The United States is among the few UN countries that do not provide paid leave for recent parents through government-paid maternity or parental allowances. It thus joins Papua New Guinea, Suriname, and five islands in Oceania that have no such allowances either. To redress this situation, the U.S. Congress is currently considering the provision of four weeks of federally paid family (parental) and medical leave. If adopted, this provision would still leave the country behind compared to European states where subsidized parental leave is common.
International overview
The United States does not comply with the international minimum recommendations, such as the 2000 Maternity Protection Convention that provides for at least 14 weeks of maternity leave, while the EU Work-Life Balance Directive endorses at least 10 days of paternity leave and four months of parental leave. Below are a few model countries:
Medical and social reasoning
Given the current circumstances, the US bill to provide four weeks of federally paid family (parental) and medical leave can be viewed as something of a U-turn. However, four weeks would still be significantly less than the recommendation of the World Health Organization “of six months paid maternity leave to ensure exclusive breastfeeding, infant’s optimal growth, and the health of both mother and infant”. The shortage of financial benefits may burden the families that are not financially secure even further and may hinder their work-family life balance.
A recent report entitled Paid Maternity Leave in the United States: Associations with Maternal and Infant Health states that women from the upper classes are more likely to take unpaid leave than women from the lower classes while more white women take unpaid maternity leave than black or Hispanic women. This disproportionateness contributes to a disparity in infant mortality between groups. An annual amount of USD 40 million is spent on re-hospitalizing premature infants and an additional USD1.6 to 3.0 million on re-hospitalizing mothers. Paid maternity leave has a direct impact on the health of mothers and infants and thus providing paid leave could reduce these costs.
Legislation in force
Currently, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is the only US federal law that secures a return to the same job for employees who take maternity or family leave. It also grants 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for mothers of newborn or recently adopted children but only if they have worked for the company for at least 12 months, have worked at least 1,250 hours over the previous year, and if the company has 50 or more employees.
Several states have adopted provisions beyond the FMLA requirements for companies with fewer employees although for about six in 10 workers with less than 50 colleagues, there is no federal legal regulation for paid or unpaid leave to care for a newborn or to recover after childbirth. These excluded categories of workers are often women with low wages thus increasing their disadvantages. The Employee’s Guide to Family and Medical Leave Act stipulates that they can use their vacation or unpaid sick leave together with the FMLA leave so they continue to be paid.
States such as California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and New York have pioneered legislation on paid leave for family members, including paid paternity leave, while the remaining states offer unpaid paternity leave. However, the number of fathers taking time off is growing.
What now?
A study by the Brookings Institution, a non-profit think tank from Washington DC, concluded that the time to consider a federal paid leave policy has now come. Although the study working group did not reach an accord on how this policy should be implemented and what funds should cover it, they stated: “that a more inclusive policy that covers all types of leave in a flexible but cost-effective manner deserves further consideration”.
Joya Misra, a Sociology and Public Policy Professor at the University of Massachusetts told the BBC that right now the U.S. has a “policy window” to enforce change, particularly because the pandemic has demonstrated the inequalities in terms of job security, gender, and childcare. To support this, she commented:
“Mandating national paid parental leave would have multiple benefits. The more people we have in the paid labor force, who are also able to be productive (i.e., not having to worry about competing caregiving responsibilities, etc.), the greater our economic output, the faster our growth, and the better our social outcomes.”
