The sorry state of parental leave in the United States

Or: Why Robin Hood has to put on a suit and head for the office

Due to circumstances both fortunate and unfortunate, I spent most of the first year of J’s life at home, with him. I spent a lot of that time worrying about how we were going to pay rent. In the moment, it felt like a curse. I’m only now able to recognize the gift of that time for what it was.

I’m in a much different place — location and life-wise — just one month after L’s birth. More than gainfully employed, I saved up over a month of vacation days to spend at home. I’m four weeks into the six weeks of leave I planned, and I can already tell that it wasn’t nearly enough. My job is protected for up to one year of unpaid parental leave, and the only thing that stops me from taking that time is the ‘unpaid’ bit.

Without my paid vacation days, I’d barely have been able to take off a week. The only federal legislation protecting parental leave time is the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which guarantees twelve weeks of unpaid leave for some life events, including the birth of a child, to employees who have worked at their current employer for over a year. And that’s the most that many people get. This problem in the U.S. is so widespread that President Obama mentioned it today during a press conference, though he offered no real solution.

I’m not sure whether I’d fare much better elsewhere. Out of 185 countries surveyed by the United Nations in a recent study, only three failed to provide legal protection for working mothers in the form of paid maternity leave: Oman, Papua New Guinea, and the United States. 78 out of 167 countries in the survey offer paternity leave entitlements, and only a handful of nations offer fathers more than a week or two of guaranteed leave.

While I’m technically a mother, I’m neither the biological mother nor the primary caretaker for my children. However, the benefits to me being home during this period of time are so obvious that it’s hard for me to understand how the United States protects neither maternity leave nor paternity leave. My wife isn’t completely overwhelmed by having to deal with a newborn and a three-year-old, and is able instead to ease into her new and far more demanding day. I am able to bond with my new daughter and strengthen the bond with my son, who needs extra attention to assure him that he has not lost his place in the family. I am able to be present with all of them and not have to worry about deadlines. For six short, almost-gone weeks, that is.

I won’t have a year at home with L. It’s likely that I’ll miss a number of firsts, if not all of them: Rolling over, crawling, words, steps. I won’t get to watch the day by day of the relationship between my two children as it grows and flourishes. While it’s necessary and clearly best for my family, my return to work means I’m losing something irreplaceable.

Currently, my days go something like this:

• Wake up to a little three-year-old face staring into mine.
• Give the face my phone so I can sleep for another half hour.
• Receive my code name for the day: Didi Police, Sheriff of Nottingham, or Robin Hood. (Disclosure: Robin Hood is my favorite.)
• Spend the next 10 hours chasing after Firefighter J and/or Prince John.

I do a fair amount of changing, rocking, and holding L, but most of my time is spent with J. We’re closer than we’ve ever been and I feel so lucky to be able to spend this kind of time with him, a luxury few U.S. parents are afforded. But right now L’s life is all about eating, and that’s not something I can help with. If I’m being honest, it took me a long time after J’s birth to feel bonded to him as a parent, rather than some random adult who was chosen by some accident of fate to watch over a tiny helpless creature. I already feel like a parent, but I still wonder how my bond with L will be affected by the time I can’t spend with her. Will I still be her Robin Hood?

It feels almost criminal to complain about not being able to take more than six weeks of leave when most U.S. workers get nothing at all. But I can’t help thinking about all of the things I’m going to miss when I’m at back at work in a few weeks: Spending an entire morning with my son in the back yard, successfully soothing my daughter, nap times, lunch times, snuggle times… As much as I like my job, work seems trivial in comparison.

Work is trivial in comparison to what I’m going to miss while I’m there. Nobody at work knows I’m really Robin Hood.