Maternity Leave in America Sucks...

So, I had the false impression that my company paid a percentage of my salary during maternity leave, so I never signed up for short-term disability to cover expenses after the baby comes, thinking “we can make it on a little less money for a while. We have savings!” Sweet, innocent, naïve Hannah…

It is absolutely my fault for not doing my research more thoroughly when I knew we were going to try for a baby soon, but I will say that an annual enrollment and an automatic refusal to cover “pre-existing conditions” such as pregnancy, significantly limit who can be covered. It really only works for people who either auto-enroll in short-term disability or who are planning to become pregnant and do their research (whoops).

Think about it. Let’s say your company’s open-enrollment is in November, and you decide not to enroll in short term disability because you don’t really understand it, and you’re young and healthy, so why would you need it anyway? Then in July, you find out you or your partner are pregnant.

Unless your work provides paid parental leave – which, according to 2018 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, if you work for the private sector (a non-government job), you have about a 16% chance of having access to paid parental leave of any amount or duration – you’re out of luck.

Thankfully (sort of…?) FMLA exists. FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) is a federal program that provides unpaid parental leave (among other things) for a maximum of 12 weeks. This protects that person from losing their job while they are gone, but, again, it is unpaid. So, I can take 12 weeks legally, but financially… well, that’s another issue we will circle around to later.

The truth is, FMLA’s 12 weeks is an arbitrary amount of time that is not based in any scientific reasoning. According to a New America article on how much parental leave is sufficient, “12 weeks represents political compromise. Early backers of the bill – which took nearly ten years to pass and was twice vetoed by President George H.W. Bush – pushed for six months of paid leave, which was eventually whittled back to 12 weeks of unpaid leave…” (italics added). According to multiple studies, more time is actually suggested (see the link above, as well as more links to studies and articles throughout and at the end of this post).

Studies show that the longer parents can spend with their newborn, the healthier the child is and will be in the future. Among many other things, longer parental leaves increase the likelihood and duration of breastfeeding, and even increase the chances that a parent will choose to immunize.

Longer parental leave also increases stronger bonding between parents and their new child who is going through exponential amounts of developmental changes in the first year of life. It also increases emotional stability among mothers (post-partum depression, anyone?), and encourages healthier marital and partner relationships (how about the tragedy of divorce, the sacredness of family, and the heartbreak of children with split homes? – this is NOT to blame divorce on unpaid parental leave per se, but when couples are set up with sufficient time and support during times of major life changes like new babies, and are able to make those transitions jointly, studies show this leads to more satisfying marriages. And these are only a few of the many benefits of extended, paid, parental leave!

So, if you are like me, you are pregnant and are about to be expecting a maximum of 12 weeks of no pay, that is unless you have PTO of some kind. But last I checked, I haven’t heard of a single person whose job offered them 12 weeks of PTO that they could just save up. And, let’s not forget our friends with pregnancy-related conditions that cause them to miss work and use up that PTO, or people who just get regular sick on occasion, or people who just want balanced lives and to be able to take a vacation for a few days here and there.

You can argue that in the face of a looming period of salary famine, taking a vacation is probably not the wisest idea, and you’d be right; however, can we imagine, and advocate for, a world in which we didn’t have to choose, where expectant parents could do both? Because going into a new stage of life as parents would also be really helpful if one was well-rested. ¡Viva vacaciones!

But I digress…

So, who knows what, or if, you would be able to accrue any type of PTO to cover an appropriate amount of leave to recover from labor and delivery as well as to bond with your child. Ergo… your potential 12-weeks of unpaid parental leave through FMLA.

Now, there are companies that provide longer, paid parental leave (though few), but here’s the sad part… the median amount of time American women are taking is 11 weeks, while for American men, it is one week. People choose to cut their protected leave short because they can’t afford to take the full amount unpaid. However, with known issues and risks such as mental health problems for the parents (remember - post-partum depression and divorce), emotional and physical health problems for the child (bonding, breastfeeding, and vaccinations), we should be paying more serious attention to this problem.

I’m going to digress briefly… again – choosing to or not to vaccinate can be a complex issue that people feel very passionately about on either side. However, I think the choice to vaccinate or not is even more complex than people believing one side of the argument or the other. As studies suggest, there is a correlation between parental leave length and vaccinations.

Here is my thought - maybe not all “anti-vaxxers” are choosing not to immunize because they’ve done their research and disagree with the benefits. Maybe some are not vaccinating because they haven’t had time to do their research, or – what with all the healing from labor, and diaper changes, and post-partum depression, and feedings, and marital issues, and lack of sleep, and financial worries – they haven’t had time (or money) to take the baby to the doctor to get any shots.

This is, by no means, an excuse for people not to make sure their child has the best health and safety as they grow up – vaccines or not. I just mean I get why this could be happening.

And as an expectant mother, I’m saying the system we have in place isn’t working. We need longer, paid parental leave (and NOT just maternity leave – fathers need time to adjust to their new role and to just be with their babies and partners as well). PAID parental leave is what will decrease these risks.

Let’s not kid ourselves – if we just increase unpaid FMLA, this will do very little to help our new families succeed. Remember, 12 weeks is 3 months… without pay under FMLA. How many of you have savings stocked up to cover three months of expenses, let alone more? Any Dave Ramsey disciples out there? Lucky you – you’re in the minority.

Washington state, where I live, is rolling out a new program in 2020 that will offer women maternity leave that pays 80% of their working salary for 12 weeks. Unfortunately this will be just after my 12 weeks are up with baby Reedy, so I won’t benefit with this pregnancy. But this is a step in the right direction. It is not even close to sufficient, but it is a huge step forward from nothing paid at all.

America, and – more pointedly – Church, we can do better. Christians say they value families. Let’s vote and donate and step up in tangible ways to support families.

Words are not enough.

James 2:15-17 says “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

Christian or not, let’s make and advocate for some changes, my friends. Our families need it.

Studies:

Bureau of Labor Statistics – Likelihood of paid parental leave in the American workforce

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2019/access-to-paid-and-unpaid-family-leave-in-2018.htm

Parental Leave and Work Adaptation at the Transition to Parenthood: Individual, Marital, and Social Correlates

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ731867

Maternal health after childbirth: results of an Australian population based survey.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9501779

List of Studies on Paid Parental Leave

http://www.nationalpartnership.org/our-work/workplace/paid-leave-resources.html#effect

Articles:

Paid Family Leave: How Much Time is Enough?