As I sit here writing, Owen is exactly 1.5 months old, which means that I am exactly half way through my maternity leave. At some points it seems like it will never end - like when I'm home alone with him and he won't stop screaming and it will be hours before I get any relief, while at other points it not surprisingly feels like it has flown by. I've definitely lost my mental acuity for things like what day it is, when I last fed or changed the baby, when I last took a shower, etc, and getting back to a more normal routine will be a welcome change if for no other reason than to have some more variety in my daily life. On the other hand, no parent worth their salt really enjoys being away from their child when they are growing and developing so rapidly. I'll be going back to work just as all the exciting firsts are about to happen - crawling, talking, eating solid foods. Owen has always been a very strong little boy, moving his head on his own since day 1, but head control (while an important building block to greater movements) is not the wow factor milestone. I have been here for his first non-bowel related smile and some of the first giggles, but I can't help but feel I'll be missing out.
For a country that likes to proclaim how pro-family our values are, as a society we do very little to support new families. Paid maternity leave is a rarity and paternity leave is even rarer. While well-child preventative care visits are generally paid for by insurance, the cost of that insurance is often overwhelming for young families. No shock that the majority of people on state assistance medical insurance are children as the young parents are not financially stable enough to self insure. Upon reflection of the costs of having a child, it seems as if we have decided to put as many economic pressures as possible on young people to dissuade them from reproducing. This tactic fails of course, but it does set up children for failure unless they come from well-to-do families, which in turn allows us to further denigrate the poor for making poor choices and furthering the poverty cycle.
As is the case in so many areas of societal life, we make rules and institutions that support our ideal circumstances at the expense of the reality. Take funding for the ever controversial Planned Parenthood. Many conservatives don't want it to receive any federal funding because they offer abortion services under the belief that funding it encourages it. I can understand that sentiment, but then you need to direct those funds to social services to 1) provide care to those women who are being denied safe abortions, 2) provide care for those children that are either abandoned into the system or taken away from unfit mothers, and 3) educated on pregnancy prevention in more ways than just abstinence. Sadly, none of these things happen because the argument is made that funding for women's health care in general will ultimately allow private funds to be diverted to cover the abortions. This only results in worse health care for women out of a fear that a perfectly legal procedure may be done. The same thing goes for mental health - it is as if funding it encourages instead of prevents. How does all of this relate back to paid maternity/paternity leave? Well, if we were to have federally mandated leave to allow bonding as a family, that would mean that all families are of equal value to society, instead of just those families with wealth and power. It is too egalitarian to treat each family unit as an asset; we instead see them as economic drains on society unless they are corporate elites.
