The Mother’s Day charade


In another excellent piece on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver makes the point that the public veneration of motherhood in the US is really a sham because we and Papua New Guinea are the only countries that do not offer paid time off for having a child, and he describes the kinds of extraordinary measures that women have to do to cobble together the necessary time off after giving birth. The email that Tesla founder Elon Musk sent to an employee who merely missed one event in order to witness the birth of his child shows how little we actually value parenting.

Comments

  1. atheistblog says

    This mothers day BS are just to make more money by making people consuming more of the corporation shit.
    Make a habit, make it a culture, it is there forever. Isn’t there any meme slowly caught up, then comes the corporations to make buck out of it ? How many ads haven’t you seen just before this mothers day about buying, remembering ? Culture of Consumerism, it has nothing to do with mothers. If you love your mother won’t you be there any other day of year ? If you feel something about mother, the best day to celebrate her is your birthday, the day she gave you birth from her womb, carried you for 10 months and finally gave you life on your own, that’s real mothers day not some meaningless mothers day.
    Gosh, these consumer culture BS.

  2. jimmyfromchicago says

    They aren’t making money if you’re taking time off work; but they do make money if you buy things. That pretty much explains it.

  3. Pianoman, Church of the Golden Retriever says

    @1

    In the vain of the christmas spirit, the apparent level of my love for my spouse is directly proportional to the amount of money I spend on gifts for her. that’s how i read into those ads they market.

  4. doublereed says

    I must say that John Oliver presents issues with remarkable clarity. It’s informative, educational, and humorous.

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