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In the Month of Love, Family Values Come First

ParentMap's editorial focus for 2015: Making it Work

Alayne Sulkin
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Published on: January 30, 2015

“Early life lasts a lifetime.”

— Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, University of Washington School of Public Health

What are your family values?  

Last year, we talked deeply about our own family values, and our biggest fears as parents, and then we brought you our bold Just Ask gun-safety awareness campaign. You dedicated your most precious resources of time and money to help fight the insane gun violence in our communities, and we won! We moved the sanity needle in November 2014 with the passage of I-594. We’re not done, but we’re off to a great start.

This year, we are putting the spotlight on another issue critical to families: Are you perpetually feeling as most American parents do — that you are unable to spend as much time with your little ones as you wish you could? Do you fear you don’t have sufficient sick time, and little flexibility to care for your ailing baby? Did you have to fight for maternity and/or paternity leave?

You are not alone!

You, our readers, responded in droves (thousands strong) to our recent work/life balance survey and expressed consistent anguish about your community and nation’s lack of policies in support of your work/life balance aspirations.

Our nation has to close the continental divide between the U.S. and Germany’s (or substitute almost any Western European country) work/life policies. Germany’s family/life stats will cause you more severe heartburn than eating too much wiener schnitzel! Our feature kicks off our 2015 content mission: Making It Work. With our yearlong special series, we’re going to explore both challenges and solutions and keep a bold conversation going across all our channels at ParentMap. Tweet or Facebook us using #MakingItWork with your thoughts and concerns around the intersection of work and family — we want to hear from you and share your stories.

Our success is your success. Together we can move our legislators on issues around maternity leave, equitable wages, parental leave, and vacation time. I urge you to read our feature story and digest the new meaning of “going Dutch” — aren’t we sick of hearing that the U.S. is the only country other than (fun as it is to say) Papua New Guinea with no nationally required paid maternity leave? It’s truly up to us: Moms and dads can make anything happen!

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