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Showing posts from July, 2013

Working Mothers

Since this is my newest favorite "rant" topic, it seemed appropriate to blog on it. Since moving to Germany, I've observed a dearth of working mothers around me - and see a fairly high population of mothers choosing to stay home. Thanks to a combination of extremely family friendly employment policies (women can take up to 3 years, 2 without pay, away from work to raise children and still have their job guaranteed upon return) and unfriendly government policies towards a two-income household (school usually ends by 1:30 pm; daycare spots are extremely hard to come by for the under-3 set, shopping hours are limited for errand-running on evenings and weekends, and don't get me started on the *costs* to have a working spouse - higher tax class, no "mother pay", separate health insurance payments... I could go on... ), moms who want to work in Germany are faced with tough and often expensive choices. The las t phrase is not so different from the US, but when y