You probably heard of Slovenia in Michael Moore’s introduction to his movie Sicko, which placed the United States just one number above them in terms of health care. What he didn’t tell you is that Slovenia provides one of the highest amount of full paid maternity leave for mothers to be. A whole 52 weeks, at the minimum. I can attest, because I live there!

In contrast the governments of Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland {that place where the king selects a bride every year from a bunch of topless “candidates”}, Australia and the United States offer some of the weakest leave benefits in the world!

I was reading the August Issue of National Geographic and saw a page titled “Who Gives Parents a Break?“, going over it I was surprised to see that Slovenia, where I currently reside, is on the top along with Russia, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Austria, Armenia, Cuba and South Korea {there were a few more smaller countries}.

So if moms in the U.S and down under, or Swaziland for that matter, can’t get a break, think about a move to any of those countries. If that’s out of reach here are a few more observations of other Guaranteed Leave for Mothers {data as per 2006} made in the same article -

• Canada, Greenland, Brazil, Peru, Chile, China, Kazakhstan, Portugal, Spain, Algeria etc…offer at least 14 weeks with full wages and up to 52 weeks with half wages.
• Iran offers at least 14 weeks and at least half wages. Much more than the “No paid leave” offered to new mothers in the U.S.
• U.S law guarantees a mere 12 weeks of unpaid leave, under certain conditions. It is the least of ANY industrialized nation.
• Employees of India’s central government may take 135 days of maternity leave at full pay.
• In Ota, Japan male municipal workers who have become fathers must take 40 days of paid leave.

I just thought this would be a nice article to share with everyone because having left the corporate world a long time ago I can certainly relate with it. When I lived in the U.S some of my new mom neighbors just couldn’t stay at home any longer due to the cost of living there. It was hard for us to, since my wife stayed at home, but our expenses were generally lower.

For instance we did not have a car, we do not smoke or drink, we splurged on stuff like movies and making home baked brownies {yummy}. Even though at times it was tough we still got over them. But then we simply decided to move out of the U.S as it was a better move for our family.

Don’t worry this will be the first and last article I post on maternity issues, promise!

{link to picture from article}

About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.