This isn’t, sadly, surprising news – but a study came out last week showing that the U.S. has some of the weakest workplace policies in the world for families. According to an AP article on the Harvard/McGill University study, we lag “far behind virtually all wealthy countries with regard to family-oriented workplace policies such as maternity leave, paid sick days and support for breast-feeding… Notably, it says the U.S. is one of only five countries out of 173 in the survey that does not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave; the others are Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.” The article goes on to say that the Labor Department is considering scaling back the Family and Medical Leave Act, which gives workers up to a total of 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year. How depressing!

Q and I are lucky in that we live in California – the only state that provides paid family leave. (And our employers have been great to us, also.) But what about people who live elsewhere? Or who can’t afford to take unpaid time off to be with their child? Even before I became a mom, I recognized the importance of family-friendly workplaces – and I can’t believe the U.S. isn’t stepping up and enacting new, better policies!

(Okay, I’m done with my political rant now.) 

-M

Dan and Jenny were our first official babysitters last night! Michelle and I got a chance to go to a movie and grab some food without worrying about Zoe for a few hours (of course, Michelle made me call them like 100 times, but we won’t count that). As it turned out, she slept almost the whole time. Right after we left, she gave Dan a good crying fit, but 20 minutes later she was fast asleep and didn’t wake up until we got back 2 and half hours later! So, a big thanks from us parents. Hopefully, she’ll be this good for future babysitting events!

Jon Q