I was reading a brief article in National Geographic (August 2007) about the statistics across the world of the amount of guaranteed maternal leave time per country. The U.S. has the absolute least in the world - only 12 weeks of unpaid leave - while places like Russia, Cuba, and Eastern Europe have at least 52 weeks and full wages. At least 66 countries allow dads time off as well, to spend with their newborns. Only the U.S., Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Australia have no guaranteed paid leave at all. Every other country in the world, under-developed and otherwise, guarantees at least partial wages and more time off.
This article just made me think about how important it is for developing countries to also understand the negative aspects of living in a developed country. We are forced to be such work-a-holics here in the U.S., and I read somewhere that we have the least amount of time off compared to most other countries. I think it was something like, Europeans get a month or two off every year, and of course Americans only get 1-2 weeks. So be careful what you wish for!
This ties into what we were talking about in class about how/if cultural values can be maintained and incorporated into development, rather than just being Westernized by development. I would hope that these developing countries would incorporate their own values on work, time off, motherhood, etc. rather than joining the U.S. in what I consider to be an absurd amount of value placed on overworking. And yes, the more you work, the more material goods you can have, but at what cost to family, friends, relationships, free time, playtime...?
In some ways this article makes me think we don't value our children as much as others. But perhaps it is just that in our society, it is expected that one will put their children in daycare - rather than take time off of work and not make money, we would rather spend money to have someone else care for our child....I am not sure this makes sense to me. I tend to commend Russia and Cuba, despite what other conditions may exist there, they value child-parent relations enough to pay full wages and allow a year off of work.
There are some interesting responses to this article online:
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11778
http://blog.mises.org/archives/006900.asp
Both these online responses criticize the article, and National Geographic in general, and commend the economic freedom of the U.S. and that the government stays out of the maternal leave issue and lets employers/ees decide between each other how they want to do it.
Any thoughts?
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The findings in this study are very interesting to me because they shed light on the kind of culture that America has become. Such short maternity leaves would indeed cause the newborn to be seperated from the family very early. Without the parents around at such a young age, the baby loses much of the familial connection it would normally have grown with its parents. This makes me wonder if this could be one of the many reasons that Americans are more individualistic than most other communities around the world. America has the highest divorce rate of any nation, a large percentage of students attending out of state universities, and a sort of "look our for number one" attitude that seems to pervade many aspects of our culture.
Another good point question to ask could be if it is not possible that the short maternity leaves and lack of fundamental, early growth with the family has more than just an immediate effect. Maybe, it is the first step in a cyclical pattern of separation from family that continues to reinforce itself as generations continue. If true, is this continued growth away from traditional family structures an irreversible process? If so, it draws parallels between itself and development as a whole (which is accused of also only working in one direction, “progress”).
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