“Your child has a place in a crèche, but we cannot accommodate him. This is the absurdity heard from parents who, lucky enough, had managed to obtain a place but who, for lack of staff, cannot benefit from it. What is the consequence of this lack of places, that is to say of the crisis of attractiveness of early childhood professions? Women, because they are often women, have to stop working to look after their newborns.
What does the new Minister of Solidarity answer, instead of attacking the root of the problem? She proposes to better compensate mothers who take parental leave, while reducing its duration. Behind the desire to show publicly that the government is inspired by the maxim with Sarkozy accents ” Work more to earn more “, and to occupy the media space in the torpor of the summer with an idea “in the air”, the damage is done. We will talk more about Aurore Bergé’s measure than about the reality of the French situation, a country that is still lagging behind in parenting and early childhood.
In France, parental leave – which follows maternity or paternity leave – is only compensated up to a maximum of 429 euros per month. Following maternity leave, which lasts sixteen short weeks, women therefore experience a structural drop in salary. For its part, paternity leave has been extended to twenty-eight days, of which only seven must be taken.
Liberal ideology
The meaning of history, and at least this is the path taken by our neighbors, is however to lengthen the time spent with the children rather than to reduce it; obligation rather than encouragement; balance between parents rather than the perpetuation of inequalities between men and women. Beyond the questions of temporality, it is the dysfunction of the early childhood service and the systemic economic violence against women against which this reform must be fought.
In this sense, the solution lies first in extending maternity leave, at least to eighteen weeks as recommended by the International Labor Organization for twenty-three years, and in aligning at least paternity leave for the same duration as the mothers. It also lies in the obligation of leave for all and especially all: why should mothers be more obliged than fathers to stop? Are they more related?
It is this extension that is promoted elsewhere: in Spain for example, where paternity leave has increased from six to sixteen weeks from 2019 to 2021. Or in Norway, where paternity leave is compensated at 100% of salary for a period minimum of fifteen weeks non-transferable to the other parent, to which are added two weeks that the employer is obliged to accept. Like these countries, we refuse that liberal ideology hinders the most precious human relationships, those that take place with the arrival of a child. Birth is not a matter of efficiency. It is an issue of solidarity and equality.
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2023-08-17 04:03:04
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