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As Omicron spreads across the nation, some schools are going virtual and an unprecedented number of people are testing positive and needing to take time at home to recover or care for loved ones. As a mother to three young children, and a journalist who’s been documenting the impact of the pandemic on moms, this all feels like a grim Groundhog Day. It’s hard to accept that we are all being forced to do all of this, again, without a national paid family leave program. This surge will eventually pass, but the ongoing catastrophe of a lack of paid leave isn’t budging. That is why it’s time to start thinking and talking about paid leave differently.
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Throughout 2021, advocacy groups engaged in intense lobbying campaigns to rally support for the Biden Administration’s American Families Plan. The plan, among other things, would have put in place a national paid family and medical leave program. The amount of time included in potential legislation oscillated between 12, 4 and 0 weeks. This legislation is now stalled, but one strategy, employed by both organizations and individuals, to build support for the policy was to put a human face on the lived reality of this national disgrace of no paid family leave in our wealthy, industrialized nation.
Social media and news outlets were flooded with heartbreaking stories (many from Senator Joe Manchin’s West Virginia constituents) about the need for paid family leave – a mom who left her premature baby in the NICU because she couldn’t afford to miss work, a woman struggling to make ends meet while caring for a spouse with a fatal illness, a mom who returned to work barely able to walk after giving birth and a mom who might have died if not for paid leave. This strategy hasn’t worked. Even with 73% of the country supporting federal funding for paid family and medical leave, Congress hasn’t passed anything.
Read More: There Is No Way I Could Have Gone to an Office 4 Weeks After Having a…
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Source : time
