childless cat ladies

 

Childless cat ladies

 

J.D.Vance is the first person that I am aware of who discussed the term shown above. He has a number of goofy ideas, including his belief that women without children are somehow not as valuable to society. He has even proposed allowing families with children more votes because “they have a larger stake in society”.

He is ignoring the fact that many women either can’t have children, or do not want them.

There ARE a number of childless women who have made significant contributions to society. Both Taylor Swift and Oprah Winfrey have donated millions of dollars to society, and there are numerous women who lead major corporations.

Kamala Harris has not given birth to any biological children, but she IS stepmother to the children of Doug Emhoff. She also has been a prosecutor, a senator, a vice-president, and a presential candidate. Her adopted children call her MOMala.

 

Remember Sara Huckabee Sanders?

She was a press secretary for Donald Trump, but later got elected governor of Arkansas.

SarahHuckabee Sanders blasts Harris for not having biological kids (usatoday.com)

During a campaign event for former President Donald Trump Tuesday, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested Vice President Kamala Harris is not humble because she does not have biological children.

The comments came during a town hall the governor moderated in Flint, Michigan, at first joking about how her children’s innocent remarks can make her feel humble despite her high-profile position.

“You can walk into a room like this where people cheer when you step onto the stage and you might think for a second that you’re kind of special,” Sanders said. “Then you go home and your kids remind you very quickly that you’re not that big of a deal.”

She kept on the theme of humility before pivoting to the Democratic nominee for president. “So, my kids keep me humble,” she said to the crowd, pausing for a few seconds. “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”

Harris has two stepchildren through her marriage to Doug Emhoff, Ella and Cole Emhoff, and has often spoken about her role as stepmom or, using her nickname, “Momala.” Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, has been a vocal supporter of Harris’ campaign and has repeatedly celebrated Harris’ role as stepmother to her two kids.

“Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for the people, ALL families,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in response to Sanders’ comments. “That keeps you pretty humble.”

Sanders’ brazen comments are not out of the norm, as the governor has become known for making bold claims and embracing ‘culture war’ issues, especially concerning gender. She has fought against the Biden administration’s IX updates, and last year signed an executive order banning what she calls “woke, anti-women” words in government. The order states that the government should “reject language that ignores, undermines, and erases women,” and should “celebrate gender distinctions between men and women—not erase them.”

The demographics of our country has changed dramatically since I was a child.

DemographicTurning Points for the United States (census.gov)

The year 2030 marks a demographic turning point for the United States. Beginning that year, all baby boomers will be older than 65 years of age. This will expand the size of the older population so that one in every five Americans is projected to be of retirement age. Later that decade, by 2034, we project that older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history. The year 2030 marks another demographic first for the United States. That year, because of population aging, immigration is projected to overtake natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) as the primary driver of population growth for the country.
 
Beyond 2030, the U.S. population is projected to grow slowly, age considerably, and become more racially and ethnically diverse. Despite slowing population growth, particularly after 2030, the U.S. population is still expected to grow by 79 million people by 2060, crossing the 400 million threshold in 2058.

21charts that explain how the US is changing | vox.com

 The US population is changing drastically, particularly in the areas of race and ethnicity. By 2050, white non-Hispanics will be a minority of the American population, according to Census projections. The biggest reason for that decline is the growth of the Hispanic population, whose share is set to nearly double between 2010 and 2050, from 16 to 30 percent. Though immigration is one reason for this shift, a large part of it is that white non-Hispanics aren't having as many babies as minorities. As of 2012, the majority of all babies born in the US were minorities.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-race-ethnicity-and-education/

In April of this year, 56% of white voters were registered as Republicans, versus 41% who registered as Democrats. Hispanic voters favored Democrats 61% to 35% Republic. Black voters were overwhelmingly Democrat (83%) to 12% Republican. Asian voters also favored Democrats (63% to 35% Republicans.

White Republicans are nervous because their numbers are shrinking, and minority groups are increasing As a result, they have resorted to voters suppression tactics to make it harder for minorities (who favor Democrats), and they got a lot of help from the Supreme Court (in Shelby County v Holder) that Section 5 of the Civil Rights Act was no longer necessary, which opened up more restrictive voting rules in the majority of the states in the country,

In effect, what J.D. Vance is promoting is similar to what Nazi Germany did in the 1930’s.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/lebensborn-program-the-woman-who-gave-birth-for-hitler

In 1935, Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the holocaust, decided to redefine motherhood.

