Persuasive Essay On Maternity Leave

My great grandmother, Margaret Christensen, was born in 1918. Her mother was required to stay strictly at home for ten days after she gave birth to Margaret. This was to allow her to recover and for complete concentration on her child. This was considered her maternity leave. Maternity leave is “a period of absence from work granted to a mother before and after the birth of her child” (Dictionary). She could ask for more, but those were the days granted for her recovery. In the United States, parents who need maternity leave are offered twelve weeks, much better than ten days, but these twelve weeks are not paid for just as they were not in 1918. In this area, America has not developed very quickly or at all in one hundred years. On a national level there is no program that states this leave is to be paid for. The system that America has now may work, but it is not helping America’s families or it’s economy. It is forcing parents to choose their jobs over families. In almost every other first world and developing country there is a system that pays

The main concern of paying parents for maternity is the business or company they are working for will lose money. During that twelve weeks of paying an employee that isn’t even present at work seems like it would hurt the company. “The costs of hiring a temp to cover the person while he/she is on leave or working part-time. A potential decrease in productivity due to the fact that other team members may need to cover for the person. The cost of covering full benefits for the employee while he/she is out or working part-time” (Dishman). From the list above it does seem as if the company would be losing a significant amount of money. When the employee is gone the business will lose some money, but overall as a company they are winning. Their company will earn more respect from their employees and in the long run they will be gaining