One in four women go back to work within 10 days of giving birth – but after years of inaction by the US, paid family leave is gaining political ground

Like millions of new mothers across America, MacKenzie Nicholson was faced with an impossible situation.

Her doctor had recommended she take at least six weeks off work after giving birth by C-section, to recover her health and bond with her newborn. Should she follow medical advice and risk losing her home, or return to work?

Just five weeks after giving birth to her second child, she was back in the office, her body still in agony from nerve damage after surgery, and her tiny baby in tow.

How did she keep it together? “I mean the reality is we didn’t,” said Nicholson, 29, who works for a not-for-profit and lives with her husband Philip, 38, and their two children Lucas, six, and Quinn, two, in Nottingham, New Hampshire.

“I was sick to my stomach all the time, feeling stressed about the work-life balance, definitely had postpartum depression, and I don’t know whether one thing leads into the other but I assume that it does and it was hard.”

That was one of the toughest times of my life, if not the toughest time of my life MacKenzie Nicholson

By American standards, however, Nicholson was comparatively lucky. The US is one of the world’s richest countries, but one in four women go back to work within 10 days of giving birth, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Nicholson’s former workplace – she now works for another not-for-profit as a grassroots manager – looked like a creche for a while, complete with a cot and rocker, and she had to take Quinn with her to work appointments.

“I look back at the times and it should be a happy memory, it’s more of like a ‘I can’t believe we did that and made it through and we’re surviving, we’re still standing’. That was one of the toughest times of my life, if not the toughest time of my life.”

•••

The US is one of only three countries in the world not to offer statutory paid maternity leave, according to analysis by the International Labour Organization. The others are the Marshall Islands and Papua New Guinea.

By comparison, Estonia gives women 85 weeks at full pay for maternity leave, while the UK, found by Unicef to be one of the least family-friendly of the world’s richest countries, offers maternity leave for the equivalent of 12 weeks full pay.

But after years of inaction in the US, national conversation around the issue of paid family leave – which can include childbirth, serious illness and caring for a sick family member – has started to gain political ground. Eight states and the District of Columbia have passed their own paid family leave bills – four of which have already implemented it.

On the national stage, it looks set to become an important policy point in the 2020 US election. Most of the Democratic presidential contenders support paid family leave and, for the first time, many Republicans are taking an interest in paid parental leave – including Donald Trump, who called for six weeks’ paid leave for new parents in his last budget.

Ruth Martin, vice-president of workplace justice campaigns at MomsRising, said this progress is partly down to the recent influx of female representation in the House and Senate.

No rest for the workers: how the US is out of step on paid leave Read more

“It’s not lost on me that we’ve seen the most momentum at the congressional level this year, right after we had the historic [2018] midterm election with a lot more women and moms elected in office. So we’re really getting close to a point where we’re going to continue to see a real increase in getting close to passing a national policy.”

•••

The only national family leave legislation currently in place in the US is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), signed into law by former president Bill Clinton in 1993 under which eligible employees can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year for birth, adoption, medical leave or to care for a sick family member.

But like about 40% of Americans who, according to the National Partnership of Women & Families do not meet the act’s various restrictions, Nicholson did not qualify (at under 50 employees, her company was too small).

Even if she had qualified, with rent, household bills, car payments and medical bills to pay, taking unpaid time off was not an option. “We would not have been able to keep a roof over our heads … I just can’t even imagine not having an extra dual income at that time, we would be in financial ruin still, I think.”

For most Americans, pregnancy or long-term sickness mean either going to work at times when they are not mentally or physically equipped to do so, or going without pay and potentially losing a job.

“For me it’s a simple thing,” said Ellen Bravo, co-Director of Family Values @ Work. “If you value families then you have to make it possible for people to do exactly what we say we care most about, being responsible family members, following doctors’ orders, we have to make it possible for people to do that without falling off an economic cliff.”

Bravo, who has been campaigning for paid family leave since the early 80s, said those in the highest-paid jobs are most likely to have access to paid leave or a “financial cushion” but it’s an issue that spans the economic spectrum, from middle-class employees to the lowest-paid workers.

According to US Department of Labor statistics, only 17% of civilian workers had access to paid family leave in March 2018. Just 40% had access to short-term disability insurance.

“Clearly it has a disparate impact on people who are in the lowest-paid jobs and those are disproportionately people of colour,” said Bravo.

I know how much further along we would have been in life had there been policies with paid family leave Tameka Henry

The absence of paid leave and the resulting pressure on families to not take time off work, she said, leads to babies being left alone in neonatal intensive care units, new mothers going back to work before they have healed and people being forced to leave their partners alone on their deathbeds. With new babies it can also impact breastfeeding, bonding and vaccinations.

As a sole carer and the only earner in her five-person household, Tameka Henry, 42, from Las Vegas, regularly has to choose between taking unpaid leave to look after her chronically ill husband, Abdul Smith, 45, or going to work so she can pay the bills.



She works two jobs – as an assistant market coordinator for a community garden and as an after-school program instructor – but it’s still a struggle to make ends meet and she worries about taking time off for hospital visits and caring for her children.



“You’re forced to make that decision. Do I be there for my family member? Or do I go to work so I can make the income to make our bills, or to be able to support some of the medications that are not covered completely under a plan? And it’s like, what do you do?” she said.

“I get emotional about this because I know how much further along we would have been in life had there been policies with paid family leave. I know that.”

•••

Paid family leave has broad support from voters. According to 2017 research by Pew, 82% of Americans say mothers should receive paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child and 69% support it for fathers.

Kevin Denny II, a developer living in San Antonio, Texas, was shocked to find that he is not entitled to any paid time off after his second child is born in November.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It’s becoming less taboo of course, but it’s still, depending on where you’re at, a taboo thing,’ said Kevin Denny II. Photograph: Kevin Denny II

Denny, 35, who already has a one-year-old son, KJ, with his wife, Jamie, said paid family leave is still unthinkable for some. “It’s becoming less taboo of course, but it’s still, depending on where you’re at, a taboo thing. Like, paid family leave, what is that?”

He is not alone. Andrea Zuniga, vice-president of legislative affairs at Paid Leave for the United States (PL+US) said: “We’ve seen, particularly with millennial men, more and more of them want to play a very active role in their child’s life and be there during those formative years, take that time off.”

With its broad appeal, Zuniga is encouraging all candidates, Democrat and Republican, to talk about paid leave.

“This is an issue that crosses partisan lines. It is something that really connects with people.”

But voters are split on how to pay for it. According to Pew, 51% said employers should be mandated to pay workers for family leave, while 48% said employers should be left to make their own decision.

To date, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York, Washington state, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon and the District of Columbia have all passed their own paid family leave laws. Meanwhile, businesses such as Walmart – the largest employer in the US – and Target now offer their own schemes.

In Tucson, Arizona, the elementary school teacher Julie Groce said she believes all government workers should be entitled to the kinds of maternity benefits available in the private sector.

Groce did not qualify for short-term disability insurance, so she had to use holiday and sick time for part of her maternity leave.

The current system, she said, relies on there being two working parents. Not receiving paid parental leave put Groce, 35, and her husband Kris, 41, who works in IT, under financial strain after the birth of their now one-year-old son, Adam.

“Why should a mother be punished for producing offspring?” she said. “If I didn’t have a partner, there’s no way … My paycheck alone would not have been able to afford a child.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Groce family. Photograph: Courtesy of Julie Groce

Now that the concept has bipartisan support, what’s stopping Congress? The New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who reintroduced the Family Act with the Connecticut representative Rosa DeLauro in February, is convinced the momentum is finally with them.

“We have not only President Trump advocating for paid family leave, we have Republicans who have paid leave plans,” Gillibrand said. “Most of the plans that Republicans have put forward so far are inadequate because they’re not for all life events, they’re just for babies. They aren’t generous enough, but at least they’re beginning to talk about it as an earned benefit.”

The Family Act would force employees and businesses pay a 0.2% payroll tax that would act as an “insurance fund”. Workers could then draw 66% of their salary, up to a capped amount, for up to 12 weeks a year for birth, adoption, recovery from serious illness or care for a sick family member.

This month the New Jersey representative Chris Smith became the first Republican to sign on and Gillibrand said she is “confident we will get even more Republican co-sponsors in the months ahead”.

Why should a mother be punished for producing offspring? Julie Groce

But the Family Act is not the only option on the table.

Republican proposals include the Florida senator Marco Rubio’s New Parents Act, co-sponsored by fellow Republican senator Mitt Romney. Rubio does not support raising taxes to pay for paid federal leave; instead his proposal would give parents a voluntary option to use some of their social security – usually used for retirement and disability – as payment during leave after birth or adoption.

The Cradle Act, put forward by the Republican senators Joni Ernst and Mike Lee, also centers around social security. The plan gives parents the option to postpone the start of their social security benefits in return for getting up to three months of paid leave after becoming parents.

Then there’s a bipartisan bill from the Republican senator Bill Cassidy and the Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema which proposes inviting new parents to “bring forward” $5,000 of their child tax credit (CTC) to help with costs after the birth or adoption of a child under six. They would then receive $1,500 annually for the subsequent 10 years instead of $2,000 to make up for the early one-off payment.

None of the Republican proposals cover sickness, however, which Marc Freedman, vice-president for workplace policy at the US Chamber of Commerce, indicated could be a sticking point.

“We need to find something that will allow employers to operate on a national platform and we think in order to get there, the leave benefit must be more comprehensive than just strictly for new children.”

Although they are looking to support a proposal, they have yet to see one that meets their requirements.

Government statistics show that most people – 73% – who take unpaid time off through FMLA do so not for the arrival of a new child but for sickness – either of themselves or a family member. This suggests that any bill without sickness provision would leave out a big proportion of people currently taking time off work.



While support for paid family leave is unquestionably building, fragmentation over how it should be defined and paid for mean implementation of any law is still likely to be years away.

“What we’re asking for here in the States is transformative, but it’s hardly generous compared to what the rest of the world has and what many companies here have,” said Bravo. “The good news is it’s not pie in the sky, we know exactly what it looks like and we know that it works, we know how to do it, it’s just about political will and we’re going to make that happen.”



