Taking Parental Leave into Your Own Hands

Parental leave is just one part of the $3.5 trillion bill that Congress is hashing out. If you have wondered why astonishingly little coverage has gone into the details of this paid parental leave, it’s because a lot is left to be desired. 

Advocates of parental leave in the United States often make the argument that the U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not offer government-sponsored parental leave. Sweden and Norway are often pointed to as model examples. Sweden offers 40 weeks of leave per child, to be split evenly between both parents, and income replacement of up to 80%. More leave is available if twins are born. In fact, Sweden’s parental leave isn’t even the most generous in the world. Thirteen countries offer more leave than Sweden, with Estonia topping the list at 86 weeks. 

Congress’ current proposed plan is 12 weeks of parental leave at two-thirds of the parent’s pay, with a monthly maximum of $4,000. 

If the entire purpose of government-sponsored parental leave is to put the U.S. on par with other developed nations, Congress’ plan is a joke. 

First off, 12 weeks is not a sufficient amount of time for parental leave. Better Life Lab, which advocates for parental leave in the United States, recommends at least 26 weeks of leave just to account for maternal health—and longer for infant health. The scientific literature indicates that even six months after giving birth, some postpartum women are still not in the same state of health as they were before having a child. 

Second, the monthly maximum means that for a mother who is making $130,000 annually, her “parental leave” will not even cover half of her normal paycheck. Congress, apparently, thinks that moms will happily take 12 weeks off, at half pay, with the added costs of a newborn child. 

A cap of any kind is frankly ridiculous. If anything, it discourages women from pursuing career advancement and penalizes women who go to college and work hard to advance in their careers. The government is essentially saying, “If you work hard enough, you can find a way to pay for the cost of having a kid yourself. If you don’t, I guess we will pay for it.” This is not only insulting to women, it is illogical. Does making more money mean that I won’t have pregnancy-related problems like diabetes or anemia?What if I have pre-existing conditions? What if, God forbid, I have a difficult delivery and need more than 12 weeks to recover?

The fundamental, practical reason for the inequality between men and women is this simple issue: women bear the burden of pregnancy and childbirth, while men do not. This plays out in many practical ways. To care for their own health, women choose to take more time off of work than men—meaning their careers are put on pause or ended. In the United States, most women are not independently wealthy, and most women do not have access to adequate parental leave. As a result, many American women depend on the fathers of their children to financially support them for at least some period of time during pregnancy and postpartum. This is evidenced both in Americans’ view that men should be able to financially support a family and the fact that, as of 2017, in 69% of married couples, the man earned more than the woman. 

If men and women are to be equals in the workforce and society at large, this means that it must be just as easy for a woman to become a mother as it is for a man to become a father. Due to the biological reality of the vastly greater burden and risk that women face in having children than men do, this means that full-scale parental leave is necessary. And, in the interest of women’s equality as well as father-child bonding, it is necessary for both men and women to have this leave so that the woman does not spend more time out of the workforce than the father. 

Congress’ plan, at best, amounts to a supplement. At its worst, it amounts to welfare. No one can honestly be expected to live, with a newborn child, on the leave that they are proposing. It still assumes that a mother has another source of income, and as such cannot be correctly identified as “leave.”

If the government is insistent on getting involved with parental leave, it should be with the mindset of enriching the nation by making it more possible for men and women to fully participate in society, at every stage of life. Parental leave should not be seen or approached as a supplement or welfare, and especially not if we’re trying to compare ourselves to Sweden, Norway, Germany or a dozen other nations.

Not to mention, if applying for and actually receiving parental leave benefits is anything like getting unemployment benefits, we can expect it to take weeks or months before a parent even gets their first check after a baby is born. 

Instead of throwing this half-baked idea into a massive spending bill, Congress should take the time to research, discuss, debate, and consider what the best solution is. I personally would welcome some creativity: lower taxes for pregnant women and their spouses, or tax breaks for businesses that offer parental leave. Perhaps Congress could even survey new parents to find out what would have been most helpful to them. 

Still, fixing parental leave is not a task that should be entirely left up to the government. The demand for parental leave is an opportunity for institutions like Charles Schwab and Vanguard to step in. For example, these financial institutions could create tax-advantaged parental leave accounts, similar to a 401k or college savings fund. (Congress, of course, would have to create a policy that allows these types of accounts to be tax-advantaged). These parental leave accounts could be set up by working adults or even by parents, from the time a child is born, to support that child when he or she is ready to have children of their own. The money in the account could be used to cover the costs associated with having a child, including time off work, medical expenses, housing, and newborn items. In terms of using the money, the fund could be structured the way that an HSA or FSA is.

We are Americans, after all, and that means we are innovative, creative, and self-sufficient. I would love to see our generation take parental leave into our own hands—especially if the current plan is the best that Congress can come up with.