The United States is Wrong on Parental Leave

Something is Rotten in the States of America

I used to be absolutely laissez-faire, believing the government’s sole purpose was to secure the rights of its citizens. Everything else was dog-eat-dog, sink or swim, my way or the highway. Bring on the Robber Barons, because that was my kind of world. Stay out of it, Uncle Sam — we’ve got this figured out.

And then, something strange happened. I became a dad, and a lot of these beliefs suddenly seemed very quaint.

The United States used to be like my parents: it always knew best and was incapable of any wrongdoing. The U.S. was infallible, larger than life, superhuman. As I grew up, the immortal sheen started to wear away; I began to see cracks in the unshakable foundations, and doubt crept through.

Some of these cracks come, I think, from years of exposure to people who aren’t drinking the ‘Merica! Kool-Aid: young, urban, affluent Millennials who get their news from John Oliver. I’ve started to ask questions like why do we have so many people in prison and why are there so many shootings here and why aren’t we on the metric system?

After becoming a parent, another question started to bug the heck out of me: Why do we think it’s ok to ask moms and dads to go right back to work after childbirth?

Free Market to New Parents: Get Bent

Young, Idealistic, Libertarian Ryan would have been appalled at Older, Wiser Dad Ryan for so much as questioning the awesomeness of my homeland, let alone suggesting that the United States government create another entitlement to help new parents. Whatareyoukiddingme?!

Let the free market decide, YIL Ryan would have said flippantly. The free market is always right. Also, why have kids if you can’t afford the time off? Sink or swim, bucko, sink or swim.

The old me was a bit of a privileged asshole.

This “let the private sector decide” mentality sounds nice, but it hasn’t worked. In the absence of a mandated paid parental leave policy:

• 25% of new mothers go back to work within 10 days of childbirth (the American Association of Pediatrics recommends at least 6–8 weeks, and the ILO and EU recommend 14 weeks)
• 94% of low-income workers have no access to paid leave
• Only 12% of private sector workers have access to paid family leave through their employer

The US is the only OECD country without a statutory entitlement to paid maternity leave. The only other country in the world with that distinction is Papua New Guinea.

So, why are we the odd ones out?

Parental Leave is Neat

“Everyone else is doing it” isn’t usually a great argument; however, there are well-established benefits to taking care of new parents, and I think the rest of the world has this figured out. Studies have shown that parental leave:

• May increase the chance mothers will start and continue to breastfeed
• Decreases the risk of postpartum depression
• Decreases infant mortality rates
• Reduces rates of divorce
• Reduces employee turnover in companies that offer it as a benefit

My experience bears out these findings. My wife and I were both fortunate enough to have parental leave; however, we realized that if I had worked for a less generous employer, things wouldn’t have gone so well for us:

• Without my ‘round the clock help and encouragement, my wife would have given up on breastfeeding in the first week or two.
• Additionally, she would have been overwhelmed, overtired, alone, and certainly at increased risk of postpartum depression.
• Without the ability to rest and work in shifts, and with one less pair of eyes, our infant would have been at an increased risk of death. Overtired parents are more likely to resort to dangerous things like sleeping with their babies in bed or falling asleep with an infant asleep on them.
• With my wife doing the majority of childcare, it’d be easy for guilt and resentment to sour an otherwise healthy relationship.
• Having this generous benefit has increased my admiration for and loyalty to my employer. Since my wife and I are considering another child in the near future, my employer’s parental leave policy will be an enticement that keeps me around.

As a new dad, I am absolutely convinced that parental leave is essential to the health and wellbeing of the entire family, and that it should not be considered a fringe benefit. It should not be considered a luxury. It should be thought of as a societal obligation we have to each other to raise happy, healthy children, and to keep families intact.

Being a Parent Shouldn’t Make You Less Happy

Being a parent is hard work. It’s the kind of hard that often leaves you tired and near tears, wondering how on earth you would have gotten through it alone. It’s this feeling of isolation and near despair that can result in parents being less happy than non-parents — at least in the United States.

The harried, sleep-deprived, socially detached parent is a popular trope in American culture. We assume parenthood is akin to eighteen years of house arrest and penury; however, it need not be so.

A 2016 study concluded that becoming a parent is not an automatic ticket to misery, nor is it universal. This study also concluded that, of the 22 countries surveyed, the United States has the largest happiness gap between parents and those without children.

This gap can be largely attributed… to two national attributes: the average cost of childcare for a 2-year-old and the number of paid vacation and sick days people can take a year.

Any parent will tell you that the first several weeks after childbirth are the most difficult. I lost track of the number of times my wife and I looked at each other groggily and said, “I can’t imagine doing this alone, and I can’t imagine having to go back to work right now.”

If I weren’t home to help my wife with childcare, she would have been a miserable wreck. Breastfeeding is a full time job, which leaves little time for mom to attend to housework, meals, or errands (that was all part of my new full-time job description).

Had either of us gone back to work right away, our sleep cycles would have been so interrupted and off kilter that we would have been unproductive zombies for at least three weeks, anyway. Since most newborns can’t sleep through the night for at least 6–8 weeks, I think it makes sense for parental leave to last at least this long.

Because of the generous maternity and paternity leave policies of our employers, my wife and I were able to spend the vital first few weeks at home with each other. I was able to encourage and support her and make this a special, awesome time instead of a frustrating, lonely, miserable one.

So, What’s the Fix?

How we currently spend our money is the truest indicator of our actual priorities. We spend over $530 billion each year on national defense, for instance, which is about 15% of the total FY2017 federal budget. Meanwhile, education is less than 3% of the same budget.

We can talk all day about how important family is, but until we act and create policy in support of families, we’re just talking.

What I propose is that the American government give a tax credit to employers that offer paid parental leave.

Here are some figures to arrive at an estimated cost of such a proposal:

• About 4,000,000 infants were born in the US in 2010. To keep things simple, let’s assume each infant has one parent that would take advantage of paid leave.
• The median household income for families with two full-time working parents and at least one child under 18 at home is $102,400. Assuming a 25% tax rate, that’s $76,800 in after-tax take home pay (the tax credit should pay for the employee’s full, after-tax salary).
• Assuming one parent takes paid leave and we follow the ILO recommendation of 14 weeks of leave, the employer would be on the hook for (14 ÷ 52 weeks) × ($76,800 ÷ 2) = $10,338.
• The total potential tax credit cost (in foregone tax revenues) would therefore be $10,338 × 4,000,000 = $41.352 billion

This is admittedly a very back-of-the-envelope calculation, but the final figure strikes me as reasonable.

Ultimately, I think it would be more fair to adjust the tax credit based on the employer’s NAICS code, since different industries would have different median incomes.

Conclusion

Raising a newborn is one of the hardest things we human beings do. We Americans make a hard thing even harder by enabling a culture that treats parenthood like the common cold.

In light of all the hubbub in this country around health care reform, I think it makes sense to start discussing a paid parental leave requirement. If the rallying cry of those in favor of government subsidized healthcare is “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” then I think they ought to take up the banner in favor of paid parental leave, too.