Posted on 05/14/2018 3:22:37 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Many new moms this Mother’s Day won’t get what they most want: time to recover from childbirth and care for their newborns without great financial sacrifice.
The United States is essentially the only developed country in the world that does not guarantee mothers paid leave.
Most conservatives already support the principle of paid leave. According to the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of Republicans think mothers should receive some paid time off.
It is time for conservatives to back a sensible policy for America’s mothers.
The principles behind paid family leave are deeply consistent with conservatism, and our movement is already showing that we are best equipped to move passable legislation forward. Done right, there is something there for all of us to like.
For fiscal conservatives, for example, there is the Rutgers study that found that women who return to work after taking paid leave are 39 percent less likely to go on public assistance and 40 percent less likely to need food stamps the following year. Or the Paychex survey of small and midsize businesses that found nearly half support the notion of paid family leave. Or the endless studies that suggest a positive correlation between female participation in the labor force and overall national economic growth.
For social conservatives, paid family leave is deeply consistent with the pro-family, pro-life ethic we champion. At its core, supporting and celebrating the irreplaceable role of mothers and their crucial work in bringing up the next generation in an increasingly gender-neutral world is inherently conservative. Much of conservatism’s maternal reverence is informed by religion; perhaps no faith elevates motherhood more than Roman Catholicism with its exaltation of Mary, the mother of Christ.
Unsurprisingly, Pope Francis, who once said that Mary is more important than the Apostles, bishops, deacons and priests, has a thing or two to say about maternity leave for women. He told business executives in 2015 that women have both “the right to work and the right to motherhood.” “The challenge,” he said, “is to protect their right to a job that is given full recognition while at the same time safeguarding their vocation to motherhood and their presence in the family.”
Pope Francis builds on the thinking of Pope Saint John Paul II, who wrote in his 1981 encyclical “Laborem Exercens” that, “The true advancement of women requires that labor should be structured in such a way that women do not have to pay for their advancement by abandoning what is specific to them and at the expense of the family, in which women as mothers have an irreplaceable role.”
But conservatives also understand that the true advancement of women usually does not come in the form of top-down, budget-busting, government mandates. Numerous studies raise legitimate concerns about whether the European models of long, mandated paid leave lead to more discrimination against women, never mind whether they are sustainable in the long term.
Thankfully, a new generation of conservatives is putting forward sensible paid leave proposals that have the potential to help lower- and middle-class moms without punishing their employers. Few have talked about the two-year trial provision that Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) slipped into last year’s tax bill. Companies receive a tax credit if they offer workers some paid leave. It’s the first time any federal paid family leave policy has been voted into law, and Republicans got it done.
Ivanka Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are shopping around a proposal that would allow new mothers to draw early from their Social Security, delaying their ability to access the benefit upon retirement by a few weeks. A variation of the plan is championed by the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative group. It has its critics on the right, but the plan’s ethos is conservative in that it gives workers more control over what is rightly theirs to begin with.
And while the left will criticize any policy conservatives put forward as too little, the reality is that America has no appetite for a heavy-handed mandate. Government-mandated paid leave simply won’t pass. Or as Rubio tweeted, “My goal isn’t the ‘perfect’ plan, it’s 60 votes for law better than status quo.”
Can the party that gave women the right to vote change the status quo and lead the way forward on paid leave? Can the conservative movement show that it is possible to help women flourish both as mothers and as workers without upending the esprit de corps of American free-market economics?
Conservatives are already embracing the challenge.
If you DON'T want to have a kid, YOU pay for the abortion. Not my tax dollars and not via the insurance me, as an employer, provides for you.
WHAT has gotten into Carrie Lukas? This doesn't sound like her at all; though she IS a Mother now, so that may have changed her point of view...
Maternity leave is an issue between an employer and their employee, to be negotiated between them. There’s no need for government to be involved.
What about dads? This is clearly sexist. After all, we all know there is no real difference between men and women. /s
Well, if you want more of something, subsidize it. If we want more middle class women to have kids then this is one way to achieve it. Demographically, one could view this as a subsidy to get the sort of people who SHOULD reproduce to do so. Arguably, the long term good is greater than the short term harm.
Not that I really have an opinion either way, but if we want kids to come from families with good work ethics and two parents, etc this might be a way to help it along. Even though as a childless male I have no gain from any such policy...
The result of this ill-considered policy will be fewer women of child bearing years getting into jobs with small businesses.
“The result of this ill-considered policy will be fewer women of child bearing years getting into jobs with small businesses.”
there’s no doubt about it ...
I’d rather have my tax dollars going to US mom’s staying home with kids than being given to every multinational bank, every corporate-welfare project Elon Musk can dream up, the F-35 moonpig, every Sunni camel jockey, every Ukrainian nazi, every belligerent Turk, Pakistani, and North Korean we can find with their hand out. Then there’s the money we let DOD spend on helping trannies chop off their penises. Then there is the mind bending waste of the NSA Utah project, the CIA, and the vaunted FBI F-troop that never met a sedition plot they didn’t like. Wars in deep dark Africa, bringing in millions of moslems and putting em on the dole.
We waste a virtual Niagra falls of 100 dollar bills on everything under the sun....
But do something to promote moms staying home with kids, and suddenly everyone starts waving the sword of purity.
Hell, it may not be popular, but I’m for it. As for us men, no dice for you to sit home spooning mashed squash like a mommy. He needs to get his azz to the jobsite and put in a full day...like in the 1950s. The oil fields are calling.
Hell, mothers day was just yesterday, ya slugs.
Other than that, I got no strong opinion on the topic.
I'm unanimous on that. Absolutely ridiculous to get even involved with that.
That’s right. If an employer wants to offer this benefit and can afford it, great! But the government shouldn’t force them to offer it.
Ftahers should be accorded the same amount of parental leave that mothers get, starting at the birth of each baby.
Parental leave is about the right to parent.
Fathers deserve an equal right to parent, just like mothers get an equal right to pursue careers.
Hey man: I’m sure you’ve changed more than one diaper on any given day. How about a dozen EVERYDAY?
And when Daddy dies and leaves Momma with kids to raise what then?
“The purpose of the woman is to breed and keep house for the patriarch and raise their children. That’s it.”
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Alrighty then./s
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I've never had to change a diaper so much as a single time in my life...and I plan on keeping it that way!
Never heard of the idiot
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