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The Case for Universal Paternity Leave
-- By MichaelBerkovits - 05 Apr 2008
Paternity leave, unknown for much of the last century and still rare today, serves several functions. For employers, it is an attractive benefit to dangle in securing employee talent. For family advocates, it is a means of ensuring that more children grow up with involved fathers. For the women's movement, paternity leave counteracts the traditional female monopoly on child-rearing and its contribution to the paucity of women in powerful positions in society.
Women remain underrepresented in significant part because of continued expectations - by men, women, and employers - that women are far more likely to interrupt their careers to raise children. So long as women, including those well-educated, do so in vastly larger numbers than men, the problem of female underrepresentation will continue.*
- What is the point of making footnotes in a wiki, and then not linking them? The whole style is unhelpful and absurd. If you need purely explanatory notes, which you shouldn't in an essay like this any more than they would be tolerated on the Op-Ed page, then link them to the word or phrase to which they apply.
Maternity Leave: A Partial Solution
The creation of maternity leave, its enshrinement in law, and the increased availability of paid leave has allowed some women to forge successful careers who would not have done so under the older system.** Since The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), most large employers are required under federal law to offer new mothers at least 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Some employers offer more generous programs, in an effort to attract and retain the best female talent. Overall, however, no more than 15% of American women have access to paid parental leave.***
Even paid maternity leave programs (MLPs), however, do not solve the female underrepresentation problem. First, firms that instituted leave policies purely in response to the FMLA may well discriminate against female candidates for hire or promotion on the theory that they will take advantage of FMLA protections and hence be inefficient investments relative to other candidates. Second, even at firms with generous MLPs, women surely fear - accurately, no doubt - that taking a lengthy break mid-career retards career advancement, if not precluding promotion entirely.
Paternity Leave: One Step Better
MLPs mitigate the female underrepresentation problem by incentivizing some women to begin careers that would otherwise be inconsistent with their vision of family life. In contrast, PLPs ensure that more men take time off to help raise children. The more men who take paternity leave, the less parental leave is a distinctly female issue and the less it operates to exclude women from privileged positions.
Paternity leave has gradually become more common. Indeed, the FMLA treats males and females symmetrically. However, while many employers go beyond the minimum requirements for female employees, the same is not true for men. Among the Institute for Women's Policy Research "Working Mother 100 Best Companies" - a set of employers presumably sensitive toward family leave issues - none offered more than six weeks paid leave for new fathers. Nearly 50% did so for new mothers. According to another study, conducted in 2005, 54% of all employers offered some paid maternity leave, while only 12% offered (any) paid leave to new fathers. So long as PLPs remain less generous than MLPs, men will not find leave as attractive an option as do women. | >
> | This paper has been revised and is in final form. | | | | |
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< | Furthermore, even if PLPs were both universal and as generous as MLPs, men might still be unlikely to utilize them. In Sweden, where all couples have access to sixteen months leave at 80% salary, to be split as a couple sees fit, men only take about 20% of the available leave.**** As each parent earns nearly his or her entire salary while on leave, the reason for this disparity cannot be that husbands earn more than their wives. The operative factor must be that women are expected to raise children, whether because of beliefs about their superior parenting skills or lingering prejudice about their unsuitability for the workforce. Also, whether explicitly or not, employers are likely to reserve coveted positions for the most demonstrably committed employees. So long as most leadership positions go to males, men cannot afford to take themselves out of the running by taking paid leave, even when it is available. And so long as men remain less likely than women to take extensive leave, the problem of female underrepresentation will continue. Something more than merely expanding the availability of PLPs is necessary.
Universal Paternity Leave with Equal Leave Time for Both Parents: A Bold Leap Forward
The rise of PLPs incentivizes more men to take parental leave than otherwise would. However, so long as paternal leave is optional, females, because of powerful economic and social forces, will continue to take the vast majority of leave. In order for paternity leave to dent the problem of female underrepresentation, it must be universal and it must be mandatory.
- That's ludicrous. People have rights. Your proposition is unconstitutional, just as it would be unconstitutional to tell mothers they have to stay home with their children until their children are ready to enter first grade.
