Family leave. Childcare. Flexibility. These aren’t frills–they’re basic needs. They shouldn’t be bonuses–they should be the bottom line.
–U.S. President Barack Obama

For the government to tell others how to do things when the government hasn’t gotten its basic house in order is not only ineffective, it’s hypocritical… I’m not saying I oppose paid maternity leave. What I’m saying is I oppose the federal government mandating paid maternity leave to every company out there.
–U.S. 2016 Presidential Candidate Carly Fiorina

Two weeks after giving birth to a healthy baby girl, Amy, an employee of a small American business, goes back to work full-time because her employer does not offer paid parental leave. Her husband Tom says that he cannot take time off to care for the child, in part because he may lose a promotion if he’s seen as uncommitted to his work. Amy’s more affluent friends look aghast when she informs them of her decision. None of Tom’s friends question his inability to help.

In Sweden, meanwhile, Sofia, an employee of a small Swedish business, is able to continue recovering at home on paid leave two weeks after a tough baby delivery. While she plans to stay home for the first few months, her husband Karl plans to take the next few months off to care for the child. When Karl’s American friends ask if he worries about any possible career setback, he responds, “I can’t imagine not taking baby leave. Every husband does here.”

*     *     *

Typically, childbirth and childrearing have a larger impact on the career paths of women than on those of men. In liberal media, the United States has frequently been criticized for its minimalist parental leave policies, while Sweden has often been lauded for its extensive ones. Paid parental leave advocates point to society’s moral imperative to support child-raising and maternal health, along with the economic and gender equality benefits that come with paid leave. On the other hand, opponents of paid parental leave argue that childcare belongs to the private sphere of the family and home and that citizens and employers should not have to shoulder the burden of others’ personal choices.

What are the philosophies behind the differing parental leave policies of the United States and Sweden? In answering this question, the essay examines the sociological, political, and economic reasons underlying current policy differences between the two countries. The U.S. and Sweden were chosen for their strongly contrasting parental leave requirements and the extent of their existing welfare measures.

The Beginnings of Parental Leave

In the middle of the 20^th century, fathers financially supported the vast majority of households in the U.S. According to the 1960 U.S. Census Bureau, almost 9 out of 10 households with children under the age of 18 included fathers as the primary or sole source of income. Thus, the predominant assumption back then was that women, if they worked outside of the home, would be the ones to take a substantial break from their jobs to raise their children. As Betty Friedan wrote in her groundbreaking 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, the typical suburban mom “made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, [and] lay beside her husband at night” while her husband brought home the money (15).

Now, however, a significant percentage of American fathers can no longer claim the title of primary breadwinner. In 2013, the Pew Research Center reported that a record 4 out of 10 households with children under the age of 18 were now headed by “breadwinner moms,” 37% of whom were married and 63% of whom were single. Over the past few decades, there has also been a considerable increase in the percentage of women in the U.S. labor force. Pew sociologists Wendy Wang and Kim Parker found that in 1968, only 37% of married mothers with children worked, while this percentage has now increased to 65% in 2011. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, of mothers with children under three, 40% worked full-time, 32% of which had children under the age of one (United States). In total, women constitute almost half of the American workforce today (Wang). In light of this changing workforce landscape, the discussion around parental leave has intensified in recent years. Figure 1 below illustrates the rise in mothers as the sole or primary providers of households with children under the age of 18.

In Sweden, the mid-20^th century saw a similar shift in the gender composition of its workforce. According to researcher Juliana Carlson, Swedish women gained employment rights in the 1930s, but often chose not to work outside the home. Carlson writes:

Not until the economic boom of the 1960s, when male workers could not fill the demand for labor, was women’s full employment realized. Equality in the workforce came to the forefront as women joined men in the labor market. Since then, many changes in labor policies and government agencies have supported women and gender equality in the labor market.

As she explains, in the 1960s Sweden reexamined society’s definitions of motherhood and fatherhood when it came to balancing childcare and work responsibilities. As a result, now, many more fathers take parental leave than ever before. While only 0.5 percent of fathers used all parental leave days available in 1974, that number had increased to 22.3 percent by 2009 (Carlson).

As a result of these policies, Sweden regularly ranks highly in international gender equality polls. The United States, however, tends to lag behind other industrialized nations due to its minimalist policies. Of the 34 members in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)[1], the United States is the only country that does not mandate paid parental leave. On average, mothers in OECD countries are entitled to 17 weeks of paid maternity leave at about four-fifths of full pay, while fathers are only entitled to nine weeks of paid paternity leave (OECD). Nine OECD countries offer no paid paternity leave (OECD).

If the United States does not mandate paid parental leave, what polices has the country instituted instead? The most important federal policy for working parents in the U.S. today is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993. This act was the first signed into law by Bill Clinton, a Democratic president, after being vetoed by former Republican president George H.W. Bush. This law provides employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for reasons ranging from pregnancy and newborn care to serious personal or familial health concerns. To qualify, employees must have been employed at the company or organization for at least the past 12 months and worked a minimum of 1,250 hours over that time period. In addition, FMLA only applies to private-sector employers if they have 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius. However, according to a 2014 report by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, FMLA only covers about 60 percent of American workers and fewer than one in five new mothers (The Council of Economic Advisers).

A second relevant piece of legislation, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978, states that “women affected by pregnancy or related conditions must be treated in the same manner as other applicants or employees who are similar in their ability or inability to work.” As long as a pregnant woman can still complete major functions of the job, she cannot be refused employment. Under this act, women with pregnancy and birth-related medical issues must be treated in a similar manner to people with other medical issues. PDA, enacted under the Carter administration, amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which famously prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.

Both of these acts passed only after extensive lobbying by interested parties. The Women’s Legal Defense Fund, composed of a team of attorneys and policy experts and now called the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF), contributed significantly to both PDA and FMLA. According to Lauren Asher and Donna Lenhoff, two of the lead National Partnership organizers, the grassroots support for what became the FMLA bill came from feminist law professors, the Children’s Defense Fund, the United Steelworkers of America, Alzheimer’s Association, Catholic Conference, and over a hundred other groups (Asher). Allies in Congress helped build legislative support, until President Clinton signed the bill into law. In a 2013 op-ed piece by Clinton looking back on the passing of FMLA, he referred to the desire to strengthen family lives and reverse the rising welfare rolls, teen pregnancy crime rates, and income inequality of the 1980s as key motivating factors (Clinton). He writes, “To this day, I receive more thanks from citizens for the FMLA than any other single piece of legislation I signed into law.”

Finally, it is important to note that, although there is no federally mandated paid parental leave policy, a few states in the US (California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island) have enacted and implemented paid family leave policies, building upon the PDA and FMLA. The states passed their respective legislation in 2004, 2008, and 2014 (NCSL). A minority of companies has also implemented paid leave of their own accord.

On the other end of the policy spectrum, Sweden offers up to 480 days of paid parental leave whenever a child is born or adopted. Ninety days are set aside for each parent, and cannot be transferred from one partner to the other. Furthermore, parents who share the transferrable leave began to receive a monetary bonus starting in 2008, to encourage equal parenting (“Gender Equality in Sweden;” CESifo).

The Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP), the largest and oldest political party in Sweden, introduced parental leave insurance in 1974. The policy uses gender-neutral language and replaced the previous maternity leave policy, which granted six months of paid maternity leave at 80% of full salary (CESifo). Over the next few decades, the parental leave legislation increased the amount of time parents could take off and adjusted the percentage of full earnings they would receive. According to researcher Juliana Carlson, feminists, the SAP, and Sweden’s economic conditions constituted the ideological and social forces behind the policy changes. A timeline of major milestones in Sweden’s parental leave policy history can be found in Figure 2 below.

Parental Leave: A Private Responsibility

The current view dominating parental leave policy in the U.S. sets forth that individual families, not governments, raise children. Supporters of small government,[2] such as all of the leading 2016 Republican presidential candidates, argue that it is not the government’s place to mandate companies to provide paid parental leave. When employees decide to have a child, they make a personal decision that shouldn’t fall to the company to bear the cost. Companies, after all, are usually not social enterprises, but rather are formed solely to make a profit.

