Parental leave (also known as family leave) is an employment-protected leave of absence regulated in the United States by US labor law and state law. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) requires 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for parents of newborn or newly adopted children if they work for a company with 50 or more employees. As of October 1, 2020, the same policy has been extended to caregivers of sick family members or a partner in direct relation to the child's birth, therefore responsible for the mother's care. Although 12 weeks are allowed for American fathers, they only take 10 days off on average due to financial need. That is below the 16-week minimum recommended by the World Health Organization.
Currently, twelve states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws to provide paid leave and paid parental leave to employees. With an additional 10 states offering a voluntary paid leave option that provides optional paid leave coverage that employers and individuals can purchase through private insurers. As of 2024, the United States is the only country among the 38 member OECD nations that has not passed laws requiring businesses and corporations to offer paid maternity leave to their employees. While the United States does not mandate paid parental leave, proponents argue that this labor market flexibility upholds principles of economic freedom and allows businesses to offer higher wages, as reflected in the U.S.'s position among the top OECD countries for average earnings even after adjusting for purchasing power.
History Between 1961 and 1965, only 14% of mothers participated in the workforce within six months of their child's birth. During the same period, only 44% of mothers worked during their pregnancy. The first set of maternity leave-related policies emerged after World War I, when first-wave feminists lobbied for a women's health bill to give grants to states to provide healthcare for women and children. By 1969, five states had enacted temporary disability insurance laws to protect employees from income loss in the occurrence of a temporary medical disability. Under that legislation, new mothers were granted leaves corresponding to the benefits that other employees received for temporary illness or disability. Changes to the federal tax code in 1976 permitted working families with a dependent child to take a tax credit on child care costs. In 1978, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) prohibited employers from treating a woman unfavorably because of pregnancy, childbirth, or a medical condition related to pregnancy or childbirth.
A landmark case in 1987, California Federal Savings and Loan Association v. Guerra, upheld a California law requiring most employers to grant pregnant women four months of unpaid disability leave and the right to return to the same job. That state-level trend of maternity leave legislation continued into the 1970s and 1980s, where multiple other states passed more explicit recognitions of new mothers' rights to a temporary leave of absence. Ultimately, 12 states and the District of Columbia had implemented measures requiring at least some private sector employers to offer maternity leave packages to their employees. Even in the absence of formal legislation, employees in other states often obtained maternity leave by collective bargaining. Employees frequently held enough bargaining power to influence employer policies and to negotiate for the inclusion of maternity leave protection.
Despite some localized employees' access to maternity leave, there was growing pressure for national maternity leave legislation in the early 1990s. Many new mothers continued to be excluded from such maternity leave provisions despite growing national demand. Until the enactment of Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993, maternity leave coverage was governed by state law, collective bargaining agreements, and employer policies. Women now enjoyed greater employment opportunities and changing gender norms that encouraged increased labor involvement. That increased female employment also extended to mothers, who now were now more likely to engage in the workforce even if they had a young child. The labor participation rate of mothers with children aged less than one rose from 31% in 1976 to 54% in 1992. The contribution of women's earnings to their family income rose from 26.6% in 1970 to 36% in 2008. In spite of a high labor force participation rate, only an estimated 40% of working women had access to explicit maternity leave protection. That inadequate national coverage provoked intense protest and growing national consensus on the value of maternity leave. Ultimately, the increased salience and galvanized national support prompted the enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, mandating maternity leave.
Although the Family and Medical Leave Act required employers to guarantee job-protected, unpaid leave up to 12 weeks after the birth or adoption of a new child, an estimated 41% of employees in the United States were not covered in 2012. Nearly two-thirds of mothers had to work during their pregnancies between 2002 and 2008. By 2012, only 14% of US fathers had access to paid family leave as an employee benefit. About two-thirds of employees (68%) had access to paid sick leave, and 38% had access to short-term disability benefits. Before the FMLA, the term "family" referred to a nuclear family with two parents of opposite sexes and the "mother" could bear a child. That was the only definition acknowledged by medical and economic research done before the LGBTQ rights movement. Only recently have studies caught up to a modern and more inclusive definition of a family.
