Great things of being mom in Germany: Healthcare

I was complaining in my last posts about how bad is seen for a woman in Germany to come back to work after giving birth. I want to talk another day about other difficulties, such as finding daycare. However today I want to write a post about great things of being a mom here, and one very important is the healthcare.

I have a public insurance (Krankenkasse), so I pay no private insurance. I always felt during my pregnancy that the german healthcare system is amazing. I was visiting my obstetrician 13 times during the pregnancy. In the beginning it was around once a month, after the week 30 every two weeks, and during the last month every week. My public insurance covered only a couple of ultrasounds (around 3 or 4), but I paid 100 euros extra which was like a "flat rate" for ultrasounds and I had many every time I was there. I know in other countries of Europe, that the public system only offers three or four visits overall! The obstetrician was amazing, and they were making me lot of tests during the whole pregnancy so I always felt quite relaxed as I was seeing that everything was going great. What a relief!

Apart from that, and also included in the public insurance, I had a midwife (Hebamme). I contacted her when I was three months pregnant and she was there always for any question I may have. I started seeing her weekly five weeks before my due date, and she was doing acupuncture in every visit. She told me she would help to make my labour quicker. I was a bit sceptic (I am sceptic by nature) but the truth is that my labour was very quick, so I would do it again, just in case! 

The best is after birth: when I arrived home with my baby, she was coming home every day for two weeks, checking that baby was fine, weighting her, taking care of her belly button, showing us how to bath her... As an expat, without family around, it was a relief to have her here. She has offered to come in the next weeks, but we told her we do not need that she visits us anymore. All these services of the midwife are also covered by the public health insurance.

I also had a good experience in the hospital. You have a lot of options to have the baby the way you prefer: water birth, or if you go to the Delivery Room, you have lot of appliances to be used during delivery such as birthing balls, ropes hanging, birthing stools... Or of course you can ask for epidural when you arrive. A midwife is there with you to help you in your decisions and ease the pain.

Once the baby is there, you stay at least three nights in the hospital until they do the second medical check to your baby. During my three days in the hospital they were all very nice and helped us a lot. I shared room with another woman. I had the chance to get a private room if I paid a fee, but there were no private rooms available, and anyway, it was much better than expected to share the room, as the other mom was very nice and gave me great tips as was her second baby. The visits schedule is very strict, it was from 2pm to 4pm and from 6pm to 8pm, so there was not much noise in the room at all. Even the food was great, we could choose our daily menu! 

In general, I feel lucky as the healthcare system here works very well and my experience was great, specially when I compare with friends in countries like UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy...

I will talk in another post of other advantages of being a mom in Germany, such as the financial support of the state.

Why I want to be a Working Mom

I believe coming back to work or staying at home is a personal decision. Families have to decide what is best for them. I respect the decision of any family. What I do not like is that my decision of coming back to work is being challenged by so many people as I explained in my last post. Some of the comments are really offensive, or try to convince me I have not really considered the situation. But I have! These are my personal reasons, that other families may share or not:

I believe it is the best for the baby:

• I think that going to a kindergarden helps the baby to develop her skills. It is more interesting and more stimulating to be not only at home with us, but also in a kindergarden with other children. She will learn new things and discover another part of the world.
• It also helps for social skills - she will be in contact with other babies. They will imitate each other, learn to share, learn that there are more kids in the world! She will start playing with them.
• She will also develop better communication skills as she has to interact with more people.
• I have a baby girl and I want to set example. What message would I give her if I decide to stop working because I am a woman?! I want that when she is older, she learns to be independent. She finds a job that she loves and makes her feel well and develops her skills. I want that if she wants to live with a man and have a family, she stays with the man because she loves him, not because she depends on him!

I also believe is the best for my family:

• Again this is very personal, but in our case, my husband and me share interests and have similar jobs. We discuss many things that happen in our job together. If I would be at home and can only talk about the new offers that are in the Lidl, our relationship would suffer it.
• Financially it also makes sense. Why to leave all the responsibility to one person? Nowadays in our IT industry things change fast, sometimes there are lay-offs, or maybe one of us wants to change job in the future. If we both have a job that can support the family, the financial risk is also minimised, and with a child depending on us, I think that is important. And of course two salaries in one family has more advantages: from healthcare support in case there is a problem, or being able to offer better education to our child, to enjoying more holidays together.

I even believe is better for the society. As mentioned in previous post, Germany is the second country in Europe in terms of bigger gender pay gap. I think this is sad. Why to leave all the responsibility to only half of the society? What happens with the wasted talent of the other half? I believe men and women should share the paternity/maternity leave so there is no impact in hiring a man or a woman.
These are the reasons I usually give when people challenge my decision, I do not want to change anybody's mind, but my mind is very clear!

What is a Rabenmutter

Language defines culture. There is a word in german language that does not exist in other languages, and this word is "Rabenmutter", or raven mother. This is a big insult, means that you are a mother who does not care for your children. You may think it is applied to mothers whose children are abandoned in their crib and receive no kisses and love from their mom, children who are dirty or who do not have an education or are not well fed, who are not stimulated and feel alone. But nooooo, this offensive word is dedicated to mothers who work! (Of course there is no "Raven father" equivalent. It is fine if the father stays out from home travelling or working from 8am to 8pm, it seems children do not need the love from the father.)

