I don’t mean to kick up a shitstorm, but I’d like to get this out of my system. Maternity leave is unfair! At least it’s blatantly unfair to those of us who don’t decide to have children. I remember having an interesting debate on IHM’s blog regarding this some time ago. This also applies to men who get paternity leave.
The way I see it, having a child is a choice a parent makes. A difficult choice true, and one that entails a lot of suffering, but a personal choice nonetheless. Their choices are their own, and I assume they’re not doing it as a service to society, but for their own selfish reasons. So my point is that if parents can make a personal choice and get time off for it, non parents should also be given time off for their other personal choices.
So if I feel the need to go and do some soul searching for a few months, I should be able to get leave in the same way that maternity and paternity leave is granted. Both are personal choices and I feel both must be treated on an equal footing.
Some say that maternity leave is the same as accident leave. It’s not. An accident is just that- an accident. Becoming a parent is a choice. And granting someone leave for their choice and not doing the same for another is unfair treatment in my eyes.
Another view is that women bear all the discomfort of pregnancy and childbirth and so they should be granted leave. But again, isn’t that a choice to bear that discomfort for their personal reasons? Moreover, suppose I want to go explore the jungles, that too is a dangerous undertaking and might even kill me. Will I get leave (paid or unpaid) for a few months to pursue my dream? No.
Some say that women in India don’t really have a choice to become pregnant. While this is certainly true in many cases, I feel that a woman working for a company that’s sophisticated enough to give maternity leave isn’t as helpless as another woman in the villages. Moreover, being forced to have a child is a bad reason to have one. If domestic violence is an issue, then the problem is not maternity leave but something else entirely! Also, maternity leave is common not just in India, but also in developed countries the world where women aren’t coerced into getting pregnant.
Finally, there are those who say that having a child is a service to society. I have to say “Gimme a break!” No woman chooses to get pregnant saying “I must do this for the good of mankind” and in India I don’t think extinction of the race is anywhere around the corner.
So what’s the deal here? Why is maternity and paternity leave much more prevalent than say “Soul searching” leave, or just “Personal leave” for a few months in India?
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Both Baghwad and Clueless are truly clueless.
Clueless is trying to argue that what is good for women and babies is good for everybody. It is nonsensense. Anyone can make this argument to justify anything. I note that women who resort to this argument are the same women who bump off millions of unborn children down at the abortion clinic as part oftheir so-called “right to choose”. Clearly, the propagation of the future generations is not their real concern. To argue that because a woman has a right to have a baby that therefore she has the right to do so on the company’s time is like arguing that because a man has the right to sleep that therefore he has the right to do so on the company’s time. What Clueless really wants is corporate socialism for breeding cows. The fact that someone has to do the extra work does not occur to her.
When this feminist nonsense began in the late 1960’s, women swore up and down that they would never make babies on the company’s time. They swore that motherhood was obsolete in an overcrowded world and that they would never do any such thing. The “Population Bomb” and the “Parent Trap” were the best sellers of the day.They lied. No male politician with his nose up the vagina of 54% of the voters would dare remind women that they ever told those lies. Clueless argues that the workplace is biased in favor of male needs. In fact, what she wants is a workplace biased in favor of female needs so that women and babies can always come first – on somebody else’s time.
Poor Baghwad has obviously bought the feminist nonsense that women have been “historically oppressed”. Just to show him how wrong he is I shall describe “sex discrimination” as it existed in my country, the United States, before the rise of male feminism.In 1950’s America women work to support men. A man’s place is in the home, obviously. Women give everything to men in divorce court (the house, the car, all the furniture and all the money). Women pay massive child support and alimony to automatic custosy fathers. Women suffer hundreds of thousands of deaths fighting and dying for their country while combat exempt male suffraggetes demand, and receive, the vote. Women go down with the Titanic so that biologically more valuable men and children can climb on the life boats. Women work themselves into heart attacks so that men can outlive women by seven years and inherit 80% of all the personal wealth of the country paid for by men’s efforts. Men have it made.
