VIDEO: He was fired for attending his son’s birth, community comes to the rescue

The birth of a child is an extremely important event for any family, and it is definitely something that parents do not want to miss for anything in this world. It is for this reason that many parents often choose to sacrifice something in order to be there at this extremely important moment, and this means a lot of times that they have to skip work.

This is exactly what Lamar Austin from New Hampshire did, as soon as he got a call from his wife that she was going through labor. He was at his new job, a position at Salerno Protective Service, which is a private security group that caters to college campuses and retail stores.

Lamar was during his 90-day trial period, in which he was expected to remain on-call all the time in his schedule. However, he naturally chose to go and be next to his wife when he was notified that she was going to give birth to their much-expected baby boy. This automatically meant that he would miss his weekend shift, so he was the recipient of a text message that notified him he had been terminated.

When a local newspaper heard about this situation, it immediately picked up the story, and a paid family leave advocate started a Go Fund Me for the family. “I don’t think they should have to be worrying about financial issues right now, it should be a joyful time for them. I don’t think anyone should ever have to choose between their family and their job, ” Sara Persechino, paid-leave advocate declared.

Due to this publicity, Austin also received three job offers, besides an offer for an “apprenticeship from the local business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and from the labor union, AFL-CIO.”

The situation is quite challenging for Austin at the moment, but he says that he would not change anything about his son’s birth. He loved being there in the moment so much, that he even decided to keep the emergency room bracelet he received when his wife checked in, as a souvenir he is very fond of.

The community around them was so eager to help, that the Go Fund Me surpassed its original goal of $10,000. This made it for a comfortable sum of money that will help the family while they decide what is the course of action they should follow in this next stage of their lives.

Studies show that what Lamar Austin did was extremely beneficial for the future relationship between him and his son, baby Cainin. Skin-to-skin contact between parents and their babies is extremely important in the first few days of life, as this helps bond the baby and the parents, as well as having actual physical benefits on the way the baby adapts to a world out of the womb. Even if Austin lost his job because of this, he knew that other jobs can always be found, but that his son will come into this world only once, and that it is important to be there.