Why doesn’t the US have paid parental leave and do you think we ever will?
Something that has been bothering me for a long time is that the majority of voters in the US are parents. It seems paid parental leave is something that most people can empathize with needing, and that would benefit most people’s lives. So I have such a hard time understanding why it isn’t proposed more often or prioritized as a voting issue. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was shocked to hear that my own mother had to decide between going back to her job 3 weeks post partum or losing her job. I can’t believe that things have not really improved (in terms of protections for all parents, not just by industry/state/company)
I read an interesting NPR article about how the AARP solidified the aging population into a powerful voting block that has skewed lawmakers to addressing their needs. Because this organization has clear priorities and influences many voters, lawmakers have incentive to pass laws the AARP supports. This article suggested that if parents could join together and create a similar political group, it would be the biggest and most powerful voting block.
So I’m interested in what your opinions are. Do you see parental leave as important? If so, why don’t we have a national leave policy? How do we get there?
I have no skin in the game as I am not a parent, nor will ever be a parent, but I personally think parental leave is an important thing we should be providing new parents regardless of whether they give birth or adopt (and I think any parent should be eligible regardless of whether they are the birthing parent) for a full year with 100% benefits and paid leave. Whether that is paid out by the government or the company, I don't care. Maybe it should be both.
It's one of those things that we - as an American society - have failed our citizens.
Unfortunately, it's one of those things that we will likely not get for a long time unless, like you said, we could get a parental group to take up the charge and have a strong voting block. But I think it would also be something we should work on in tandem with strengthening worker rights and protections (since it's a worker's rights issue) along with decoupling healthcare from the job (because that's probably a huge factor in why healthcare rights like healing after a pregnancy are close to zero)
That’s really true. I remember working with my HR to set up my short term disability and they asked if I was hoping to have a vaginal birth or planning a c-section. Having to say the words “I hope it will be vaginal” in my office felt so invasive and wrong.
I think paid parental leave could be a good first step in decoupling healthcare from your job. For example, Massachusetts just implemented a statewide paid parental leave by adding a payroll tax to everyone which then covers the people who need it. I could see this being almost like a trial run for state healthcare coverage.
My first reaction would be "That's none of your damn business" but unfortunately it is their business because of the way employer-based healthcare and benefits are set up in the US. I'm not a parent but it boggles my mind what the citizenry here allows to happen and then accepts as "just the way it is."
But it's definitely not any of their business. HR cannot compel you to disclose your medical info, nor can they request that info from a medical professional. For FMLA, you get 12 weeks of unpaid time off after the date of you giving birth (both parents), and short term disability is typically 2 weeks before, and 6 weeks after giving birth. It does not depend on type of procedure, you shouldn't have to provide anything other than the expected delivery date to HR. All other details should be between you, your doctor, and/or directly with your insurance provider without HR in the middle. Employers cannot ask specifics about any medical condition other than when and how much time you need for recovery. They can ask for a letter verifying you have a condition requiring leave and duration for recovery, but they do not need to know what the condition is.
If you're at work and are asked a question you're not comfortable with, it's almost always inappropriate, and not something you have to answer. Just having employer subsidized insurance does not make HR then part of your insurance company.
They were asking because short term disability for c-sections can be increased to 12 weeks. Of course I could have not answered, there’s really no way to know beforehand if you are having a C-section or not. But they also had the right to ask as it was the insurance company asking (not hr) and part of it was releasing my medical records to them.
I really hope more States take up adding this as coverage. It’s doesn’t look like anything will happen on the federal level for a long time. I think most people are against raising taxes; which may be a reason we don’t have universal healthcare. Healthcare in the US in really a mess and will take both sides coming to an agreement to make it work.
It's worth noting that even though there's no federal mandate regarding parental leave, a lot of federal agencies DO provide significantly more generous leave policies than private American companies. For example, starting this year all branches of the military get three months of parental leave, no questions asked - including both the mother and father.
If we're to be honest, the military isn't known for their stellar quality of life, so I admire them implementing this policy in full. It doesn't seem to have an adverse impact on their deployment and training cycles either. If the army, which rotates thousands of people to Europe and Asia on a yearly basis, can incorporate this kind of leniency and still maintain performance, why can't a more static company?
It is a good step to decoupling health care from a job but it depends how far it goes. Here in Canada it does still make a difference where you are employed because (assuming you do 12 months of parental leave) you get 55% of your income and then POSSIBLY a top up from your employer and it can be any amount.