In 1963 a revolutionary book appears on the market. It is called “The Male Mystique” by Betty Schmuckstein. Schmuckstein poses as an ordinary housewife but is in reality a life long Jewish Communist and devotee of Joseph Stalin. She has been a member of the Congress of American Women, the chief Communist legal front for females in America. She was also a newspaper editor for the United Electrical Radio Workers and Machinists Union, one of the largest Communist Unions of the 1940’s and 1950’s. All these provable facts about Schmuckstein’s Communist background are deliberately ommitted by the Jewish editors of her book. Schmuckstein argues that the average male house husband is living in a camouflaged Auschwitz concentration camp. Men should “liberate” themselves from this concentration camp and pursue careers in addition to men and babies first. Women tell men to shove it. All the real discrimination is in favor of men. Women are not going to men all the high paying jobs too. Men have too much already. Men scream that they are being paid less than women. Women retort that it is women who must support the opposite sex, not men. It is women who must give away everything their money paid for in men take all divorce court and women who must pay child support and alimony to automatic custody fathers. Women deserve higher pay because they have greater expenses.
Now, just to further educate you on the lie called feminism, I shall point out the obvious. The entire movement was created and promoted from inception in the 1960’s by Jews. Recall the names: Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Ellerbee, Gloria Allred, Ruth Ginsberg, Stephanie Coontz, Adrienne Rich, Nadine Stroesser, the list is endless. The media which are the cheerleaders for feminism, are equally Jewish controlled. Now let me list for you some vey interesting facts on how women are treated in Israel. These facts are almost never mentioned by the media. Israel granted women legal equality in a 1953 law. Yet they made one glaring exception: family law.In Israel, a woman cannot get a divorce without her husbans’s consent. She cannot make her own decision on abortion. She must apply for permission to a state board. If her husband dies while she is childless, she must offer herself in marriage to the brother of the husband, who will release her from the obligation provided she relinquishes the community property to him. If she has a child out of wedlock in consequence of adultery, her child is a mamzerim or bastard and can never marry, except to another bastard. If her husband disappears in war, she cannot remarry without absolute proof of his death, no matter how many years he has been missing.Women in Israel are forced to ride in the back of the bus as they ride through Orthodox neighborhoods. There also exists a vast sex slave trade in Israel in which thousands of women are kidnapped each year to the brothels in Tel Aviv.These facts are thorougly documented in very small copiy editions of books like “Between The Banner and the Flag” by Yael Yisrael and “Women In Israel” by Lesley Hazelton. But they are nowhere mentioned on the Jewish controlled TV set or in mainsream books for the gullible goyim published by mainstream Jewish publisher. Even Baghwad and Clueless should be able to figure out why.
Women of a certain character have always been prominent in politics. Communism in Germany after the First World War was led by two vitriolic little Jewesses, Clara Zetkin and Ruth Fisher. Hilda Benjamin was the “hanging judge”, the Minister of Justice of Communist East Germany. Helena Volinska, another Jewess, was one of the chief prosecutors of Communist Poland. Communist Romania was run by a hideous Jewess hyaena, Ana Pauker. Her real head of foreign affairs was another Jewess, lka Wasserman. Still another high level Jewess Communist in Romania was Ghisella Vass. Today, two Bolshevik Jewesses named Ginsburg and Kaganaovitch sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. They are not noted for demanding that Palestinian females be promoted over Orthodox Jew boys in Israel.
Figure it out. I already have. I’ve given you the facts. Can you correctly analyze them?
Now that I have explained the fallacies of feminism, let me explain the origin of certain concepts.
When the industrial revolution began, employers wanted to employ women and reduce their labor costs. Women objected. They demanded that employers pay their men folk a wage sufficient to support a wife and family so that women could stay home and be with the children. This was the origin of the concept of “family wage” and it was set up at the insistence of women themselves. Now, the idea that women should be driven out of the home and given “equal opportunity” was devised by the Marxists. Whether one reads Marx and Engels on “The Origin of the Family” or Madame Kollontai or Clara Zetkins interview with Lenin, it was the policy of all Communist states from the beginning to destroy the one income patriarchal family. Thus, immediately upon the establishment of Communism in both Russia and China, the Communist state immediately began efforts to move women into the labor force with men.Maternity leave was a Communist idea to prevent women from having to choose between motherhood and career. Under no circumstances did the Communists wish to preserve female economic independence upon men because they regarded that as an essential element of the capitalist order they wished to destroy. Rather than the traditional family, they wanted a barracks existence where both male and female worked and the children were raised in state communes (read: day care center).
