"Rabenmutter" No More

Liberal Americans tend to idealize Europeans for their high quality of life, generally considered to be superior to our own for having family-friendly policies such as five weeks of paid annual leave, universal healthcare and affordable childcare.

Well, who knew that working mothers in Germany have long been treated like lepers and are only just now starting to get the respect -- and policy changes -- they deserve? And just whom do they have to thank for it? American women, thank you very much.

According to a column by Doug Sanders in Canadian national newspaper The Globe and Mail, Germany has long looked down its nose at working moms, providing little in the way of affordable childcare and maternity leave for mothers who choose to continue to work outside the home. In fact, working moms in the country are considered so vile that they're often referred to as "rabenmutter" or "raven mother," meaning a woman who abandons her children. (Sanders does a great job explaining the origins of this bizarre attitude toward working women, but in the interest of brevity, I'll skip over that here.)

But lately, thanks in large part to Germany's Minister of Family Affairs Ursula von den Leyen, the tide is finally beginning to turn. In 2007, Von den Leyen introduced the country's first maternity leave policy granting women up to $2,800 a month for a year (14 months if the father takes time as well), and she's in the midst of introducing hundreds of thousands of state-subsidized child-care spaces.

Sanders credits von den Leyen's support of the working mother to her experience studying and working in the United States where she witnessed women combining work and parenthood. Of course, she's done us one better -- but hey, maybe some day we too can extend our mat leave to a full year?

One can only dream.

Photo courtesy of rmolnar7 via Flickr.