Pregnant women and working parents are often excluded from training and other opportunities despite extensive workplace and anti-discrimination laws.
Karina Gould pauses to talk to reporters as she carries her three-month-old baby, Oliver Gerones, following a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in May 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Karina Gould’s parental leave is similar to that of many Canadians. Yet there are key differences, and they offer lessons on how parental leave could be redesigned to help more Canadian parents.
Too few Canadian fathers take parental leave. That’s because parental leave is framed as an employment policy rather than as care/work policy that promotes greater sharing of both paid and unpaid care work between parents.
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If more Canadian fathers are to harness the benefits of parental leave and remote work, we need to design employment and care policies in ways that recognize every family’s unique needs.
Darby Saxbe, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences e Magdalena Martínez García, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón IiSGM
Neuroscientists know that pregnant mothers’ brains change in ways that appear to help with caring for a baby. Now researchers have identified changes in new fathers’ brains, too.
Of the 10 most child-friendly states, only one has attempted to ban abortion.
Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Labor and the Coalition have announced their parental leave policies. If you are planning to have children, you should be familiar with what they’re offering.
The gift of sleep, time, self-care (“me time”) and a message of what a remarkable job she is doing may be what new mothers need most this Mother’s Day.
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Mothers with young children are consistently identified as having lower levels of physical activity and leisure opportunities, which place their physical and mental health at risk.
Current parental leave schemes reinforce old gender stereotypes and the pay gap between women and men. Overseas experience shows better targeted leave for new fathers helps everyone.
You might expect progressive policies in our universities, but a parental leave system of primary and secondary caregivers – the first 93% women, the second 96% men – perpetuates the gender gap.
Most U.S. parents who take time off work to tend to newborns currently use unpaid leave.
Whitney Curti/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Single mothers need more of a break than they get under current laws.
In this January 2019 photo, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser kisses her daughter after being sworn in. Will the coronavirus stop women’s careers from advancing or lead to societal changes that will make advancement easier?
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
Whatever the eventual impact on women’s candidacies post-pandemic, COVID-19 has the potential to shock the system, upending or reinforcing existing gender imbalances in political power.
It is harder for stay-at-home moms to return to work than for stay-at-home dads.
Liderina/Shutterstock.com
Professeure à l'Université TELUQ, Université du Québec, directrice de l'ARUC sur la gestion des âges et des temps sociaux et de la Chaire de recherche du Canada sur l'économie du savoir, Université TÉLUQ