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What does a working mother look like?
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If you ask the Internet,
this is what you'll be told.
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Never mind that this is
what you'll actually produce
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if you attempt to work at a computer
with a baby on your lap.
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(Laughter)
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But no, this is a working mother.
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You'll notice a theme in these photos.
We'll look at a lot of them.
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That theme is amazing natural lighting,
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which, as we all know,
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is the hallmark
of every American workplace.
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There are thousands of images like these.
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Just put the term "working mother"
into any Google Image search engine,
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stock photo site.
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They're all over the Internet,
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they're topping
blog posts and news pieces,
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and I've become kind of obsessed with them
and the lie that they tell us
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and the comfort that they give us,
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that when it comes
to new working motherhood in America,
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everything's fine.
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But it's not fine.
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As a country, we are sending
millions of women back to work
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every year, incredibly
and kind of horrifically soon
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after they give birth.
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That's a moral problem
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but today I'm also going to tell you
why it's an economic problem.
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I got so annoyed and obsessed
with the unreality of these images,
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which look nothing like my life,
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that I recently decided to shoot and star
in a parody series of stock photos
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that I hoped the world would start to use
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just showing the really awkward reality
of going back to work
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when your baby's food source
is attached to your body.
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I'm just going to show you two of them.
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(Laughter)
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Nothing says "Give that girl a promotion"
like leaking breast milk
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through your dress during a presentation.
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You'll notice that there's
no baby in this photo,
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because that's not how this works,
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not for most working mothers.
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Did you know, and this will ruin your day,
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that every time a toilet is flushed,
its contents are aerosolized
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and they'll stay airborne for hours?
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And yet, for many new working mothers,
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this is the only place during the day
that they can find to make food
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for their newborn babies.
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I put these things,
a whole dozen of them, into the world.
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I wanted to make a point.
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I didn't know what I was also doing
was opening a door,
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because now, total strangers
from all walks of life
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write to me all the time
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just to tell me what it's like
for them to go back to work
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within days or weeks of having a baby.
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I'm going to share
10 of their stories with you today.
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They are totally real,
some of them are very raw,
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and not one of them
looks anything like this.
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Here's the first.
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"I was an active duty
service member at a federal prison.
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I returned to work after the maximum
allowed eight weeks for my C-section.
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A male coworker was annoyed
that I had been out on 'vacation, '
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so he intentionally opened the door on me
while I was pumping breast milk
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and stood in the doorway
with inmates in the hallway."
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Most of the stories that these women,
total strangers, send to me now,
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are not actually even about breastfeeding.
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A woman wrote to me to say,
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"I gave birth to twins and went back
to work after seven unpaid weeks.
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Emotionally, I was a wreck.
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Physically, I had a severe hemorrhage
during labor, and major tearing,
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so I could barely get up, sit, or walk.
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My employer told me I wasn't allowed
to use my available vacation days
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because it was budget season."
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I've come to believe that we can't look
situations like these in the eye
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because then we'd be horrified,
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and if we get horrified,
then we have to do something about it.
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So we choose to look at,
and believe, this image.
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I don't really know
what's going on in this picture,
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because I find it weird
and slightly creepy.
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(Laughter)
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Like, what is she doing?
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But I know what it tells us.
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It tells us that everything's fine.
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This working mother, all working mothers,
and all of their babies, are fine.
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There's nothing to see here.
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And anyway, women have made a choice,
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so none of it's even our problem.
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I want to break this choice thing
down into two parts.
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The first choice says
that women have chosen to work.
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So, that's not true.
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Today in America, women make up
47 percent of the workforce,
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and in 40 percent of American households,
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a woman is the sole
or primary breadwinner.
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Our paid work is a part, a huge part,
of the engine of this economy,
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and it is essential
for the engines of our families.
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On a national level,
our paid work is not optional.
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Choice number two says that women
are choosing to have babies,
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so women alone should bear
the consequences of those choices.
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You know, that's one of those things
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that when you hear it in passing,
can sound correct.
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I didn't make you have a baby.
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I certainly wasn't there
when that happened.
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But that stance
ignores a fundamental truth,
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which is that our procreation
on a national scale is not optional.