My wife and I had a baby last year and we didn't really need to think about it bc I was the one with a steady income so it made sense for me to take most of the leave. My wife has a steady job now but no parental leave top up. So if we have another baby, for me I would get almost all of my pay vs. her getting only 55%. Most likely she would just take most of the time off anyway because I did it last time, we can afford that, but if we were in a precarious situation where we couldn't I'd have to take the leave again.
I think that's a great start, but that's still not far enough! Canada needs to do better for its citizens by making leave more affordable for them as well. Companies should be required to top up that extra 45%, that's already a 55% reduction in what they have to pay you so that only makes sense.
I think that it was likely a lot easier to pass parental leave legislation that way -- there is no big buy-in from employers other than keeping the position available for you when you come back from parental leave (which is another, different kind of cost). It was a much smaller ask that way that probably met way less resistance.
Then the pressure came later for employers to offer it in order to retain employees. I believe about 6 in 10 employers offer some kind of top-up but it varies. Some of them top it up to 100%. Some of them don't. Some of them only cover maternity leave (leave that can ONLY be taken by a parent who gives birth, typically the first 3 months or so) and some cover both maternity and parental leave (the latter being the rest of the leave that can be taken by either parent).
In the last few years we have brought in universal childcare subsidies as well which make a HUMONGOUS difference. Here in Canada it's also assumed that most parents will take at least 12 months off... to the point that it is almost impossible to find daycare spots for children under 12 months, most don't accept them. In fact with leave stretching to 18 months (that's a relatively new thing), it's increasingly difficult to even find spots under 18 months -- my wife and I only did 12 months of leave and were told by a few daycares that they no longer have infant programs at all and only start taking them if they are a) 18 months or b) 15 months+ and can walk independently.
There is no limitation to how long you need to work for an employer before going on mat/pat leave (this is an unfortunate complication because it can sometimes make employers more hesistant to hire women who are in their years where they are most likely to be having kids - because they could soon have children and go on leave, or could already be pregnant since you can't exactly ask someone about that... obviously men take parental leave too but it is more commonly the women doing so).
HOWEVER in order to qualify for EI during maternity/parental leave, you have to have worked at least 600 hours in the previous 12 months. As an example, I qualified for leave when I had a baby but my wife did not bc she worked contracts and couldn't show that she worked 600 hours in the past year. Having said that, this is 600 hours of work, NOT 600 hours of work for your current employer, so you could have quit one job, moved to a new one and still go on leave.
Normally, if employers do a top-up, it also requires you to sign an agreement that you will work for them for X amount of time after returning from leave. Typically this is the same amount of time you went on leave for. So if you took 9 months parental leave, they'll make you guarantee you will stay at least 9 months upon your return.
I will say that a lot of employers do offer some kind of top-up, but it's still only 58% that offer something and like half of those only offer it for the maternity leave period (like the first 3 months, that can only be taken by the birth-giving parent), not the rest of the parental leave.
honestly, I think the government should pay too (or instead). Either way, you shouldn't take a pay reduction when you're staying at home with a new child.
ACA was also modeled after Mitt Romney's Massachusetts healthcare plan. I will never let the world forget that.
I assume you mean adopt from birth and I agree on that. Here in Canada we have various kinds of leave and i might not be 100% accurate here:
You can also choose to take up to 18 months of leave if you want, but you only get govt payments for 1 year's worth @ 55% of your pay, so if you take 18 months you get the same amount stretched out over 18 months. Plus whatever top up your employer offers (which varies from 0 all the way to 45% to give you your full salary).
I personally think adopting at any age can be traumatic and a huge change. I think it's important for the family to have bonding time and to get to spend time getting used to one another, regardless of the age of the child at the time of adoption. A blanket one-year term seems fair to make sure everyone has everything in order since there will also be therapy, medical visits, and any other number of things that are difficult for a working parent to set up for a child at any age, but some of those are crucial for adopted children and their new parents.
In Canada there's "12 months" (can be stretched to 18 with the same amount of money) of leave, but the first 3 months is specifically for birth-giving parents and is meant to be, in part, meant for their physical recovery.
People who adopt don't have to deal with that part, so I believe they aren't entitled to the "maternity leave" part but only to the parental leave portion.
Giving people 1 year off of work for adopting a child would also be a very very hard sell. There's plenty of childcare available for kids above 1 year old, not so for kids under 1. So the idea is to get them to 1 year old and then they can be in childcare so parents can work -- that's the whole point of parental leave programs, it's to help people maintain their employment so that they can go back to the same job and not fall behind in their career bc they had to stay home to take care of a baby... it's harder to sell the idea that someone should be able to stay home to take care of an adopted 5 year old for a year, get paid for it the whole time and then come back to their old job.
