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Dove is offering $5,000 to dads without parental leave at their jobs.

Dove is offering $5,000 to dads without parental leave at their jobs.

The workplace has daddy issues. While it’s common for a new mother to take maternity leave postpartum, there’s still a stigma surrounding paternity leave.

Most dads don’t have access to paid time off to experience their child’s crucial first few weeks of life. Furthermore, they feel as if their jobs might be in jeopardy if they do opt to spend time with their bundle of joy.

In order to combat the stigma around paternity leave, Dove Men+Care is offering $5,000 to new dads planning to take full-time paternity leave. Dove has pledged $1 million to new fathers across America for the next two years.


“Less than 1 in 5 men in the U.S. are offered any paid paternity leave. Most dads who do have it don’t believe they can take their full time off to care for a newborn. It’s time to change that," Dove wrote on their website ."Working dads shouldn’t have to choose between their children and a paycheck—because when they take paternity leave, it benefits families, workplaces and communities.”

Currently, companies with 50 or more employees are unable to fire workers for taking up to 12 weeks ofparental leave, however they are not required to pay them.

Children are expensive, and money is an object when parents are deciding whether or not they should spend time with their newborn.  Currently,70% of new dads will take 10 days of paternity leave – or less.

Dove Men+Care hopes that the campaign will raise awareness for the importance of paternity leave as well as the impact of paternity leave on children.

"While the role dads play in the lives of their families continues to evolve, 87 percent of dads report being more satisfied with their lives when they can be the caregivers they want to be," Unilever, the company that manufactures Dove Care+Men, stated in a press release.

The campaign is backed by Alex Ohanian, Reddit co-founder and husband to Serena Williams. After becoming a father to daughter Alexis Olympia, Ohanian realized just how important it is for fathers to spend time with their newborns. “No dad should have to sacrifice taking leave, and I’ve been very public about taking mine in an effort to show other men that you can still be an ambitious business person while also taking time for your family,” Ohanian said.

Studies have shown that newborn babies benefit from having their fathers around just as much as they benefit  from having their mothers around. (Not to mention having dad around to help can be a relief to exhausted mom.) It’ll be interesting to see how Dove Men+Care’s initiative will impact a future generation of children and the society they will inherit.  

You can apply for the paternity leave fund on the Dove website.

Planet

Easy (and free!) ways to save the ocean

The ocean is the heart of our planet. It needs our help to be healthy.

Ocean Wise

Volunteers at a local shoreline cleanup

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The ocean covers over 71% of the Earth’s surface and serves as our planet’s heart. Ocean currents circulate vital heat, moisture, and nutrients around the globe to influence and regulate our climate, similar to the human circulatory system. Cool, right?

Our ocean systems provide us with everything from fresh oxygen to fresh food. We need it to survive and thrive—and when the ocean struggles to function healthfully, the whole world is affected.

Pollution, overfishing, and climate change are the three biggest challenges preventing the ocean from doing its job, and it needs our help now more than ever. Humans created the problem; now humans are responsible for solving it.

#BeOceanWise is a global rallying cry to do what you can for the ocean, because we need the ocean and the ocean needs us. If you’re wondering how—or if—you can make a difference, the answer is a resounding YES. There are a myriad of ways you can help, even if you don’t live near a body of water. For example, you can focus on reducing the amount of plastic you purchase for yourself or your family.

Another easy way to help clean up our oceans is to be aware of what’s known as the “dirty dozen.” Every year, scientists release an updated list of the most-found litter scattered along shorelines. The biggest culprit? Single-use beverage and food items such as foam cups, straws, bottle caps, and cigarette butts. If you can’t cut single-use plastic out of your life completely, we understand. Just make sure to correctly recycle plastic when you are finished using it. A staggering 3 million tons of plastic ends up in our oceans annually. Imagine the difference we could make if everyone recycled!

The 2022 "Dirty Dozen" ListOcean Wise

If you live near a shoreline, help clean it up! Organize or join an effort to take action and make a positive impact in your community alongside your friends, family, or colleagues. You can also tag @oceanwise on social if you spot a beach that needs some love. The location will be added to Ocean Wise’s system so you can submit data on the litter found during future Shoreline Cleanups. This data helps Ocean Wise work with businesses and governments to stop plastic pollution at its source. In Canada, Ocean Wise data helped inform a federal ban on unnecessary single-use plastics. Small but important actions like these greatly help reduce the litter that ends up in our ocean.

Ocean Wise, a conservation organization on a mission to restore and protect our oceans, is focused on empowering and educating everyone from individuals to governments on how to protect our waters. They are making conservation happen through five big initiatives: monitoring and protecting whales, fighting climate change and restoring biodiversity, innovating for a plastic-free ocean, protecting and restoring fish stocks, and finally, educating and empowering youth. The non-profit believes that in order to rebuild a resilient and vibrant ocean within the next ten years, everyone needs to take action.

Become an Ocean Wise ally and share your knowledge with others. The more people who know how badly the ocean needs our help, the better! Now is a great time to commit to being a part of something bigger and get our oceans healthy again.

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A new trend in treasure hunting called magnet fishing has blown up over the past two years, evidenced by an explosion of YouTube channels covering the hobby. Magnet fishing is a pretty simple activity. Hobbyists attach high-powered magnets to strong ropes, drop them into waterways and see what they attract.

The hobby has caught the attention of law enforcement and government agencies because urban waterways are a popular place for criminals to drop weapons and stolen items after committing a crime. In 2019, a magnet fisherman in Michigan pulled up an antique World War I mortar grenade and the bomb squad had to be called out to investigate.


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But there’s also a beautiful loyalty. Sure, sisters can turn from friends to enemies on a dime, but in those purer moments, you’ll see them stop at nothing to help one another.

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Sometimes we hear a story that makes us collectively confused. Should we be offended? Laugh? Donate to a parents future bail fund for their children? It's really a toss up but the consensus on this mom's eyebrow raising story is that laughter and bail money are both appropriate responses.

Maranda Arbogast, a mom that runs the TikTok page, momma.chaos, shared a hilariously mortifying story of a time she took her three daughters grocery shopping and somehow wound up in a, "one of these things is not like the others" moment. The mom of three leads into the story by explaining that she is raising children that will likely have run ins with the law.

"Some families gotta save money for medical expenses or college funds. We gotta save money for bail because we are raising criminals, especially my middle daughter. It's always the middle child," Arbogast jokes. "She's gotta be frisked before we leave anywhere."

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Period simulators gave cis-gendered men a painful glimpse of what women go through on a monthly basis. But what about going through life with an actual human growing in their belly?

That’s where the watermelon challenge comes in.

TikTok’s watermelon challenge is a simple concept, where dads-to-be strap watermelons, weighing somewhere around 14 pounds, onto their bellies in order to simulate what it’s like for pregnant moms. Bonus point for taping mangos onto the chest because #lactation.

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