Here in Ireland we recently celebrated the news that from next year, fathers will also be able to enjoy some paid parental leave.
In Scandinavia, families (mums and dads can share parental leave between themselves) get up to a year’s fully paid leave to bond with their babies. In the US, however, mums are having to return to work mere weeks after having had a baby. Which, to New York mum Amber Scorah, ended up costing her infant son his life.
In July of this year Scorah returned to work – having just taken three months maternity leave following the birth of her first child, Karl. Having dropped her baby into his first day of day-care only two hours previous, when Scorah returned to the downtown Manhattan daycare facility to feed her baby, she found him unconscious, with the center’s daycare owner “performing CPR on him, incorrectly.”
An hour and a half later the baby boy was pronounced dead. To this day, nobody really knows why. What Scorah does know, however, is that she, due to the limitations of her maternity leave, felt forced to return to work and leave her child before she was ready to do so.
“Why, why does a parent in this country have to sacrifice her job, her ability to provide her child with proper health care — or for many worse off than me, enough food to eat — to buy just a few more months to nurture a child past the point of vulnerability?” Scorah recently wrote in a New York Times essay that pushes for a national paid parental leave policy.
While recounting the horrific scene, Scorah also stresses her article is not about day-care safety. Nor is it intended to lash out at her company. Her three month long leave is by US standards considered generous. But the bereaved mother also said her human resources department would not allow her to extend her time off, even without pay, without losing her job — and with it her family’s health insurance.
“A mother should never have no choice but to leave her infant with a stranger at 3 months old if that decision doesn’t feel right to her. Or at 6 weeks old. Or 3 weeks old. I would have stayed home with Karl longer, but there just didn’t seem to be a way,” she wrote.
American culture is to blame, Scorah argues, comparing it to that of many countries here in Europa, where new mums enjoys much longer leave, largely paid as well.
“I wasn’t just up against the end of my parental leave. I was up against an entire culture that places very little value on caring for infants and small children,” she said, providing links to research and articles that suggest extended parental leave reduces infant death and helps women stay active in the workforce.
Scorah and her partner Lee Towndow recently launched the website, ForKarl, to help encourage people to voice their support for paid family leave by contacting congressional lawmakers and presidential candidates.
“Yes, it’s possible that even in a different system, Karl still might not have lived a day longer, but had he had been with me, where I wanted him, I wouldn’t be sitting here, living with the nearly incapacitating anguish of a question that has no answer,” she wrote.
We are heartbroken and horrified by this story, and hopefully this campaign will highlight the need for better and longer parental leave policies in the US.
How much of a maternity leave did YOU get? Were you able to stay at home for as long as you wanted, or did you for financial reasons feel forced to return to work before you were ready? Do you think Ireland’s maternity leave is long enough for mum and baby? Join the conversation with us on Twitter at @Herfamilydotie
