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Maternity leave and parental leave is absolutely vital for strengthening families. It's an issue for men and women.

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.

As our nation continues to slowly recover from the recession, it is clear some families are doing better than others.

A vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by a mother who sees that the others get it.

With so many part-time people on - and not on - the job, corporate America has started to feel like it's on a permanent maternity leave. Colleagues are an amorphous, free-floating army of rotating waifs whose voicemails are clogged with plaintive requests from their own offices for missing information.

Every time a woman leaves the workforce because she can't find or afford childcare, or she can't work out a flexible arrangement with her boss, or she has no paid maternity leave, her family's income falls down a notch. Simultaneously, national productivity numbers decline.

Not everybody even gets to live with their own family because they have to go to L.A. or New York or wherever to work and find a job and leave their family back home. But every day, I get to work with my family - if I want to.

Today, smartphones, tablets, and the Internet have allowed people to conduct business from anywhere at any time. But as we continue to progress, many families find it harder to balance the ever-increasing demands of their work with their desire to care for and be with their family.

Everything has changed in recent decades - the economy, technology, cultural attitudes, the demographics of the workforce, the role of women in society and the structure of the American family. It's about time our laws caught up. We watch 'Modern Family' on television, but we're still living by 'Leave It To Beaver' rules.

It's really important to recognize that family life in America has changed pretty dramatically.