{"id":183365,"date":"2014-12-15T21:15:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T02:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/12\/15\/we-are-the-texas-of-the-developed-world\/"},"modified":"2014-12-15T21:15:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T02:15:00","slug":"we-are-the-texas-of-the-developed-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/12\/15\/we-are-the-texas-of-the-developed-world\/","title":{"rendered":"We are the Texas of the Developed World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am paraphrasing the late Molly Ivins here, but the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/12\/14\/upshot\/us-employment-women-not-working.html\">the United States antediluvian approach to child care is driving women out of the workplace<\/a>, and so making us less competitive than other members of the developed world, should be an subject of national shame:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Since Kerry Devine, 32, and her friends began having children, she has noticed a stark difference between her female friends in Auburn, Wash., where she lives, and those in England and Cyprus, where she grew up. In the United States, they almost all stopped working outside the home, at least until their children were in school. Yet, she says, she can\u2019t think of a friend in Europe who left work after her children were born.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Devine quit her job after she had her first child, a girl, four years ago, because she thought 12 weeks of maternity leave was too short. \u201cI just didn\u2019t want to leave her in day care or pay for the expenses of it,\u201d she said. When she gave birth to twin boys this year, a return to work \u2014 she had been a property manager for apartment buildings \u2014 looked even less plausible.Since Kerry Devine, 32, and her friends began having children, she has noticed a stark difference between her female friends in Auburn, Wash., where she lives, and those in England and Cyprus, where she grew up. In the United States, they almost all stopped working outside the home, at least until their children were in school. Yet, she says, she can\u2019t think of a friend in Europe who left work after her children were born.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Devine quit her job after she had her first child, a girl, four years ago, because she thought 12 weeks of maternity leave was too short. \u201cI just didn\u2019t want to leave her in day care or pay for the expenses of it,\u201d she said. When she gave birth to twin boys this year, a return to work \u2014 she had been a property manager for apartment buildings \u2014 looked even less plausible.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Her story would have played out differently, she said, if she had been  living in her native England. Like many European countries, Britain  offers a year of maternity leave, much of it paid, and protections for  part-time workers, among other policies aimed at keeping women employed.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One would think that the supporting family values would actually involve supporting people who actually have a family, but the &#8220;family values&#8221; crowd seems to think that all they need to do is to tell women what to do with their ovaries, and hate te ghey, and it is <i>Mission Accomplished<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>F%$# that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am paraphrasing the late Molly Ivins here, but the fact that the United States antediluvian approach to child care is driving women out of the workplace, and so making us less competitive than other members of the developed world, should be an subject of national shame: Since Kerry Devine, 32, and her friends began &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[975,1051,985,1086],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-hypocrisy","category-regulation","category-social-safety-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}