As I said, there is a whole other set of hurdles to overcome in an adoptive family. A lot of children who are adopted at a later age have a lot more trauma that needs to be addressed that can't properly be taken care of when both parents are working full time.
I think given the number of families who want to adopt and the number of kids in "the system" globally who need loving families, we need to start also taking care of these families in a sympathetic way.
In general we don't do enough for families to care for them and help them thrive financially and emotionally.
It won't change when greedy assholes cannot look outside their own experiences to understand how hard having a brand new kid and juggling a career can be. Employers don't see employee benefits and rights as investment costs, but as losses, and they want to avoid spending any money that doesn't directly relate to manhours.
In big companies especially where the people who are making the policies and what not aren't even connecting to most of the people that those policies impact it's not even that surprising to me that they're disconnected from others lives. Yet I worked for a small business of fewer than 50 employees and it was surprisingly just as bad. I was newly promoted into management and there was an employee whose wife just had a baby and this employee had taken some days off to be with his wife. These managers (and the owner of the business) were straight up annoyed that this new father was taking time off work to share responsibilities with his wife and be with his newborn. This is unpaid leave mind you, not even paid leave. They literally were annoyed about a father taking unpaid days off to be with his wife and newborn. I think one of them even remarked that one day off should have been enough, the day of the birth, and that's basically how it was "in their day" type of thing and 'kids' these days have it too easy etc. This was a management team that was more women than men, and aged between 40-59 years old (excluding myself).
Overall it wasn't a totally employee hostile small business exactly, at least not overtly, but getting a look behind the curtain it kind of blew my mind that they were so closed off to the idea that a father taking even unpaid time off was worth some behind-the-scenes ridicule.
Not from the US myself but from what I've studied and understood, most of the peoples' problems in US today can be traced to the Capitalist nature of the society itself.
Consider the "hire and fire" policy for starters, it's one of the few countries where employers can fire at will with full disregard to labor laws and regulations. When a cataclysmically failed management decision (looking at you Metaverse) turns into lowest grade employees taking the burden of layoffs and wage cuts, it raises a lot of questions. In any other country, the employer would have thought a thousand times before making those hiring decisions or alternatively, would have ensured the product's vision and sustainability before giving it a go ahead.
Elon Musk and Alphabet's massive number of layoffs is another example. It seems labor laws and trade unions are either not enough to meet the practical requirements of the workers or the employer somehow does a workaround on the legal system?
Now, don't get me wrong. All the Laissez Faire or the Free Trade Economy concept has benefited US in the past too, they're the number one global economy today, be it in terms of GDP, Infrastructure Development, technological advancements and many other areas. But they also need to be a bit more socialist, especially with regard to this labor situation. And it's high time that cartels like Big Tech and Big Pharma need to be put under lot's of checks and balances.
The thing is what happens in US today affects rest of the world, other countries take cues and signals from US in making these top level decisions, that's why it's so important that US fixes these systemic issues soon.
I've had several conversations with people here in the US. Many want smaller government so there isn't tyranny, but turn a blind eye to corporate tyranny. We've just traded one for the other at this point. The checks and balances (regulations and regulations) have been gutted to the point where we've allowed these companies to become so large that they are effectively countries in their power and influence. I like that the system has the openness to take risks, to provide a decent living for those that work hard. But I don't like that we don't have protections for regular people. A strong middle class but America and that class is dwindling. I hope we can make some serious changes and have a better balance between capitalism and socialism. I don't think there is a perfect system but something that balances each other I feel created a better balanced society.
Well, it's more that the US does not have minimum paternity leave (depending on what state you're in). People do have paid paternity leave - where I work, if were to have the child, as a man I would have 4 months of paternity leave, and if I were the mother (or "birthing parent" is how it's specifically worded), I would have 1 month during pregnancy and 5 months after. All paid. This is about in life with what is in the EU.
So the voting bloc isn't as unified in their experience as you put out. People have varying levels of paternity leave, and varying needs for paternity leave.
That being said, it's certainly something you can push for. And not just at a federal level, where's a handful of states with paid paternity leave regulations. Voting always matters.
EU standards are even higher than that in almost all cases - at the very top must be Sweden with a total of 480 days across both parents that can be split pretty much as they see fit, but most have 6 months full paid as a national legal minimum, with many legal minimums way above that. And that's the legal minimum, many companies give more generously than that of course.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2022/698892/EPRS_ATA(2022)698892_EN.pdf gives a full breakdown as of last year!
