AOC: U.S. parental leave 'treats people worse than dogs'

Vicki Shabo is quoted in Yahoo! Money about the Better Life Lab’s report on men, caregiving, and paid leave, Lifting the Barriers to Paid Family and Medical Leave for Men in the United States:

Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow at New America, a think tank focusing on public policy issues, told the hearing that six-to-eight weeks is the most common length of paid family leave. She also agreed with Ocasio-Cortez’s points.

“The sentiments that your staffers have articulated actually came up really poignantly last week on a panel that I moderated at New America on the release of our men and care report, men in paid leave specifically,” Shabo said. “There were three dads who talked about the cultural expectations that dads wouldn’t take leave. They were able to negotiate, to cobble together, one of them had a wife that had a horrible labor and a baby that was in the NICU and he was back to work within a week.”

She later added that “policy is a precondition. We have to design policies that have wage replacement that’s high enough so that men can afford to take leave. We also need a culture and sort of a discussion and men standing up to say: ‘Leave taking is important to me, and here’s the way that it allowed me to not only bond with my child, but also support my partner.’”