This Mother’s Day Forget About the Flowers, Get us Benefits!

This Sunday is the famously celebrated (especially by Hallmark and Macy’s) Mother’s Day. The day a year to appreciate the person who brought you to this world, and/or raised you —and even though we love the gesture, the massages, the flowers and chocolates, the truth is that mothers need much more than that.

Being a mother is probably the hardest work out there. It’s 24/7, no sick days or vacations. The stakes are really high and in this country it is not valued as it should. In the European Union, Canada, or in some Asian countries, where having kids is seen as something sacred (we are basically raising the next generation of citizens) moms have way more benefits. Some offer a generous paid leave, others, subsidized child care, and others offer flexible work arrangements.

The United States is one of the few developed countries that doesn’t have a national policy on paid parental leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act, enacted in 1993, guarantees new parents up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. The minimum required paid maternity leave in the U.S. is zero weeks. ZERO weeks. In California we are lucky that it’s a more progressive state and pays you the six first weeks, but that’s about it, and it’s really up to your employer to give you more or less flexibility. I’m lucky I have good ones, but many other women or freelancers don’t have that luck.

Scandinavian countries are champions when it comes to their parental leave culture, Norway leads the race with 59 weeks of maternity leave paid at an 80% pay rate or 49 weeks at full pay (and 10 weeks for the father). In other European Union countries both parents are entitled to at least four months leave each.

In April 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden proposed a $225 billion package of paid family and medical leave benefits that would allow workers to take up to 12 weeks paid leave to care for a new-born or family member. However that hasn’t gone into effect and we’re losing our cool. On this episode of Mami Got This, we featured different Latina moms demanding the President and all other policy makers to change that.