This system has now been achieved, ironically enough, by the very capitalist system Marx wanted to destroy. Employers now pay two people less money than what they had to pay one man under the old “family wage” system. Before anyone says that family wage was “sex discrimination”, analyze the issue this way. Single men were paid less money than married men even though they were doing the same work. Why? Because the married man had expenses that the single man did not, i.e. supporting a family. Women have traditionally been paid less money than men for the same reason.
Driving both men and women into the labor market is merely a way to destroy the patriarchal family in preparation for the coming “Jew World Order”. And, as I demonstrated, feminism was unleashed upon the world by ths same Jews who concocted the “gas chamber” hoax and the lie of the murdered six million.
See, I have it all figured out, don’t I?
Baghwad:
I was rereading your comments on my positions and laughing at how mentally incompetent you are. Most women want a man who is more successful than they are as a husband. But, at the same time, they want to make as much money, or more, than men in the work place. That the one objective precludes the other occurs neither to them, or you.
You babble constantly about the need to distinguish between “facts” and “opinions”. Yet when I posted the documented facts on who was behind feminism and how women were treated in Israel, you had nothing to say. You really should invite the British back to rule your country. The whites did a better job of it than racially inferior Hindus will ever do.
Bhagwad, I think the reason companies have made maternity leave a given, was mentioned by Clueless though you didn’t find it entirely convincing. At the end of the day, people need to have children for the human race to go on. This may not seem relevant to India where there is overpopulation but in many countries, especially those with generous maternity leave, there is a very low birth rate. Hong Kong is one of them, one of the lowest birth rates in the world and an alarmingly aging demographic. Who is going to care for these old people when the ratio becomes 1 young person to every 4 elderly people? The burden on the state would be enormous. We are already in a situation in Hong Kong where there are old people (well 50+) looking after older people in old age homes. So if countries want a balanced demographic, people need to have children even as healthcare improves the life expectancy. And so maternity and increasingly paternity leave becomes the socially responsible thing to do. It helps that the majority do want to have children – this is something of a primal human urge (again to ensure the continuity of the species) though all may not share it.
If there was no maternity leave, two things might happen:
1. In societies like India, almost all women would leave the workforce. The fact is that after giving birth, a woman needs at least a month to recover and longer if she wants to establish breastfeeding. Breastfeeding really suffers once you go back to work and breastfeeding has been proven to be healthier for the child. By breastfeeding, we are ensuring a generation of kids with less allergies, healthier immune systems etc. which is better for society. Most societies have recognised that it is in the interest of society to have women in the workplace.
2. In societies like Hong Kong and Scandanavia, most women would decide they’d rather just not have children. These societies can either see the demographic imbalance that we’re experiencing in Hong Kong or take urgent measures to encourage women to have children. Thus, you have Sweden where there is one year maternity leave and one year paternity leave paid.
Yes, having a child is on one level a deeply selfish act. On the other, though, it is also an unselfish act because you are spending time, energy, your own money on ensuring the continuity of the species. Sure, parents do get rewards from raising children – they would have to otherwise nobody would do it – but so does society.
In reply to The Bride
I agree with everything you say. And I’m not saying that women shouldn’t get time off after having children at at all.
What I’m saying is that everyone should get a substantial time off for their personal pursuits and not just mothers.
In the order of society’s priorities, though, it seems that there is broad agreement that the continuation of the human race and the need to encourage people to have children for that purpose trumps other considerations like indulging personal pursuits. (Countries could consider restricting maternity/paternity benefits to two children though, especially places like India, though Sweden or Hong Kong or Japan would love people to have three and four).
In Hong Kong, because of our aging demographic, companies are going to have to put in place measures to allow people to take time off to look after sick/old parents. So this might be the next thing.