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The babies that women, many of them
working women, are having today,
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will one day fill our workforce,
protect our shores,
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make up our tax base.
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Our procreation
on a national scale is not optional.
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These aren't choices.
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We need women to work.
We need working women to have babies.
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So we should make
doing those things at the same time
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at least palatable, right?
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OK, this is pop quiz time:
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what percentage of working
women in America do you think
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have no access to paid maternity leave?
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88 percent.
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88 percent of working mothers
will not get one minute of paid leave
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after they have a baby.
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So now you're thinking about unpaid leave.
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It exists in America.
It's called FMLA. It does not work.
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Because of the way it's structured,
all kinds of exceptions,
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half of new mothers are ineligible for it.
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Here's what that looks like.
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"We adopted our son.
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When I got the call, the day he was born,
I had to take off work.
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I had not been there long enough
to qualify for FMLA,
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so I wasn't eligible for unpaid leave.
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When I took time off
to meet my newborn son,
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I lost my job."
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These corporate stock photos
hide another reality, another layer.
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Of those who do have access
to just that unpaid leave,
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most women can't afford
to take much of it at all.
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A nurse told me, "I didn't qualify
for short-term disability
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because my pregnancy
was considered a preexisting condition.
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We used up all of our tax returns
and half of our savings
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during my six unpaid weeks.
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We just couldn't manage any longer.
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Physically it was hard,
but emotionally it was worse.
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I struggled for months
being away from my son."
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So this decision
to go back to work so early,
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it's a rational economic decision
driven by family finances,
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but it's often physically horrific
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because putting a human
into the world is messy.
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A waitress told me,
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"With my first baby, I was back
at work five weeks postpartum.
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With my second, I had to have
major surgery after giving birth,
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so I waited until six weeks to go back.
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I had third degree tears."
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Twenty-three percent
of new working mothers in America
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will be back on the job
within two weeks of giving birth.
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"I worked as a bartender and cook,
average of 75 hours a week while pregnant.
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I had to return to work
before my baby was a month old,
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working 60 hours a week.
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One of my coworkers was only able
to afford 10 days off with her baby."
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Of course, this isn't just a scenario
with economic and physical implications.
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Childbirth is, and always will be,
an enormous psychological event.
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A teacher told me,
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"I returned to work
eight weeks after my son was born.
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I already suffer from anxiety,
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but the panic attacks I had prior
to returning to work were unbearable."
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Statistically speaking,
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the shorter a woman's leave
after having a baby,
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the more likely she will be to suffer
from postpartum mood disorders
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like depression and anxiety,
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and among many potential
consequences of those disorders,
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suicide is the second
most common cause of death
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in a woman's first year postpartum.
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Heads up that this next story --
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I've never met this woman,
but I find it hard to get through.
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"I feel tremendous grief and rage
that I lost an essential,
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irreplaceable, and formative
time with my son.
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Labor and delivery
left me feeling absolutely broken.
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For months, all I remember
is the screaming: colic, they said.
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On the inside, I was drowning.
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Every morning, I asked myself
how much longer I could do it.
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I was allowed to bring my baby to work.
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I closed my office door
while I rocked and shushed
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and begged him to stop screaming
so I wouldn't get in trouble.
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I hid behind that office door
every damn day
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and cried while he screamed.
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I cried in the bathroom
while I washed out the pump equipment.
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Every day, I cried all the way to work
and all the way home again.
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I promised my boss that the work
I didn't get done during the day,
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I'd make up at night from home.
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I thought, there's just something
wrong with me that I can't swing this."
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So those are the mothers.
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What of the babies?
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As a country, do we care
about the millions of babies
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born every year to working mothers?
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I say we don't,
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not until they're of working
and tax-paying and military-serving age.
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We tell them we'll see them in 18 years,
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and getting there is kind of on them.
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One of the reasons I know this
is that babies whose mothers
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have 12 or more weeks at home with them
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are more likely to get their vaccinations
and their well checks in their first year,
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so those babies are more protected
from deadly and disabling diseases.
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But those things are hidden
behind images like this.
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America has a message for new mothers
who work and for their babies.
