A lot of times, people say, 'My work didn't suffer with family.' I would go a step further: My career only flourished upon having children. It got better.
You shouldn't have to win the boss lottery in order to have a little bit of flexibility at work. Raising and supporting a family isn't just a financial obligation. What's important isn't just being able to put food on the dinner table - we want you to be at the dinner table, too.
I'm going to do everything I can to bring our policies in line with the way families live and work today by guaranteeing paid family leave and making child care affordable.
For me as a mom, not an allocated player, there have been some years that have been a difficult journey because NWSL doesn't really support mothers.
When I started, there were very few women at the managing director level and very few who had families, which is something that was important to me. So it's not like, when I looked up, I could say, 'Well, that's who I want to be.'
There's also, I think more so in the music business and especially for women, this ceiling that people put on you if you have children or a family and decide to spend time with them.
I think the rules will change and I think more and more young women are going to decide that having a family and taking care of a home is not a bad choice, but how do we subsidize it - not necessarily European-style socialism. It'll have to be a new more creative, dynamic and local solution.
We also have to look at how we help families balance the responsibilities at home and the responsibilities at business.
Paternity, paternity. Let's think about this. This discriminates against the childless. So you get a year off because you produce a brat. If anything if you have a child you should work more because your brat's going to annoy me at the restaurants.
I'm on the MIT board, and a lot of our buildings now have daycare centers; it's becoming a standard.
I just remember when my first child was born I called the personnel office and I asked them about their leave policies. And they said, "Leave policies? Women just leave and they don't come back." And I said, "But I want to come back." They said, "We have no leave policy." And then they said, "Why don't you apply for disability?" Well, having a child is not a disability.
I have proposed maternity leave for mothers whose employers do not provide it.
I'm particularly fortunate to be in a position where I can bring my child to work and be able to get good child care. Not a lot of women have that.
Men want to play a bigger and equal role in raising their children, but as a society we don't support them in that.
Paid family leave, for instance, has strong backing in scientific literature as an effective means of enabling families who want kids to have them.
Maternity leave and parental leave is absolutely vital for strengthening families. It's an issue for men and women.
There's a tremendous loss of talent to businesses who cannot make room for their employees to attend to family responsibilities. It really amounts to corporate waste: They hire really talented women and then lose them because they can't find ways to keep them productive and content the minute they can't "lean in."
In 2016, you shouldn't have to choose between succeeding at work and being there for your family.
I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family.
Being transparent about parental leave and pay policies will help build a workplace culture where men also feel supported in taking on their fair share of caring responsibilities.
As president, my father will change the labor laws put in place when women were not a significant portion of the workforce. He will make childcare affordable and accessible to all. He will fight for equal pay for equal work, and I will fight for this, too, right alongside of him.
We are still behaving as if a worker really doesn't have a family because the work pattern really was meant for men who really were the financial support but weren't looking after their families. We need to change this, and we can easily do that.
America is the only developed nation in the world with no guaranteed paid leave of any kind. That means we're leaving a whole lot of talent on the sidelines.
A company that pays attention to the family unit is a successful company. We don't isolate the family. We don't make rides that say, 'Hey mom, dad, you go sit on the bench.'
If we want a Parliament that understands people's lives when it takes decisions, it needs to be representative of society, which includes having MPs who are parents of small children - both mums and dads.