Enlightened companies, however, are moving towards flexible working hours, sabbaticals etc. for everyone because they recognise the benefits of work-life balance. In my husband’s company, for example, everyone gets to pick a day in the week to work from home, not just people with kids though I think the initiative was started for people with young kids. That said, maternity/paternity leave (and I strongly believe in paternity leave) may continue to be extra because it is not just a personal pursuit – it is providing for a need of the larger society. This sounds abstract but if you live in a place like Hong Kong you see the real consequences of people not having kids and then you know why society needs to avoid that situation. Companies may also prioritise granting long leave to employees that take time off to work on some socially-responsible project, which is deemed as contributing to society. For example, my husband’s company has a sabbatical programme where employees can take a year (or maybe less) to do something related to climate change. They are expected to come back and act as climate change embassadors after that year (in addition to their jobs).
In reply to The Bride
I still don’t agree that we need to encourage children in India – people will have kids regardless of anything here :) . In any case, if something is so fundamentally good then it should be addressed by the government and not individual companies – just like China took upon itself the role of curbing its population.
In fact, the need is to discourage children in India as of now. Perhaps we can start encouraging them a century later!
Bhagwad, companies don’t function in the air, they recognise that they are part of society and it is in their own interest that society remains stable or they wouldn’t bother. Companies also value women in the workplace; the fact is that in societies like India where there is over-population, women will be pulled out of the workplace to have children if there was no maternity leave, thereby depriving companies of having talented women in the workplace and also creating a society where women are universally financially dependent on men which is really not desirable.
It does not take a century for a population to drop, once the tide turns it can be very rapid. So a society shouldn’t be pursuing a strategy that is not really sustainable. By the way, one of the ways for the tide to turn is to educate women and make them financially independent. They will on their own refuse to have more than a couple of children. By that logic, keeping women in the workplace benefits the population-control advocates too.
The point about majority is an important one too. A company is not obliged to provide benefits that are applicable to all. But they will go for a policy that they feel benefits most, and if it benefits society too, then all the more reason. For example, my company offers dental insurance to all. Some may never use it. My husband’s company has a bar for employees – some may be teetotallers.
In reply to The Bride
Bride, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not against maternity leave. I’m against classifying it as maternity leave. I’m all for potential mothers being able to take the time off for properly raising their children. So there’s no fear that women will be pulled out of their jobs because of this insufficiency.
All I’m asking for is that others get time off for their choices too. In India, we already have plenty of incentive to have children – religion of course is a big one that isn’t going away any time soon. The family concept in India is powerful and there’s no need to incentivise having children.
In fact, the government is aggressively pushing for single child families in India to counter the tendency of people to have more than two children. We certainly don’t need another policy to encourage giving birth!
But like I said, I’m not suggesting that women either have children or quit the workplace. Not at all. Rather I’m suggesting that other people who choose not to have kids get time off for their pursuits too.
Your point about the majority is well taken though. I do feel however, that leave is something which should be standardized…
Ok so if one accepts that since India doesn’t need to encourage people to have children – my thoughts on the misguidedness of government’s population control initiatives left aside – and that everyone should have long leave, how does it work?
Maternity leave is event-based… so you have kid, you are entitled to the leave. Generally, people will avail of it once or twice in an entire career.
How would the long leave work? You are entitled to it every couple of years? Or once in your lifetime in the company? That concept doesn’t fit in with maternity leave which is event based.
In reply to The Bride
I think personal leave should be given once every five years or so to everyone. Those choosing to use it for motherhood are welcome to do so. Those using it for other reasons are allowed as well.
I’m sure we can come up with something that suits everyone…
Hmmm. Could work if it was every two years. Most people would not want a five year gap between children, leading them to quitting the workplace after the first child, which I’d hope companies would not want. Unlike a lot of other interests, pregnancy is not something that can be scheduled so exactly either.
Also what about people that don’t take the leave. Can they encash? I actually don’t see it as as simple for HR to organise as you are suggesting.
PS: Thanks for patiently having this discussion. The reason I am going on so much is that it has made me think, not simply seeking to convince you here.
In reply to The Bride
I’m sure maternity leave has its limits too – something like once every so and so years…A lot of companies in the US force people to take vacations now and then. I think that might a good policy to enforce.
I enjoy discussing this too without getting emotional. It’s stuff like this that makes having a blog worthwhile :)