Are you happy with the Maternity Leave in the US?

I know some companies offer VERY generous maternity leave benefits. However, most do not. I work for a state agency so our policy is:

-12 weeks FMLA (if you’ve been here a year

-unpaid

-must use all sick and vacation time while on FMLA

Which means, when we return to work, we’ve exhausted all leave so if we or the baby get sick, we have no paid time we can take.

And sadly, this is considered generous compared to many companies in the US! So recently I vented about this because it had kept me up for several nights (worrying) and several of my older male relatives bashed me for “wanting a socialist country” (wanted the same leave my friends get in different parts of Europe and Canada). Told me it could be worse, I could be in a third world country. Took up for these policies and said “we shouldn’t expect to get paid to do nothing”. One even told me I could get an abortion (I’m 20 weeks pregnant with my daughter and they know how happy I am).

Why can’t I simultaneously be excited for my baby and also frustrated with shitty policy?? Why do men- who haven’t had children (or it’s been 30+ years since their wives have had children) feel their need to put women down over this frustration?? Men have no idea what our bodies go through, how much healing needs to happen WHILE bonding and caring for an infant. And then we are expected to just bounce back into work and act like we aren’t still bonding and caring for our infants? And care for them like we aren’t a full time employee?

Im happy to be a mom. I’m happy to eventually return to my job. It just feels like 12 weeks is too soon to leave my baby and it makes me sad. And obviously it pisses me off how men feel the need to put women down for this