Family-friendly workplaces key to successful parenting

Dulles, VA: In the first couple of years after giving birth to her first daughter, Julie Shields experienced both intense joy and intense frustration. "Slowly it dawned on me that my husband and I couldn't have it all at the same time—two vibrant careers, a functional family existence, and the best situation for our daughter and ourselves." She began interviewing parents, marital counselors, childcare workers, negotiation and work-life experts, employers, and child development experts to find out how to create a true family balance. The result is HOW TO AVOID THE MOMMY TRAP: A Roadmap for Sharing Parenting and Making It Work,(Capital Books, September 1, 2002, $26.95, hardcover) just released by Capital Books, a guide for those who want to break out of traditional roles and find their own personalized approach to life after parenting.
Part of the problem, Shields says, is an American work system that is not family-friendly. "Among industrialized countries, the United States ranks second to last in terms of national maternity, paternity, and parental leave, and child care policies. The combination of federal inaction, old expectations, poor quality of available child care, and time demands at work give women a big shove into the Mommy Trap," she says. "We have a crisis on our hands that will certainly haunt us in the future if we do not address it now. In our current system, many American parents do not feel as if they have a wide range of choices. The system in this country needs an overhaul. Too often it prevents mothers and fathers from making their best family effort."
Shields points out that in the United States, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) represents the only national policy that gives new parents any kind of time to care for their children and still have a job when they return. FMLA grants twelve weeks of job-protected, unpaid parental leave for new mothers and fathers who work for employers with fifty or more employees, to be used in the year after a baby's birth. Employers can and do require employees to use all of their accumulated vacation and sick leave before taking FMLA. "This policy tends to get women back to work sooner rather than later, without allowing them to feel competent at home, bond for long with their babies, or hold out for the best child care arrangement. It also tends to force expectant mothers to work until the last minute and to keep both fathers and lower-income parents from taking any leave at all." Shields herself left her office to go out to lunch on the day her daughter was born and gave birth nine hours later.
In HOW TO AVOID THE MOMMY TRAP, Shields offers solutions that can help make American employers more family-friendly:
Affirmative Action To Get Men Involved A tax credit for part-time or stay-at-home parents of children ages three and younger, limited to those with upper-middle class incomes and below, would help those who can use it the most make time at home. Adding a tax credit and saving on child care expenses will help part-time incomes go further, facilitating more family time. And providing a double credit for men during the first ten years of the policy will give them much-needed societal approval to cut back at work rather than continuing to provide income no matter what the costs to their family life.
Longer and Paid Maternity Leave. We should push for paid and longer maternity leaves, emphasizing the needs of a changed workforce, and the costs employers must absorb when they lose trained employees who cannot meet all of their responsibilities at home and at work. "Forcing women to take sick and vacation leave for getting pregnant and having babies is wrong. Society benefits from and could not continue without women having babies. Society also benefits if parents do childrearing right and pays the costs is parents do childrearing badly."
Longer and Paid Paternity Leave. "We should push for ten days of paid paternity leave. Society benefits when fathers bond with their infants, participate in childrearing, and help their wives recover while temporarily disabled. The federal government should provide incentives to employers whose employees make use of paid paternity leave."
Longer and Paid Parental Leave. In addition to paid maternity leave, many European countries provide parental leave that enable parents to spend time with and care for young children without jeopardizing their careers - up to 15 months of paid time off. "We need to start educating the American public about the benefits of parental care for small children, and the realities of substitute care in this country," Shields says. "We can start by seeking unpaid parental leaves beyond the twelve weeks afforded FMLA. Providing unpaid parental leaves of up to a year costs less than paying the turnover costs of hiring and training new employees."
Career Breaks. Career breaks are also common in Europe and increasingly instituted here by progressive Fortune 100 companies such as IBM. Career breaks allow either parent to take two years off after the birth of a child, with some minimal training in keeping skills current, and then return to his or her job, at a similar level of pay and responsibility.
Prorated Part-Time Benefits. One of the largest stumbling blocks for couples who want to reduce their workforce participation is the accompanying loss of benefits—particularly health and life insurance. "A federal law mandating prorated benefits for part-time workers working twenty or more hours a week would make the choice of part time work more attractive for parents and others who have responsibilities or outside interests they want to pursue."
Tax Credit for Flexible Employers. "The government should provide tax incentives to employers when employees use family-friendly policies such as part-time work, flextime, work-at-home, parental leave, career breaks, and time-shifting, with extra credit when fathers make use of such policies." Non parents can also benefit from these policies, which will help change the focus in our workplace from "face-time" to production and results.
Breast Pumping Hour. In light of the vast benefits of breastfeeding, employers ought to make it easier for women to express milk at work. A policy allowing a breastfeeding hour for the first year of life would be relatively easy and not costly to implement. "In an ideal world, employer's could provide breast pumps in a nursing room, which could also contain a small refrigerator for the storage of expressed milk. We could require businesses to provide a nursing room by passing city and town ordinances mandating commercial developers to include them in their new buildings. Unions could also demand an accommodation for nursing. The benefits of breastfeeding include reduced parental absences to tend sick babies, a benefit to the employer, and greater intelligence and better health of both mother and child, a benefit to society."
Day Care Standards and On Site Daycare. Good substitute care is hard to find, regardless of price. "Parents need to have better information about what makes for good care, and to ask for quality services when they do not occur." Shields recommends the government accredit and regulate childcare providers, and offer tax incentives to employers to maintain on-site daycare and early learning centers. With on-site care, children don't have to go up to 12 hours without seeing a parent, and parents can better monitor the quality of care.
"Today, moms and dads have more life possibilities than ever before. We can create a world in which mothers and fathers find satisfaction inside and outside the home, and in each other. And a key part of creating that world, which is sorely lacking at the moment, are family-friendly working environments."
    Julie Shields received her bachelor's degree in Humanities from Johns Hopkins University. After graduating from Duke Law School, she litigated in the intellectual property field for a Los Angeles corporate law firm for a number of years. After spending three years at home on career break, she resumed the practice of trademark law at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). At the PTO she has advocated successfully for more flexible part-time work schedules. Julie is spearheading an effort to improve American parental leave options. She has written textbooks on copyright and trademark law, and articles and essays for Oxygen.com, Mothers First, and the Duke Law Magazine. Ms. Shields lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and their two daughters.
HOW TO AVOID THE MOMMY TRAP
A Roadmap for Sharing Parenting and Making It Work
By Julie Shields
September 1, 2002, ISBN 1-892123-88-6, $26.95, Hardcover




This article courtesy of http://www.amaternity.com/.
You may freely reprint this article on your website or in
your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author
name and URL remain intact.

Submit Your Article