When you have a baby, you should get time off with pay
Since the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993, American parents working for companies with at least 50 employees have had a right to 12 weeks of unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child.
But many don’t take advantage of that option for the simple reason that they can’t afford to go that long without a paycheck.
The Trump administration, at the urging of first daughter Ivanka Trump, has included in its budget released Tuesday a plan for paid medical leave of up to six weeks. The proposal will likely
But the rest of Trump’s budget will hurt families
face considerable opposition — from fiscally conservative Republicans, who won’t like its price tag of $19 billion over the next decade, and from Democrats, who won’t like much of anything coming from Trump. But paid parental leave is one of the better new ideas in the Trump budget.
The USA is the only industrialized nation without some form of paid parental leave, suggesting that America might have something to learn from abroad.
In this country, just 12% of private-sector workers have paid parental leave, as do residents of three states (soon to be four, plus the District of Columbia). These companies and states have offered leave because they want to attract and retain the best workforce.
Paid parental leave has a broad societal justification as well. Having a baby is expensive. Adopting is even more so, as it is usually not covered by insurance.
This financial hit puts enormous strain on family members at the very moment they are, arguably, making their biggest contribution to sustaining society. Studies show that babies, as well as parents, benefit from leave in a variety of ways, including a 10% drop in infant mortality in coun- tries with generous leave polices.
Over the years, government has come to realize its role in getting people back on their feet after a job loss or sickness. And it sees value in young men and women going to college. Why, then, is government so miserly on the vitally important issue of family formation?
If there’s a downside to the Trump paid-leave plan, it’s that the details of how it would work are scant and the funding is unlikely to be sufficient.
Each year in America, 4 million babies are born and 135,000 adopted. If these stayed constant over the 10 years that the $19 billion is allocated, there would be $460 per baby. Even if states pitched in, that would hardly go far in funding a six-week leave.
To make matters worse, the Trump leave proposal is overshadowed by huge cuts in his budget that would dismantle the safety net that lower-income parents, as well as others, rely on.
About $800 billion would be gouged over 10 years from Medicaid, the health care program that pays for nearly half of all childbirths. The Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would be gutted as well.
This leaves the Trump budget with the germ of a good idea amid an epidemic of bad ones.