Northeastern University: Petition to Improve Family Leave Benefits

The timing of birth does mean very different benefits for different people. That does not seem right.

To bet on families is to bet on the future

What a wonderful cause!

I support working FAMILIES (Mothers and Fathers) and I endorse the proposals set forth in this document.

I support Working families at Northeastern University.

"Strong mothers provide stable homes. In return maintain a productive environment for your school. Empower our mother's Northeastern University ."

Northeastern prides itself as being a global, innovative university. However, this maternity/paternity plan is from the dark ages. When a parent is forced to choose time with their new born, their health or paying the bills that is wrong for a place that bills itself as progressive. This needs to change

Let this happen

I strongly support ally the mothers and the quality time needed for their children.

Northeastern university needs to do better with helping out mothers with new born.

Dads needs paid time off also

We need to and can do better. Northeastern is advanced in so many areas and this very important area they are in the dark. So unfortunate.

I read this petition and I see these demands as the bare minimum standard for a private university. My prior institutions offered more than this petition has asked for. The present state at NU is unacceptable.

Faculty and staff, both male and female, need greater family and child support from NU. My own experience of adopting a child and receiving no support or time off at all was a real struggle.

Let's have Northeastern become an innovator in this area.

As a recent faculty hire who will be starting this fall, I'm surprised and disappointed that so many of these policies don't already exist at Northeastern.

I consider myself a successful scientist. I always thought if I (as a woman) try hard, I can get whatever I want. However, after giving birth to my child, I realized that Nature is more powerful than me. I cannot fight against sleepless nights, hormonal changes, etc. And, this time it's society's task to support me as a new mom until I get back to a stable situation. Now, I strongly believe that if a society or an institution wants to do only one single change towards gender equality, it should start from supporting new moms. Coming from Harvard, I realized that NU is too far from having an gender-equal environment. The main purpose of a university is to educate people, however NU fails even to educate its own people about the basics, such as work-life balance, gender equality, ect.. Instead, it encourages people to produce/publish like robots (no humanity involved). Of coarse, it is only my observation and different departments and institutes can be different. "Pretending" to be a leading university is far different than "being" a leading university. After all, those new buildings and those fancy-named institutes that NU puts lots of money in are to serve scientists and employees. If the employees are not satisfied with their work environment, non of those expensive infrastructures can improve NUs productivity, or can help NU to get higher in universities ranking list. I highly recommend NU to invest more on employees' work-life balance or any thing that matters to employees that its physical appearance and fancy words. PS: Thanks Esther for initiating this. I hope this synergy can take NU to a better position.

As a male faculty I applaud this effort and strongly ask Northeastern to adopt each of these carefully thought out recommendations.

Thank you Esther

How can Northeastern be a world-class university that claims to care about women students, professionals, and entrepreneurs if they don't follow the lead of others who offer humane family leave benefits?