There was an alternative House proposal for paid leave which would allow parents to make a savings account that would be used to care for the child and that they wouldn’t have to pay taxes on. This means that 14% of Americans have access to paid family leave. California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island require paid family leave, but are the only states in the US to do so. Not to mention the cost of having a child, which is just under $13,000 annually for a middle-income two-child household. Though the 12 weeks that Americans are offered give them job security, many of those who are eligible for leave do not take it because they can’t afford to take 12 weeks off of work without pay. Within this act lie other issues: this unpaid leave is not available to 40% of US workers.

It hasn’t changed since 1993, when Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which offers 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for newborns or ill family members. Maternity leave in the US has always been worse than in other wealthy countries, having never had paid maternity leave. Other studies have found that shorter maternity leaves can lead to poorer health and increased depression and that mothers who took longer maternity leave were at a lower risk for violence exhibited from their partners. A shorter maternity leave has negative effects on both the mother and child.įor example, a study done by the Society for Research in Child Development found that shorter leaves resulted in “lower levels of maternal sensitivity and increased negative affect during interactions with the child.” Another study done at Fordham University found a link between maternity leave and attachment: infants whose mothers did not take maternity leave had more separation anxiety. But maternity leave doesn’t seem like something that people should have to work for. The decades-old notion of the American Dream could contribute to how bad maternity leave is in the US-the idea that people need to work for everything they have and want instead of being given money. That is more than a year and a half of paid maternity leave for Estonians. While the US offers zero weeks of paid maternity leave, the UK offers 52, Japan 52 or more, Sweden 68, and Estonia 82 or more. Compared to other wealthy countries, the US is very far behind in terms of maternity leave.

A Tempestuous Affair by Harriet Bennett