The US treats pregnancy and parental leave as a problem that needs to be solved by the parent,not as a natural fragment of life that deserves legal protectionA friend recently asked me how long I took parental leave when my wife and I adopted our now four-year-old son. She’d been on a fact-finding mission on behalf of a friend who’s adopting a baby and haggling with her employer who was only giving her a week off after the baby is born.“That’s exceptionally horrible, good?” my friend asked me. Yes, and it is absolutely egregious,but then again, so are our parental leave laws in this country. I took nearly three months off to bond with my son in 2011, or I didn’t lose my job or my health benefits. By American standards,I was lucky.
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Source: theguardian.com