Buy Your Leave

We know that the United States joins Papua New Guinea, Lesotho and Swaziland as the only countries that do not have a national paid maternity leave requirement, and clearly we are the only developed country without that policy. A couple of states have limited programs that pay rather small amounts for short periods of time to young mothers, and a number of companies have added this as a benefit.

Oh sure, you can take time off; the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which does not apply to small companies, requires 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for mothers of newborns or newly adopted children. Our pre-school programs have suffered under budget slashing conservative legislators, and childcare remains not much more than a tax deduction that offers little solace to lower income women who either can’t afford it anyway or don’t have enough of an income for the deduction to mean much.

But what about companies that in fact offer paid maternity benefits? Great, huh? Unless you a dumb enough to use the benefit at some of these “benevolent” employers. Yahoo, for example, offers mothers eight weeks of paid maternity leave. Cool, huh? But what’s the hidden corporate message for moms who want to take advantage of that policy. Let’s look at the top, CEO Marissa Mayer, who recently announced she is having twins. Here’s what she wrote in a message on Tumblr: “I plan to approach the pregnancy and delivery as I did with my son three years ago, taking limited time away and working throughout.” What kind of a message do you think that sends to employees in a “work is everything” culture if they are even considering availing themselves of that leave policy?

Did read the New York Times piece on the work ethos expectations at Amazon (denied by CEO Jeff Bezos)? What message do you think that send to new moms? Take paid or unpaid leave and your career is toast? Yet there is an accelerating trend among larger, more successful entities, to add paid maternity and even paternity leaves as a major benefit to attract new hires.

“Even as employees are increasingly tethered to the office, a workplace culture that urges new mothers and fathers to hurry back to their cubicles is beginning to shift… In recent weeks, companies like Accenture and Microsoft said they would offer more family-friendly benefits like generous parental leave. The trend may be a sign of a tightening job market, at least for a certain segment of highly skilled performers.

“But it also raises the question of whether these new benefits will be more talked up than actually taken. Employees may wonder if doing so is acceptable or if it could hurt their careers. At many companies, the new benefits are at odds with a highly demanding, 24/7 workplace culture — a culture that starts from the top…

“At the same time, the new benefits are an acknowledgment that the American economy is struggling to adjust to modern gender roles and the rise of two-income families. As work hours have increased, and in the absence of government policies like paid parental leave, the work-family juggle has become daunting for many workers at all income levels. More than half of nonworking Americans say family responsibilities are a reason they are not working, according to a New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

“Just 12 percent of workers in the United States private sector have access to paid family leave, according to the Department of Labor. White-collar workers are often expected to have a singular focus on work: Amazon, which a recent New York Times article showed fosters a bruising atmosphere, offers no paternity leave. For blue-collar workers in most companies, leave is even less common. Netflix, for instance, did not give its leave to hourly workers.

“One reason some companies are doing this now is that millennials, the biggest generation in the work force, have higher expectations for gender equality at home and for accommodations from their employers. Highly educated women have become more likely to believe that an ambitious career does not preclude children. And the competition for elite workers has become so fierce that companies are searching for new ways to recruit and retain them.” New York Times, September 1^st. As I keep saying, you can learn a lot about a nation’s values by looking at how they treat children and family values… for real. And the United States doesn’t wind up looking particularly good.

I’m Peter Dekom, and at what point did we determine that raising and caring for children was no longer a national value or priority?