Opponents of paid parental leave, like former Cato Institute member Nita Ghei, contend that mandating such a policy could lead to unintended consequences—such as discrimination. What is to stop a manager from discriminating against female applicants of childbearing age in favor of males? Thomas DeLeire, then an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, published a paper in 2000 in the Cato Institute’s journal Regulation on the law of unintended consequences and the aftermath of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). He stated that employment for disabled men in the U.S. fell from 60 percent to 49 percent within five years of the ADA’s passage—which was certainly not the goal of the act.[3] DeLeire suggests that threats of prosecution by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) and disabled workers, along with the cost of complying with the accommodation mandate of the ADA with the hiring of disabled workers, were to blame. DeLeire writes, “That result is not surprising to students of economics. After all, if you raise the price of a good or service, you must expect that less of it will be bought. Likewise, theories of labor demand predict that when a group of workers becomes more expensive, firms will hire other workers or substitute capital for labor.”

Opponents of paid parental leave policy also argue that these policies unfairly disadvantage those who forgo children, as they do not get paid more for their hours at work when their parenting coworkers are on leave. One such opponent, entrepreneur Jay Miletsky, wrote in a piece for PuckerMob, an online publication geared towards young females, “If the annual salary is calculated on a per-productive-hour basis, the employee on maternity leave, having fewer productive hours than her co-worker, ends up making more for each hour actually worked – the employee who didn’t choose to have a baby is punished for not having a child and working three months longer.”

Finally, other critics like researchers at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation also frequently point to the economic effects of forcing paid parental leave. Some small businesses, they contend, wouldn’t be able to afford paying their employees for three months of unproductivity, especially if the system is abused. If the burden instead fell on society as a whole (in the form of raised taxes for everyone), then the critics circle back to their opposition to big government.

The fear that people will take advantage of the policy also drives some criticisms. A 2006 report by the Department of Labor found that FMLA leave use increased on Mondays and Fridays, and on days when vacation requests were denied. According to an article by Heritage Foundation researcher James Sherk:

Because companies cannot punish workers for taking leave under the FMLA, irresponsible employees have found they can use the act to skip work without consequences. They have claimed FMLA leave to avoid undesirable shifts or to excuse unannounced absences or tardiness. In other cases, employees take FMLA leave for ailments that are far from “serious medical conditions.” When this happens, their work is often dumped on coworkers or left undone.

Maternity leave abuse seems to appear more frequently in other countries, where parental leave policies seem more generous. In Britain, for instance, The Telegraph profiled a few women’s accounts of their willingness to take advantage of their companies’ maternity leave policies. One woman said she took the whole year of paid parental leave before returning to work two-months pregnant and ready to take another year’s leave before ultimately quitting to become a full-time mother (Smith). Another person recounted how many of his female colleagues in a struggling BBC department quickly became pregnant when they “realized that the corporation was in trouble and that they should waste no time before having babies,” under the protection of anti-discrimination laws (Smith). Abuse might discourage companies from hiring women, and possibly even lead some to outsource their work to other countries with cheaper labor costs.

Parental Leave: A Social Responsibility

On the other side, proponents of paid parental leave, such as all of the leading 2016 Democratic presidential candidates, argue that workers should not have to choose between a family and a career. The decision to have a child, they say, shouldn’t be so costly that for some, exiting the workforce makes more financial sense than staying. Does society have a moral obligation to support working parents and children, who will make up the nation’s future? Proponents believe so.

Children are vital to a nation’s future, both to sustain the economy and to propagate the nation’s ideals. Instead of making it difficult for parents to juggle children and careers, proponents believe that society should provide incentives for people to have children, potentially in the form of tax deductions for the child and for childcare expenses. Japan is a modern-day example of a country that faces an extremely low birth rate; policymakers in the country have been searching for solutions to encourage procreation for many years now, including increasing the number of family-friendly policies (BBC). According to a 2015 article in Time magazine, Japan has considered policies ranging from expanding free nursing care to increasing paternity leave and building more fertility centers (“Japan”).

Moreover, focusing on parental leave instead of only maternity leave promotes gender equality and simultaneously gives women more choices in the workforce while giving men more opportunities to spend time with their children. Another consequence of the fact that women still earn less than men do on average in the U.S. is that mothers are more likely to be the ones to take time off to care for children than fathers are (Glynn, 2014).

