Name: 【TED】How America Fails New Parents — and Their Babies | Jessica Shortall | TED Talks
Uploaded: 2016-01-17T03:04:28.000Z
Duration: 15 min 46 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Future simple

If you ask the Internet, this is what you'll be told.

The imperative

Never mind that this is what you'll actually produce

if you attempt to work at a computer with a baby on your lap.

You'll notice a theme in these photos. We'll look at a lot of them.

is the hallmark of every American workplace.

There are thousands of images like these.

Just put the term "working mother" into any Google image search engine,

they're topping blog posts and news pieces,

and I've become kind of obsessed with them and the lie that they tell us

that when it comes to new working motherhood in America,

As a country, we are sending millions of women back to work

every year, incredibly and kind of horrifically soon

but today I'm also going to tell you why it's an economic problem.

I got so annoyed and obsessed with the unreality of these images,

that I recently decided to shoot and star in a parody series of stock photos

that I hoped the world would start to use

just showing the really awkward reality of going back to work

when your baby's food source is attached to your body.

Nothing says "Give that girl a promotion" like leaking breast milk

through your dress during a presentation.

You'll notice that there's no baby in this photo,

Did you know, and this will ruin your day,

that every time a toilet is flushed, its contents are aerosolized

this is the only place during the day that they can find to make food

I put these things, a whole dozen of them, into the world.

I didn't know what I was also doing was opening a door,

because now, total strangers from all walks of life

just to tell me what it's like for them to go back to work

I'm going to share 10 of their stories with you today.

They are totally real, some of them are very raw,

and not one of them looks anything like this.

"I was an active duty service member at a federal prison.

I returned to work after the maximum allowed eight weeks for my C-section.

A male coworker was annoyed that I had been out on 'vacation,'

so he intentionally opened the door on me while I was pumping breast milk

and stood in the doorway with inmates in the hallway."

Most of the stories that these women, total strangers, send to me now,

are not actually even about breastfeeding.

"I gave birth to twins and went back to work after seven unpaid weeks.

Physically, I had a severe hemorrhage during labor, and major tearing,

My employer told me I wasn't allowed to use my available vacation days

I've come to believe that we can't look situations like these in the eye

and if we get horrified then we have to do something about it.

So we choose to look at, and believe, this image.

I don't really know what's going on in this picture,

because I find it weird and slightly creepy.

This working mother, all working mothers and all of their babies, are fine.

I want to break this choice thing down into two parts.

The first choice says that women have chosen to work.

Today in America, women make up 47 percent of the workforce,

a woman is the sole or primary breadwinner.

Our paid work is a part, a huge part, of the engine of this economy,

and it is essential for the engines of our families.

On a national level, our paid work is not optional.

Choice number two says that women are choosing to have babies,

so women alone should bear the consequences of those choices.

that when you hear it in passing, can sound correct.

I certainly wasn't there when that happened.

But that stance ignores a fundamental truth,

which is that our procreation on a national scale is not optional.

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【TED】How America Fails New Parents — and Their Babies | Jessica Shortall | TED Talks

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work

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