Benefits Of Paid Maternity Leave

Great Essays
Paid maternity leave is offered to women and the policy even extends to men for a lesser time frame around the globe. Countries have offered as much as 12 to 18 weeks paid leave and some private sector organizations overseas can offer up to a year of maternity leave. Countries that are rapidly growing within their economic development have also extended policy centered around maternity leave which begs the question: Why is the United States lagging behind our global counterparts in providing sufficient paid maternity leave policy? Should the United States federal government write policy to provide required mandatory minimums for paid maternity leave and paternity leave? Experiences vary by case to case; however, paid maternity leave should be extended to employees that are expecting children. Understanding the policies currently in …show more content…
Gordon’s book elicited an emotional response out of me considering he malpractice of public personnel management that takes place. Interviewee 13 from Dr. Gordon’s research stated that it was very difficult to focus throughout the day knowing that they were away from their child. Interviewee 3 suggested that they would love to have paid maternity leave (Gordon, 2013). I interviewed of my close family and friends that have children to give further insight about maternity leave and they will be referred to as interviewee A & B. I asked interviewee A about her experiences with Maternity leave and I was given a very interesting response. Interviewee A is a mother of 5 children and started having children when she was 18 years old. Interviewee A stated much of the same regarding returning to work after her 6 weeks was over. Her response to the open ended question was interesting:
“It's delightful to have the time off to bond with your new baby. Howeve,r maternity leave is typically not paid leave. So it was somewhat stressful as well because there are also mounting bills. Especially in a single parent

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis Paid family leave has become a more controversial subject over time, some say. According to Lisa Belkin, author of the article Paid Family Leave: Can We Change The Maternity And Paternity Leave Debates To Include Everyone, the United States have not fully addressed the need or want for paid maternity/ paternity leave or to take it one step further to include paid family leave. She states that many other countries such as “Sweden (480 days), Germany (365 days), Italy (90), Kenya (14), Switzerland (3), and Indonesia (2) provide paternity leave (Belkin).…

    • 1313 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is also in society’s best interest to allow women time to recuperate after giving birth and to give babies time to bond with their mothers. In most cases, it is even in the business’s own economic interest to give women longer maternity leaves. Through communication, preparation, and flexibility, the United States can and should begin to offer its pregnant employees longer and paid leaves (Budak). Many employers’ expectations have not changed since the days when moms took care of the house and dads brought home the money (Warner 28). However, in today’s society sixty-three percent of women are co-breadwinners and employers need to adjust their expectations accordingly (Warner 27).…

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fmla Pros And Cons

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Most women take advantage of medical leave while pregnant. A friend of mine whom works for Ross was very sick one day. Ross would not honor her medical leave request because she is part time employee. Some feel FMLA should be honored throughout the work-place regardless of employment status. In the absence of FMLA, it becomes difficult for employees to receive a day off when sick, recovering from a medical event, or having to care for a child, parent, or…

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 21 percent of large U.S. corporations offered paid maternity leave in 2015, up from 12 percent in 2014. Major employers that recently expanded their paid parental leave programs include financial firms Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan Chase, and tech leaders such as Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Etsy, Adobe Systems and Netflix, along with businesses such as Hilton Worldwide.”…

    • 71 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During the early half of the 20th century, new parents did not get any paid leave to care for their new baby. Parents would have to work and raise their baby at the same time, which was very difficult. In 1971, the Unemployment Act was expanded to provide 15 weeks of paid parental leave for mothers. In 1990 the Act was amended to allow both parents to use parental leave. Finally, another Act amendment in 2000 extended parental and maternity leave to one year, which is still one of the longest paid parental/maternity leave offered in the world.…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The United States is the only developed country without a national paid-maternity-leave program. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 mandates that employers offer twelve weeks of job-protected leave to workers for family-related issues, but 40 percent of working women are ineligible, because of the various restrictions” (McCloskey). Eliza Strickland, Senior Associate Editor at IEEE Spectrum, acknowledges that a single mother today earns only 60 cents to every dollar a man makes, while a mother earns 73 cents and a childless woman earns 90 cents (Strickland). Strickland proves here that the wage gap is still prevalent today in the workplace.…

    • 1419 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    If you asked most people which gender is most likely to be discriminated against, most people would say women. However based on the article “Attitudes Shift on Paid Leave: Dads Sue, Too,” written by Noah Scheiber, Men who are asking for paternity leave are being denied the leave and some are even being mocked and fired as a result of taking the leave. Scheiber gives evidence that paternity discrimination is happening and also that it’s a problem.…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The article, “When Dad Stays Home Too: Paternity Leave, Gender, and Parenting” written by Erin M. Rehel, was published on September 26, 2013. I selected this article, because I wanted to understand how a father’s presence would affect a child’s development during the infancy stage. In addition, I wanted to be more informed about the benefits that are associated with paternity leave. At the Introduction of the article, Rehel wanted to determine if “men develop understandings and enactments of parenting that mirror those of women when they, too, exit the workforce temporarily in the immediate post-birth period.…

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “In the richest country on earth, no one should force parents to go back to work days or weeks after giving birth.” The Expand Maternity and Paternity Leave Act (EMPLA) provides certain parents with up to fifteen weeks of paid, job-protected leave. The parents or single parent can start their maternity leave seven weeks before their due date and eight weeks after, around 70% of their normal pay. They can extend the leave for another two weeks if the child gets sick or has special needs. The Executive Agency that will be regulating or enforcing the law is the Department of Labor.…

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Paid Maternity Leave

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Paid Maternity Leave in the United States From the abject misery of Haiti, past the streets of Afghanistan, and to the slums of Djibouti, working women and men all have something in common; paid maternity leave. The poorest and most corrupt nations in the world, along with the most advanced and modernized, all have laws in place for ensuring pay when a mother has a child (Lerner). Most of the countries in the world have caught on to this necessary enforcement for working families, with an exception of Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, and The United States of America. As one of the most powerful nations in the world, the United States has one of the most insubstantial systems for pregnant mothers in the work force; no paid maternity leave. The…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Paid Maternity Leave Madeleine M. Kunin once said, “Every time a woman leaves the workforce because she can't find or afford childcare, or she can't work out a flexible arrangement with her boss, or she has no paid maternity leave, her family's income falls down a notch. Simultaneously, national productivity numbers decline.” This quote displays the true effects of the neglect of paid leave in the United States. The United States is part of a small handful of countries that still do not mandate paid maternity leave laws for women. We should make paid maternity leave mandatory, as studies have shown it can lead to healthier child development, benefit mothers and families, and boost respect and employment rates for employers.…

    • 1099 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Paid Parental Leave

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The topic I chose for my Senior Research is longer paid parental leave. The reason why I chose this topic is my mother struggled a lot when she had my little sister because my father could not take time off from work to be with his newborn baby or help my mother with her recovery. Due to the fact that, currently in the United States, 38% of all employers offer paid parental leave. Parents of newborns in the United States should have longer parental leave with pay because parents, especially fathers, will be more involved in the baby’s life, parental leave will benefit the child’s development, and employers will benefit from giving paid parental leave by receiving positive outcomes such as higher retention rates from employees. What I knew…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Brilliant Essays

    Equal Pay Act Case Study

    • 5387 Words
    • 22 Pages

    Maternity leave is also a contributing factor as to why there is still a gender pay gap as many salaries are performance related and so are not earning as much as males who are still working after child birth. Data analysed by the House of Commons library found that 14% of the 340,000 women who take maternity leave each year find their jobs under threat when they try to return, with some told that they cannot continue in their role part-time. Some women are forced into positions with less responsibility and find it harder to get a promotion, while others are effectively constructively dismissed. Georgina Joseph, UK, told The Telegraph that she regretfully arranged with her boss to come back to work part-time informally but the offer was later withdrawn and was told that she could return on the exact terms of her previous employment (five days a week) or nothing at all. She worked out that if she had gone back full-time, she would have seen her baby, awake, for less than 23 hours a week.…

    • 5387 Words
    • 22 Pages
    Brilliant Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Paid Paternity Leave

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages

    There are nearly 80 countries in the world that currently grant their male employees with a guaranteed paid parental leave, along with additional days that they are entitled to request off. United States is one of the major countries not included in this estimate, which goes to show that paid paternity leave is not universally accepted. A common presumption as to why paid parental leave sounds unattractive to businesses is the idea that paid paternity leave will set a business back financially. Another presumption is that paid paternity leave isn’t worth implementing since fathers hardly take it when it’s offered and also because males should prioritize their work first in order to provide for their family. Lastly, companies fear that paternity leave will be taken advantage of by their male…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Importance Of Parental Leave

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages
    • 9 Works Cited

    While the questions of parental leave is most frequently considered in the light of a woman’s ability to take time off from work after giving birth, the importance of paternity leave must also be considered.…

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages
    • 9 Works Cited
    Improved Essays