maternity leave usa
we are potentially planning a move from europe to the US , we are just recently married and are planning children in our future (not for maybe 3-4 years) i am however pretty horrified to read about the extremely short maternity leave offered in companies and overall in the US. 12 weeks compared to 6 months to a year over here is making me think twice about the move. is there options in some tech comapies to take 12 weeks plus additional unpaid? i cpuldnt imagine going bavk to work with a tiny baby at home so soon!
Depending on which state you are moving to and the company you work for you will have different options. There are different leave types and different levels of pay and job protection.
FMLA provides 12 weeks unpaid. That is the maximum. Depending on your company they might provide paternity or maternity leave that is 1 week to 6 months that can be used on top of that It really depends on the company. I say stay in Europe if it's important to you such as France
Most tech companies do 6 to 12 months paid.
Lol only Netflix does 12 months , most do 3 months
Most do 6*. Don't know any that do just 3? Even frugal amazon does more than 3.
USA is a workshop and not as chilled as Europe but the money is better of course. Think over what is important to you.
Most companies provide zero for paternity leave.
Bank of America does 4 months paid for men and women
Laughing. If you get lucky with a good company, sure you can get a bearable amount of time off for maternity. But I’d say more than 75% of companies are going to offer you a couple paid weeks plus a whole lotta unpaid time. And don’t forget about the hospital cost of having a child here. If you have the ability to stay in Europe until after you have children, do that. You’ll be so much better off.
US has bad maternity care compared even to some so called third world countries, all that matters is money. A huge number of docs just go by the book and don't apply common sense. Most of them will scare you into thinking you need a C section. If you want to have a peaceful life and don't want your kids to go through security checks in school, Europe is better. Of course Europe does have refugee crisis so it's screwed in a different way there. US is all money and loneliness, no love and happiness.
You have to get very lucky to land at a company that offers any kind of meaningful *paid* parental leave. FMLA guarantees your job held for you for up to 12 weeks but FMLA is *unpaid*. It's up to the individual employer if they offer paid parental leave or not. Yes, the big tech companies tend to be more generous with paid leave but they are the exception. Most companies *might* offer 1 month paid. Even the venerable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (the bellwether of progressive women's rights and all the money in the world) just rolled back their maternity leave from 12 months paid to 6 months paid. Most companies won't even match that.
Stay in Europe . People don’t even take full maternity leave here there is untold stigma , like everyone will comment oh you were out for xx months
ThAts so terrible, sorry to hear