Current legislation In the United States, parents and family are federally protected under the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to go on maternity or family leave after the adoption or birth of a child. Under this law, legal parents are protected for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave (per year). The FMLA ensures the job security of parents/employees but does not protect employees who go on paid leave with their employers. Receiving the correct payment for being on leave is between the firm and the employee. However, some states have laws that do protect and guarantee employees for paid family leave (see State Legislation). Additionally, the FMLA defines "parents" as biological, adoptive, step or foster parent who stood in loco parentis or "in the place of a parent". Parents do not include parents-in-law.
This paragraph is for employees who are seeking to get paid using their firm's extended policies on leaves. If employees choose to go on maternity or family leave, The Employee's Guide to Family and Medical Leave Act states that they can sometimes use their unspent sick leave or annual leave, saved up with their employer at the same time of their FMLA leave so that they continue to get paid. To use such leave, "you must follow your employer's normal leave rules such as submitting a leave form or providing advance notice. Even if you don't want to use your paid leave, your employer can require you to use it during your FMLA leave".
If employees choose to use the FMLA to go on regular unpaid leave without any extended or paid leave, the FMLA has several limiting stipulations and leaves out certain employees' conditions, such as temporary workers and trans employees, meaning only certain employees are eligible. To receive maternity leave protections under FMLA, employees must: Work for a covered employer; Have worked 1,250 hours during the 12 months prior to the start of leave; (special hours of service rules apply to airline flight crew members) Work at a location where the employer has 50 or more employees within 75 miles; and Have worked for the employer for 12 months.
The 12 months of employment are not required to be consecutive in order for the employee to qualify for FMLA leave. In general, only employment within seven years is counted unless the break in service is (1) due to an employee's fulfilment of military obligations or (2) governed by a collective bargaining agreement or other written agreement.
The FMLA is the only law that federally protects American employees who go on maternity or family leave their resumed job security. It was signed into law during President Bill Clinton's first term in 1993 and revised on February 23, 2015, to include same-sex parents and spouses. Two other federal laws, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's (PPACA, also known as the Affordable Care Act, the ACA or Obamacare) amendment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, provide some additional protection for parents on the birth of a child. For instance, the PDA upholds maternity leave by arguing that employees who give temporarily disabled folks a disability leave should give pregnant women maternity leave with the same protections and benefits. Essentially, the PDA of 1978 argues pregnant women should have rights to the same paid or unpaid leave that temporarily disabled workers are afforded by their employers. If an employer offers this protection to temporarily disabled workers, then the PDA says that pregnant women should also be protected using the same processes and the same benefits. Additionally, in 2014, the PPACA amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act made it so that all insurance companies had to include maternity coverage in individual insurance plans. Therefore, it fills the gap for unemployed women with individual insurance coverage plans to be able to afford the prenatal and postnatal pregnancy care that they need to have a healthy baby. Maternity care came to include: Outpatient services, such as prenatal and postnatal doctor visits, gestational diabetes screenings, lab studies, medications, etc. Inpatient services, such as hospitalization, physician fees, etc. Newborn baby care Lactation counselling and breast pump rental
These federal laws and amendments have increased the accessibility and quality of care for prenatal and postnatal mothers and families. For example, before the Affordable Care Act, only 12% of insurance plans sold in the individual market included maternity coverage. Also, according to a journal study on FMLA by researchers at the University of Maryland, it was found that mothers who benefitted from FMLA returned to the same job sooner, which depicts the impact of job stability for mothers. Nonetheless, many employees are still ineligible for the FMLA. According to the Family and Medical Leave Report in 2012, only 59% of American employees were eligible under the FMLA. Additionally, female employees who returned after FMLA were given lower wages than when they left. This comes from the same study by researchers at the University of Maryland. These lower wages may not have been permanent since the study only went to highlight women's experience with maternity leave two years after they left.
In polls from 2017, Democrats and Republicans both are in high support of federal funding for paid maternity and family leave. According to a study done by the Brookings Institution, a non-profit think tank in D.C., 71% of Republicans and 83% of Democrats support a paid leave policy. Although the study did not reach a particular compromise on how the policies should work, who should pay for it, how much, and other concerns that might factor into creating a universal paid parental leave policy, it reached a conclusion. Among the diverse group of researchers with different political and economic views, everyone believed that it is worthwhile to consider a federal paid leave policy. One reason is that the "US is the only advanced country that provides no public support to new parents."