Strollerderby : benefits

They Say: Legalizing Gay Marriage Will Benefit Kids

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

As the Vermont legislature is poised to vote on whether or not to move from civil unions to gay marriage, the Vermont chapters of four national mental health organizations have weighed in heavily in favor of granting gay couples all of the legal benefits of marriage.

The National Psychiatric Association, the Psychological Association, the Association of Mental Health Counselors, and the National Association of Social Workers focused heavily on children’s well-being in their statement. According to the psychologist who released the statement, “Research has shown children of same-sex couples are as likely as children of heterosexual parents to flourish…[and] same-sex parents are just as likely to provide healthy and supportive environments for children."

The sole reason that the children of same-sex couples may suffer more than their peers in social situations is because of deeply engrained societal discrimination—a problem that will only fade as governments grant same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples.

Photo: National Film Board of Canada

No Worker's Comp For Son of Woman Murdered

Kelly Mills — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:33:00 GMT

Taneka Talley was stabbed to death at her job---she was a clerk at the Dollar Store in Fairfield, California. Now the company is denying worker's compensation benefits to her surviving eleven-year-old son. The boy's grandmother, who won custody, is fighting the case, and her lawyer says, "They're saying (the killing) didn't arise out of her employment, except that in this case she wouldn't have been killed if she hadn't been at work. This person didn't know her, just walked into the store and picked her out."

See, the murder was motivated by racism. The man who is going to stand trial for killing her allegedly decided he wanted to kill a black person, and Talley was the first person he saw. He walked into the store where Talley was stocking shelves, stabbed her, and fled.

Worker's compensation benefits don't cover injuries or deaths that have a "personal" motive, such as a spouse attacking someone at work. The company is arguing that in this case, Talley's murder was personally motivated, even though she did not know her attacker, and therefore her son should be ineligible to receive $250,000 in death benefits. Personally I think that it's a crappy case to make, and in drawing this line, they obviously harm her young son, the one she was working to support. Heartless.

Eight-Year-Old Charged With Murdering His Father

Kids Yell Assasinate Obama On School Bus

Parenting: What's In It For Me?

Kelly Mills — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:07:00 GMT

You know, when you decide to make the plunge into parenthood, there's likely some hidden expectation about what having kids was going to do for you. I think I had some weird romantic notion about becoming a gentle earth mother serenely rocking my sleeping infant as I finally understood all the mysteries of the universe. Of course, I now look back on my child's infancy and can count the serene moments on zero fingers. I mean, really. Colic. Sigh. The only mystery I wrestled with was how any one child could make such a horrific noise for so damn long.

Anyhow, I thought of this when I read this excellent post on the Alpha Mummy blog, which I clearly liked alot. She lists some great benefits of parenting, like realizing that everything in the whole world is a phase (we'll even be able to say goodbye to Crocs one day!), and developing a work ethic that would make the driven pre-kid you look like a total slouch. So anyhow, what did you get out of becoming a parent?

Working women wisdom

Ten Childish (and Childless Things)

Weekly Check-Up: Laugh Your Yoga Off

Kelly Mills — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:01:00 GMT

I swear every day a new kind of yoga is created by someone. Guess one growing trend is laughter yoga, where you, you know, laugh as part of the practice. "'Kids laugh about 400 times a day, and adults only about 15,' notes Barb Fisher, a certified laughter yoga leader..." Yes, you can get certified to teach people how to giggle in a healing way, and once again, children hold the answers. Oh, help me see the world through the eyes of a child. Hey, if you aren't a class kind of person, may I suggest you read my stuff, cuz I guarantee to make you laugh as much as your average kid or I'll give you your money back.

I know I'm far too curmudgeonly for my own good, and why I'm picking on yoga with all the injustice in the world is beyond me, but how come we have to take special classes to laugh? And why do we have to sell it by pumpimg up the health benefits of laughing? (Which include, by the way, stress relief, muscle toning, and, um, help with digestion and constipation. See? Just thinking about constipation made me giggle right there.) I swear, soon we'll have to have special crapping yoga to keep us regular and cuddling yoga so the people in our lives feel loved. Anyhow, perhaps these classes are totally awesome and soon when celebrities are asked how they stay so thin, they'll swear it's the laughter yoga that gave 'em the six-pack abs. But we'll all know the truth: It was totally my writing that did it.

How Taxes Stack Up

Amy Kuras — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:04:00 GMT

It's Tax Day, and you are either sweating out your tax forms at the last minute or you’ve already spent your refund and are smugly awaiting your stimulus payment. Or you’re like me, bleary eyed and cranky because you wanted to make sure you had an extra day to deal with problems and thus stayed up incredibly late last night.

Has I been snug in my bed right on time, though, I would still hate paying taxes to our current government and be extra pissy today because I had to. Especially after looking at this press release from the Council on Contemporary Families at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It lays out what family-friendly benefits US families get for their tax money versus what people in other industrialized nations get for their (admittedly higher) tax dollars. Check it out:

•   In Norway, parental leave allowance is 54 weeks at 80% pay or 44 weeks at 100% to be shared any way the parents wish, although the mother must take three weeks before birth and six weeks immediately after and the father must take five weeks off if they intend to use any leave (yes, must, not "if they have a sympathetic boss and can afford to, maybe"). Adoptive parents are eligible for 51 weeks off at 80% pay or 41 weeks at 100%.

•   In Greece, either parent can use up to 17 months of leave time, and receive an additional hour off per day until the child is 30 months old, or two hours per day for 12 months and one hour per day for the next six months.

•   In Belgium, free early childhood education is available to all children starting at the age of 2 1/2.

We couldn’t even deduct child care.
Sigh.