Paid Sick Days, Anyone? (Or, More from the Annals of Only in America)

The National Partnership for Women and Families (US) asks, "Did you know that 57 million working people don't have a single paid sick day? And nearly 100 million workers don't have paid sick days to care for a sick child."

While the Family and Medical Leave Act guarantees up to three months unpaid leave, this doesn't help the vast majority of US workers who live paycheck to paycheck. Just taking off a few unpaid days can spell economic disaster.

This situation, nonexistent in the more highly developed European social welfare states, falls particularly hard on parents who have disabilities/health conditions, and/or who have disabled/chronically ill children. Among other ills it inflicts...it contributes to the pressures upon pregnant women who have disabilities and/or unborn kids with disabilities to have abortions or *else.*

Paid sick days shouldn't be an unattainable luxury. They should be available and accessible to all, like any other human right. In the US? Please join the national movement for paid sick days!!

Child Abuse: What Can A Person Do?

Many people feel powerless to recognize child abuse when it is going on. If they do recognize it, they are confused or paralyzed about responding. And many people wonder what to do with abusive impulses or tendencies they may have towards their own children, especially when they are feeling stressed out or disempowered.

Prevent Child Abuse America offers very helpful pages on What You Can Do.

I don't believe the organization takes a position on abortion. But its current e-newsletter offers tips for expectant parents on prenatal care, nutrition, and positive planning for labor and delivery. The message is clear: healthy parent-child relationships begin when your child is still unborn.

Promoting such relationships before and after birth is not simply the responsibility of individual parents. It is a collective responsibility. We all need to do whatever we can--in our personal lives and at the level of social policy-- to create the conditions necessary for every child to live and thrive in safety and respect, and for every parent to feel that s/he has the power to commit nonviolence rather than violence, at every step of the way.

Starting when the child is in the womb, but never stopping there.