Nobody has ever told me "you are a Rabenmutter". But yes, many people have challenged me if I am doing the right thing for my child.

The kind of comments I have heard when saying I would go back to work are:

• "Being a mother is a full time job for three years" (my reaction: it is for my whole life, I am always going to be there for my child, and always taking care of her!!)
• "I feel sorry for children who are not with the mom during the first three years" (my reaction: I feel sorry for the children that are all day with a bored mom and do not get to know other children and other games and experiences)
• "It is ok if you go back to work, but do not work more than 10 hours per week, that would not work for your child" (hmm 10 hours per week? This really depends on your job - in mine it does not have any sense)
• "I do not know why you have a kid if you want to go back to work" (what?? is it wrong to work? why would you never say this from a man?)
• "You say that you want to go back to work, but I am sure that when you have your baby in your arms, you cannot make that to her, you will see" (many people told me this one while I was pregnant!! and really offended me, it was like "now you do not have feelings, but you will develop them". Sorry I already know I will love my baby, indeed I love her during the pregnancy as well and I know the best for my baby and my family is that I go back to work.)
• "In other countries women have to work because families cannot live from one salary as in Germany" (ah ok...so for you the fact that women go to university is just a back up plan in case they do not find a rich husband?)
• "Women stop working to raise the children because family is very important for us" (this one hurts...I felt very offended. Family is very important for me. In my home country, families support each other all the life, and here in Germany I have the impression that when kids are adults the support is over, and still I would never say that family is not important for them!)

I am very tired. During the pregnancy I had to deal with these comments so many times. My baby is weeks old and I keep hearing them, and I suspect I will continue hearing them for the next years. And these comments were coming from everyone at any time, from my family in law, from german colleagues, from a waiter in a restaurant! In the beginning I was just trying to ignore them, but then I created a list of reasons of why I want to go back to work, and started confronting them.
I believe this is a personal and hard decision, and people have nothing to say about it. I will write down my reasons in next post!

Facts, Facts, Facts

I was shocked when I realised that here in Bavaria people tend to measure how good mother you are by the amount of months you stay at home after your child is born, but I will talk about the comments I have heard and how I cope with them in another post.

I want to share some facts about the situation of working women in Germany in the post today. I am working in IT, so it is usually always much less women than men. However as I have worked in other countries and had business meetings in US and many countries in Europe, such as UK, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium or Denmark, it has been clear for me that in Germany there are even less women working than in other countries, and of course the percentage is even lower in management positions. I share my impression and my experience, but as I like science and statistics, and I know that the experience of one person is not statistically relevant to jump to a conclusion, I have been searching for the situation in Germany in the media.

This article of New York times talks about how difficult is to empower women in Germany (even when the president is a woman - but here I want to clarify "Merkel is not a mother!"). I was reading this article and thinking "oh yes, this is so true". It explains how only about 14 percent of German mothers with one child resume full-time work, and only 6 percent of those with two. Which is fine, if this is a free decision. But I think what is sad is what a SAP Board Member mentions in her interview "When you have children, you’re expected to stay home for a significant period; otherwise you are considered a bad mother.".This diagram from the article shows the comparison between different countries of the share of women in corporate boards and Executive Committees, where Germany is closer to India and Brazil than to other European Countries or US:

Is there also a difference in the salaries? Yes there is - according to the European Union report about gender gap, on average women in the EU earn around 16% less per hour than men. The gender pay

gap varies across Europe. No surprise the biggest gap is in Germany with 22.4% and Austria with 23%.

This report of the OECD gives more information about the percentage of families working full time. The percentage of parents working full time with children from 0-14 years old (around 17%) is one of the lowest of the OECD countries, whereas the US percentage is one of the highest (around 71%).

I had already heard that many women stayed at home, but I always thought it was a free choice. What I did not expect is that the society wants you to be at home when you have a child, and this is what I experience every day, and what I am going to explain in my next posts.

why this blog

I want to start writing a blog with my experience as working mom in Germany.
I came to live to Germany three years ago. Some people come because is a great place to work and quality of life is great; other people come because of love; and other people because of beer festivals. All these were good reasons for me! In summary, I fell in love with a german guy, I found Germany a great place to live which much better job opportunities and moved to Bavaria. Soon I was learning german, wearing a dirndl and drinking five mass of beer one day in the Oktoberfest.
I am very happy here and grateful to german society. I got a great job and I enjoy, respect and find incredibly interesting german culture. I like that people pay the public transport, that I can leave my bike on street and when I am back is there, I like punctuality. I spent the first years thinking very lucky with my decision to move here.
But then there was the day when we decided to have a child and I got pregnant. I was excited and very happy. What I didn't expect is that I had to start to justify to so many people why I want to keep working. Indeed I thought I finally found why in this region of Bavaria the unemployment is so low: women stop working for raising children, and if they work, they probably work half time. This country has a woman as president because she does not have children. There is even a negative term "rabenmutter" for the women who decide to work. Waiting lists for childcare take years. But the worse is when I have to explain again and again my decision, which of course nobody asks to my husband. About all this I want to write, which is my experience as a working mom in Germany!