Maternity Leave - Did you know?

Give birth to a baby in France and you can count on at least 16 weeks of paid leave to cuddle and bond. Have a child in Norway and you get 42 weeks at full pay. Sweden promises 390 days at 80 percent of your salary. So how much paid leave does Uncle Sam guarantee America's moms? Try zero, zip, zilch.

That's right, the United States may be the world's richest nation, but we're also one of only 5 out of 174 that don't mandate any paid maternity leave. Three others are poor countries (Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Lesotho); the fourth, Australia, at least guarantees a full year of unpaid leave, plus a small lump-sum payment to all new mothers. We can't even match that: The U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) merely requires employers to offer 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave, and the rule applies only to companies with 50 or more workers.

And what does it say when we have the VP candidate of the United States who has a baby and goes back to work three days later? I appreciate her dedication to her job and her wish to not be seen in the dog-eat-dog world of politics as more of a liability than a man, but when the rest of us ground-level moms are having to fight for every minute we can of even unpaid leave, and to ensure our jobs are there when we get back, I'm not sure it gives us moms begging for some leave a proverbial leg to stand on. I would love to work part time and be able to stay at home more with my son. Unfortunately, that's just not possible if I want to get our rent, power, gas, grocery bill, and car payments paid. When Xavier was born, I took 9 weeks of leave. I got paid for 6 weeks of short-term disability at 60% of my pay. Though to be honest, I had to jump through so many hoops and fill out so much paperwork it almost wasn't worth it. I got a lump sum check two days before I went back to work.

So maybe I should have a child in Norway or Australia? Sad that the country of my birth is not at all interested in encouraging moms to be at home with their children at the levels of the rest of the developed world. I wonder where the priorities really are.