…should you still get a maternity leave? Or the equivalent time off with the same benefits as your gestating or adopting colleagues?
A survey reported on by Harry Wallop at the Telegraph says yes. The survey:
found that 74 per cent of women would be in favour of being allowed to take a six-month break, or even longer, as mothers are allowed to do when they give birth. More than two-thirds of those in favour were mothers themselves.
And thanks, Jezebel, for the link.
Dating Jesus 
I have no idea how I feel about that.
I totally want bereavement leave even though no one in my family currently died!
That was my first reaction, but I’ve heard from unmarried friends who talk about how cool it would be to have a shower for themselves and get all new stuff. I don’t think the same would work for childfree friends who want a baby shower, though.
Wanting the leave makes it sound like people are just getting extra vacation or something. I say if they want that 6 wks they get EVERYTHING that comes along with it. Give them one of those robot babies that screams all night. How about 6 wks of bleeding? Night sweats, hormonal fluctuations, breast pain, etc etc etc
Or like-minded women who’ve just given birth can hand their new babies off to them.
I was always glad for any time off, although I never thought about un-maternity leave.
What I DID want was a getting-set-up-in-my-own-place shower. Everybody else got good stuff (from older friends and family members who were better off at that point) when they got married, but I didn’t get married so I was on my own.
That always seemed kind of rotten to me. Even among married friends, we used to talk about having showers every 20 years or so to renew our old stuff. And yes, that was grubby of us.
Thinking about that unmarried shower, it seems like this is usually what a high school graduation party is about. I know my sister and I got cash, linens, dorm fridges etc. Not everybody gets one of these parties though, it’s kind of up to your parents.
Of course it’d be even better if we got one of these after college when we are really getting into our own places.
Wouldn’t it? I had a house fire and lost just about everything and insurance money allowed me to go get all new stuff there about 14 years ago. I can tell you, those newer toasters worked great! But I wouldn’t recommend a house fire.
we had a house fire too. Bleah. People still have housewarmin parties, dont they?
I’ve not been to one in, like, forever. Did you lose everything?
Housewarming parties are such a hard thing, etiquette-wise. I’ve only ever been to one and it was a housewarming/college grad party. The invites said gifts weren’t necessary but welcome or something weird like that.
I don’t like a party you have to throw for yourself because it makes the gift thing SOOO awkward.
It does. But then, whoever thinks of throwing a gift-party for someone else? I had a 50th birthday this summer and I was adamant that no one buy me anything because I’ve already bought absolutely everything for myself, already. And how many joke “God-but-you’re-old” gifts do you want to have to throw out? I mean, maybe a box of Depends will come in handy one day, but I have storage issues for now…
I threw a Staying SIngle party for a friend. She was very happy to finally have beautiful hand towels and a teapot. :)
We didn’t lose everything, we lost our kitchen, found out there was asbestos in our ceiling and lost a bunch of furniture (upholstered) Fortunately since our decorating scheme is “Grad School/4 cats and 2 sons” we didn’t care much.
We’d just bought new living room kitchen (mission style, which I’d always wanted) and just about everything burned up and I stood out in my front yard with my arms around my sons and thought, “Wow. I’m not as materialistic as I thought” because I just didn’t care about the stuff that was burning. It was stuff.