Oh, Mr. Trump.
Every time we talk about the man that is the equivalent of a political mythical creature, I feel like I’m in an episode of “I Love Lucy.”
Oh, what kind of shenanigans is he going to get himself into this time? Well, Donald Trump has a newly formulated maternity-leave plan that will be sure to knock you up…out.
He plans to secure mothers with a fixed income for their maternity leave which will run over the course of six weeks. This is a pretty big deal considering that, currently, the government only enforces a 12-week unpaid leave of absence for most employees, according to ABC News.
On top of that, this maternity leave/child care plan allows for working parents to “deduct child care expenses from their income taxes and [create] dependent care savings accounts.”
The brains behind the operation, however, seem to be that of Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, who gave an impassioned speech that exemplified her dedication to providing affordable child care to today’s working parent.
She gave an anecdote about a woman who was facing homelessness and who, while going into a job interview, left her two children in a hot car. She used this as the opening to her speech to exemplify the detrimental effect inaccessible and expensive child care has on working class parents.
The plan is geared toward dual-income families, which were not common when these family-care laws were established in the late 1940s. It now focuses on aiding “a primarily male work force that no longer exists.” Ivanka solidified this with the statistic that women now represent 47 percent of the American work force.
There are, of course, those who see faults in the Trump plan.
Josh Barro from Business Insider Online, said “such a mandate could discourage companies from hiring workers who they think might have children.”
So anyone with a uterus? Got it.
Hillary Clinton plans to enforce a 12-week paid leave, but with a 2/3 wage cap so things don’t become too generous.
Whether it’s the pros or cons of this plan that resonate most with you, I have to admit this is innovative thinking for the Republican Party – a political party known for its God-fearing Christians and white, male-dominated masses.
For a Republican candidate to understand that today’s families are represented in a variety of numbers, and are not pigeon-held to one gender, speaks volumes for the changes that could be made, and acts as a bright spot on an otherwise spotty track record for Donald J. Trump.
But one has to ask, is this simply a stigmatized, sexist man trying to get the female vote in order to secure his presidency or a father who empathizes with the tumultuous burden of having offspring? I don’t want to assume that he is incapable of understanding that financial burden, but  his kids seem like the type that got a yacht-of-the-month club membership for their first birthdays.
But I’ll leave that to be decided.