The reason was the declining German population. World War I resulted in the decimation of the country's young male population. More than 2,000,000 German soldiers had been killed, and intermarriage with Jews and others deemed "inferior" by Nazis had made the population "racially impure," as Himmler termed it.

In addition, more than 800,000 pregnancies ended in abortion every year. This decline was unacceptable to Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, who were dreaming of creating a racially pure Nazi-Aryan nation.

It was in that context that the Lebensborn “super baby” breeding program was created. “Lebensborn" means "wellspring of life" or "fountain of life." The Lebensborn project was one of the most secretive and disgusting Nazi programs ever created. Heinrich Himmler himself initiated the Lebensborn project on December 12, 1935.

The disgusting program was a system of supervised selective breeding in which unmarried ‘racially pure’ women were instructed to have children with Nazi officers and create a “super race” for the German Reich that would rule for a thousand years — the ultimate goal of Lebensborn.

The plan started with Germany and gradually expanded to occupied countries, most notably in Scandinavia, where the Nordic gene with its blond hair and blue eyes was considered classically Aryan and was particularly favored by Himmler, who set up the majority of the Lebensborn centers in Nazi-occupied Norway.

As a first step, the mother and father must pass a “racial purity” test to be admitted into the program. Blond-haired and blue-eyed people were preferred, and family lineage had to be traceable and pure up to at least three generations. The criterion was strict; only 40 percent of women passed the purity test. Most of the mothers were unwed.

 

The first Lebensborn family home was opened in 1936 in Steinhoering, a nondescript village near Munich. The furnishings and the décor for these homes were best in class, looted from Jews and other people in occupied countries.

In these homes, “racially pure” German women were encouraged to meet and have children with SS officers who occasionally visited. The SS then took the children when they were born. The program supported expectant mothers and enabled them to have their children safely, secretly, and comfortably.

Himmler, the mastermind, also has an incentive system in place that was equally diabolical. A Mother’s Cross of Honor was created in three classes: bronze, silver, and gold. The bronze cross required a woman to give birth to and raise at least four children, while the highest honor, the gold cross, recognized a woman who had given birth to eight or more.

In addition, these mothers received government subsidies designed to take care of the kids. “Lucky” mothers with three and more children under ten years old got 'honorary cards' allowing them to get preferential treatment in shopping queues and discounts on their rent payments. They were also given the best meats from butcher shops and were entitled to zero-interest state-sponsored loans.

Himmler soon expanded the program to include non-German mothers. In a bizarre policy formed by Hitler in 1942, German soldiers were encouraged to socialize with native women, with the instruction that any children they produced would be given to SS. “Racially pure” women were encouraged to have one-night stands with SS officers in Lebensborn homes where they could have children in secrecy and confidentiality.

The worst part was kidnapping “Aryan children” from occupied territories.

In 1939, under Himmler’s directive, the Nazis began systematically kidnapping thousands of children who they regarded as “Aryan-looking” from other countries, mainly Poland, Yugoslavia and Russia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Norway, for the Lebensborn program. While some of these children were orphans, it has been well-documented that many were stolen from their parent's arms.

In these centers, these children were “Germanized” and forced to forget their birth parents. Those children who refused were beaten mercilessly or even sent to concentration camps for “re-education.” Ultimately these re-educated children were adopted by SS families. Himmler himself reportedly justified this brutal kidnapping when he stated that “It is our duty to take [the children] with us to remove them from their environment… either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people, or we destroy this blood.”

As the Nazis started losing the war, they destroyed almost all the documents on the Lebensborn program leaving an estimated 200,000 children separated from their families. Only 25,000 children were retrieved after the war and returned to their families. Some made it home, but others could not remember enough of their original families to find their way back.

It is also believed that several German families even refused to return the children they had received from the Lebensborn centers. In some cases, the children refused to return to their original families as they were brainwashed by the Nazi propaganda and considered themselves “pure” Germans for better or worse.

