The Issue Of Maternity Leave

Parents who lose wages while they take time off are protected by the Paid Family Leave Act (PFL), as California provides income replacement in order for them to bond with their newborn or newly adopted child. PFL offers six weeks of partial pay in order to care for the child, financially. According to website, paidfamilyleave.org the partial pay is 55 percent of the worker’s usual salary. PFL does not guarantee job protection as the parent has to qualify for the California Family Rights Act. In the article 10 Things You Need to Know About Maternity Leave in the US, it states, “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 12 percent of Americans have access to the paid parental leave, which is considered a benefit by employers,” demonstrating that only certain employees receive paid parental leave as

Take a moment to think about this: you and your significant other just took the step to become parents. Though you are young, you both believed it was time and went ahead and brought a baby into your lives. Staring at your baby and your spouse with loving eyes, you do not think life can get any better. However blissful life may seem, things soon come crashing down. You and your significant other work average wage jobs and are having a hard-enough time supporting each other, and now the cost of diapers, clothes, furniture, formula and baby food are creeping in on you and sucking the life out of your bank account. You want to spend time with your new bundle of joy, but suddenly, your baby is being ripped out of your hands and being sent to an

4.2 Secondly, the Maternity & Parental Leave Regs 1999. Maternity allows female employees to have the basic rights including, time off for anti natal care, not to be unfairly dismissed, and the choice to return to work after their child has been born. Parental leave provides the right for employees to take unpaid leave to support dependants in an emergency which we at Pershing fully support.

Pregnancy and early child development is a fundamental aspect of human society, and is pertinent to the development of a successfully functioning community. The developmental and social progress of any civilization relies on children, as they will compose the future working population. Therefore, a mother or father’s involvement in the child’s development is of extreme importance, which is why family leave has been implemented all over the world. Family leave refers to the period of time granted to the employee to care for their newborn child. As communities evolve economically, financial stability is necessary, for what is perceived to be socially successful for a child’s development, which is why paid family leave is popular throughout the world’s nations. However, ABC News reports that “the U.S. is only one of three countries in the world that don't offer paid maternity leave” (Kim, 2015); the same is true for paternity leave. The United States government has an interesting track record dealing with family leave, but in order to analyze what the US government and advocacy groups have done to solve this issue, there first needs to be an understanding on why this issue is so difficult to resolve. The arguments that support and oppose paid family leave in the United States are equally valid, therefore causing a stalemate in the attempted policy making of legislative bodies.

The issue I decided to use was my Toulmin essay. I wrote about maternity leave in the United States. My claim for this essay was that maternity leave laws should be reevaluated so that mothers receive paid maternity leave and that the law should be reevaluated. An example of how I proved this claim is with the information I found about the Family and Medical Leave Act. “In 1993 President Bill Clinton signed into law the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) (Rossin, 221). The FMLA affected women greatly, this federal law approved unpaid maternity leave for all women, regardless of what state they lived in.” Like the reading in the lesson said I would write down a list of arguments based on maternity leave and find any claims or desires

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

Today there are two countries in the world that do not currently guarantee paid maternity leave for employed new mothers and/or expecting mothers, those countries are the United States and Papua New Guinea, according to the International Labour Organization, an United Nations agency (Rubin 2016). In recent years, the controversial issue of guaranteed maternal leave has been a prominent topic of debate amongst political activists and elites, particularly in the United States, where reform is both an ethical protection for employees and a feasible option for employers, but has yet to be achieved. It is this absence of policy that has been linked to significant health related issues of which does not only effect mothers, but their children as well. In addition to these adverse health impacts, it generates economic hardships to mothers and families. Thus, the consequences to mothers, families, and newborns that the absence of guaranteed paid maternal leave presents and the potential benefits of guaranteed paid leave for these individuals as well as employers, creates a case for policy reform in this particular area that would implement such protection.

The lack of a paid parental leave law in the country does not necessarily mean that it is absent in the U.S. labor market. Some generous and more progressive companies do recognize the importance of the leave to employees and do offer it. According to the Employee Benefits Survey of 2015, 21% of employers nationally offer some paid maternity leave while 17% offer some paid paternity/adoption leave. However, about a fifth don’t have any kind of protected maternity, paternity, or adoptive leave. (Ray, 8; Time, n. pag.)

Paid parental leave should be equal and for both parents once a child is born

The photograph by Steven Brahms is from an online article in Bloomberg Businessweek titled, “Maternity Leave: US Policies Still Fail Workers.” Pictured is a new mother in the hospital after having a baby. The mother, still wearing her hospital gown, is sitting at the end of the hospital bed cradling her newborn baby. She is holding the baby in her left arm while staring intensely at her laptop that is sitting on a hospital tray to her right. Simultaneously, the new mother is reaching across her body and baby with her right arm for papers that are lying on the bed to her left. The picture is reflecting how a new mother in the United States is expected by her employers to continue to do her job even after having a baby, especially if she is still

Paternity leave should be a right for all male workers for two weeks. Paternity leave is a period of absence from work granted to a father after or shortly before the birth of his child. Usually, pregnant women who are nearly due for delivery are able to take parental leave from their employment, what about men? Shouldn’t they have the ability to go on leave for the birth of their children? Paternity leave should be granted for male workers for many reasons. This essay will consider some of those reasons, such as if the partner is not well after the birth of the child, needs care and supervision or if she is going through tough pregnancy and needs her male partner to assist her delivering their child. It is also important for an infant-father bonding as much as an infant-mother bonding after the child is born. Also if a horrible circumstance occurs like mother passing away during her delivery, that would leave the father as the first and only carer.

Every single person should be aware of its rights and benefits as a worker in a company. A benefit that commonly women get is, “Maternity leave,” or “Family leave.” This an principally significant topic, since in some companies, and corporations this right is not truly respected, and some employees don’t know how to fight for their privileges.

A mere 12 weeks is the amount of unpaid maternity leave promised to working mothers under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in America. Although many mothers-to-be gladly take the dozen weeks off, American families are at a disadvantage compared to other families around the globe. The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not guarantee or even offer paid maternity leave for working mothers; employers decide whether to provide paid leave for mothers. In the last few decades, more women have traded their aprons for briefcases. However, working women in the United States must choose to raise families while keeping their jobs. Currently, women in the United States must choose between their kids or their career. Mothers who decide to have families must stay at home with a new baby with no guarantee of a paycheck. New mothers should be guaranteed six months of fully paid maternity leave in the United States because they need to restore their health, paid leave helps the economy, and it promotes better health of the baby.

The fact that women’s health can be affected negatively just because employers don’t provide paid maternity leave is something I learned from this article. There is study after study that shows a positive effect of paid maternity leave and woman’s health. I never knew it actually effected the woman’s health, I just thought that it would provide more support for them. Not only will it be more support for them but it will affect their health in a positive way.

When a law is passed, it can have a large effect on the citizens of that area. It has been said that the first year of a child’s life is the basic foundation of their entire life. In order to make that first year successful, money, time and of course love are critical. However because the current policies that exist in America, mothers are denied an easy balance between work, money, and time for their children. The current policies regarding maternity leave are extremely outdated and need to be reformed to accommodate mothers in this day and age. If I could create a law in America, it would be a law upgrading the Family and Medical Leave Act, requiring all employers