As part of our ongoing coverage of paid leave, we're rounding up the most important news from the week. Here's what you need to know about paid leave, working parents, and child care in the United States and abroad.
Millenials are more accepting of working mothers than earlier generations. Only 22 percent of high school seniors believe that young children suffer if their mother works, down from 34 percent in the 1990s and 59 percent in the 1970s, according to a new study by psychologists at University of California, San Diego, and San Diego State University.
Sweet. Nestle is the latest global corporation to overhaul its maternity leave policy. The company will start offering primary caretakers of a new child 12 weeks of paid leave, double what it used to offer. These benefits don't extend to fathers who aren’t primary caregivers, though: Paid paternity leave is only one week.
Good news, and bad, for military moms: The U.S. Navy tripled its paid maternity leave to 18 weeks, in a move that will benefit 5,000 women. The other military branches may follow, but female soldiers still have other problems: The U.S. Army is the only branch of the military that doesn't specify accomodations for soldiers who need to breastfeed, leaving new mothers at the mercy of officers who may maye resent or punish them for needing to pump more than once a day, or instruct them to pump in unsanitary bathrooms.
Time to move to India? Online retailer Flipkart is the latest Indian company to announce lavish new maternity policies—24 weeks paid leave—in an effort to retain female employees. Many women in India leave the workforce soon after having children, though the country’s mandated twelve weeks of paid maternity leave is generous by American standards.
Discrimination in the courtroom: A Florida lawyer’s request to take short breaks every few hours in trial to pump was denied by the sitting judge, who told the nursing mother, “Well, I’m not going to take a break just because you need to pump.”