Yeah, my company covered 2 weeks of parental leave. Because I gave birth, I used short term disability for 8 weeks, but the coverage only kicked in after 1 week and there was a 1 week delay, so it ended up being 6 weeks at 70% (don’t even get me started on how that is allowed to be called 8 weeks of coverage). My husbands company covered 6 weeks at 100% of leave. So technically my husband got more paternity leave than I did maternity leave. And where we work, that coverage is considered “good” and above industry standard. It seems like the most influence I have is by seeking a good parental leave policy in my next employer, hoping to pressure employers to cover it. Oh man, having pregnancy leave would be amazing. I had constant contractions the last 4 weeks and I had to keep working until the day I went to the hospital. Lol the last week was constant “guess I’m still here! But don’t give me anything I can’t finish today!”
I don't really think 6 months is anywhere near enough, personally. Up here in Canada you have the option of ~ 1 year at 55% compensation or ~1.5 years at 33% compensation from the federal government (subject to maximums), with various ways to divide among parents. Some employers will 'top-up' these amounts as part of paid benefits, but most do not. The benefits make taking the full leave a realistic decision for most families, but the biggest benefit by far is the legal protection for taking up to the full leave and not getting fired or having been replaced when you come back.
I think this is ultimately just a lack of worker protections in the US. Paid leave of any kind is not legally required in the US like it is in other countries. Holidays, sick days, PTO/vacation, parental leave, etc is all left up to companies/organizations to decide for themselves. Obviously, larger / higher-margin companies are more likely to be able to offer these types of benefits. My company offers leave for both primary and secondary caregivers above the medical disability that the mother gets. Since benefits in general help hiring and recruiting, it can be advantageous for companies who are actually competing for workers to offer strong benefits like this.
Some states have decided to take this on themselves. Rhode Island, for example, has a payroll tax assessed against all workers to fund a state-run disability and caretaker insurance program. Parents are entitled to 6 weeks of benefits funded by that tax.
One of the problems with mandating parental leave paid by the company is that it would discourage some companies from hiring women because they don't want to pay their leave. This is already a problem as-is, and it's very difficult to enforce this kind of discrimination unless the company is blatant about it. I could see it getting even worse with a mandate.
I think that something along the lines of a tax-based insurance like Rhode Island does for parental leave, where companies aren't deincentivized from hiring women for fear of having to pay their full salary for whatever period of time would probably work out best for everyone.
I didn't see this mentioned - Washington state has paid family leave if you have worked a qualifying number of hours. Doesn't have to be for the same employer. I don't think it's full pay, but it's something: https://paidleave.wa.gov/question/what-is-family-leave/
While I'm not a parent, adoption is something I would consider in my future. Having this on the table along with FMLA (if qualified) and/or an employer policy, if one exists, has made me feel pretty secure about staying in Washington and contributing to its economy.
Glad to see other states stepping up here!
Why doesn’t the US have paid parental leave? Republicans. And, to a slightly lesser degree, Democrats.
Do you think we ever will? Not so long as there are Republicans and, to a slightly lesser degree, Democrats.
This is the factual answer to ten-thousand questions about why America is so screwed up: Republicans, and, to a slightly lesser degree, Democrats.
Why doesn’t the US have popularly supported insert social service at the federal level typically is due to the structure of the US system that makes passing almost anything incredibly difficult. The US has more veto points in passing legislation than almost any other developed democracy and the de facto supermajority requirements in the senate due to the now ubiquitous abuse of the filibuster basically kill the ability to pass such laws even if a single party that supports that policy has control of the Presidency, House and Senate.
So basically the only option until you get a once in a lifetime senate supermajority is to continue to pass paid parental leave at the state level (which many states have now done).
These questions have little to do with the lack of popular support and everything to do with the structure of American government.
We have a tangled web of incentives against doing so.
Workers enjoy the freedom to switch jobs (at-will employment). Instead of pension funds, they save for retirement by becoming shareholders in the market using tax-deferred brokerage accounts. Shareholders want company profits to rise. Profits rise when companies strip benefits. Stripping benefits harms workers which encourages them to search for better jobs.
Compare to Europe or Japan, where workers are legally or socially tied to single employers. To ensure that these employers don't harm workers or strip their benefits, their activities are highly regulated. This system is much less stressful and probably leads to happier outcomes for everyone on average, but how to convince Americans of that when they have no familiarity with other systems at all?
This is simply untrue. Across Europe, the benefits are tied to the individual, who is eligible for them regardless of whether they work for one company or 20 across their lifetime. Holidays, sicks days, parental leave, pension, none of it requires being tied to one company for an extended period of time.
I would argue it's in fact the opposite - many Americans don't enjoy decent levels of benefits (such as holidays) until they have been with the company for a while. In Europe, you're entitled to it all from day one with each employer.
It completely amazes me with the prevalence of the internet and the global economy/global communication that we haven't all homogenized and picked the best parts of all of the different nations' ideas already. But I think Americans have been scared into "socialism bad" when they see things like socialized healthcare because of the boogeyman these things were made out to be when the internet first started getting popular and we all had more access to other countries information about how their systems run. We had the people at the top screaming how it's bad and the US has had a large hate issue against anything that could lead to communism (which they think socialism does?, idk) at least as early as the 1950's, but I am too tired to look up how early red scares started happening in this country.
That’s interesting linking it to retirement accounts. Perhaps decoupling healthcare, as someone else has suggested, would relieve some of the pressure of growing such a large retirement savings? I expect that medical expenses are a significant portion of that.
Because in the US nearly every aspect of social life takes 2nd place to elite business concerns. Environmental devastation? Social well-being? Worker protections? Better educational outcomes? Public infrastructure? Screw all that, that would hurt the bottom line of companies that are trying to contribute as little as possible into the system (while getting as many benefits as possible from the same system).
The onus for everything is placed on individual citizens (who likely have the least amount of impact on an individual basis), YET corporations, who are also getting treated like people in the eyes of the law, somehow have absolutely no obligation towards maintaining society, often benefitting from many of these modern conveniences (public education, well-maintained roads, middle-class with extra time & money on their hands, etc). And despite amassing record profits, they're allowed to run up the price on commodities and housing ("greedflation") in order to boost their profit margins, while the rest of us suffer even more. We often hear about "price gouging" in terms of gas prices getting jacked up during emergencies, but what about all the price-gouging and profiteering we've been seeing on a DAILY basis in the grocery store and in the housing/rental markets?
Adding a link to the article- I didn’t include it in the post because it talks about a lot of things, but if you are interested here it is:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/05/17/1098524454/the-case-for-revolutionizing-child-care-in-america
By then it's too late. You need a bloc of people before they start having kids. Once you have that kid the fight for parental leave becomes moot because even if you win by the time you get it the kid is grown enough it's not an issue.
As for why we don't have it in the US you can boil it down to one simple issue: corporate greed. Companies cut pay and benefits as much as they can. The vast majority of Americans are trying and failing to secure pay raises that match inflation and (decent) health insurance. Paid parental leave is such a lower priority it's laughable.
Though it wasn’t directly affecting my mother anymore, seeing me have the same challenges she did brought up a lot of anger in her. So I think that most parents still care about this issue even though they wouldn’t use it anymore.
If more people were as empathetic as your mother we'd be in a better place.
The idea is parents would vote for rights relevant for all parents, from education to parental leave to safe environments for their kids etc etc. Not just for the next 4 years of their development!
Education and safe environment affect their children for much longer than 4 years. Children are in school until they are at least 18. They need a safe environment until they die. The length of time in which those are a priority for parents is MUCH longer than the issue of parental leave.
I would be inclined to vote for something that does half paid time for up to 6 months for both parents or a limit of twice in a lifetime at full pay. I do not in any way want to incentivize people having more children as I believe the current global population is and always will be a detriment to the world and it's finite resources. I would rather we also subsidize the cost of adoptions, why does it cost tens of thousands to adopt in the first place?
My wife and I are currently pregnant with our first, and this is my opinion only. Paid parental leave would not incentivize us to have more children, and I would urge you to think about that statement more. Paid parental leave helps when the baby is born, because caring for a newborn is a lot of work; raising the child is going to cost far more in money and time until they’re 18 than a paltry few weeks of paid leave would gain.
Paltry few weeks... I'm talking 4-6 months minimum, that is a lot of time for people to do side hustle on top of collecting full paychecks or single mothers collecting paychecks and child support. Plus the subsidized nature on taxes where a lot of people I know are getting about $5-7k per child in reductions and added refund per year. It might not be a great way to live, but I see a lot of low income mothers popping out kids already while they collect child support, welfare and have only side hustle kind of jobs. If you create something else they can exploit some people will take advantage of it. Maybe not the majority, but enough to create a problem that will be left unchecked.
I want parents to be able to have paternity leave, but it needs to not be exploitable.
Because due to the way our government works and donations keep them in office our government serves corporations instead of people. Because giving people time off paid would cost money with no output then our government doesn't see value in it.