Immediate implementation is politically unrealistic, but the Swedish system is a workable model and a worthy goal, so long as it is modified to require that couples split their leave 50/50 - either sequentially or concurrently - if they opt into the system at all.
- A government benefit cannot be conditioned on acceptance of an unconstitutional condition. Such a statute is as void as one that requires you to register as a Democrat in order to pay into or collect Social Security.
The system would be expensive, but at least part of the costs to productivity would be offset by a happier workforce no longer forced to fight the family - career battle.
- A "happier workforce"? Who do you think you are kidding?
A few couples might be dissuaded from having children altogether because of the burden of required leave by both parents. Other couples might have children later in their careers, after having comfortably moved through the ranks, leading to more parents having children for the first time when older. But these effects, if present, will be on the margins. Most parents will choose to have children, and most parents would opt in to the system of paid leave. The result could be a society of parents who take career breaks of equal lengths in order to raise children.***** Many more children could grow up with two parents involved in their lives from birth. Family, rather than being in constant conflict with career, could be in harmony with it. And the problem of female underrepresentation could be one step closer to being solved.
- This isn't social analysis. This isn't even science fiction. There is no polite name for what this is. You don't have any evidence in support of these predictions, because no society on earth has dared the experiment on your astoundingly tin-eared terms.
Notes
*It is true that one reason for the female underrepresentation problem may be that, because women on average hold less powerful (and hence less lucrative) positions than men, many women elect to serve as the parent who takes time off to raise children because it is the rational economic decision in light of the parents' respective salaries.
- It is true that one reason women are underrepresented in positions of power is that women, being underrepresented in positions of power, stay home more with the children? That's not logically coherent.
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> | How Swede It Is | | | | |
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> | -- By MichaelBerkovits - 19 May 2008 | | | | |
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< | In this sense, the fact that women bear the brunt of the child-rearing burden is an effect of the problem of female underrepresentation, as well as a cause. Regardless of the precise mechanisms at work, however, it is clear that the cycle must somehow be broken. | >
> | Congress does not ordinarily look to Scandinavia for guidance on economic and social policy. But when it comes to paternity leave, Sweden has it mostly right, and America has it mostly wrong. | | | | |
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- This is a sort of description of a feedback cycle, as opposed to the first sentence, which is a fallacy. But it is not a credible description of such a cycle, because the causal mechanism is unidentified.
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> | In Sweden, all parents have access to up to sixteen months leave, thirteen of which are paid at 80% salary. The cost of the program is split between employers and the government. In a two-parent household, the sixteen months can be split as the parents see fit, provided that at least two months are taken by each parent. | | | | |
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> | The Swedish model serves several objectives. First, while no one is forced into the system, the generous subsidies provide strong encouragement to opt in, ensuring that more children grow up with early, full-time parental support than otherwise would. Second, the two-month minimum for each parent ensures that male parents in households opting into the system take time off to help raise their children; indeed, more than 80% of new Swedish fathers do. Third, Swedish women gain a somewhat more equal career playing field, relative to Swedish men. In a society where most people take at least two months of leave, per child, lengthy career interruptions are the norm for both genders and not merely for childbearing women. Therefore, Swedish women as a group do not suffer as severe a competitive disadvantage as do women in countries with fewer reasonable options for paternity leave. | | | | |
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> | The American System
Parental leave has gradually become more common and more generous in the United States. Late into the twentieth century, women were often fired for having become pregnant. But since The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), most large employers are required under federal law to offer new mothers at least twelve weeks of unpaid leave. Some employers offer more generous programs in an effort to attract and retain the best female talent. Overall, however, no more than 15% of American women have access to paid parental leave. | | | | |
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- So far as breaking the cycle, is concerned, why didn't you take the simple route, dissolve the "nuclear" family, and call for communal child-raising? You would at least have had the kibbutzim to provide you with some data. Too radical for your very moderate social taste? Then why didn't you take another simple and much more moderate route, and call for a pervasive system of guaranteed state-provided work-time child care, allowing any custodial adult taking care of a child at any preschool stage of life to sign that child up for competent and well-monitored care during the adult's daily work period? Sixty-two million French people are wrong, perhaps. But at least you would have some data. Non. You would prefer to make up a crackpot system not in use anywhere in the world because no one wants to stand for it, and which is flatly unconstitutional in your own legal system, because that way you can be sure to solve the Woman Problem. Or at least as sure as you can be given that you have absolutely no data of any kind.
