Caitlin Ford

“Nordic nations have realized that it is in the best long-term interests of everyone, including businesses, to support families in raising children. After all, in the long run, happy family members are more productive, and businesses will have a wider pool of healthy, productive, well-adjusted workers to draw on in the future. So when it comes to granting parental leave after a baby is born, the Nordic approach is also quite different from the American.”
― Anu Partanen, The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life

“By contrast, Nordic societies have decided to free parents from this burden as it is good for all the individuals and institutions involved: employers, parents, and—not least, of course—the children themselves. Thanks to the Nordic theory of love, every parent in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark has easy access to inexpensive, convenient day care, publicly subsidized and generally paid for on a sliding scale according to a family’s income. Access to day care begins as soon as parents complete their initial parental leaves, and day-care centers are regulated to ensure high quality. Privately run day care is certainly also available in many places, if parents prefer that option.”
― Anu Partanen, The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life

“According to a UN report from 2014 surveying 185 countries and territories, only two did not guarantee any paid maternity leave; Papua New Guinea and the United States. The United States is also one of only a handful of countries that don’t guarantee their workers any paid time off for illness—others include Angola, India, and Liberia.”
― Anu Partanen, The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life

“But you said I had to spend some time with them!” “A few hours, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said, “to apologize for the trouble you’d given them. What did you expect? That I’d leave you here all summer, in the exact place where your enemies know where to look? With people that aren’t even your family? In a place you don’t really like, and that is depressingly normal compared to the world you’ve grown to love? Doesn’t that sound a little stupid and contrived to you?” I raised a relieved hand to my head. “Yeah,” I noted, “now that you mention it, who would do something silly like that?”
― Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians