I was shocked on how little time off my US friends got for having kids. Most fathers kept on working and mothers were back to work within a week to month of ha

I was shocked on how little time off my US friends got for having kids. Most fathers kept on working and mothers were back to work within a week to month of having a baby. This practice of encouraging mothers to return to work so quickly seemed like a relic of some era of one wage earner families. How can Europe and US be so different in this regard, when the demographic problems should be similar?