Moving to Canada

[bluekitsune]

As seen over at Mothers in Medicine:

One year and three months into a two-year residency, I give birth to my daughter. I am eligible for one year of maternity leave, and have every intention of staying home with my sweet, big-eyed Saskia for all fifty-two weeks.*

*I am Canadian

Yeah, I'm moving to Canada. Totally.

Comments

[blakdove]

I want this SO BADLY. I knew it would be hard to leave Gnarly to return to work, but I didn't know it would be this hard on all three of us -- and I'm even able to come home during the day!

[blakdove]

Oh, in Russia, they tried to cut maternity leave DOWN to 18months --that didn't fly, so it's back to 3 years.

[bluekitsune]

I'm not even in that position yet and I'm already beyond conflicted. :/

[glishara]

When I was just starting my 3rd trimester of pregnancy with Wesley (or thereabouts -- I know I was showing pretty clearly by then), I had to go on a business trip to Sweden for 2 weeks. I was pretty crabby about it, and when I got there I found that one of the women on the team in Sweden was also pregnant, and only a couple of weeks shy of her due date. She mentioned at one point that she was going to be sad to miss the deployment, and I was kind of baffled by that: "I thought the deployment was in 6 months?" That's how I found out that they legally get 16 months of paid leave per child, to be divided between the parents. The minority parent has to take at least two months of that, though, to encourage paternal involvement. She and her husband were splitting it almost evenly, if I remember correctly: they were both taking at least half a year

[glishara]

Oh! And my company wasn't even legally obligated to give me that full 12 weeks, because they didn't have enough employees AT MY LOCAL SITE. Too many were officially stationed in other countries or states.

[bluekitsune]

I just don't get it. I've seen residency programs where your 6-week maternity leave is made up of 4 weeks of vacation for that year plus two from the following year. So you only get 2 weeks vacation the next year. It's insane. No wonder one of the residents I enjoyed working with ended up sobbing in the ER every day after coming off of her maternity leave.

[glishara]

That's just insane. I don't understand how we can be SO FAR behind the rest of the world when it comes to maternity leave. I was amusing/irritating myself today by looking at the Wikipedia page on paid parental leave and trying to see if I could find countries with worse policies than the US. North Korea was one: it didn't offer any paid or unpaid leave under any circumstances that I could see. But every other country I searched for had SOME paid leave guaranteed: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Mexico, Rwanda, Cuba...

It was kind of horrifying to compare that with what we have, where workers in a lot of places get 2 weeks medical leave, then burn their 5 days of vacation, then have to be back to work with a 21-day-old baby at home or risk losing their jobs.

[misterbeans]

*sigh*

[bluekitsune]

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't terrified. *hugs*

[ancientwhisper]

Yeah, what everyone else said. Meh.