State-mandated paid maternity leave should have existed since the big bang.
It just seems unfair to have to go back to work shortly after giving birth for a number of reasons such as sleep deprivation, anxiety and even depression.
An article by Christopher J. Ruhm, titled “Policies to Assist Parents With Young Children,” wrote, “The idea behind brief maternity leave is meant to promote women’s labor force attachment, whereas longer job absence could endanger women’s labor market situation due to the scrutiny of human capital.”
According to the Family and Medical Leave Act, firms employing at least 50 people within 75 miles of the work site are required to offer eligible workers 12 weeks of job-protected but unpaid time off work to care for newborn or newly adopted children. However, the firm size and work history requirements imply that only around half of the employees are eligible for Family and Medical Leave Act leave.
Maternity leave is essential. Besides the fact that parents want to bond and care for a newborn, recovery time after pregnancy and birth is also essential.
Director for Health System Transformation Sarah Coombs said that for the three out of four people who take leave each year for reasons other than maternity or paternity leave, paid leave is also critical.
“Other reasons include caring for other family members or addressing their own serious health conditions,” Coombs said. “The introduction of paid maternity leave in states such as California, New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, & Rhode Island, led to the reduction of both low birth weight and preterm births.”
Coomb also mentioned that the actual length of paid leave does have an impact on maternal and infant health.
“Less than eight weeks of paid leave is linked to a reduction in overall health status and increased depression,” Coomb said. “Longer paid leave significantly increases breastfeeding initiation and duration, which has innumerable benefits for moms and babies, this includes improvement in the function of the digestive and immune system of the child, and reduces risk of breast and ovarian cancer, diabetes, and obesity for the mother.”
Kelly Wallace and Jenn Christian of CNN Health took a deep dive into what are not just the short term, but also long term benefits of paid leave.
“Women who took longer than 12 weeks maternity leave reported fewer depressive symptoms, a reduction in severe depression and improvement in their overall health,” Wallace and Christian said.
According to Maurcio Avendano, Associate Professor of social science, health and medicine at King’s College London, “Women who were exposed to a more generous maternity leave policy were 18% more likely to suffer from depression 30 years later when they were 50 or older.”
Wallace and Christian also touch on the effects that paid parental leave has on fathers.
“When Looking at fathers in the United States, United Kingdom, Denmark and Australia, dads who took paternity leave of 10 days or longer were more involved with their children and child care activities in comparison to men who took no leave,” Wallace and Christian said.
State mandated paid maternity leave should be a right. It’s not a woman’s fault that her body goes through certain things after giving birth. It’s human nature.
Paid maternity leave benefits mothers and their children and gives them time to spend with each other. We are all human and we all deserve to enjoy the little things in life (no pun intended).
