Legacy

Tonight, I welcomed my son into the world.

Yesterday evening, my wife and I headed to the hospital to induce her into labor.  Originally, we were supposed to go around 8 in the evening.  We set out early, because snow flurries and slick roads made the journey to the hospital interesting.  On the way, we got a call from the hospital:  Not yet.  It seems some other woman or women had gone into labor ahead of us.

So I turned the car around.  Back home.

We relaxed and watched a movie while waiting for the hospital to call and clear us to come on in and get my wife admitted.  The call comes.  So once more on to the slick roads.  Snow sticking a little bit more.

We get my wife admitted and settled in the room a little bit before midnight.  Monitors put on.  Medication applied.  We settle in the for the night.  I wake up frequently to the sounds of the nurses adjusting the "belts" on my wife.  I had forgotten sleepwear, so I slept in my long underwear.

The next morning, they put in the epidural drip and my wife's OB checks the progress.  Slow going.  During the day, nurses and OB notice the fetal heart rate drop with every contraction.  As afternoon approaches, we're given the decision to make:  Try and deliver naturally, or go with a C-section.  We opt for the latter.

Around 6 in the evening, they prep my wife for surgery and give me scrubs to put on.  My wife is wheeled into an OR and I'm directed to wait in an empty room.  The minutes I was there felt like hours.  My mind ran worrisome scenarios that only heightened my anxiety.  I noticed a book on Bible verses and pick it up.  I can't remember what I read, just that it comforted me in those nerve-wracking minutes.  When I entered the OR, I was calm.  The nurses found me a stool to sit on so I could keep my wife calm.  We settled on our child's middle name.  The first name had been decided for a couple of weeks.

My wife's OB calls me to stand up and look over the screen to see my child, and to tell my wife what I see.  And I see it, clear as day:  I excitedly tell me wife (though from behind my surgical mask, I'm not sure how much expression there was on my face):  "It's a boy!"

I remember tears of joy in my eyes at that moment.  It's an emotional experience that defies description.  One has to become a parent to know it.  I think to myself about the journey to this moment:  My own childhood, growing up in Florida, Arizona, and Germany.  My time in college.  Working in Minnesota.  Moving to Iowa.  Meeting my wife.  Our wedding day and honeymoon.  All those events that led me to this moment, cutting the umbilical cord and holding my son.  A son.  He'll carry the last name forward.  I sit on the stool by my wife and show her our son.  Tears well up in our eyes.

I accompany the nurse on the elevator down to the nursery, where my son gets tagged like merchandise in a department store.  He and I share a few private moments after he's been weighed and measured:  7 lbs 6 oz.  21 inches.  I tell him:

Hey there, little guy.  I'm your Daddy.  Your Mommy and I are very happy to finally meet you!  I can tell already that you're going to be a heartbreaker.  You're going to get your way quite often with Mommy.  I'll tell you right now that I'm going to be a little tougher on you.  But it's because it's my job.  I'm here to protect you.  To teach you what it is to be a man.  To be strong.  To stand up for yourself.  To teach you not to be fearless, but to conquer your fear.  To give you advice, even when you don't want to hear it.  To help you learn from my mistakes without having to make them yourself.  I'm here to also teach you compassion, generosity, and forgiveness.  But for now, I'll start with teaching you about love.  Love is simply this:  I will do anything, my son, to keep you safe, even give up my own life.  I hope it doesn't come to that, because I look forward to spending the rest of my life getting to know you.

So as I sit here in my wife's room with both her and my son asleep, ready to take him back to the nursery for the night, I glance out the window as another midnight approaches.  It's Sunday, so the traffic on the highway is sparse.  A thin layer of snow still covers everything.  And I still don't have any sleepwear.  But at this moment, I don't care.  I beam at my sleeping son and think how much different my life has become in the last 24 hours.  Yesterday, I was just a husband.  Today, I'm also a dad.

Paid Maternity Leave - Why?

I've seen a lot of friends linking to articles on social media recently, about how the U.S. is the only industrialized nation that doesn't require employers to offer paid maternity leave to employees.

My first reaction is...so what?

Yes, I'm sure that sounds heartless. But I guess I've never been one to demonstrate my largesse with someone else's money.

Lost in the emotion of this issue, I think, is the notion of getting something for nothing. Why should an employer be forced to pay for an employee who's not working, whatever the reason?

There are many companies that offer some form of paid maternity leave already. I'm guessing their accountants have determined that the company can mitigate the financial loss of paying an employee to be a mother or father instead of working, with the benefits being that it helps the employer recruit and retain good employees. It's a similar notion behind paying for an employee's health/dental insurance, vacation time, and short-term and long-term disability. These are all benefits tacked on top of an employee's salary to help attract and retain high-quality employees.

So why does the government need to bring the force of law and mandate employers offer a perk? Especially now, as the country slowly climbs out of a recession, as the country sees high unemployment (I'm talking about real unemployment, as opposed the number that just measures the people who haven't yet given up looking for a job).  Why does the government need to mandate that employees get paid for having a kid?  Was that in the terms of employment when the employee was hired?

It shouldn't surprise me that the Obama administration should want to invade and nullify the contract, implied or formal, between employer and employee, given the administration's prior disregard for contract law.  I'm just hoping for a little more justification on why businesses should be forced to pay for their employees to have kids, other than lots of statistics about how other industrialized nations offer this and a general railing about the unfairness of the situation.

Wait a minute, who ever said that life was fair?

The thing is, if the government can show studies about how offering this benefit increases employee productivity and retention for employers, if they can show the businesses that offering paid maternity leave has short-term and/or long-term benefits for the employer's bottom line... wouldn't the businesses already be offering paid maternity leave?  The thing is, those studies exist, and some businesses have calculated that they can offer the benefit while staying solvent (Rule #1 of running a business is making sure you stay in business!)

With the Affordable Care Act, the law saw employees laid off or reduced from full-time positions to part-time positions so employers could stay afloat.

Consider this scenario, should paid maternity leave be mandated:  A couple with both people working consider having a baby much sooner, considering now someone else is paying the bills while they are off work, instead of waiting to get a little more savings built up and/or a better paying job so that they can weather the financial hardships of caring for another human being for the better part of 18 years.

So what happens if the business that employs the mother or father folds under this hardship of being forced to pay for this couple, and every other couple who decides to have children earlier?  Now the employer's money is gone, and the new parents are left to fend for themselves before they were ready?  Do they go on welfare?  Does the parent still employed have to find a better-paying job (with the possibility of longer hours away from his or her child), or worse, take a second job?

What about single people?  Or childless couples?  They weren't the same financial drain on the business.  Why should they suffer the economic consequences or this law?

I remember seeing a story a few years ago, about France's unemployment problems, and how French politicians toyed with the idea of allowing an employer to dismiss employees in the first two years of their employment for whatever reason.  Labor laws being what they are in France, it's very difficult to fire an employee, so businesses are reluctant to hire someone who might not be a good fit for the company.  See the law of unintended consequences playing out here?

Anyway, the French politicians considered the legislation, and the population, with their ingrained sense of entitlement, damn near rioted.  They couldn't see past the short-term benefits of having a guaranteed job and see the long-term negative of how the policy served as a barrier to employment in the first place.

Paid maternity leave, forced on businesses by the government.  Just another example of the staggering economic illiteracy you get when the president hasn't demonstrated the business acumen to run so much as a lemonade stand.