Pregnant people in New York would have 40 hours of paid leave to attend prenatal medical appointments under a new proposal by Gov. Kathy Hochul after the state’s legislative session kicked off this week.
The Democrat’s plan to expand the state’s paid family leave policy, which would need to be approved by the state Legislature, aims to expand access to high-quality prenatal care and prevent maternal and infant deaths in New York, an issue that especially affects low-income and minority communities.
The U.S. infant mortality rate, a measure of how many babies die before they reach their first birthday, is worse than other high-income countries, which experts have attributed to poverty, inadequate prenatal care and other possibilities. The U.S. rate rose 3% in 2022 — the largest increase in two decades, according to a 2023 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I’m older. I have kids. I saw the value of getting time off as a father and wished it could have been more. I actually had better time off benefits than my wife though which is pretty disgraceful. No it shouldn’t be on a business to fund families but it is on society as a whole to policy each other up. Like many, many other things, other countries have figured this out and America is WAY behind.
When my kids were born, I was able to take one week. It came out of my vacation time and I got very little time with my kid, due to the effing mother-in-law who apparently had priority over the Dad. I wish for everyone to meet their kids better than that, both in regards to time off and less toxic maternity
Okay. My point is that expecting and requiring every business to be able to pay employees who aren’t working for months at a time is asinine.