President Obama told Kelly Wallace of CNN that American families are struggling without the basic minimum labor standards available to workers in most other corners of the globe.  Most children live in households where all adults are employed, and 2/3 of mothers with children under 5 are in the labor force.  Millions of children and millions of parents must have access to earned sick days and paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child, or during a time of serious illness or injury.  Without these family economic security policies, the President explained that working men and women find themselves too often having to choose between their child or their job, a dying parent or their paycheck.  He's asked Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act, which gives every worker 7 earned sick days per year, and indicated he'll put $2 billion in the 2015 budget for states to devise and put in place their own paid family leave insurance programs. If this sounds good to you let your members of Congress and state legislators know that you support earned sick days and paid family leave.

Some states don't like the idea of paid sick days at all - and they are passing laws pre-emptively to prohibit any paid sick days legislation from being introduced.  Pennsylvania is the state where this has happened most recently, according to RH Reality Check:  "Pennsylvania state senators-a Republican and a Democrat-on Wednesday said they would introduce legislation prohibiting municipalities from enacting paid leave protections for workers, a direct response to a long-standing effort in Philadelphia to give employees paid sick leave."

Fitting Dads Into The Equation

Mothers' roles can't change successfully without father's roles undergoing a complementary shift as well.  In the past 50 years, the big story has been women moving into the workforce, though the rate has flattened out and progress has either stalled of dropped to a glacially slow pace.  Now we're hearing more about the effect of fatherhood on men's careers, and the impact that their dual roles as wage earner and family caregiver have on each other.  This just in - "Working fathers who spend more time with their children are likely to have a greater sense of satisfaction on the job, and less of a desire to move to another organization," according to Forbes.com.

How did you spend your pregnancy?  Attending childbirth classes?  Putting together the nursery?   Waiting for test results?  One more thing to add to the list while you're waiting for the blessed event - a little family financial planning.  Take a look at what GoGirl Finance has to say about "How to Financially Prepare for an Unexpected Pregnancy."