CoreForce 1a. Reasonable vacation/sick time (along with borough approval of said leave)
In Spain, full-time admiral are affirmed 22 paid vacation days, not including 14 attainable holidays. This is in actuality below than abounding added countries in the Eurozone (UK: 28, France: 25-35 Germany: 20-30) accepting the acceptability that Spaniards access a amore for connected vacations (the city-limits of Madrid actually is comatose in August.)
The U.S. has no adequate ceremony leave days. None. 0. Zilch.
Generally, companies with added than 50 admiral board amidst 8 and 12 canicule of vacation a year, abacus a day for ceremony year worked. To say that this is awful isn’t even acerbic it. However, the complete adversity I’ve actuate with vacation time in the U.S. is the stigma that surrounds appliance vacation time (i.e. you’re somehow not a harder artisan or as advancing as your colleagues if you crop it) or even the attributes of the address that makes demography different canicule in a row about cool afterwards accurate activity afflicted for yourself aloft your return. This has resulted in an accession aggregate of Americans not appliance the affecting aggregate of ceremony leave they are allotted to alpha with.
1b. Maternology leave
This one gets a absent section, but barrage below a affiliated absorption as the ancient item. Alone four countries in the angel access no borough law mandating paid time off for new parents. Four. The Affiliated States is one of them. The added three are Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland. The babyish activity ante in those countries are 7.1%, 4.08% and 5.8% respectively, to accordance you an absorption of breadth women’s blossom stands in those countries.
Birth is the a lot of acclimatized activity there is. The acclimatized to actuate a ancestors and access accouchement is universal, and yet the Affiliated States has one of the worst maternology leave situations. In an age breadth a lot of mothers both ambition to and often need to work, our adjustment has not accidentally angled up. The accession aggregate of women who are animate has acclimatized the home, the address and agreeable dynamics in the access 50 years or so, and yet the alone law on the book that mandates companies board maternology leave (the Ancestors and Medical Leave Act, 1993) is for companies with 50+ admiral and you access to access formed at diminutive 12 months/1,250 hours in the anterior year. This leave is not bounden to be paid about and is alone up to 3 months. No acclaimed daycare in the Affiliated States will access a boyish over 5 months so parents access to scrape calm their already apprenticed vacation/sick time (see above) or anticipate on ancestors and friends, which not anybody has. Additionally, prenatal adversity in the U.S. is ranked a allocation of the adversity in first-world countries and abounding of it is not covered by allowance diplomacy or requires abounding copays, making the U.S. the a lot of big-ticket address to access a baby.
Alternatively, in Spain a mother is provided with prenatal adversity chargeless of accusation and is acclimatized 16 weeks of 100% paid leave, as able as up to a year of 31% paid leave. A mother can crop up to 3 years of contributed leave with a acceding of her job if she returns. Imagine that… a mother who gets to be a mother to her own child! A antecedent aswell gets 15 canicule of ancestors leave with 15 added canicule that can be adopted from the mother’s leave. Since attainable apprenticeship in Spain begins at age 3, a ancestors is affirmed childcare for their accouchement until they are 18 and all accouchement access accepting to quality, affordable preschool education.
2. The metric adjustment and Celsius
So there are 12 inches in a foot, 3 all-overs in a yard, 5,280 all-overs in a mile… I think… access freezes at 32°F and boils at 212°F. I’m an American and even I don’t actually get our system… I in actuality had to accessory some of that up. Of beforehand I get it in access and I still access to do the changeabout in my able for Celsius. I can alone belt meters off of how connected a boy already told me it was to his address (200 meters takes about 5 annual to airing if you stop to kiss alternating the way) but that’s alone because I grew up in our adjustment and access 25+ years of training in it, not because it’s in actuality logical.
The alone added countries not appliance it accepting Burma and Liberia. A absorption in 1968 angled that the U.S. would eventually acclimatize to the draft of the angel and hop on the metrification bandwagon. We are still waiting. Attempts in 1975 and again in 1981 bootless due to “resistance, apathy, and sometimes ridicule.”
Sure, it would be hard. But the UK and all of their old commonwealths did it. Mexico did it.
Say it with me, America… 100 centimeters in a meter. 1,000 meters in a kilometer. Access freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C. Perhaps if we got our animate out of our star-spangled asses and apprehend how simple this is, it wouldn’t be a answerable of aboveboard “ridicule?” Alas, one can hope.
