Canadian parents can get up to 50 weeks leave at reduced pay when they first have children. In Serbia, parents get 52 weeks at full pay. And in Sweden, where I’ve convinced myself the streets are lined with candy canes and it rains gumdrops, moms and dads can share almost 122 weeks of leave, 60 days of which is reserved for the father.
So while we’re applauding President Obama’s Thursday announcement that he’s directing federal agencies to give employees six weeks of paid parental leave - and the move certainly does deserve applause – let’s not forget that the allowance is downright puny by international standards.
The United States has long been a global laughingstock for our awful policies for children and families. We’re the only industrialized nation without paid maternity leave, and our childcare system is archaic – there are few options for children under kindergarten age, and the cost of care has doubled in the last 25 years. These are not the numbers of a country that values working families.
But we do need to start somewhere, and President Obama’s plan is a good first step – and one that is long overdue. As author and professor Stephanie Coontz wrote in 2013, “even though 70 percent of American children now live in households where every adult in the home is employed, in the past 20 years the United States has not passed any major federal initiative to help workers accommodate their family and work demands.”
Obama’s directive will only require paid leave for federal employees, but the president is also pushing Congress to pass a bill that would make it easier for states to pay for their own family leave initiatives. Right now, only three states – California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island – offer residents paid family and medical leave. The rest of us rely on the discretion of our workplaces for family-friendly policies – and for the most part, they do not deliver. Only 10% of the workplaces in the private sector cover the cost of childcare, and 11% have paid family leave.
But as Vivien Labaton and Tracy Sturdivant, executive directors of the Make It Work campaign, pointed out in response to Obama’s announcement, there is much more left to do. In order to help families, the president will also need to take on equal pay and affordable child care – and quickly. “Our workplace laws are out of sync with the reality of today’s working families,” Labaton and Sturdivant wrote in a statement, “and our policies need to sprint to catch up.”
Let’s hope this is the starter gun for that sprint. Let’s hope that this relatively tiny amount of leave – as any parent could tell you, six weeks is barely enough time to adjust to your new sleep schedule, let alone having a new human in your life – is the beginning of something much larger: a move towards supporting families across the board.
Because if Americans really want to stand by our constant assertions that motherhood is “the most important job in the world,” or that we want men to be involved parents, too, we’re going to need a lot more than six weeks. We’re going to need child care that doesn’t break the bank, fair pay for child care workers, equal pay for women, and a national conversation on how to make sure childcare issues aren’t just “women’s issues.” Until then, I’ll dream of Sweden.