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Whatever time you get together,
you should be grateful for it,
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and you're an inconvenience
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to the economy and to your employers.
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That narrative of gratitude
runs through a lot of the stories I hear.
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A woman told me,
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"I went back at eight weeks
after my C-section
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because my husband was out of work.
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Without me, my daughter
had failure to thrive.
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She wouldn't take a bottle.
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She started losing weight.
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Thankfully, my manager
was very understanding.
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He let my mom bring my baby,
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who was on oxygen and a monitor,
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four times a shift so I could nurse her."
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There's a little club
of countries in the world
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that offer no national
paid leave to new mothers.
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Care to guess who they are?
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The first eight make up eight million
in total population.
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They are Papua New Guinea,
Suriname, and the tiny island nations
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of Micronesia, Marshall Islands,
Nauru, Niue, Palau, and Tonga.
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Number nine is the United
States of America,
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with 320 million people.
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Oh, that's it.
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That's the end of the list.
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Every other economy on the planet
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has found a way to make some level
of national paid leave work
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for the people doing the work
of the future of those countries,
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but we say,
"We couldn't possibly do that."
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We say that the market
will solve this problem,
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and then we cheer when corporations
offer even more paid leave to the women
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who are already the highest-educated
and highest-paid among us.
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Remember that 88 percent?
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Those middle- and low-income women
are not going to participate in that.
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We know that there are staggering
economic, financial, physical,
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and emotional costs to this approach.
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We have decided --
decided, not an accident,
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to pass these costs directly
on to working mothers and their babies.
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We know the price tag is higher
for low-income women,
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therefore disproportionately
for women of color.
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We pass them on anyway.
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All of this is to America's shame.
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But it's also to America's risk
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because what would happen
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if all of these individual
so-called choices to have babies
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started to turn into individual choices
not to have babies.
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One woman told me,
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"New motherhood is hard.
It shouldn't be traumatic.
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When we talk about expanding
our family now,
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we focus on how much time I would have
to care for myself and a new baby.
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If we were to have to do it again
the same way as with our first,
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we might stick with one kid."
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The birthrate needed in America
to keep the population stable
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is 2.1 live births per woman.
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In America today, we are at 1.86.
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We need women to have babies,
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and we are actively disincentivizing
working women from doing that.
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What would happen to work force,
to innovation, to GDP,
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if one by one, the working mothers
of this country were to decide
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that they can't bear
to do this thing more than once?
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I'm here today with only
one idea worth spreading,
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and you've guessed what it is.
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It is long since time
for the most powerful country on Earth
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to offer national paid leave
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to the people doing the work
of the future of this country
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and to the babies
who represent that future.
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Childbirth is a public good.
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This leave should be state-subsidized.
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It should have no exceptions
for small businesses,
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length of employment, or entrepreneurs.
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It should be able
to be shared between partners.
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I've talked today a lot about mothers,
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but co-parents matter on so many levels.
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Not one more woman
should have to go back to work
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while she is hobbling and bleeding.
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Not one more family should have
to drain their savings account
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to buy a few days
of rest and recovery and bonding.
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Not one more fragile infant
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should have to go directly
from the incubator to day care
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because his parents have used up
all of their meager time
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sitting in the NICU.
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Not one more working family
should be told that the collision
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of their work, their needed work,
and their needed parenthood,
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is their problem alone.
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The catch is that when this is happening
to a new family, it is consuming,
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and a family with a new baby
is more financially vulnerable
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than they've ever been before,
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so that new mother cannot afford
to speak up on her own behalf.
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But all of us have voices.
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I am done, done having babies,
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and you might be pre-baby,
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you might be post-baby,
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you might be no baby.
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It should not matter.
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We have to stop framing this
as a mother's issue,
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or even a women's issue.
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This is an American issue.
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We need to stop buying the lie
that these images tell us.
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We need to stop being comforted by them.
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We need to question
why we're told that this can't work
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when we see it work
everywhere all over the world.
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We need to recognize
that this American reality
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is to our dishonor and to our peril,
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because this is not,
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this is not,
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and this is not
what a working mother looks like.
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(Applause)
Brian Greene
This headline has been updated.
The new headline is: The US needs paid family leave -- for the sake of its future