There’s no excuse for missing work here in America, even if you just went through labor. Pull yourself by the bootstraps and get back out there!
The United States, which is often regarded as the best country in the world, is the only industrialized country without paid maternity leave. The United States offers parents 12 weeks leave from their jobs, but businesses are not required to pay these parents. Only 16% of employers offer paid maternity leave, and the percent is even lower for fathers to receive paternity leave, according to Huffington Post.
Is this acceptable? Should parents be forced to work immediately after their child is born? Of course not, and here are some reasons why. Firstly, countries much less fortunate than the U.S. are able to afford to give new parents paid leave after child birth. Countries such as Brazil and Indonesia are able to give both the mother and father of the newborn child paid leave, with Brazil giving 120 days leave and Indonesia giving 84 days off, according to Huffington Post. If countries less established than us can give this leave to parents, what is the United States’ excuse?
Second, it is a known fact that children’s connections with their parents as infants is important to a child’s health and wellbeing. According to the Select Investigative Panel, paid parental leave can bring infant mortality down 10%. If our country cares as much for children as it claims to, there should be an overwhelming effort to provide children with the ability to bond with their parents during the first weeks of their lives.
Lastly, parents deserve to be able to spend time with their children, especially during the start of their children’s lives. According to Time, women with infants who worked full time were more depressed, had decreased health, and had overall more stress. This can be due to the added responsibility of a newborn child, or simply due to the new parent missing their child. Either way, parents should be able to receive paid leave to have time for this new responsibility and have time to bond with their newborn.
Often paternity leave is brushed to the side, but leave for fathers is important as well. Although women actually birth the child, the father also deserves to bond with their new creation. As long as the father is there for their newborn, they have every right to take time off work for their baby, just as mothers do. Paternity leave is also important for single fathers. What if the mother decides to abandon the child? What is this new father going to do with this newborn while he has to go to work? The idea of women only deserving leave is quite sexist, since women are often seen as the ones who stay at home with their children, but this idea is outdated. Any parent who is committed to taking care of their child deserves to take time off to tend to the new addition to their family.
This country needs to provide parental leave. As urgent as this issue is, it would be impractical to expect paternal leave right away. First, maternity leave should be first provided, followed up by paternity leave. No matter how slow this process may be, it needs to start immediately so the new children of this country will have the benefit of spending quality time with their parents in their first stages of life.
