocation to motherhood and their presence in the family.”
Pope Francis builds on the thinking of Pope Saint John Paul II, who wrote in his 1981 encyclical “Laborem Exercens” that, “The true advancement of women requires that labor should be structured in such a way that women do not have to pay for their advancement by abandoning what is specific to them and at the expense of the family, in which women as mothers have an irreplaceable role.”
But conservatives also understand that the true advancement of women usually does not come in the form of top-down, budget-busting, government mandates. Numerous studies raise legitimate concerns about whether the European models of long, mandated paid leave lead to more discrimination against women, never mind whether they are sustainable in the long term.
Thankfully, a new generation of conservatives is putting forward sensible paid leave proposals that have the potential to help lower- and middle-class moms without punishing their employers. Few have talked about the two-year trial provision that Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) slipped into last year’s tax bill. Companies receive a tax credit if they offer workers some paid leave. It’s the first time any federal paid family leave policy has been voted into law, and Republicans got it done.
Ivanka Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are shopping around a proposal that would allow new mothers to draw early from their Social Security, delaying their ability to access the benefit upon retirement by a few weeks. A variation of the plan is championed by the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative group. It has its critics on the right, but the plan’s ethos is conservative in that it gives workers more control over what is rightly theirs to begin with.
And while the left will criticize any policy conservatives put forward as too little, the reality is that America has no appetite for a heavy-handed mandate. Government-mandated paid leave simply won’t pass. Or as Rubio tweeted, “My goal isn’t the ‘perfect’ plan, it’s 60 votes for law better than status quo.”
Can the party that gave women the right to vote change the status quo and lead the way forward on paid leave? Can the conservative movement show that it is possible to help women flourish both as mothers and as workers without upending the esprit de corps of American free-market economics?
Conservatives are already embracing the challenge.
I can see that aspect, too. (Rewarding conservatives for reproducing.)
HOWEVER, Government meddling in ANYTHING does NOT produce the results they THINK they will.
It never does. Ever. Never. Ever. EVER. :)
One of my BILs has been a SAHD since the day his first son was born. (They have two boys, now.)
His wife makes major cash consolidating/streamlining/fixing businesses and saving them from bankruptcy; she’s VERY good at what she does, I can name many businesses and community hospitals that she has saved.
She has the money-making skills, he has the parenting skills, though, of course, her boys ADORE her. (We all do!)
Their kids are super-smart, play sports and instruments, can drive farm machinery; heck, they excel at anything they do! They are polite, well-mannered and a JOY to be around.
It works.
They should not have paid leave.
“According to the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of Republicans”
Baloney. Its ridiculous how often Pew claims to find most Republicans always agreeing with Democrats.
As Asian who live in us for more than 28 years now I kind of have second thought on American ideals or this pursuit of happiness, personal liberty and freedom stuff. These things guide young people especially young white ladies away from family. Young ones always think of themselves first, they never have family and nation in their mind. Historically whites are majority in us they are good people and did very good building country. They are dwindling fast to minority. somewhere I read one woman should give birth to 3 baby in order for her racial group to sustain in a long run. From what I observe, whites are below the minimum birth rate. God knows what they are thinking
That is wonderful.
Discriminates against employees that don’t take time off. How about no special privileges for any self-inflicted conditions.
Then she will collect on his sizable life insurance policy. Also she will get SS Death Benfits.
Thanks to the non-conservatives, jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka.
We will now have huge tax increases, so that millions of wealthy, overly paid public employees can take a year off to have a nanny take care of their kids.
What about non-parents? Should they be paid less because of conditions outside of their job duties? Pay should be based on value to the employer, not family status, race, gender, or any other non-performance measure.
Anyone advocating paid family leave is not a conservative.
But far worse is the massive child care credit that Ivanka got into the last tax bill. That is not only destructive to families, but a huge cost to taxpayers.
How about ZERO time off, and NO paid time off for maternity leave?
The total amount of time that I could take off from when my three sons were born was exactly four days total. Two of those days were unpaid call in, two were vacation days. My wife was not working at the time. Due to my work schedule, I pretty much missed out on my two youngest growing up.
If I could do it over, I would have told my employer to FOAD, and that the paycheck just wasn’t worth it.
If you want slaves, go down to the border and pick some up. At least you can have the feds subsidize their kids.
And people just can’t wrap their heads around why America is slowly devolving into mexico.
“What about dads?”
Mothers are heroes for birthing babies. Dads work their butts off to provide food, shelter and education for 18 years. That’s not heroic.
You say that like our rulers would treat them as mutually exclusive.
When I had my son, I received disability. I had a c-section and doctor’s orders for 8 weeks. I did not receive 100% pay, of course. I took an extra week with no pay. I had a difficult pregnancy and did have to take a few weeks off prior. Again, medically necessary. I guess I was lucky to be partially paid and alive.
Total BS.
Of course we all knew that unpaid family leave would ultimately lead to paid family leave. Just like we knew civil unions would lead to gay marriage, affirmative action would lead to quotas, feminism would lead to anti-masculinity, welfare state would lead to socialism, etc.
We are making the same mistakes that Western Europe is making, only at a much faster rate.
Military now has paternal leave .....
Snort. They subsidize with one hand, paid family leave, then penalize, high prop taxes that make a larger home impossible, with the other.
Government should just get the heck off our backs and keeps its mitts out of our pockets.
And I hate to break it to supporters, but the last stats I saw showed that the people who could use this the most, folks with lower incomes, are the least able/inclined to use it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.