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Not all parents are able to take paid family leave
The ability to take time off to bond with a new child, care for a seriously ill relative or manage one’s own health crisis without jeopardizing financial stability is undeniably beneficial. However, the current landscape of paid family leave policies in the United States, primarily a patchwork of state-level programs and employer-provided benefits, leaves many parents behind. Only 27 percent of U.S. workers have access to paid family leave through an employer and only 40 percent have access to short-term disability insurance.
The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave; its limitations are significant. Strict eligibility requirements based on employer size, tenure and hours worked exclude a substantial portion of the workforce, particularly those in low-wage jobs, part-time positions, small businesses and freelancers. As more people in the U.S. are starting their own businesses, self-employed parents are growing in number – and need.
As a self-employed mom, I was not able to take a full maternity leave when my daughter was born in 2022. Instead, I scaled back to part-time work for the first month after my daughter was born and then returned to my full-time workload when she was four weeks old. I appreciated the ability to work from home and have a flexible schedule to make this arrangement feasible, but other parents who are not currently covered by family leave policies are not as fortunate.
Dawn Huckelbridge, director of Paid Leave for All, explained in an email interview, “While the FMLA provides job-protected leave, it’s unpaid and only covers employees at larger companies who have been there for at least a year. That leaves out millions of new parents who either can’t afford to take unpaid time off or work for small businesses. I’ve seen workers forced to return to their jobs within days of childbirth or adoption because they simply couldn’t afford the income gap, and the emotional and physical toll it takes is profound.” According to Huckelbridge, only one in four workers has access to paid family leave through their jobs. “We are one of the only countries in the world that doesn't guarantee any form of paid leave for its people,” explains Huckelbridge. “Fourteen states, including DC, have passed paid leave policies of their own, but we have nothing at the federal level.”
Limitations Of Current Paid Family Leave Policies
Nearly one in four employed mothers have returned to work within two weeks of giving birth and one in five retirees have left the workforce earlier than planned to care for an ill family member. Even for those who are covered under FMLA’s unpaid leave policy, within marginalized communities and lower-income families, parents are often unable to afford to take unpaid time off. The state-level paid family leave programs in states like California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Delaware and the District of Columbia offer a glimmer of hope. These programs provide partial wage replacement for eligible workers, making leave more financially viable. However, even these progressive initiatives create disparities, since not all workers are eligible.
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