Parental Leave and Child Care

The United States of America is the only industrialized country not to mandate paid leave for new mothers. Let that sink in for a minute. The great United States is only 1 in 4 countries not to mandate paid maternity leave. That doesn't sound great to me.

The Huffington Post article, "Paid Parental Leave: U.S. vs. The World," provides some statistics about parental leave in the U.S. The article states, "New parents in the U.S. are guaranteed their jobs for 12 weeks after the arrival of a new baby, thanks to the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993, but they do not have to be paid during that time and exemptions apply for small companies. Only about 16 percent of employers offer fully paid maternity leave and many families take on significant debt or turn to public assistance around the birth of a child."

The article provides this infographic to compare the U.S. vs. the world.

These statistics don't seem acceptable to me. The U.S. is supposed to be one of the world's leading nations, but falls seriously behind in this aspect of the work place because of the lack of support given to women and families. What is so wrong with having a family? The U.S. should support families and help them when children are born.

But maybe we should look at things closer to home. An OU professor was gracious enough to share her experiences with OU's maternity and child care policy with me. She said:

"OU really needs to work on better benefits for employees regarding maternity leave and child care.  I took off six months of maternity leave with no pay.  I also was not given health care benefits since I was an adjunct professor.  Luckily, my husband's employer provided health insurance for me, but they were surprised that I was not covered as an OU faculty member.  I went back to work part time when my daughter was just 3 months old.  Although I was teaching classes at OU, I was paid so little that I still qualified for public assistance (WIC, food stamps, and Medicaid medical card for my daughter).  This is ridiculous, considering I was a faculty member at a public university."  

Child care has also been difficult.  The Child Development Center at OU is full with a long waiting list (there are 60 children the same age as my daughter who are also waiting for a spot, and we are almost all OU employees).  The CDC also requires parents to pay for full time, year round child care, which is super expensive (based on your income, but it can cost anywhere from $8,000 to $17,000 per year!!!).  Other child care options in Athens are limited - most places do not accept babies or children who are not potty-trained.  I have had to find a private babysitter and I am paying a lot of money out of my pocket for part time child care.  

OU should provide better benefits for all employees and students who need maternity leave, health care and child care during our childbearing years... I am impressed with the policies of other nations, particularly in Europe, where both maternity leave and child care are protected and generously compensated by the government.  I think that governments should invest more money in the lives of their children than in their military and security agencies - our priorities in the U.S. are really skewed in the opposite direction.  

These policies need to change.  It is ridiculous that so many of us are struggling to balance work and family life as if these are private, individual struggles - when really this is a social and political issue... It sometimes feels like parents are on our own when it comes to trying to balance working, providing for and nurturing our families."

I would like to thank this professor for shedding light on problems mothers have even at a public university like ours.

Family support from the workforce is greatly lacking. When discussing the maternal wall in her article "The Opt-Out Revolution," author Lisa Belkin says:

...the percentage of new mothers who go back to work fell from 59 percent in 1998 to 55 percent in 2000. Look, too, at the mothers who have not left completely but have scaled down or redefined their roles in the crucial career-building years (25 to 44). Two-thirds of those mothers work fewer than 40 hours a week -- in other words, part time. Only 5 percent work 50 or more hours weekly. Women leave the workplace to strike out on their own at equally telling rates; the number of businesses owned or co-owned by women jumped 11 percent since 1997, nearly twice the rate of businesses in general.

Though one discussion that could be had at this point, which is what Belkin goes on to discuss, is why fathers aren't hit by some sort of paternity wall, what I would like to point out is perhaps the reason so many women leave the workforce, scale down their work, or start their own companies is because the maternity leave and child care system we have in the U.S. has failed them.

Instead of helping their employees be successful workers while also being parents, businesses in the U.S. treat having children as a weakness The government doesn't help change this. Caring for children after they're born is expensive. People need to work to provide for their families, but in order to do that, they have to pay for childcare, which is also expensive. 

And in regards to parental leave, pregnancy is not a disease, yet one of the only ways for new parents to manage with the birth of their children is to take sick leave or disability. And even when parents do get time off that is allotted for parenting, it's usually not paid. Companies and the government act as if being parents to newborns is a choice. When a baby is born, he needs his parents to take care of him. Companies should understand this. And the government should support this.

The U.S. needs to step up its game to support families like it should, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

- Erin

Sources:

"Paid Parental Leave": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/maternity-leave-paid-parental-leave-_n_2617284.html

"The Opt-Out Revolution" (Blackboard) https://blackboard.ohio.edu/@@/DF756A91A3F296711719D15A71B1C3D9/courses/1/WGS_2000_101_LEC_SPRG_2012-13/content/_3091259_1/Belkin-OptOutRevolution.pdf