Other than moral incentives, proponents also point to the positive benefits in the child development process when parents are able to spend more time with their young children. The benefits of breastfeeding, for one, have been extensively documented in research studies (“Benefits of Breastfeeding”). Breastfeeding has been shown to strengthen the immune systems of babies, as well as reduce the incidence of respiratory, diarrheal, and ear infections. In addition, health benefits for these children seem to continue later in life as well, along with health and economic benefits for the mothers themselves (“Benefits of Breastfeeding”). According to research completed in 2014 at the Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development, children who spend quality time with their fathers in their first years also display fewer signs of disruptive behavior later in life (Sandnes). However, both length and quality of time matter. For the behavioral benefits to exist, there must be positive interaction between father and child, which the researchers defined as paying attention to and reacting to a child’s interest (Sandnes).

Furthermore, companies with generous parental leave policies have also been shown to retain more women in the workforce after childbirth (Jaumotte). After Google increased its length of paid maternity leave to five months in 2007, the female postpartum attrition rate decreased by 50% and matched that of their male coworkers (West). Laszlo Block, Google’s head of Human Resources, said that with “the savings in recruitment costs, granting mothers five months of leave doesn’t cost Google any more money.” According to economist Florence Jaumotte, paid parental leave and childcare subsidies tend to stimulate full-time rather than part-time female participation in the labor force. This result promotes gender equality because part-time jobs may marginalize women in the labor market as many of these jobs are characterized by poor compensation and lack of promotion opportunities, making these workers more likely to drop out of the labor force (Jaumotte). In addition, these inequality effects continue into retirement due to the lower amounts of wages paid into (and taken out of) Social Security. However, Jaumotte also notes that if a mother takes parental leave for longer than about 20 weeks’ worth of full pay, her likelihood of returning to the workforce full-time decreases. This phenomenon could make it financially difficult for businesses because retraining costs money. In addition, this would worsen gender inequality problems by reducing the mother’s financial independence. Hence, there may be such a possibility as a too-generous parental leave system.

However, in terms of potential abuse of a more generous parental leave system in the U.S., it appears that critics overstate these concerns. In California, the first U.S. state to begin implementing paid parental leave policies, a 2011 study conducted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research “found that 89% of employers surveyed reported that the state’s policy had either a positive or no noticeable effect on productivity” (West). Thus, while too much paid parental leave may cause unintended consequences, a reasonable amount of paid parental leave seems unlikely to do so.

What’s Next?

As of yet, no country seems to have struck the perfect balance between sufficient parental leave policies and high numbers of women in full-time, leadership positions. According to a 2013 working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the expansion of family-friendly policies in OECD countries appear to “encourage part-time work and employment in lower level positions” (Blau). While U.S. parental leave policies appear to be relatively limited compared to the rest of the developed world, American women are “more likely than women in other countries to have full-time jobs and to work as managers or professionals” (Blau). In Europe, women were only half as likely as men to be managers, while women and men were equally as likely to be managers in the United States (Blau). However, the U.S. might do well to offer—at the bare minimum—a few weeks of paid parental leave and take some elements of the Swedish model, such as the monetary incentives to share leave.

Currently, both major presidential candidates for the U.S. Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, strongly support 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave during which workers receive at least two-thirds of their monthly wages (“Paid Family Leave;” “Real Family Values”). This appears to be a step in the right direction towards developing a fairer, more inclusive society that supports families in the U.S.

The two women described at the outset of this essay, Amy from the U.S. and Sofia from Sweden, may currently live in two completely different worlds when it comes to societal childrearing support. However, the two worlds may come closer in the coming years if the United States realizes that it doesn’t take a family to raise a child; it takes a village.

 

Works Cited

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[1] The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organization initially founded in 1961 to promote economic progress and trade worldwide. The 34 OECD members are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

[2] The belief that government should act only within defined limits based on either a constitution or other legal code.

[3] However, the findings of DeLeire’s piece have been disputed. Tom Tolin and Martin Patwell of West Chester University pointed out in 2003 that “people who are not disabled and people who are unable to work are included as respondents in the samples” of DeLeire’s statistical analyses when they should not be, and emphasize that five years was too short of a timeframe to draw definitive conclusions. Julie L. Hotchkiss of Georgia State University in 2003 published a paper that stated that “the source of this measured decline in employment is the result of a tremendous drop in the labor force participation rate among the disabled.”