Are Parents Welcome in Silicon Valley?

Without government-mandated policies for parental or family leave, companies are free to offer benefits packages that work for them. For many Silicon Valley companies, that means they don’t offer any leave at all. That’s only one example of the not-so-subtle discrimination faced by working parents in the tech industry.

For generations, American employers have prized people who prioritize work over family, and European countries have long had more generous policies for working parents. But in the last two decades, that gap has widened significantly. Other developed countries have expanded benefits like paid parental leave and child care, while the United States has not. This coincides with a major shift away from an economic structure where fathers worked while mothers took care of the home and children. Those days are long gone, but our workplace polices have not kept pace.

Claire Cain Miller, writing in The New York Times, details the disconnect between Silicon Valley culture and family life, and talks with some executives who have made major changes in order to create a better work-life balance.