Rhetorical Analysis Of Paid Family Leave

Rhetorical Analysis Paid family leave has become a more controversial subject over time, some say. According to Lisa Belkin, author of the article Paid Family Leave: Can We Change The Maternity And Paternity Leave Debates To Include Everyone, the United States have not fully addressed the need or want for paid maternity/ paternity leave or to take it one step further to include paid family leave. She states that many other countries such as “Sweden (480 days), Germany (365 days), Italy (90), Kenya (14), Switzerland (3), and Indonesia (2) provide paternity leave (Belkin). However, among these, the United States are not required and often don’t provide the same entities of other countries. Lisa Belkin dives into the controversy of paid maternity/ …show more content…
While she did use a few outside sources such as Zach from 8BitDad, the government of Bangladesh, and a Danish minister, she completely missed stating her own credentials and providing an answer to someone that would have an opposing view to paid family leave. It can be inferred that Lisa Belkin is a mother or is some part of a family because she states in paragraph 13, “Because all of us have a family.” However, this isn’t enough for a reader to assume she is a credible source. It isn’t until further outside research is done to know that she is a common author for other papers such as The New York Times and even then, it could be rather difficult to pinpoint just who she is. Lisa Belkin also fails to provide any sort of alternative view to paid leave at all. The only thing even related to the other side of the argument is when she says, “Why should I support someone else’s decision to have a child.” She provides very little solutions to this and quickly jumps to the idea of paid family leave and included that everyone has a family. While this could be true for many people, she does not take into consideration any readers that do not have any other family. Without providing her own credentials, a professional appearance, and fairness of other arguer’s views, Lisa failed to make ethos persuasive topic in her argument. In conclusion, Lisa Belkin provided a very significant amount of logos and pathos, but excluded ethos almost entirely to make this article unpersuasive. Without the use of ethos, it is difficult to pinpoint what facts and statistics are credible and which have been thrown in to add to the article just to benefit the writer. Lisa Belkin could make a much stronger argument if she first established her credentials and made herself a believable