Parental Leave Pay

With women taking on more powerful positions in the work force, having the child’s father take time off work instead can help the mother maintain her success in the work world. As Bryce Covert states in ‘How Everyone Benefits When New Fathers Take paid Leave’, “Paid maternity leave offers new mothers the break they physically need without breaking the bank. But paid paternity leave goes even further. It often changes a family’s gender dynamics and helps mothers stay attached to the workforce”. If the family would prefer that the father took time off rather than the mother, the father would also be guaranteed a paycheck if paid paternity leave was put in place. According to Rachel Gillett in ‘Why Paid Paternity Leave is Good For Everyone’, “In Sweden, where fathers must take at least two months off before the child is 8 years old to receive the government benefits, researchers saw mothers' incomes increase almost 7% for every month of paternity leave their husbands took”. The option of allowing women to continue working while the child’s father stays at home should be offered to every family as the modern world adapts to new gender roles and family

Although current federal and state level legislation guarantee some protections, these policies do not cover all new parents. Parents must have worked a minimum of 5 months while contributing to State Disability Insurance to receive 55% of their salary during 6 weeks of their parental leave, and must have worked with an employer for 1 year to quality for 12 weeks of unpaid leave (“About Paid Family Leave (PFL),” n.d.). Parental leave is not accessible to all adults in the United States because of these requirements, and therefore makes early parenting even more challenging for working adults. Nationally, the trend for mothers on maternal leave has stagnated, although the US economy has expanded (Zagorsky, 2017).

Is America falling behind the rest of the world in terms of the services it provides? As a proud citizen of this great nation I, unfortunately, have to say “yes.” Our once outstanding country has been falling behind in a number of areas including technology, education, economics, and yes, even in family care! America is now one of only three industrialized countries that hasn’t set up a nationwide policy for paid parental leave. With this knowledge I desired to know more, particularly if we as a nation are not doing much to rectify the situation. Then, to learn if any states were doing something about this issue which effects so many people in the workforce. I wanted to see exactly how far behind, compared to the rest world, we are in the issue of paid parental leave. The Pew Research Center conducted a study of government supported leave in 38 OECD countries, and found that the US had the lowest figures with zero weeks of paid leave. Though we did fare better when it came to the number of weeks provided for protected leave with 12 weeks. We were still far worse than most other OECD countries (see Figure 1 at right). Knowing that we were rated worse I wanted to know what people are saying that we can and should be doing to change this situation?

Jane thinks she will be taking ten months’ maternity leave after the birth of their child. Her employer’s maternity package is full pay for the first six months, and then on the statutory maternity pay, worth about £94 net per week, for the further four months. They looked into Adan taking some paternity leave but have decided against it, and

Many believe that the success of a functioning community can be measured by the development of the youth, with the assumption that they would progress society as the future generation. Today’s children are tomorrow’s working class and the main contributors of social progress. Thus, the developmental stages in a child’s life is pertinent to success of a community, and in these stages parental involvement is a necessary component, which is why Family Leave is a policy implemented worldwide. Policy regarding family leave refers to the leave granted to employees in order to care for their newborn child. All countries, with the exception of two, have gone a step further by requiring employers to partially or fully compensate employees during family

Google and YouTube- 18 weeks of paid maternity leave, 12 weeks of “baby-bonding leave” for primary caregivers, and up to 7 weeks for non-primary

The Family and Medical Aid Act (FLMA), of 1993, provides for 12 weeks of unpaid, job protected leave for certain specified events (8). Whilst one could refer to this as maternity or paternity leave if taken because of a pregnancy, this would not be strictly true. Where maternity and paternity leave are offered around the

Fathers are eligible to take up to 12 weeks with the FMLA Act. This act allows them to take unpaid time off while having job security for any family or medical reasons. In order to qualify for time, leave the employee must meet these requirements: “worked for over 12 months for the state or federal government, a public school or private employer with more than 50 employees. In the last year, the employee must have worked 1,250 hours at the job and must work at a location with 50 or more employees within 75 miles.” Although this act seems fair, some fathers do not take advantage of

Paternity leave is the time a father takes off work at the birth or adoption of a child. This kind of leave is rarely paid and is important. After the mother gives birth she may not be feeling well, or exhausting and does not want to go through raising the child all on her own after recently giving birth. She will need the father to take paternity leave and be with her, support her and assist her when taking care of the new born. Another circumstance where paternity leave is a must when the mother-to-be is going through tough

In the United States, paid paternal leave is not mandated by law whereas other countries have mandated paid maternity and even paid paternity leave. Paid maternity and paternity leave should be a law because of the potentially positive impact it has on the child and the parents in the long run.

A Maternity leave now often called parental or family leave, is the time a mother (or father) takes off from work for the birth or adoption of a child.

Paid parental leave has been an issue of public and political debate since the early 1970s (Brennan, 2009), stemming from lobbying of the women’s movement and women’s liberation groups (Kramarae & Spender, 2000). The first development towards paid parental leave was made in the late 1970s. At this time the union movement, in particular, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, successfully pushed for a woman’s rights to access maternity leave by applying political pressure on the government of the day (Baird & Murray, 2014). As a result women were able to access 52 weeks of unpaid maternity leave with jobs protected, access to this leave was granted to adoptive parents and fathers from the mid 1980’s (McCarthy, Jenkin & Stewart, 2011). Throughout

Women give birth nearly every day around the world, yet some fathers are hardly present to lend them support. Some fathers may not be desirous of the opportunity while others can’t find time to be there long enough. Also, some fathers can’t afford to sacrifice their pay check, which their families need to maintain the new addition. Paternity leave is time off from work granted to male employees, in the private and public sectors, to be with their spouses and newborns. Most employers rarely pay male employees paternity leave to spend time with their spouses when they deliver a child, suffer a miscarriage, or adopt a child. Men wishing to take paternity leave to assist their spouse under these conditions usually do so through paid leave such

· Family and Parenting benefits comprise work from home, childcare, maternity and paternity leave, unpaid extended leave, flexible hours.

The article, “Without Taking Away Her Leave”: A Canadian Case Study of Couples Decisions on Father’s Use of Parental Leave” explains, “More than one in four Canadian fathers now takes some paid leave at the birth of a child.” While this certain explanation is shown in a positive perspective, more fathers in the workplace should be taking hefty advantage of paid parental leave particularly to form the bond in the first six weeks. While in countries like Canada in the province of Quebec, paternity leave is more accepted by men than it is in countries like the United States. In the United States it is more likely for a father not to take any time off after his child is born. One might argue that taking too much time off after the birth of a child might take away opportunities in the workplace, but because paternity leave is becoming more accepted, it will be normal for a man to take time off. It is likely that they will have to use vacation time which might leave room for not being able to call off for an emergency. In most cases, taking twelve weeks unpaid could really hurt a family. That is why those first six weeks should be paid for. The idea