Sorry for the brief interruption yesterday, folks! Our countdown continues today as we look at family leave.

The New Yorker calls it America’s disgrace. NPR has dived into the historical reasons for it. And the Atlantic snidely says, “good job America” for it (it’s easy to miss, but check out the URL).

America is alone among developed countries in not ensuring that mothers have paid time off work to bond with a new infant or care for a sick child. Other countries either provide benefits or require businesses to do so; here in America, we make sure that parents can that if they want to be unpaid for 12 weeks, they can come back to their jobs. Unless they work for a variety of businesses that are exempted. And if they’re in certain classes of workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 13 percent of American workers get paid family leave.

And we’re not doing well on other measures. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (roughly, the collection of countries against we can reasonably compare the U.S.) says that while we’re third in gross domestic product, our students are 27th in math (among 34 countries). Then again, I’m not sure how much I trust an organization that “organization” with an S.

Whether the two are related – whether ensuring parents can spend time with their children has any affect on those children’s development – is a complex question that would probably require a House subcommittee convening for at least as long as the one investigating whether Hillary Clinton led the attack in Benghazi. (At least we’ve got our priorities straight, amirite?) But it does seem to me that we could join the rest of the civilized world and find out.

To that end, Bernie has co-sponsored two bills, one that guarantees paid family and medical leave and one that guarantees paid sick time. He’s also introduced a bill to require paid vacation.

You can learn more about Bernie’s plan for real family values here.