Play this game to see how absurd it is that many employees have no sick days.

Doesn’t apply to you? Think again, your waitress or cook may be passing a virus on to you right now.

What would be the best Mother’s Day Gift?

The Family Leave Insurance Act of 2008.

I want to show mother’s how much I REALLY love them.

I want tangible family values and not just hot air popping out of politicians mouths who then vote against employment policies that value families.

I want to pass the Family Leave Insurance Act which declares that Americans value families in a real monetary paid 12 weeks kind of way.

Join me and Momsrising this Mother’s Day in writing your representative and asking them to value Mom’s contribution to both the family and the workplace (no, it’s not too much to ask).

Ask your husband to honor your motherhood in the same way. (It takes two seconds.)

The Family Leave Insurance Act of 2008 will:

* Provide all workers with 12 weeks of paid leave over a 12-month period to care for a new child, provide for an ill family member, treat their own illness, or deal with an exigency caused by the deployment of a member of the military;

* Provide these benefits through a new trust fund that is financed equally by employers and employees, who will each contribute 0.2% of the employee’s pay;

* Progressively tier the benefits so that a low wage worker (earning less than $30,000) will receive full or near full salary replacement, middle income workers ($30,000- $60,000) receive 55% wage replacement, and higher earners (over $60,000) receive 40-45%, with the benefit capped at approximately $800 per week;

* Administer the program through the Department of Labor which will contract with states to administer the program (similar to how the Unemployment Insurance program is run);

* Allow states and businesses with materially equivalent or better benefits to opt-out of the program.

Image Source: MomsRising.org

I want This is what I asked for for Mother’s Day - hip political t-shirts at Momsrising.org’s new Zazzle store.

Momsrising.org is a bipartisan political action group made up of mothers fighting for Family’s rights. Mother’s rights are family rights. Women’s rights are human rights. Family rights are human rights.

Momsrising.org leads the way for women, stay-at-home-moms and career women equally, to cast aside apathy and become active participants in the making of policy.

Opting-out of the corporate workforce is no excuse for ignoring the feminine condition as it impacts working mothers.

Staying in the workforce is not excuse for ignoring the feminine condition as it impacts stay-at-home moms.

Your investment in how women are treated and how laws impact women remains the same, and increases for every female child you have and every woman who will mother your son’s children.

Momsrising takes on fair pay, breastfeeding rights, maternity and paternity leave, after-school programs, education, healthcare, sick leave, pollutants in bottles and toys, television and advertising, and flexible work hours, everything that concerns mothers.

Images: Momsrising Zazzle Store.

My very favorite grassroots political action group is MomsRising.org because they represent ME & YOU. Mothers and women are very often left out of the loop, but MomsRising is showing us how to claim our own power on Capitol Hill.

Think a letter doesn’t make a difference? They do when 60,000 of them are sent to the New Jersey Legislature and that results in New Jersey passing a Paid Family Leave law. That makes three states (California and Washington) that have them now. Only 47 more to go.

Members have also sent over 42,000 letters to Congress telling them not to cut after school programs and it’s resulted in two congressional hearings being scheduled.

They’ve also been a key player in the Product Safety Commission Reform Act to reduce toxins in our homes, breastfeeding rights and healthcare reform.

MomsRising members have held 44 meetings with U.S. Senate Offices in support of the Fair Pay Restoration Act which requires companies to pay men and women equally.

This is how the system works Ladies. We get what we need if we participate. A single letter gets little response. But, when women team up together and require our government to meet our needs - well, we really can change the world.

Visit their website right now. If you can, donate some money. Send some letters to your representatives through their easy links. Become a member and get their emails. Their emails are always something I deeply care about and always provide a simple action step that makes me feel more powerful. Order the Motherhood Manifesto and invite your friends over to party. Membership is FREE.

Tell 8 of your friends about MomsRising and we have Motherhood Revolution with 1 Million Moms. Who knows - YOU might get to be the millionth mom! How cool is that?

Women are not made out of cookie cutters. I suspected this when as a child, I saw my role as a woman very carefully outlined, “Be a wife and a mother, your place is in the home.”

Not that I think that’s a bad place to find yourself at certain times in your life.

But, all women are not the same. My place is where I decide it is.

People just see things differently and it’s maturity that allows us to see that and respect it.

What I don’t like to see is women doing something they don’t want to be doing.

According to Pew Research Center Survey more than one-half of women are doing something they don’t want to be doing.

• 60% of women who work full-time wish they worked part-time (19% wanted to not work at all).
• 50% of women who stay-at-home wished they worked, (33% part-time, 16% full-time).

The feminist revolution held lots of assumptions that well, they just didn’t pan out quite like we thought.

The child-care situation isn’t as rosy as we predicted and maybe we underestimated our own mother-love.

Whatever our personal assumptions were or our economic realities turned out to be - we don’t have to hate the past to change our present.

What we do have to do is get proactive about making what we want our reality.

• Paid family leave so no mother has to go back to work days after giving birth,
• Public universal pre-school,
• Major investments in child care so having a child is no longer the top reason American families have “a poverty spell”,
• After school programs for all kids who need them,
• Health care for all children,
• Benefits for part-time workers, and
• Telecommuting incentives so parents have more flexible work options.

Women are a special interest group that makes of half the population. We need to get serious about voting for our own interests.

Interestingly,73% of men are happy working full-time (and doing only 25% of the housework and childcare). But, most likely they are sick of hearing us complain about our unhappiness with our work-home balance, so this is in their best interests too.

Momsrising is telling every candidate that women want a family-friendly America.

I’m ordering the Motherhood Manifesto DVD for my book-club right now.

The primary function of breasts is baby food not porn.

I was loving the Suave commercials showing the breastfeeding mother. They came under fire by National Action Against Obesity, whose President MeMe Roth Cites U.S.’s Anti-Nursing Climate as Contributor to Obesity Epidemic–”Suave Shampoo is irresponsible in discouraging breastfeeding, even in jest.”

Breast feeding DOES make breasts flat. For many, many mothers. How is that discouraging breastfeeding? To say that it doesn’t make breasts flat is to deny the reality of breastfeeding. And it inflates the importance of full breasts.

That it changes the nature of breasts, as does pregnancy, weight fluctuations and age, doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. It just means you might buy a different bra.

Now Facebook is removing all breastfeeding images from its site. MiMi, what if all your criticism about showing breastfeeding backfired? What if they are taking it as anti-breastfeeding - not fit for public viewing and all that?

I’m joining Babylune in stating that breastfeeding is not dirty and shouldn’t be hidden. I breastfed my babies in PUBLIC and I had every right to do it. More women should.

I can’t tell you how many times I had people tell me I should hide in the bathroom or in a hot car that was 120 degrees - the MOMA, JC Penny, family members and strangers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve defended other mothers’ rights to not hide in a filthy toilet or smother their babies under hot blankets.

In this culture, we hide what we consider dirty and obscene. Why should breast feeding fall in that category? We’re inundated with images of breasts in a sexual-object context, but not at all supportive of a maternal-feminine context for breasts?

We, as women, must stop shunning the nursing mother. Men will follow our lead.

Join Momsrising.org in their statement of support for breastfeeding moms.

Send Facebook hatemail - they deserve it.  Join the group Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!