Exploratory Essay Topic Proposal

Maternity Leave in the United States is too short for new mothers to adequately bond with their baby and to fully recover from giving birth.  American women have one of the shortest maternity leaves in the world; it is on average eight weeks.  In other countries, such as Switzerland, women can take of up to two years paid, and then return to work with no penalties or demotions.  As a country that prides its self on getting things done quickly, America has made giving birth into a race for many women.  Women who have just given birth, parents who are adopting, recently widowed people with young children are commonly given two weeks in the US to return to work.  This time can be either paid or unpaid, which adds stress to the new mothers if they are depending on the paychecks.  The people affected are women who have just given birth, parents who are adopting, and men who have to raise a baby on their own.  It also affects employers because they are the ones who give their employees their time off.  A woman who has recently given birth will feel that she deserves more time off.  Women are put through emotional and physical distress at be put back into the work force after only the legally enforced amount of parental leave. One person who would oppose the idea of longer maternity leaves would be employers for two reasons.  The first being that it is very difficult for work to be completed if a company is short an employee.  The second reason companies support short maternity leaves if they do not want to be paying someone who is not there doing work.  The company is essentially paying more money for the same amount of work to be done because someone else has to be paid to do the new mother’s job.   I think that mothers should be given four to six months of paid maternity leave because these women are often not fully recovered when they are forced to return too soon, which results in them doing a poor job on their work.