Writer, coach, and postpartum specialist Allison Chawla offers her perspective on the surprisingly controversial topic of paid parental leave in the US, having experienced it from multiple angles.
S ome background: two days a week I work for an agency that trains and places women in various blue-collar jobs. These women have been displaced in society and are unable to find employment themselves. They’ve missed the opportunity for education, they have lost spouses, have fallen behind with any skills that would allow them to acquire employment, experienced domestic violence, and fallen into poverty, often despite their partners working. The tragic list goes on and on. Initially, I couldn’t understand how so many of these people had gotten themselves into such a difficult positions. But within a very short period, I understood that many people, no matter how hard they work, don’t get the same opportunities as others.
In a recent article on the Huffington Post, I asked why mothers in the US are expected to raise the future of our nation without any financial compensation.
After all, infant brain development depends in part on receiving love and having their needs met in the first few months of life. Multiple studies show that a child’s self-esteem, ability to trust, and ability to have healthy relationships as adults are all developed in the first year of life as they’re nurtured by their mother or caretakers. You can’t put a price on something as essential as that. In writing that piece, I wanted to highlight a practice that’s already working with great success for other countries. I knew that this would be a controversial topic; I expected both negative and positive feedback. Unfortunately, many comments seemed to be knee-jerk reactions instead of pondered thoughts. They were higher in number, and far beyond anything I imagined:"Entitled, much?"
"Get real!"
"What a joke. Everyone with their hand out for money from the tax payer. I suppose if heaven forbid their child passes away, they would want unemployment because they now do not have any job to do."
"I'd like to point out that the Nazis paid mothers to stay home and have children. Are you saying you want a government like that?"
"In the U.S. you would see some women pumping out babies like guppies."
"Sorry, you lost me at 'all mothers matter.'"
They don’t get the best of choices. Others get no choice at all. And despite what many of us think or believe, having a choice is a great luxury.
Not everyone has a partner that’s employed. Not everyone has a partner. People leave. Relationships end. People die. Not everyone gets a 401k or a severance package for the work they do. The United States Welfare System, in its current state, has been failing for many years. It continues to fail. The same goes for a successful paid maternity or paternity leave program - because the United States hasn’t had one. Just 5% of US companies offer fully paid maternity leave. There is no set leave for parents after childbirth in the US. Some people get three months while others only get eight weeks, and in certain circumstances, some parents do not get any at all.The U.S. is only one of three countries in the world that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave.
The other two countries are Papua New Guinea and Suriname. There are many other countries like Canada, Sweden, Holland and Britain that have paid maternity/paternity leave and measurable, positive socio-economic and social outcomes as a result. Countries that offer paid leave for parents have higher rates of people completing college educations, lower rates of unemployed, lower rates of crime, lower rates of divorce and higher rates of parents returning to work after childbirth. Anne-Marie Slaughter's essay "A Toxic Work World" in the New York Times meticulously details how the lack of societal support for raising kids or caring for elders in the US forces huge numbers of talented, driven men and women to abandon careers to take care of family.
