On Tuesday night, Donald Trump released a child care and maternity leave plan that offers new mothers six weeks of paid maternity leave, tax deductions for stay-at-home parents, and dependent care savings accounts for families. America is the only industrialized country in the world that does not offer federally mandated family leave, and Trump’s proposal is a significant shift from the traditional Republican stance against mandating paid leave. The campaign, which recently kicked off a Women Empowerment Tour, has been attempting to boost its image among women voters — 65 percent of whom have an unfavorable view of the candidate, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll from late August. At the forefront of his outreach efforts has been 34-year-old Ivanka Trump, an executive at the Trump Organization and mother of three, who talked about the importance of supporting working mothers in her RNC speech and was a major influence behind the proposal. Ivanka helped Donald Trump announce the plan on stage in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night and wrote an op-ed detailing specifics of the new policy, published in the Wall Street Journal. Cosmopolitan.com spoke with Ivanka over the phone Wednesday morning about her father’s new family leave and child care policy.

Hillary Clinton released [aspects of] her plan over a year ago. Why did the Trump campaign wait so long to release this policy?

I am all for multiple plans on both sides of the aisle being presented to the American people on this issue. It is a terrible thing that we are the only industrialized nation in the world that does not offer paid maternity leave and I am excited to be part of a dialogue about this and, hopefully under a Trump administration, have that changed. For decades, people have been trying to achieve this in the U.S and it has yet to be realized and I think our plan is a great one. It's comprehensive, not only relating to family and maternity leave, but also relating to child care. And a big component of this plan is the child care component, because it is a major problem in the United States. The lack of affordable, safe, quality child care is an enormous issue and it's growing ever larger. So our plan is the first to address this in a comprehensive way.

Child care expenses are one of the largest expenses in many American households. And in fact this even exceeds the cost of housing in almost half of America. So this is an enormous issue for tens of millions of American parents, and our proposal is multipronged, so first and foremost, under the Trump plan, we'll be rewriting the tax code to allow working parents to deduct from their income taxes child care expenses for up to four children, and that includes also elderly dependents, of which women are most often responsible for and [which is] one of the elements that leads to wage discrepancy. Also, for the people who are unable to pay income taxes, because they'd be the lowest-income families in America and ultimately the people who need this benefit the most, we're going to be expanding the existing earned income tax credit to ensure that child care spending rebates for lower-income taxpayers come through the expansion of that program. So it's a very comprehensive rewrite of a tax code that is 65 years old and was put in place before a significant portion of the U.S. labor force was female.

In your op-ed, you mention the pay gap for women exacerbates after they bear children, and one of the reasons for that is that mothers are usually charged with child care over men. I'm wondering — and this speaks to the maternity leave aspect of the plan — paternity leave is said to be a great factor in creating gender equality. So I’m wondering, why does this policy not include any paternity leave?

This is a giant leap from where we are today, which is sadly, nothing. Both sides of the aisle have been unable to agree on this issue, so I think this takes huge advancement and obviously, for same-sex couples as well, there's tremendous benefit here to enabling the mother to recover after childbirth. It's critical for the health of the mother. It's critical for bonding with the child, and that was a top focus of this plan.

OK, so when it comes to same-sex—

So it's meant to benefit, whether it's in same-sex marriages as well, to benefit the mother who has given birth to the child if they have legal married status under the tax code.

Well, what about gay couples, where both partners are men?

The policy is fleshed out online, so you can go see all the elements of it. But the original intention of the plan is to help mothers in recovery in the immediate aftermath of childbirth.

So I just want to be clear that, for same-sex adoption, where the two parents are both men, they would not be receiving special leave for that because they don't need to recover or anything?

Well, those are your words, not mine. [Laughs.] Those are your words. The plan, right now, is focusing on mothers, whether they be in same-sex marriages or not.

OK, I just wanted to make sure I understood. In 2004, Donald Trump said that pregnancy is an inconvenient thing for a business. It's surprising to see this policy from him today. Can you talk a little bit about those comments, and perhaps what has changed?

So I think that you have a lot of negativity in these questions, and I think my father has put forth a very comprehensive and really revolutionary plan to deal with a lot of issues. So I don't know how useful it is to spend too much time with you on this if you're going to make a comment like that. My father obviously has a track record of decades of employing women at every level of his company, and supporting women, and supporting them in their professional capacity, and enabling them to thrive outside of the office and within. To imply otherwise is an unfair characterization of his track record and his support of professional women. So the policies at our company reflect that, and the diversity of our workforce, from a gender perspective, and in all perspectives, reflects that. So my father has been a great advocate for the women in the workforce, and that's part of why he recognized that reform is so necessary.



I would like to say that I'm sorry the questions — you’re finding them negative, but it is relevant that a presidential candidate made those comments, so I'm just following up.



Well, you said he made those comments. I don't know that he said those comments.



This is quoted from an NBC [interview] from 2004. I definitely did not make that up. I do want to talk to you a little bit beyond the plan, as well—

I think what I was — there's plenty of time for you to editorialize around this, but I think he put forth a really incredible plan that has pushed the boundaries of what anyone else is talking about. On child care specifically, there are no proposals on the table. He really took ownership of this issue, and I really applaud him for doing that. I hope that, regardless of what your political viewpoint is, this should be celebrated.

I want to talk about how this will be paid for. I know that Donald Trump wants to have an increase in defense spending, also is promising tax cuts, [wants to raise] infrastructure spending, and wants to build a wall [at the Mexican border]. How will this plan be paid for?

Well, he's going to unveil his total tax-reform plan on Thursday, and this is a component of that, so it will be included in his overall budget and economic vision. So it is accounted for, it is paid for under this plan, and it is budget-neutral. In terms of the paid leave component, that's self-financing through reforms in existing unemployment insurance. So the child care component of the plan, and the dependent care component of the plan, will be presented as part of the larger tax reform that he's going to be presenting on Thursday in a speech here in New York. And the paid leave component is self-financing through the reforms I just mentioned.

I'm going to jump off, I have to run. I apologize.

OK, well, thank you for your time.

Sounds good, thanks.

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Prachi Gupta Prachi Gupta is an award-winning journalist based in New York.

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