If you want to have lots of babies and maintain a distinguished career, the place to work is Netflix or a similar Silicon Valley company. Besides the perks of living in a sunny climate, using nap pods, eating gourmet meals, and enjoying free massages, many of these high-tech software companies are now offering extended paid maternity and paternity leave. On Tuesday, August 4th, not only did Netflix's shares become the most valuable they have ever been at $122.79, Netflix also announced a new policy for both maternity and paternity leave; many other specialized technology companies are beginning to follow suit. Netflix said both parents can now take off as much time as they want, from the birth/adoption of their child to the first birthday. In this first year following the baby's arrival, parents will enjoy the flexibility of choosing not to work, choosing to work full-time, choosing to work part-time or choosing some combination of the three options, all of which come with the parents' regular paychecks. Netflix probably chose one year because by the first birthday, babies tend to be past the breastfeeding stage and are sleeping more regularly.
Within 24 hours of Netflix's new policy, Microsoft announced an improved deal for its employees: 20 paid weeks of maternity leave and 12 paid weeks of paternity leave. Less than a week afterwards, Adobe created a new policy. Primary caregivers (the parent that takes care of the baby during the workday) now receive 16 weeks paid leave and 10 weeks paid medical leave, a total of 26 paid weeks. Secondary caregivers (the other parent) will be given 4 weeks of paid leave. Adobe's new policy will apply to 6,000 employees.
Other technology companies have been ahead of the curve. Facebook provides four months of paid maternity leave, Google provides 18 weeks of paid maternity leave and Twitter provides 20 weeks of paid maternity leave and ten weeks of paid paternity leave. In addition to Facebook's four months, it gifts $4,000 towards each new child, subsidizes daycare programs and freezes eggs - as does Apple. In July, IBM created a plan to ship breast milk home to babies while mothers are away on business trips.
The big question is WHY? Why are these software companies creating such elaborate maternity leaves? To begin, many of these companies do not provide all of their employees with the fancy perks. Think of this as the "Titanic" of the workforce, except instead of "the more you paid for your cabin, the higher the chance you'll get on a lifeboat," it's "the more we want you, the more likely you'll get the perks." Netflix's new policy will apply to roughly 2,189 full-time employees, but will not apply to the 261 part-time employees in the DVD section of the company (these guys are riding in steerage). These 261 employees are not highly sought-after by the company and are easily replaceable, therefore Netflix need not entice them with extensive maternity leave. Their jobs are not the highly-skilled jobs of the upper echelons in the company; sure, the jobs distributing DVDs are important, but they also do not require much skill.
As for the employees with rare skills, they ride in first-class cabins on the top deck. This is the simple law of supply and demand: there is a limited supply of these highly skilled professionals and a great demand for them, so they get to enjoy the benefits. Unemployment rates in technology companies are half the national average, so it is difficult for these companies to find adequate staff; they need to outdo their competitors' perks. As for why these companies are offering extended paternity leaves, if only women were given leave it would segregate them from the men, making women appear less valuable to the company. Netflix handles this issue beautifully by providing both men and women the same paid leave.
While many people celebrate these new policies of maternity/paternity leave, the United States still has a long way to go in this realm. The United States and Papa New Guinea are the only two countries in the entire world that do not have federally-mandated paid parental leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 mandates that employees receive 12 weeks of unpaid leave, yet this is only at companies of a particular size and this is unpaid leave. Contrastingly, the E.U. has strict laws on parental leave, stating that women may take a minimum of 14 weeks maternity leave before and/or after the baby is born. Women must also take two weeks off before they deliver and men and women are also given equal rights to 18 weeks of paid leave per child. So yes, while it's great to hear about Netflix's new policy, it's important to realize that this is a slim minority in the United States workforce, while similar policies are not so uncommon in the rest of the world.