But for most of them, it was a long life of shame, loneliness, and ostracization by society. Many of the Lebensborn women were beaten or killed by the angry, starving public, and their children were bullied for their Nazi roots throughout their lives.

After years of enforcing the “one child rule”, China is now encouraging more births because their economy is declining. They also are no longer encouraging abortions as they once were.

 China is far from alone in experiencing declining birth rates.

It is also true in Japan, South Korea, and other countries.

Across Europe, East Asia and North America, many governments are, like Japan, introducing measures like paid parental leave, child care subsidies and direct cash transfers. According to the U.N., the number of countries deliberately targeting birthrates rose from 19 in 1986 to 55 by 2015.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/13/world/asia/birth-rate-fertility-policy-japan.html

I’m not implying that today’s Republican Party is made up of a bunch of Nazis, but consider these facts:

1)    Republicans are pushing for abortion bans because they want more children

2)   They have a strong preference for white people

3)   If you looked up the word “fascist”, you’ll discover on the list fits Donald Trump exactly

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/01/31/the-12-early-warning-signs-of-fascism/

In 2017, there were “very fine people of both sides”, but not all of them were chanting “Jews will not replace us”

a woman of integrity

 

In 2018, I wrote two articles about men with integrity:

 

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/01/a-man-of-integrity.html

 

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/02/another-man-of-integrity.html

 

Frequently overlooked, however, is that fact that women also have integrity.

 

The most recent example, of course, is Liz Cheney, who served on the January 6 panel, and also recently went to Ripon,Wisconsin to appear in public with Kamala Harris.

Earlier this year, I read her latest book, “Oath and Honor”, which is worth reading.

If you went back in time about 50 years, you may remember that Jane Fonda was vilified for traveling to Vietnam during the Vietnam was.

https://time.com/5116479/jane-fonda-hanoi-jane-nickname/

Amid what was widely perceived as a lack of progress in the war, its continuation prompted widespread protests in the U.S. It was around that time that Fonda focused her political activism solely on the antiwar movement. By that point, she was a prominent movie star, renowned for her performances in critically acclaimed films like Klute, Barefoot in the Park, Barbarella and They Shoot Horses Don’t They? 

Having worked on behalf of Native Americans and the Black Panthers in the 1960s, Fonda dove into protesting the Vietnam War, first with the formation of the “Free Army Tour” (FTA) with actor Donald Sutherland in 1970. FTA was an anti-war show designed to contrast Bob Hope’s USO tour, touring military bases on the West Coast and talking to soldiers before they were deployed to Vietnam.

In 1972, Fonda went on to tour North Vietnam in a controversial trip would come to be the most famous — or infamous — part of her activist career, and led to her the nickname “Hanoi Jane.”

 While in Vietnam, Fonda appeared on 10 radio programs to speak out against the U.S. military’s policy in Vietnam and beg pilots to cease bombing non-military targets. It was during that trip that a photograph was taken of her seated on an anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi, making it look like she would shoot down American planes.

 At the time, Fonda’s public criticisms of U.S. leadership caused massive outrage among American officials and war veterans. According to the Washington Post, some lawmakers saw her protests as treasonous, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars called for Fonda to be tried as a traitor. At one point, the Maryland state legislature considered banning her and her films from the state.

On the other hand, the antiwar feeling Fonda came to embody was relatively widespread among the American population at the time, and, as filmmaker Lynn Novick put it in discussing recent documentary series The Vietnam War, some veterans “think she was courageous for going to Hanoi and taking a stand even though they didn’t agree with everything she had to say.” More recent scholarship has also emphasized the ways in which the idea of “Hanoi Jane” has grown far beyond Fonda’s actual actions during that tumultuous period.

  Since then, Fonda has apologized repeatedly for the “Hanoi Jane” photo, and clarified that actions during the Vietnam War were in protest of the U.S. government and not against soldiers. he addressed the photo in her 2005 memoir My Life So Far:

 Here is my best, honest recollection of what took place. Someone (I don’t remember who) leads me toward the gun, and I sit down, still laughing, still applauding. It all has nothing to do with where I am sitting. I hardly even think about where I am sitting. The cameras flash. I get up, and as I start to walk back to the car with the translator, the implication of what has just happened hits me.

Oh, my God. It’s going to look like I was trying to shoot down U.S. planes! I plead with him, “You have to be sure those photographs are not published. Please, you can’t let them be published.” I am assured it will be taken care of. I don’t know what else to do. It is possible that the Vietnamese had it all planned. I will never know. If they did, can I really blame them? The buck stops here. If I was used, I allowed it to happen. It was my mistake, and I have paid and continue to pay a heavy price for it.

 Nearly a half-century later, some veterans still aren’t pleased with Fonda’s actions in 1972. In 2015, about 50 veterans protested her appearance at the Weinberg Center for the Arts in Frederick, Md., holding signs that said, “Forgive? Maybe. Forget? Never.”

 Fonda told the crowd she tries to maintain open conversations with veterans, according to the Frederick News-Post.

 “Whenever possible I try to sit down with vets and talk with them, because I understand and it makes me said,” she said. “It hurts me and it will to my grave that I made a huge, huge mistake that made a lot of people think I was against the soldiers.

 

Kris Kristofferson passed away on September 28 of this year. Often overlooked is the fact that he was a Rhodes scholar, in addition to being a great actor. He was also a source of comfort to a young female singer at a concert in 1992.

The singer was named Sinead O’Connor.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/arts/music/kris-kristofferson-sinead-oconnor.html

 

On Oct. 16, 1992, Columbia Records threw its longtime artist Bob Dylan an event at Madison Square Garden to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his first album with the label. The concert, available on pay-per-view, featured performances by Dylan along with some of the biggest stars of his era, among them Stevie Wonder, George Harrison, Johnny Cash and Eric Clapton.

But it was the performance by the comparative newcomer Sinead O’Connor and the assist lent her by the country veteran Kris Kristofferson, who died Saturday at 88, that proved most memorable.

O’Connor, then just 25, was at the center of a firestorm. Just two weeks earlier, the Irish singer was the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” when, at the conclusion of her second and final performance of the evening, she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II and exhorted, “Fight the real enemy,” a defiant act of protest against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (and also, she later revealed, a deeply personal statement — the photograph had belonged to her mother, who had physically abused her). The incident drew widespread outrage and turned O’Connor into a cultural pariah.

Now, in the wake of that polarizing moment, it was Kristofferson who was tasked with bringing O’Connor to the stage.

I’m real proud to introduce this next artist, whose name’s become synonymous with courage and integrity,” Kristofferson said, in obvious reference to the “S.N.L.” incident. (As he would later sing of O’Connor, “She told them her truth just as hard as she could/Her message profoundly was misunderstood.”)

O’Connor took the stage to a cascade of applause and boos, which did not let up as O’Connor stood silently at the microphone with her hands behind her back. A minute passed, and Kristofferson re-emerged from stage left, put his arm around O’Connor and whispered something in her ear.

As the pianist played the opening of O’Connor’s scheduled song, the Dylan track “I Believe in You,” O’Connor motioned the band to stop and proceeded to perform an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War” — the same song from that fateful “S.N.L.” performance, a confrontational track with lyrics primarily drawn from a speech the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I had delivered at the United Nations.

O’Connor ended the song and defiantly regarded the audience as the jeering persisted, and began to exit the stage — but not before Kristofferson again approached her, embraced her and walked off with her.

 The general public was not aware of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church until the release of the movie “Spotlight” in 2015, but O’Connor was already discussing it 23 years earlier, although the Boston Globe’s editorial staff had published an expose in 2002, for which they won a Pulitzer Prize.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_%28film%29

To date, the Catholic church in America has spent $4 billion to settle sexual abuse cases, and numerous archdioceses have filed for bankruptcy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sex_abuse_cases_in_the_United_States

Sinead O’Connor died on July 26, 2003. She was 54 years old.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

life goes on

 

 

Last week, one of Sharon’s cousins died. He was roughly her age.

A few months aga, the wife of one of our cards- playing friends died at the age of 68.

Over the last 5 years, I have lost a number of cousins (Frank, Tom and Mary) and none of us are getting any younger.

This spring, we went to a seminar at a local restaurant that focused on end-of-life planning, and in June, a representative came to our house to discuss our end-of-life decisions, like cremation, death certificates, and other details.

One of the best obituaries I have ever read was the one written by the late Mike Royko in November of 1979, shortly after his wife died.

Here it is:

Editor's note:  The Chicago Sun-Times published this column November 22, 1979.  Royko wrote it several months after the death of his wife, Carol.  In 1985, he married Judy Arndt. Mike and Judy Royko bought a vacation place together, on the water in Florida. The two of them first started spending weekends at the small, quiet Wisconsin lake almost 25 years ago. Some of her relatives let them use a tiny cottage in a wooded hollow a mile or so from the water. He worked odd hours, so sometimes they wouldn't get there until after midnight on a Friday. But if the mosquitoes weren't out, they'd go to the empty public beach for a moonlight swim, then sit with their backs against a tree and drink wine and talk about their future. They were young and had little money, and they came from working class families. So to them the cottage was a luxury, although it wasn't any bigger than the boat garages on Lake Geneva, where the rich people played. The cottage had a screened porch where they sat at night, him playing a guitar and her singing folk songs in a sweet, clear voice. An old man who lived alone in a cottage beyond the next clump of woods would applaud and call out requests. One summer the young man bought an old motorboat for a couple of hundred dollars. The motor didn't start easily. Some weekends it didn't start at all, and she'd sit and laugh and row while he pulled the rope and swore. But sometimes it started, and they'd ride slowly along the shoreline, looking at the houses and wondering what it would be like to have a place that was actually on the water. He'd just shake his head because even on a lake without social status, houses on the water cost a lot more than he'd ever be able to afford. The years passed, they had kids, and after a while they didn't go to the little cottage in the hollow as often. Something was always coming up. He worked on weekends, or they had someplace else to go. Finally the relatives sold the cottage. Then he got lucky in his work. He made more money than he had ever dreamed they'd have. They remembered how good those weekends had been and they went looking at lakes in Wisconsin to see if they could afford something on the water. They looked at one lake, then another. Then another. Cottages they could afford, they didn't like. Those they liked were overpriced. Or the lake had too many taverns and not enough solitude.  So they went back to that little lake. They hadn't been there for years. They were surprised to find that it was still quiet. That it still had no taverns and one grocery store. And they saw a For Sale sign in front of a cedar house on the water. They parked and walked around. It was surrounded by big old trees. The land sloped gently down to the shore. On the other side of the road was nothing but woods. Beyond the woods were farms. On the lake side, the house was all glass sliding doors. It had a large balcony. From the outside it was perfect. A real estate salesman let them in. The interior was stunning -- like something out of a homes magazine. They knew it had to be out of their reach. But when the salesman told them the price, it was close enough to what they could afford that they had the checkbook out before they saw the second fireplace upstairs.  They hadn't known summers could be that good. In the mornings, he'd go fishing before it was light. She'd sleep until the birds woke her. Then he'd make breakfast and they'd eat omelets on the wooden deck in the shade of the trees. They got to know the chipmunks, the squirrels, and a woodpecker who took over their biggest tree. They got to know the grocer, the old German butcher who smoked his own bacon, the little farmer who sold them vine-ripened tomatoes and sweet corn. They were a little selfish about it. They seldom invited friends for weekends. But they didn't feel guilty. It was their own, quiet place. The best part of their day was dusk. They had a west view and she loved sunsets. Whatever they were doing, they'd always stop to sit on the pier or deck and silently watch the sun go down, changing the color of the lake from blue to purple to silver and black. One evening he made up a small poem: The sun rolls down like a golden tear Another day, Another day gone. She told him it was sad, but that she liked it.  What she didn't like was October, even with the beautiful colors and the evenings in front of the fireplace. She was a summer person. The cold wind wasn't her friend. And she saw November as her enemy. Sometime in November would be the day they would take up the pier, store the boat, bring in the deck chairs, take down the hammock, pour antifreeze in the plumbing, turn down the heat, lock everything tight and drive back to the city. She'd always sigh as they pulled onto the road. He'd try to cheer her up by stopping at a German restaurant that had good food and a corny band, and he'd tell her how quickly the winter would pass, and how soon they'd be there again. And the snow would finally melt. Spring would come, and one day, when they knew the ice on the lake was gone, they would be back. She'd throw open all the doors and windows and let the fresh air in. Then she'd go out and greet the chipmunks and the woodpeckers.  And she'd plant more flowers. Every summer, there were more and more flowers. And every summer seemed better than the last. The sunsets seemed to become more spectacular. And more precious. This past weekend, he closed the place down for the winter. He went alone. He worked quickly, trying not to let himself think that this particular chair had been her favorite chair, that the hammock had been her Christmas gift to him, that the lovely house on the lake had been his gift to her. He didn't work quickly enough. He was still there at sunset. It was a great burst of orange, the kind of sunset she loved best. He tried, but he couldn't watch it alone. Not through tears. So he turned his back on it, went inside, drew the draperies, locked the door and drove away without looking back. It was the last time he would ever see that lovely place. Next spring there will be a For Sale sign in front and an impersonal real estate man will show people through. Maybe a couple who love to quietly watch sunsets together will like it. He hopes so.

---

 

https://michaelsherwood.com/RoykoNovember.html

The irony of Royko’s column is that it was published precisely 6 days after our daughter was born.

My dad died on October 31 of 1994 – the exact same day that her cousin Tim welcome a new daughter into his family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Royko

Mike Royko lived roughly 18 years longer after his wife Carol died.  Long enough, in fact, that he married again 7 years later.

 

None of us know when our time on this planet is going to end. For that reason, it’s important to savor the good times when they occur, and to shrug off the times when things go bad.

 

 

and baby makes three

 

It’s no secret that Tucson is more liberal than many other cities in the state. Pima county, where Tucson is located (district 7), has a Cook Partisan voting index of D+15, which means that it leans strongly to the Democrats. In contrast, district 9, which is represented by Paul Gosar, is the most conservative district in the state, with a rating of R+16, which is why he always gets at least 60% of the vote in the final elections.

The most conservative large city in the county is Mesa, Arizona. However, Mayor John Giles just endorsed Kamala Harris at the DNC convention, so Donald Trump is going to find it very difficult to win in Arizona on election day.

https://www.cookpolitical.com/cook-pvi/2022-partisan-voting-index/district-map-and-list

I work as a substitute teacher for TUSD (Tucson Unified School District) , which just announced paid parentally leave.

 

https://tucson.com/news/local/education/precollegiate/tusd-teachers-staff-could-soon-qualify-for-paid-parental-leave/article_c7ea9d98-6593-11ef-b008-e791d6bf90cc.html#tracking-source=home-the-latest

Some Tucson Unified School District employees could soon be eligible for 12 weeks of paid parental leave under a new policy being considered by the governing board.

“As a recently new father, who about a year and a half ago was constantly logging on to see how many personal days I was burning on my paternity, this is going to be a really good thing for employees in their parenthood journey,” TUSD Superintendent Dr. Gabriel Trujillo said Tuesday at the governing board meeting just before the first reading of the proposed policy.

The policy is the result of an agreement reached between TUSD and the Tucson Education Association that started in the spring, Karla Escamilla, a TUSD spokeswoman, said in an email.

If adopted, TUSD would be the first school district in Arizona to offer 12 weeks of paid parental leave to public school teachers and staff, the teacher’s union said in a news release.

The policy states employees’ eligibility for paid parental leave in the life events of “birth, surrogacy, adoption, miscarriage, stillbirth.”

The board unanimously approved moving forward with the policy.

“This policy is the product of union educators using their voices and practicing their power to bring public schools into the modern era by providing compassionate and evidence-based paid parental leave,” said TEA President Jim Byrne in the news release.

“Not only is this policy the right thing to do for TUSD families, but this policy will help TUSD recruit and retain the highly qualified educators our students deserve on every campus and in every classroom.”

The origin of the policy began at the end of 2023 and early 2024 when educators across TUSD discussed the difficulties of navigating parenthood due to the lack of paid parental leave, said Carmen Smith-Estrada, one of the organizers pushing for the policy and a teacher at Davis Bilingual Elementary Magnet School.

The conversation included educators who had to leave the district after having babies, educators who had stayed on after giving birth, as well as educators who didn’t have children since they didn’t think they could financially support them with no paid time off, said Smith-Estrada.

“A lot of people have been forced to leave the district, forced to leave teaching because they haven’t felt supported,” said Smith-Estrada, stressing the importance of TEA and what educators can achieve.

The policy mandates that employees asking for the 12-week paid parental leave need to be at TUSD for at least a year and includes a “payback provision” in case the employee doesn’t return to work at the end of the time-off period. Exceptions to this would be if the employee’s inability to return is due to the “onset, recurrence or continuation of a serious health condition of the eligible employee or the child,” the policy reads.

The tentative agreement between the TEA and TUSD also included $1,500-$2,500 raises for classroom teachers and certified staff, 1% raises for education support professionals with an additional stipend for those who qualify and a sick leave sell-back policy, the TEA release reads.

         

The policy’s full adoption is expected to take place in about four weeks.

On a federal level, only 11 states offer paid maternity leave.

https://www.newsweek.com/which-states-offer-maternity-leave-us-1929135#:~:text=Only%2011%20states%20currently%20offer%20paid%20maternity%20leave%2C,most%20of%20these%20concentrated%20on%20the%20East%20Coast.

According to the state's Employment and Development Department, Californians are entitled to up to eight weeks of partial wage replacement to bond with a new child, and this paid family leave is fully funded by employers.

In Oregon, employees may take up to 12 weeks paid leave and receive 100% of their weekly wages equal to or less than 65% of the state average, according to the Center for American Progress. All wages above this threshold are deducted 50%.

According to a 2021 report by The Century Foundation, Oregon received the highest rating for its family care policies.

In addition, Washington also offers paid parental leave, as so 8 other states, all of which are on the East Coast. The remainder of the states guarantee unpaid leave to take care of a newborn, or no leave at all.

The remainder of the states guarantee unpaid leave to take care of a newborn, or no leave at all.

 

Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow at the think tank New America, and a paid leave policy expert, spoke to Newsweek about the unique state of parental support in the U.S.

According to Shabo, of the 38 OECD states, The U.S. is the only country that "that fails to guarantee paid maternity leave to new mothers and one of a handful that does not guarantee paid parental leave to new fathers."

When asked why the U.S. was so unique in its family care practices, Shabo said this was due to the country's "very individualistic, pull-yourself-up-by-your bootstraps mentality," which is compounded by "business lobby efforts to stop government regulation and keep taxes low."

"All of this has stymied federal paid family and medical leave policy efforts," Shabo added.

While certain employees may be entitled to up to 12-week of unpaid leave under the 1993 U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act, Shabo said that this only covered those who work for an employer with over 50 employees in a 75-mile radius, and who meet "both tenure and hours-worked requirements."

"Just 56% of U.S. workers are eligible for these job protections," Shabo said. "Some states offer greater protections, both for unpaid leave and paid leave, but tens of millions of workers are without any protections at all."

"Notably, not a single state that has banned or substantially restricted abortion provides a paid parental leave guarantee and many actively restrict localities within their states from offering paid leave," Shabo said. "Whereas many of the states that have protected the right to abortion also offer paid leave and other supports to facilitate families' economic security and health."

However, Shabo said that calls for change are growing louder, and that "a broad and large coalition has been working with members of Congress since 2013 to pass the FAMILY Act (Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act)."

This would create a national paid family and medical leave program, "guaranteeing workers up to 12 weeks of paid leave each year to care for a new child, a seriously ill or injured loved one, a workers' own serious health issue and care for a military service member."

Shabo noted that Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for the November election, has long supported the FAMILY Act and, in her 2020 presidential campaign, proposed a plan for six-months of government-paid family and medical leave.

 My wife and I are long past the age where we could have children. We DO have two grandchildren, but there will not be any more, so why is the action of TUSD important to me?

 For one thing, it means that there will be fewer unfilled teacher positions, which will lead to smaller class sizes.  I’ve been in a few classrooms with more than 30 students, and it is not fun.

 In addition, the TUSD policy highlights which political party is actually the one with “family values”- and that will have a strong effect on the November election, even if some of the voters are childless cat ladies.