While there are many policies that affect women, maternity leave is definitely one that is at the top of the list. The United States has always been a target for our poor maternity leave policies and we are falling behind when it comes to looking at other countries. In the article “Paid Maternity Leave: U.S. is Still One of the Worst Countries in the World Despite Donald Trump’s Family Leave Plan,” author Charlotte England (2017) states that women who have had a newborn in the countries of Estonia and Hungary get more than a year off from work. The United States does not even come close to that. It is important to look back and see what maternity leave is, why it was created, and how it started. Knowing the history of maternity leave will set a path to see how it can be better.
First, it is crucial to address the policies that pertain to maternity leave such as the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. All of these have set the ground work in getting better maternity leave because we had to start somewhere. Second, I will be analyzing the policies that discuss maternity leave and how they impact women. I will also be looking into how these policies are enforced throughout the United States. With a new President and administration, there will be a new take on maternity leave and it is important to analyze the positives and negatives of their plans for this issue. Lastly, the policy advantages, weaknesses, and what I think could be added, or taken out, to improve the newest policy on maternity leave will be discussed.
History of Maternity Leave
It is not news that maternity leave has not been around very long. The United States has only been around for so long and for a long while, most women were stay-at-home wives and mothers. According to the article “Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns: 1961-1995,” authors Kristin Smith, Barbara Downs, and Martin O’Connell (2001) mention that in the 1960s, most women were expected to quit working when they got pregnant. “In 1978, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed which prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of pregnancy or childbirth. This act covered hiring and firing policies as well as promotions and pay levels” (p. 3). This also helped with taxes in which parents were allowed to “take a tax credit on child care costs” with a dependent child (p. 3). Smith, Downs, and O’Connell (2001) also mention that during this time period, it started to become more necessary for two household incomes.
However, maternity leave really did not start in the United States until 1993 when they passed the Family and Medical Leave Act. In the article “The History of Family Leave Policies in the United States,” author Megan A. Sholar (2016) states that this act gave both women and men twelve weeks of unpaid leave. The reasons being having a newborn child to care for; adopting a new child; caring for an immediate family member that has a serious health issue and also for the employee to take care of themselves should they become sick or injured. However, there are certain requirements to even qualify for these things though. These women and men have to work in either a “public agency or private company” that has more than fifty employees and have to have been there for at least a year. They also need to have worked 1,250 hours in the year that they have been employed there. This only qualifies about 60% of the people working in the United States.
Sholar (2016) emphasizes that when women first started working in the beginning of the twentieth century that they were not expected to stay very long in the workforce. People assumed that women were just working until they got married. However, as we have learned throughout history classes, women really made a huge impact on World War II. Women were left in the United States taking over men’s jobs to help and make an income since their husbands were at war. Sholar (2016) mentions that “when the war ended, a significant number of women remained in the workforce and attitudes toward their employment slowly began to shift.” Not only that, but this is also when second-wave feminism began. This resulted in the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC required employers to “treat disabilities resulting from pregnancy, such as miscarriage, abortion, or childbirth and recovery, in the same manner as other temporary disabilities.”
Sholar (2016) then mentions that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, while important, did not provide any time off for mothers to care for their newborns so those women had to leave the workforce anyways. This resulted in people pushing for a family leave bill. This resulted in the writing of the Family Employment Security Act in 1984, which “called for up to twenty-six weeks per year of unpaid, job-protected leave to care for a new child, a child’s illness, a spouse’s disability, or the employee’s own disability.” While many activists for this bill wanted it to be paid leave, they knew it might be difficult to pass. The FESA never made it “formally” to Congress, but did help push for similar bills to be introduced about family leave and how important it was.
During the years 1986 to 1990, Sholar (2016) states that “legislators continued to debate the details of the FMLA, making comprises on the generosity of benefits and the requirements to qualify for leave. In May 1990 the House successfully passed the bill; the Senate followed suit one more later.” However, President George H. W. Bush ended up vetoing the bill. President Bush said that he did support family leave, but only if businesses were allowed to offer this voluntarily instead of it being mandatory.