CURMUDGUCATION: Why Do Teachers Have Such Lousy Parental Leave?

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Do Teachers Have Such Lousy Parental Leave?

Why Do Teachers Have Such Lousy Parental Leave?

At Working Mother, Amy Sherman asks a really good question-- It's a Mom-Dominated Profession. So Why Are Teachers Getting the Shaft on Maternity Leave?

Of course, we're talking about US teachers, because we rank at the very bottom of the barrel for developed (or in some cases, even semi-developed) countries when it comes to maternity leave. For all our noise about babies and motherhood and how parenting a small child is one of the most important jobs in the world, as a society, we don't do jack to support people who are actually parenting babies. We could make, as a country, the same deal that we make, for instance, with soldiers-- when duty calls, the employers just have to suck it up and the country makes sure to support them.

Just got home from Stock Photo Hospital

Instead, we leave it to individual businesses to decide how much support they will give parents of newborns (above and beyond the meager FMLA requirement). Some businesses do pretty well. For all their faults, Microsoft has a pretty good set of policies for parental leave. Many of the tech companies do, even though they are notoriously bad at hiring women.

So what does it say that one of the most female professions has uniformly lousy parental leave policies?

My wife and I were fortunate. The twins were born on the day after the last student day of my wife's year (a few days after my last day). As was the case with the woman in Sherman's story, my wife could have had paid leave-- by using up her sick days. This is a ridiculous bind to put new parents in-- what are the odds that a parent of small children will need a few sick days? A few years ago, my CONTINUE READING:CURMUDGUCATION: Why Do Teachers Have Such Lousy Parental Leave?