Diane writses:
>A year paid maternity leave.........someone must pay for that leave. Who
>whould it be? the employer? The Government(which means you and I).

In all of the Scandinavian countries, it is my understanding that income
taxes are very high, BUT everyone then gets lots of services including
complete FREE medical and dental care.  In Norway, the dental care is free
until age 18 only.

 If a woman
>chooses to have a baby she must also except the responsibilities that come
>with it. Whether it be  Day care, working out an arrangement with her
>employer, staying home, or doing a shared-time situation.  I know woman who
>have done many of these things, raised healthy babies, breastfed and worked
>w/o forcing employers and others to share in the lifestyle she (her family)
>chooses.  Now I'll climb down off my soapbox :-)

You seem to be missing the point I was making -- women are not free to
choose a lifestyle of breastfeeding if no one supports them.  Asking an
employer to provide a clean place to pump, or on-site child care, is not
forcing the employer to breastfeed!  All of society shares the benefit when
children go to school -- that's why everyone's property taxes go to fund the
public schools, whether or not you have children attending the schools.  All
of society shares the burden when children don't go to school, or go to
crummy schools.

Likewise, I would much rather my tax dollars go to support a year of paid
maternity leave so that mom could stay home with baby and breastfeed it and
nurture it than that my tax dollars go to pay for medicaid for visits to the
doctor because the bottle-fed baby has many more ear infections,
gastrointestinal infections, upper respiratory infections, etc.  And for the
long term, more diabetes, more multiple sclerosis, more allergies, more
Crone's disease, etc.  I also think we as a society pay a huge price for the
kind of children (and the adults they become) one gets when they are
bottle-fed, forced to sleep alone, not cuddled or played with, etc.
Anything that would help get the mother-infant bond off to a good start
would have enormous repercussions for the physical and mental health of the
children of the country -- way beyond the initial cost of a year's paid
maternity leave.  In my humble opinion, we wouldn't have the drug problems,
the crime problems, we wouldn't need so many prisons, or so many
psychologists, women in poverty wouldn't be having one child every year if
they were exclusively breastfeeding for the first six months, etc...........

Kathy Dettwyler