3. Bilingual attainable schools
In 2004, Spain began an activity to accustom a bilingual chic to attainable schools aloft the nation. Now, there are over 400 bilingual primary schools in Madrid alone. A lot of are English/Spanish, but some focus on French, German or Italian. These schools are still animate out the kinks, but their mission is clear: address an educated, bilingual accession of accepting who are able for a globalizing exchange and populace.
Despite an ever-increasing Latino population, the U.S. is hardly abutting to accepting bilingual or even speaking different languages at a able level. There is a caper (at our expense) that I heard abroad:
If you anxiety a accepting who speaks 2 languages “bilingual” and a accepting who speaks 3 languages “trilingual,” what do you anxiety a accepting who alone speaks 1 language? An American.
Only about 10% of native-born Americans adduce a emphasis added than English, putting us at a huge disadvantage if it comes to issues of education, tourism, economics and borough security.
4. Staying an alone afterwards adequate married/having children
I access that I could get a lot of adversity for this, but it is my accuracy that a lot of Americans crop on things like “wife,” “husband,” “mother,” and “father,” not just as added roles, but about as their complete identities if they get affiliated and access children. It seems that as afresh as abounding Americans become parents, they accordance up their agreeable lives, their hobbies and a big allocation of their adroitness of agreeable self. They changeabout inwards while accurate their accouchement the alone activity in their lives afterwards analytic away to accession sustenance and support. This bureau they about abound atramentous because they’ve forcibly alone their changeable and their sociality, accepting sacrificed it for a dull, amber burlap accouterment fit for spit-up and beautify markings, but not for play time at a café. Spaniards, alternating with beforehand a bigger work/life antipode in general, access agreeable even as they accessory and access accouchement and not just with added families from their children’s schools.
Though Spain is about acclimatized as historically accepting a more machismo culture, I in actuality actuate that women in Spain retained their adroitness of arrogant added than Americans did as they aged. Allocation of this could be due to the cultural differences in demography or not demography a husband’s name afterwards marriage. Women in Spain accrue their names afterwards accord and accouchement are acclimatized two access names: that of their father’s and their mother’s.
Like a lot of American children, I grew up doodling “Allison insert-name-of-current-crush-here” on my notebooks. These days, I don’t access 1/4 my Facebook accompany because they’ve gotten affiliated and access a new access name. I just afflicted that I would accessory and change my name until I abashed to Spain and able it’s not acclimatized to all cultures. While I access the absorption of accepting a ancestors affiliated below one name, the paternalistic attributes of the wife and accouchement adopting just the husband’s name doesn’t sit actually acclimatized with me.
Writing Christmas cards to Spanish families can be backbreaking (everyone has two access names and the parents ceremony adapt from the accouchement in two of them), but this babyish bulk to pay seems annual it as it aswell seems to access cultural ramifications in acceding of how one identifies afterwards accord and children. I’m not aphorism one ceases to be themselves afterwards accepting affiliated if they crop your husband’s name, and it’s actually a claimed choice, but afore accomplishing so “because that’s how it’s consistently been done” in the Anglo-Saxon world, crop a moment to accept the absolute implications.
5. Sunday lunches and paseos with family/friends
While sometimes it can be a bit abounding (children about abide with their parents through their late-20s and aloft and even if they move out will abide in the above adjacency or even in the above building), Spaniards emphasis ancestors time and spending above time with ancestors members.
One attitude I applause is the Sunday lunch. Added than a Norman Rockwell painting, this seems to access abundantly abolished from the American landscape. Spaniards still accrue with their families or abutting accompany on Sundays for a big beforehand that includes the aperitivo (tapas or the like afore lunch, usually out at a belted restaurant), the basic meal (often paella or accession abounding adequate dish) and the sobremesa, which is babble and coffee with bake-apple and cheese afterwards. This is about followed by a paseo (stroll) about the adjacency breadth they accessory with ceremony added and added bodies from their neighborhood.
Most aliment aren’t even attainable on Sundays in Spain. Sometimes this is inconvenient, but it bureau that ancestors and associate time gets prioritized and it’s not so simple to achieve excuses for things you “need to do.” Afterwards all, we all allegation at diminutive one day a ceremony breadth we don’t feel like we “need” to do abolishment added than blot above time with the ones we love.
Runners-up included: chargeless appetizers with drinks, wine that isn’t credible up 700% in restaurants, reliable and on-time attainable transportation, putting the comma outside the parenthesis and pedestrian amiable streets.
Bonus: Jamón. Because it’s like Spanish crack.
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