Why does the United States not have mandated paid maternity

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Very strange to me that you're a corporate cheerleader instead of pro fair pay & benefits for labour services rendered.

I believe that individuals and businesses are perfectly capable on their own to set what value they are, 1. willing to sell things for, and 2. willing to buy things for. Somewhere in between is an actual value that allows both buyer and seller to win. This is called trade.

Individuals and businesses don't need help in setting prices for goods and services, nor do they need any help deciding how much any amount of given labor is to them. If that is what it's worth to an employer, then it is fair. Employees, likewise, don't need any help setting a value on the work they are capable of providing. Employees might say their labor is worth more. Employers might say that labor is worth less. Somewhere in between is the ACTUAL value that both parties can agree on. If pay at one company is not what a potential employee expects, he can seek work elsewhere. If an employer thinks he can find cheaper labor, he should go looking for it. If no employee is willing to work for less than a certain amount, then the employer has to decide how much his business is worth to him. Does he want to stay in business or not? And THEN he may find that the real value of employers is higher than he thought to begin with. That's because employers and employees exist in this thing called reality, and that reality allows people to set their own worth and negotiate an agreement on actual value.

The result is what both agree on is fair and works best in the interests of both. There's no need for bully unions to represent a collective and tell the employer how to run his business. There's no need for the government to interfere and set wages. An employer may freely CHOOSE to allow unionization as a cooperative effort to offset the responsibility of having to keep employees happy, but it is not the place of unions to make administrative decisions that affect company direction. Besides, HR departments and personnel can accomplish the same thing.

It's just so ridiculously simple. You don't like how a company treats employees? Don't work for them. You don't like an employee's attitude? Fire him. If you want good employees to keep coming back to work, pay them well and include paid parental leave.

As far as paid parental leave goes...another problem with it is that it's going to end up costing the company in lost productivity no matter how you play it. So you can make salaries and commissions more attractive by offering more of it but NOT allow for parental leave. This puts management of money squarely in the hands of the employee with complete control over how/when the employee requests leave along with maintaining an emergency fund. Or the company can offer a lower wage but offer paid parental leave. It's smarter and more effective for the employee to maintain control over his money and keep about 3 months to a year of expenses in a savings account or an investment. Then you can take off work any time you want and you don't even have to worry about how you're going to pay for everything. Why make the government and the taxpayers by extension responsible for something individuals are really supposed to do for themselves anyway? Wouldn't leaving what employers and employees together consider what is fair pay and benefits actually be more fair and beneficial?

No matter what anybody says, I believe "paid maternity leave" is something an enlightened society should do.

Economically, women have to work these days. When a woman works and has a kid, she has to get expensive childcare. Or she has to leave the kid with relatives or whatever. Working women frequently don't have enough time to be really nurturing to their kids.

Yes, I do believe "paid maternity leave" is the way to go.

We also have paid paternity leave here. My friend just had nearly 1 year of paid paternity leave. I'm not sure if both people are allowed to take leave or if only one of the two. His wife is a full time mother of 3, so doesn't work an outside job anyways.

I do wonder if part of the reason some Americans oppose maternity/paternity leave is because they're attitude is "Well, I never got to be home with my baby, so, F all these younger/other people! Why should they get what I didn't?? F maternity/paternity leave!"

Theory, theory and more theory. you're a lot like Karl Marx. A genius, no doubt, but everything you say is just theory. Nothing you said has been verified empirically.

Calling me ignorant doesnt change the fact that what you wrote is just as valid as communism: works great on paper, backfires historically and practically never works.

Not even theory. Just wordy propaganda. Marx wasn’t perfect, but his criticisms of capitalism were astute.

People have this rugged individualist survivalist mindset that’s completely divorced from reality in modern capitalism. They decry public services as “handouts” when they apply directly to individuals, but don’t even pay attention to all the collectivism that must go on behind the scenes to keep a capitalist economy functioning.

No, because the usual pattern in American society since the Depression has been “MY children will never have to experience what I went through. They’re going to have a better life than I did.” One generation goes bankrupt, bank takes the farm, families moved into subsidized housing, Daddy took a job with the TVA. They pushed their own kids off the farms and into colleges after which they qualified for professional jobs and moved to the suburbs. Their kids had a fairly easy life, but were heavily disciplined if their grades slipped. So their attitude (closer to my generation) was MY kids aren’t going to have parents who abuse them. So when a little talking to doesn’t get results from Johnny, they get him tested for ADHD, which at this point is a novel thing treated with Ritalin. Millennials aren’t any different with their own kids, it’s just more of the same. The difference is a lot of enabling combined with an utter lack of responsibility. Back in the 80’s, rich kids had it SOOOOO HAAAAARD because dad didn’t buy his baby girl the right color sports car. Nowadays kids are actually comparing anti-anxiety meds and complaining about changing doctors. And, of course, they’ll eventually say MY kids will NEVER have to go through what happened to me because I’ll make sure MY kids see the best doctors and get the right pills.

Same goes for paid maternity leave. First it’s about giving mothers special treatment...which, honestly, any kind of medical ordeal will be understood as requiring leave, such as major illness and surgery. No one is disputing that maternity leave is necessary. It’s a question of how long and who pays for it. So when you have politicos making mandated maternity leave a campaign plank, young adult mothers are going to think, “It’s illegal to fire pregnant mothers and women who’ve just had babies, insurance can’t refuse L&D claims, you can take up to a year, and your company HAS to hold your job for you? Heck yeah! I don’t want MY daughter to go through what I went through.” If the pattern holds, those daughters will begin to think that paid, state-subsidized, maybe even indefinite leave is an entitlement. And while that won’t be a problem for them, there will always be something else to get mad about.

If women get maternity leave through the state, isn’t it only fair that men get parental leave, too? So rather than, say, at worst 50% of the labor force out of work at any given time, it’s logically possible that you could have up to 100% of the labor force staying at home for a year and saying they believe it’s their God-given right to not work and still get paid, anyway.

That is harmful to the job market in the long run because if everyone is getting paid and nobody is working, that means the only employable people are older people who are already parents and/or over childbearing age. You can say there are laws against age discrimination and that companies have to have a quota of young people at a certain ages, but that won’t stop businesses from having hiring freezes. Then there’s no law anyone can pass to force compliance when a company literally CANNOT hire another worker.

The day will eventually come when governments are stretched too thin to enforce mandates. When government becomes too unreliable to provide programs and services and enforce manifold laws that cannot work in the long-term, individuals and companies will rely on themselves to offer attractive incentives to keep the best workers.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

No maternity/paternity, no healthcare, $7.25 min wage in 2021, record cash in corporate accounts & stock market valuations.. yep, unchecked capitalism determines a fair equilibrium point for all!

I heard some faux news talking head say that some European countries were “experimenting,” with giving families with children $x/month to see if it helps families and the economy.. ummm, hello?? Canada is right next door and we’ve had this since 1944.

Americans are just convinced that their tax dollars can only pay for corporate subsidies and endless war vs the betterment of citizens lives for some reason.

Yeah, the level of brainwashing is pretty epic.

I've heard it said that the U.S. is an "undeveloping nation." I tend to agree, especially since so many of my countrymen are convinced that our taxes should never be invested in the welfare of our people.

Is there any hope you can develop again?

Oh, I absolutely do believe that taxes should be invested in the welfare of a nation's people. My problem is what often passes for welfare often isn't. I've told this same story in detail a few times before when we applied for a program to help with paying for housing when we were both out of work. The short version: After about two months having our paperwork rejected on technicalities and unreasonable deadlines, we were told not to come back because we're white and married.

The only sympathy I ever got was when I took our kids to the health department for vaccinations. The way that processed worked was you made an appointment, showed up early, made sure you brought coloring books, toys, and extra diapers/formula for the little one, and waited 3 hours for a nurse to come out and say they were out of time and please reschedule for tomorrow...which you couldn't do because the next day was always already booked up. So you'd reschedule, rinse and repeat, and if you were LUCKY you'd get all your shots for your kids. So on this particular day when I succeeded in getting my kids vaxxed, I went to pay for the shots. The lady at the desk told me how much it would cost, which was significantly more than I'd planned for. I told her I needed to go back out to the van for a second to get enough cash to make up the difference. She asked, "Wait...you pay taxes, don't you?" I said, "Of course, I do. Why?" She said, "Don't worry about it, you've already paid for it." I was confused because I really did have the money. But she was insistent and I chose to be grateful.

It's frustrating because it's against the law to discriminate based on race, yet what happens in the real world actually is racist. I don't want to stray off topic... It's just that the welfare system itself is inequitable and enables the same abuses that it purports to remedy. Mandated parental leave has the effect of rewarding people for not working. You can make the case all you want that you're trying to protect workers, but if government is going to protect workers, then who is going to protect employers? I don't think protecting poor people of one race or another is mutually exclusive with protecting another group, and I don't think protecting employers AND employees is mutually exclusive, either. But as long as someone is being excluded as the result of regulation, employers will always fall victim to greedy and envious people. The main thing we need to be concerned with when it comes to protecting people is protecting ALL people, and that manifests any time a crime is committed or a nation is invaded. As long as programs are used to protect perpetual victim classes, you're always going to see high crime, racism, sexual discrimination, and violence. Why? Because these so-called victims have government protection from reprisal from actual victims. Justice that is separate but equal is not justice. And mandated parental leave has the effect of forcing the will of perpetual victims on employers and diminishing their power to act.

Seriously, if you knew your employer NEVER WANTED to offer parental leave and only allows it because of a government mandate and not because of genuine interest and concern for your well-being and the well-being of your children/family, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO WORK FOR THEM? Without the mandate, businesses can independently, willingly demonstrate how much they care for parents and how much they want to keep them in the workplace. That only makes sense. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Force people to do what they don't want and you get resentment. Freedom to act results in a genuine investment, and employees will compete more for those they know value them the most. Take away the value of a job and employees have no reason to apply.

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CORPORATIONS!! !

He who holds the gold makes the rules.. employers don't need special protections from the employees they hold power over. When they don't have to do something due to no regulations, employers will all just screw workers as hard as they can.. and people will work for them because they need to eat & there's no better option elsewhere.

Hence the existence of both government regulations and labour unions.

It's still weird af that you're defending terrible employer practices in the name of the free market economy as if you yourself have some equal moonshot at becoming a multi-Millionaire/Billionaire based on those lax rules. Brainwashing is uber strong in this one. Get the poor people to argue against other poor people not being poor in hopes that maybe one day they might not be so poor as they come up through the ranks and join the oppressor class themselves.. only that almost never happens - the thing that happens is some suckers believe it could happen so they help perpetuate the game played against their fellow plebs.

The USA is The Mississippi or Alabama of the industrialized country's. So ass backwards. No maternity leave, no universal healthcare, no mandated sick/vacation time. However, there are more pressing matters. Such as bathroom bills, voter ID laws, and "religious freedom laws".