実践ビジネス英語ディクテーション (12/15,16)

こんにちは。NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。
Lesson 17のテーマは、‘Help With Maternity Leave’（産休・育休を支援する）でした。Vignetteでは、女性社員の出産・育児を支援するマタニティ・コンシェルジュ・サービスが話題になりました。“Talk the Talk”では、Heatherさんがある銀行のマタニティ・コンシェルジュが提供するサービスを紹介。日本の産休・育休が優れていることについても話されています。

Help With Maternity Leave
（S: 杉田敏先生　H: Heather Howardさん）

S: Our current vignette talks about maternity concierges, company staff who help pregnant employees and those with small children.
How does that sound to you, Heather?

H: Luck, heaven, sign me up.
I recently read about the services offered by the maternity concierges at a U.S. bank―they were great.
One concierge prepared a mom-to-be’s hospital bag, researched a list of possible churches for another baby’s baptism.
She even helped one employee choose her baby’s name!
Apparently the program was developed by one of the bank’s executives, who heard from expecting mothers and new mothers at the company that they were overwhelmed by all the things they had to get done before the baby arrived.
I can speak to that.
It’s mentally as well as physically draining.
I was lucky to have a lot of help and advice from friends and colleagues who already had kids, but what if you didn’t have that?
Just knowing help is close at hand must make the mothers feel much more secure.

S: So, what kind of help would you have asked for if you had had access to such a service?

H: Definitely some assistance with grocery shopping after the baby came.
My husband works at home, which was a great help, both before and after I gave birth.
But we were both absolutely exhausted all the time after our daughter showed up.
Just having someone else bring us food from the supermarket would have been a godsend.
I was very grateful for the services provided by our ward office.
I asked a midwife to come to the house at one point, for example, to get some advice about breastfeeding; I wasn’t sure if I was doing it correctly.
And her advice was most helpful.
I’m glad to pay residency taxes to fund services like that.

S: Maternity concierge services also benefit their companies as the vignette points out.

H: They must be wonderful for fostering loyalty.
Employees will not only do a better job if they’re less tired and emotionally frazzled, they’re sure to be grateful to the company providing all this help.
It would certainly make me think twice about going somewhere else if I worked at a place like that.

S: The vignette later compares the maternity leave situation in the United States to that in Japan.

H: If everybody could come over here from the States and experience what a great help it is to have guaranteed paid leave, they’d go back to America and demand the federal government institute a national program at once.
The current president’s daughter has said she wants to get something done in this regard; I really hope she’s able to do it.

S: The vignette mentions that doctors recommend taking at least twelve weeks off after birth to bond with the baby and recover physically.

H: I’m sure that’s true, especially if you have a trend toward older mothers like Japan in recent years.
I was almost forty-two when our daughter was born, and I certainly needed time to recover physically.
A week or two after I went home, we needed to go to a branch of our ward office to file some paperwork.
Normally it’s just a fifteen-minute walk from our house, but in my postpartum condition, it took forty minutes.

お読み下さり、ありがとうございます♪