(The headline in the above article has “maternity leave”, but President Obama has emphasized the need for both parents to be at home with the baby.)
I am not sure how I feel about this, so I’m open to all the arguments. But it seems to me that most families struggle not just with the first six weeks of a baby’s life, but with paying for childcare in the subsequent months and years. Childcare costs are what make women (usually) drop out of the workforce. I guess I’d rather tax dollars go to addressing this problem, if we had to just choose one to fix.
According to the article, there is proposed legislation to fund paid parental leave through Social Security. It’s not gonna pass (at least with the current Congress), but let’s say it does. How would the program work? Would there be a lifetime limit on how much paid leave a person could get? (I’m thinking of serial “baby daddies” or Duggar wannabes). How does it work in countries with paid parental leave?
In Canada, either parent, or both, can take parental leave, for a maximum combined leave of one year. Employment insurance kicks in after two weeks of leave. It’s not the full amount of salary; EI is capped at a certain amount. However, if your salary exceeds what EI pays, some employers will too it up as a benefit, often to close to your full salary. Provincial and federal labour standards laws require that an employer keep your position open for you, up to a year, so your job is waiting for you when you come back.
Mrs Piper and I split the leave when the Cub came along. She took 8 months, I took 4, and it was great! We both got time to be with him during that first year. It helped ensure that there would not be any presumption that child care was her responsibility, since we had both had that early experience of being the stay-at-home parent.
ETA: and, it’s one year for each child. No life-time limit v
We can’t afford it. Enough “free” shit, please. Just one more thing in a seemingly endless litany of feel-good items where the cost-benefit analysis only considers the benefit.
In Canada, it’s funded through the national EI system. Employees and employers make equal payments, up to a maximum per year, based on salary. The EI find consistently has a surplus.
In California we have paid family leave, funded through a small payroll tax. It’s a fairly new thing. It’s not just for new parents, I used it when my husband was in the hospital after brain surgery. I’m not sure what the time limit is, I was off work for six weeks. It seems to be working just fine for us Californians. We also have paid disability leave, funded through a small payroll tax, which can last up to a year.
So your feeling is that America is specifically inept and unable to provide something every other industrialized country does?
Of course we can afford it. I can’t get over the conservative impulse to have American citizens be the worst treated, most struggling citizens in the developed world. IMHO, the richest, most powerful country on Earth should have citizens treated at least as well as most other developed countries.
One cold hard fact is that countries with paid parental leave see a higher percentage of employed women.
I live in the Netherlands, which has three months of maternity leave and 2 days paternity leave. The pay is always a percentage ( about 70%) of the income, and it is very clear when someone is eligible, so this is actually the social security measure with zero fraudulent abuse. Not that other abuse is rampant, research after research puts the fraud percentage at less then 2 percent, which is actually lower then general white collar fraud.
The law in question would not in itself cause anyone to take on an expense they can’t afford, since the law itself would render them able to afford it.
I’d be in favor of it. I’m assuming if SS can cover people’s retirements for 12.4% of worker income (which is capped), then an uncapped tax (either income or payroll or both) could cover this and come to less than 1%.
How long are people out? I think California is 6 weeks, other nations have a year or more. Is it 6 weeks, 12, 26, 52?
We absolutely need it. Too many people (not just women) end up losing jobs to take leave, or coming back to work just after having a baby, still recovering. In a civilized society we should be able to accommodate time to recover and care for a newborn. What are we all working for if it isn’t for a society worth living in. The job and capitalism is the be all and end all of our purpose in life.
Yeeahh, not exactly.
If the system was 100% taxpayer-funded, I’d go along with it, but if it cost employers extra I’d be strongly opposed. Women are disadvantaged enough in the workforce. The idea that hiring one of childbearing age might cost you months of pay with no work being performed in return will do them no favors.
It used to be America was a leader. Now we are being lapped and surpassed by a list of third world nations on various fronts (civil rights, health care, parental leave, random violence, etc).
Exactly- when did this attitude of “you must do everything your self and society is only there to facilitate those who can make money to make that money” become the America way? There’s more to society than making life is as hard as possible.
Ever think that giving someone a few weeks of paid leave will allow them to return to a job, earn money, keep paying taxes and actually support their family? It’s such a no-brainer. The question for these society support programs shoudn’t be prove to me why should we do it, but find me strong reasons to not do it.
Under the Family Leave Act, a person is allowed leave from work to care for a new baby/sick family member. Paid parental leave, which would be funded through taxes (payroll, presumably), would turn this into paid leave.
Paid parental leave would encourage even more people to take family leave, which Mr. Boss Man isn’t going to like at all. But the burden on workplaces would be in staffing shortages, not undeserved paychecks.
(As a childless worker, I’m not a fan of having to work double-time to cover the duties of workers out on parental leave. But if the law applies to all family caretakers–like adult children caring for elderly parents–then I’m all for it.)
My dear fellow, you must be a neophyte to the American political arena. Republicans are all about family values. They never fail to emphasize how the family is the keystone of society. Liberals are the ones seeking to destroy marriage so they can trap as many single mothers on the dole as possible. So where the parties line up on issues like this is quite clear.
How does this work in other countries? Presumably, employers have the number of employees they need. So they’ll have to hire/train a temp when someone is out of work for several months. Does the gov cover the cost of that, while the employer continues to pay the salary of the missing worker? Or does the gov pay the worker, and the employer finds the replacement on his own dime?
Let’s say it is here and now and I am a young adult working part-time at Walmart. I manage to pay my share of rent and utilities in a shared apartment and even manage to dine on rice and beans a time or two a day. I decide inexplicably to have a baby and make the necessary arrangements to begin incubating one. I share this happy news with my parents and they realize that if my child is to eat and wear clothing and such, they must get some extra jobs and buy me and baby the needed supplies, plus let me move in so I can take some time off work. They aren’t happy about this, but they prefer it to the alternative, so they do what they can.
Can I actually afford this baby because there it is eating and wearing clothes and sheltered from the elements? Or are others subsidizing my decision?
Offering the same to men is all well and good, but in reality, employers are likely to make it known that taking your leave is not okay, like the way many companies behave with vacations and personal days.
This is my question. It seems like a double whammy for the employer - pay someone not to work (or some percentage thereof) and then pay for the replacement employee of the OT for the people covering for them, plus lost productivity spent in training, etc. That’s a hell of an expense, and not every company is WalMart.