Why isn't guaranteed maternity leave a "pro-life" imperative?

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I’m not sure if its tax deductible. I don’t use daycare(unless its a relative watching them for free of course). Its the only way making what I make is worth it to my family’s income and it still allows me a lot of time to do what I love-raise my children.
 
It’s very simple: The cost of living is geared toward what the average family makes. When two income families became the norm, the cost of living went up to reflect that reality. Nobody got ahead. The average family income doubles? The cost of living doubles right along with it.

This is why you can’t go back: The toothpaste is out of the cost of living tube.
 
Pup7 said:
How is the government raising children again if the parents work? What does THAT have to do with mandated maternity leave? I don’t get a year off if I have a kiddo. I get 12 weeks. Mandated maternity leave doesn’t mean a year off.

And yeah, they do work for that over there - and it IS a privilege of working, extended to those who choose to work. It’s not an entitlement. It’s a benefit. There’s a difference.

It’s so odd how so many Americans seem to equate working and being a parent with being poor. The lieutenant colonels and colonels I know who are women and moms (some with little kids!) and earn a base pay of five figures a month would be surprised they’re thought of as poor and working class.
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I gave a clear example of one of the things that happen to families when maternity leave is paid and women are expected to work.

If you look at the countries with the “best” maternity policies they have outright made homeschooling illegal or basically ban it. The correlation is strong and it’s really scary. It’s the one that matters most to me, but there’s others.

Homeschooling is a parental right that has been stripped in many countries in favor of state education starting at the age of one.
 
anon10271182 said:
Amen. Time to remember what a noble profession “homemaker” truly is.
Ask any man who has tackled the job.
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True, I also think that mothers out of the work force tend to be greater anchors of non commercialised culture. This would include morals, sociability, lifestyle competence and wisdom. Aspects that we are now dearly missing in the western world.

Of course people have different views and that is fine, but we do risk a cultural apartheid sometime in the future and a further loss of important cultural benefits.
 
Pup7 said:
How is the government raising children again if the parents work?
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Because when taxes are so high (because it becomes the government’s job to pay for maternity leave (or family leave) and all medical care etc) that both parents have to work to make ends meet, then there is no longer a choice for a parent to stay home. Therefore, their children will need to be put into daycare/nursery. The government is then the ones who regulate the daycares and has a say in what those children are exposed to. Children with two mommies or two daddies. Trans parents. Supposedly Trans kids. The children, from very, very young ages are forced to deal with issues that are not in their ability to fully comprehend and before their consciences are fully formed. Society shouldn’t be formed in such a way, that primarily the mother, but either parent, is forced to work (due to unbearably high taxes) and left without a choice to raise their own children. JP II said as much.
Pup7 said:
Mandated maternity leave doesn’t mean a year off.
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There was a person from one of the countries, who in your opinion are doing it right, who said that moms get a year off to be with their kids.
Pup7 said:
And yeah, they do work for that over there - and it IS a privilege of working, extended to those who choose to work. It’s not an entitlement. It’s a benefit.
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Right. Which it becomes a burden to single income families who would like to have a parent home when that single income is heavily taxed. Not to mention, may even mean the choice to raise their own kids becomes a non-option. If it’s a work benefit, then let the employers who can pay for that benefit, offer it. It’s not something the gov’t (meaning all working citizens) should pay for.
Pup7 said:
It’s so odd how so many Americans seem to equate working and being a parent with being poor. The lieutenant colonels and colonels I know who are women and moms (some with little kids!) and earn a base pay of five figures a month would be surprised they’re thought of as poor and working class.
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It’s not odd at all. The wealthy will always have more options. But something as basic as having the choice to raise your own children shouldn’t only be a privilege of the wealthy.
 
If I had to guess, I’d wager these are also countries with below replacement fertility rates, no?
 
Elizabeth3 said:
But something as basic as having the choice to raise your own children shouldn’t only be a privilege of the wealthy.
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The Land of the Free. Where the government takes care of your children for eight hours a day because daddy doesn’t make enough for mommy to stay home.

Then you get off work and still have all the cooking, cleaning and laundry to do. I don’t see the magic of progress, but everyone thinks I’m crazy so it must be there.
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
Nope. The US is at 1.87, which is more or less middle of the pack for a first world country.
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I think you may have read into my comment the reverse of what I intended.

I meant to imply that these countries’ supposedly great maternity leave policies don’t seem to be encouraging their people to have any more children.

Which also leads one to wonder how they’re going to be paying for their welfare states when there aren’t as many young workers paying taxes, but that’s another discussion.
 
It seems to have no affect. I think that in those countries raising children is actually more cost prohibitive as Americans can buy bigger cars and homes where in many of the European countries small houses and small cars as well as mass transit make big families impossible. It might be costly to buy a minivan but it’s possible. I was able to take six young children to a children’s museum by myself in a city 45 minuets away…and other field trips she the children’s mothers could get a break. Six kids 2-11. Two with severe ADHD and one with mild autism. No way on Gods green earth I could of done that with public transportation.
 
To answer the topic of this thread “Why isn’t guaranteed maternity leave a “pro-life” imperative?”

I’m not so sure that that would be that much of an incentive to a woman who is contemplating abortion due to financial hardship. A woman under this kind of pressure and fear of being unable to provide because she’s already struggling to make ends meet, isn’t going to be moved much by having some pay for the first twelve weeks of her baby’s life because the question then becomes "what happens after that? " There’s a lot of life beyond those first few weeks to pay for, especially if she has to find and pay for childcare when she returns to work.
 
ChaosGamma said:
The Land of the Free. Where the government takes care of your children for eight hours a day because daddy doesn’t make enough for mommy to stay home.
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Huh?

We don’t have public day care here. It’s not subsidized here. People pay out of pocket in the US. It’s not covered by the government in the US.
 
Elizabeth3 said:
There was a person from one of the countries, who in your opinion are doing it right, who said that moms get a year off to be with their kids.
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Yes, the UK does. So does much of Europe. But that’s not essential, is it, really? That’s a massive privilege. The Feds get 12 weeks, and the DOD gets 12 weeks fully paid.
Elizabeth3 said:
Which it becomes a burden to single income families who would like to have a parent home when that single income is heavily taxed.
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It’s taxed no more than my dual income household is - about 1/3.
Elizabeth3 said:
It’s not odd at all. The wealthy will always have more options. But something as basic as having the choice to raise your own children shouldn’t only be a privilege of the wealthy.
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Again - working Americans aren’t wealthy. I’m not talking about wealthy people. I’m talking about WORKING people - the middle class. Not the wealthy. Good grief.

As I said, the rest of the world has managed to come up with something. It’s disgraceful that it’s such a matter of conjecture here.
 
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Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
If you look at the countries with the “best” maternity policies they have outright made homeschooling illegal or basically ban it. The correlation is strong and it’s really scary. It’s the one that matters most to me, but there’s others.
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Which doesn’t mean if you mandated maternity leave here that that is what would happen. Good grief. What makes people think everything has to be exactly the way it is somewhere else?

Not too sure how we’ve jumped from “why can’t we mandate maternity leave” to “oh that means they’d take our homeschool rights away”. We’re not the UK or Europe in most respects as it is.
 
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