Disability insurance, whether short-term or long-term, should provide some income replacement for maternity leave as with any other disability. The birth of a child creates a necessary medical leave. According to your physician, you cannot drive for up to 2 weeks, you cannot lift anything heavier than your baby as well as other constraints. Most policies have a 30-day elimination period before payments begin. If you have only 6 weeks’ parental leave, then a disability policy would not be worth it since it would only cover 2 weeks of income payments. Some argue that the paid parental leave is bad for a company because it will cause a loss in productivity and it is expensive to businesses. Also, it is unfair to employees who do not have children. When an employee takes parental leave it has a big affect on a business and its …show more content…
The only objection mentioned above that I have not addresses is the fairness to employees who do not have children to have a paid parental leave policy. Would this be considered discriminatory? I do not believe that it is discriminatory at all for the following reasons. The people who do not have children live in a society full of children who are products of parental leave. Therefore, they benefit from the improved behavior of children that comes along with parental leave. Also, their lives may be made better or even saved by a child who was given a healthy stable home and grew up to create or invent something life changing. Perhaps a cure for cancer or the invented the iPhone. What would we do without our iPhone? Maybe if parents were not given the benefit of parental leave they would have chosen not to have this child. Therefore, the whole world would have missed out on this child’s contribution to society. Also, as these individuals retire, we will need productive young citizens to pay taxes and support the
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) provides certain employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave and job protection for childbirth, adoption or foster care; to care for a seriously ill child, spouse, or parent; or for an employee’s own serious illness (Cañas & Sondak, 2011). It also requires that their group health benefits remain intact during the unpaid leave of absence. The employee must have worked for the employer for at least a year and must have earned 1,250 hours of service during the previous 12 months ((Cañas & Sondak, 2011, pg. 70).
Trial and error tests have been exercised, including the extension of Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI), to examine how beneficial or detrimental it is to the economy. Some short term solutions and suggestions have also been pitched. Lovell and Helmuth claim that one policy that would reduce pressure on the early child care, thus cutting down on leave time, is to expand support for employees caring for their newborn at home. Providing paid parental leave for workers is projected to improve retention of young workers, preventing millions per year in costs associated with employee turnover. Having a policy that would reduce the costs to workers and society for carrying out basic life tasks would be the ideal and admired implementation.
You get the phone call in the middle of the night. Your son or daughter has been in a serious accident and is hospitalized in critical condition. After several day’s they come home from the hospital with several broken bones and require your around the clock attention for the next eight to twelve weeks. You just got over a serious medical condition yourself which you acquired while on vacation and do not have any vacation time or sick time to take off. Do you have to quit your job? Can your employer terminate you for taking time off to be with your child? What options do you have? What can your employer do for you? Well, the answer lies in the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Paid maternity leave can increase female labor force participation by making it easier for women
If you and your significant other had a child, would you want to be there to not only support your partner, but to see your child’s first milestones in real life? Of course you would! The problem is most parents miss crucial parts of their child’s life because of the lack of paid maternity and paternity leave in the United States. New families, across the nation, should be allowed a minimum six months of paid maternity leave.
Family Leave is time off from work with pay to care for another family member, give birth and take care of a new baby, or recover from illness. North Carolina also gives employees the right to take time off domestic violence leave and children’s school activities. Family Leave is very similar to parental or maternal leave.
The United States is one of three industrialized countries that do not have policies put in place that mandate companies to provide paid parental leave. In 1993, U.S President, Bill Clinton, enacted the family and medical leave act (FMLA) which allows for employees to take unpaid, job-protected leave for up to twelve weeks for medical reasons if their employer has more than fifty employees employed at the company. Later on in January of 2015, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that entitles federal employees for up to six weeks of paid sick days to take care of a newborn child or an adopted child. Currently there are only three states in the United States with paid parental leave policies which are California, New Jersey and Rhode Island. As of right now, only those employers who
Currently in the United States, under The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, the federal government mandates a minimum of 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave to mothers who have a newborn or have newly adopted a child. Whether or not an employer chooses to pay the mother during this time is left to their discretion. This law only applies to about 50 -60 percent of working mothers due to firm size and duration of employment requirements. Currently, only 11 percent of private sector workers have access to paid maternity leave in the United States. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t mandate paid maternity leave to women. (Stearns, 2015)
Starting and expanding families is challenging for most working people in America. Job uncertainty, financial insecurity and catering to the needs of a newborn are just a few of many challenges American families face when taking a leave of absence from work after the birth of a child. Every company should have a family policy that gives its employees the option to take paid leave if a family emergency occurs—most importantly the arrival of a newborn. Paid family leave will give working parents in America the chance to adjust to the lifestyle changes associated with having a newborn, without putting the stability of their home at risk. Pregnancies will be less stressful for mothers and fathers; businesses will increase production and the economy
Balancing work and family is a concern of parents’ around the world. It not only concerns mother’s, it concern’s fathers. It is a societal norm that the mother is the “caregiver” and the father is “breadwinner.” With the feminist movement, things began to change, giving women additional educational and employment opportunities; therefore, millions of women entered the workforce. This shift required a change in attitude, as it implied new roles for men, which promoted shared parental responsibility. Sweden was the first country in the world to introduce parental leave, giving both parents the right to stay home with their children. According to Carlson (2013), “Fundamentally, Sweden’s parental leave insurance policy is not just about providing individual families with resources to make choices about employment and caregiving; it is a social policy with the defined aim of increasing gender equality for the Swedish people” (p. 65). It is asserted that Sweden’s government developed the parental leave policy to address; participation and wage equity in the workforce; and to promote gender equality in care giving (Carlson, 2013, p. 63).
Paid parental leave should be equal and for both parents once a child is born
Having said that, it is high time for a more effective and inclusive family leave policy to take effect. Even with private sectors and some states offering paid leave, 40 percent of American women do not enjoy the benefits (Wares). The Family and Medical Leave Act, although utilized widely, does not encompass all working American women/ because of its strict prerequisites, many women find themselves paying the motherhood penalty with unpaid leave, or not taking any leave at all, which jeopardizes their health and their child’s early
America is the one and only developed country that does not offer any paid maternity leave. Maternity leave is a period of absence from work granted to a mother before and after the birth of her child. In America this means twelve weeks of unpaid absence that guarantees her job when she returns. We are so far behind everyone that out of all of the countries around the world seven out of 196 including America do not have mandatory paid maternity leave. (Colorado public radio news) That is a sad figure, to think that we place having a family so high but don’t give the mothers the protection and security they deserve.
Maternity leave is a time when a woman leaves before her pregnancy and can stay gone from a company anywhere from 4-6 weeks, after the birth of her baby. The promise of holding your job is guaranteed, but on this leave you collect no income. The issues widely debated is whether men should have the option whether to take maternity leave and if maternity leave should be paid. Bonding is crucial to early childhood development for both parents. Introducing a baby into a family’s life, can affect a family financially and physically, due to lack of time with your child.
By giving males the opportunity to take maternity leave, the business is also beneficial as they will not have to spend time and money retraining the staff members or employing other staff to take over from the mother when she takes maternity