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> | While paid maternity leave is rare, paid paternity leave is nearly unheard of. The FMLA treats male and female parents symmetrically, mandating that employers offer at least twelve weeks unpaid leave for fathers as well as mothers. But while many employers go beyond the minimum requirements for female employees, the same is not true for men. According to a 2005 study, 54% of all employers offered some paid maternity leave. Only 12% offered any paid leave to new fathers. | | | | |
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> | The Problem | | | | |
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> | The American system of parental leave fails to perform any of the three functions which the Swedish system serves. First, the FMLA’s guarantee of twelve weeks leave pales in comparison to the sixteen-month Swedish model, which allows a much lengthier period for full-time parent-child bonding. Indeed, the three-month FMLA period, at least for some women, is barely sufficient for full physical recovery from pregnancy. Second, the paucity of compensated paternity leave in America means that few fathers can afford to take any substantial time off, especially considering that male wage-earners often contribute a large share of the family income. Approximately 15% of the men eligible for paternity leave under the FMLA request it, suggesting that the FMLA does little to encourage more paternal involvement in child-rearing; it may well be that those men who take time off under the FMLA tend to be more motivated fathers who would have found ways to take time off work even before the FMLA was passed. Third, because so few men take parental leave, the American system has utterly failed in creating a workforce in which interrupting career for family is an ungendered phenomenon. In Sweden, most men and women take lengthy amounts of time off work to raise a family; in the U.S., this remains a female phenomenon. | | | | |
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< | **At one time, women were frequently fired merely for having become pregnant. | >
> | Toward a Solution | | | | |
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< | ***The study shows that only 8% of American employees, male and female, have access to paid parental leave. Assuming approximately equal numbers of men and women in the workforce, this means that, at most, 16% of women have access to paid leave. | >
> | The Swedish system benignly “forces” men as well as women to interrupt careers to raise children by providing strong incentives to opt into a program of generous compensation. In the process, it encourages greater early parental involvement with children, greater involvement by fathers, and the growth of a workforce that cannot be easily divided along gender lines in terms of who is liable to interrupt a career to raise children and who is not. | | | | |
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< | ****The statistic might be even more skewed if not for the fact that each parent is required to take a minimum portion of the available leave time - approximately 20%!. | >
> | Each of these three benefits can be approached in degrees, without a wholesale shift to the Swedish model. The present American system guarantees many Americans three months of unpaid leave; expanding the federal requirements to, say, six months leave with at least six weeks paid at 80% salary, would go a long way toward achieving some of the benefits of the Swedish system. Significant resources would be necessary to make the program work (indeed, the full program eats up 1% of the Swedish GDP), but it is not hard to imagine that a combination of federal funding, employer tax breaks, and self-funding (perhaps through a modest increase in social security, as is done in admittedly more socialist Sweden) could work. | | | | |
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< | *****Single parents raise different issues which are outside the scope of this paper. | >
> | While Sweden requires that both parents take at least some leave, it is unlikely that this most effective method of ensuring male opt-in – mandating it – could be instituted in the United States (even at a modest 80/20 or 70/30 split). The Supreme Court has held that the federal government may not condition a benefit, e.g., leave pay, on the waiver of a constitutional right. While passage of the Equal Rights Amendment might have altered the Constitutional fabric sufficiently to allow for such legislation, our present Constitutional structure would seemingly preclude a wholesale move to a Swedish-style model. | | | | |
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- I look forward to your solution to the problem of how to get men to do half the housework.
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> | Nevertheless, expanded parental leave, including robust requirements for employers to provide compensated paternity leave, needs to stay on the political radar. While the full extent of the Swedish model may not be implementable here as a matter of American constitutional law and practical politics, the social benefits of expanded parental leave, including strong, institutional encouragement of paternity leave, are too great to ignore. |
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