Twenty Years After the FMLA, Our Family Leave Policies Are Dragging Us Down

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/172660/twenty-years-after-fmla-our-family-leave-policies-are-dragging-us-down

Twenty years ago today, the US passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, finally codifying into law the right for most employees to take time off from work for the birth of a baby or to care for a seriously ill family member. Since then, workers have used it 100 million times to care for themselves and their families.

But this milestone, and all the good it’s done since, hasn’t been enough. We’ve fallen behind our industrialized peers on many key indicators since then. Only about 60 percent of workers have access to paid leave, putting a huge financial burden on new parents and those with sick family members. Our failure hits working families square on. But it’s a problem we all bear, because it’s also threatening our economic edge.

The US holds a dubious distinction: single parents in this country are the worst off compared to 16 other high-income countries, despite the fact that we have the highest rates of single parenthood. There are a variety of factors that go into getting that award—failing to ensure adequate health insurance coverage, long waits for early childhood education to begin, low rates of child support receipt—but an important factor is family leave. We’re the only one without paid leave, and we also fall behind in how much leave we guarantee. As the report notes, “The duration of the job-protected leave entitlement ranges from a low of 12 weeks in the U.S. to a high of 162 weeks in France and Germany.” Here’s how it looks for single mothers in various countries: