Paid Family Leave: A Giant Baby Step for the U.S.

On June 20, 2008, by a vote of 278-146, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 5781, the Family Leave and Medical Insurance Act, which would grant federal workers up to twelve weeks of paid leave. The tantalizing taste of victory may make you want to start dancing in the street. Yet, in a Simon-Says like dichotomy, the passage of this bill in the House is at once a giant step and a baby step. If the bill passes both houses of Congress unscathed and survives or overrides a Presidential veto, it would become a federal law requiring one (albeit humongous) employer to provide the benefit of paid family leave to its employees. Paid family leave would ease the current financial strain and penalty many parents experience on the birth of their child when they lose one income for however long a parent takes advantage of current unpaid family leave "benefts." To become law, a corresponding paid family leave bill must pass in the U.S. Senate, emerge from conference intact and reasonably unmitigated, and survive a possibly, likely or threatened (depending on who you talk to) Presidential veto. If a viable paid family leave bill weaves through that Washingtonian obstacle course successfully, the victory remains one giant baby step. Under the Family Leave and Medical Insurance Act, only federal workers are entitled to paid family leave. Everyone else (other than residents of California, Washington and New Jersey) can have a baby and lose a paycheck for however long they are out of work following the birth. California, Washington and New Jersey each have a law requiring certain private sector employers to provide their employees paid family leave, but the length of the paid leave varies and smaller businesses are often exempt from the requirement.

So, we should all hoot and holler and applaud and contact our Senators and urge them to pass their version of the Family Leave and Medical Insurance Act. But one wonders how far we really have come. In 1870, Francis Walker, a prestigious economist took charge of the U.S. Census, and in what is arguably the greatest “one fell swoop” of all time (or at least of the history of at-home mothers in this country), Walker struck “keeping house for one’s own family,” from the list of productive employments as recorded in the U.S. Census and, in turn, from calculations of productivity in the U.S. economy. Walker gets credit for originating the notion that homemaking and child-rearing has no real economic value in this country. If we cannot agree that raising a child (i.e., a future contributor to the workforce, a future citizen of our country, a future contributor to the Social Security system who will support us all in our old age) has economic value, can we not at least agree as a society that birthing a child and recovering from the birth should not, at the very least, trigger economic strain and hardship for working mothers?  By supporting the passage of a paid family leave act, even one just for federal employees, we create a model for states and private employers to emulate, and we join the ranks of the more civilized industrialized nations of the world nation in taking this giant baby step for man(and woman)kind. Simon Says.

Carol O’Day

www.thenewhavingitall.com

http://blog.thenewhavingitall.com