GAY PARENTS CHEER A BENEFITS REVOLUTION: From USA Today

After Michael Fierstos and his partner, Mike McCarns, decided to become parents of three siblings, he left his job as a project manager to become a stay-at-home dad.

Instead of managing accounts, he now spends his time organizing play groups and taking his children to the supermarket.

As the number of same-sex couples with children reaches records, more are confronting challenges about how to balance work and family. Gay dads are quitting work to stay home with kids, lesbian mothers are going part time--and employers are responding by offering work-life programs and benefits to gay employees. ...

Nearly half of Fortune 500 companies offer domestic partner benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a Washington, D.C.-based organization that focuses on gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual issues.

But many are going beyond the basics. Of companies that provide such benefits, 90% cover a domestic partner's dependant children. Sixty percent extend adoption assistance to the domestic partner. And 72% also allow employees to take extended family leave to care for a domestic partner or their dependents.

Many of these benefits have been added in the past 10 years. "Companies are really instituting policies that recognize the workforce has changed and the 1960s definition of family no longer fits the workforce," says Daryl Herrschaft, director of the workplace project at HRC. "The flexibility that has existed for straight families in the workplace is being extended to domestic partners. Corporate America is really leading the way."

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posted by Eve at 5:12 PM | link

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