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The Issue Of Paid Parental Leave

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INTRODUCTION

Is America falling behind the rest of the world in terms of the services it provides? As a proud citizen of this great nation I, unfortunately, have to say “yes.” Our once outstanding country has been falling behind in a number of areas including technology, education, economics, and yes, even in family care! America is now one of only three industrialized countries that hasn’t set up a nationwide policy for paid parental leave. With this knowledge I desired to know more, particularly if we as a nation are not doing much to rectify the situation. Then, to learn if any states were doing something about this issue which effects so many people in the workforce. I wanted to see exactly how far behind, compared to the rest world, we are in the issue of paid parental leave. The Pew Research Center conducted a study of government supported leave in 38 OECD countries, and found that the US had the lowest figures with zero weeks of paid leave. Though we did fare better when it came to the number of weeks provided for protected leave with 12 weeks. We were still far worse than most other OECD countries (see Figure 1 at right). Knowing that we were rated worse I wanted to know what people are saying that we can and should be doing to change this situation?

BACKGROUND

The first recorded policy involving working pregnant women was in 1877 in Switzerland. It stated that a women could not work for at least six weeks after giving birth. Then in 1878 Germany issued a

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