@caldreamerCalifornia Politics It’s no secret that the American culture places a heavy focus on family life. Even in a society where individualism is highly valued, our families show where we come from and how we identify ourselves. When the time comes for us to leave our families to potentially have our own, we expose ourselves to a new world of responsibility and potential hardships. Although starting a family can be exciting for most couples, it can also be very stressful to think about the greater financial need that’s required to support a growing family. The common solution for supporting a family is obviously for at least one of the parents to hold a job, but life isn’t perfect, and there will inevitably come times when at least one of the parents will not be able to work for a period of time. This is where paid family leave becomes important. To our misfortune, the United States lacks this essential safety net.
The United States is the only developed country with no federal paid parental leave policy, only unpaid. In 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was signed into law. This law provides certain employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year. These certain employees are those who have been employed with the company for 12 months, have worked at least 1,250 hours during the 12 months prior to the start of FMLA leave, and whose employer is one who employs 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius of the worksite. After jumping through all those hoops, employees can rest assured that they’ll have a job to come back to after lasting 12 weeks without a single paycheck. As for the rest of America, not even unpaid leave is a guarantee, which leaves women most at risk. According to HealthLine, 40 percent of women don’t qualify for the FMLA, 25 percent of women have to return to their jobs within just 2 weeks of giving birth, and only 12 percent of women in the private sector have access to any sort of paid maternity leave (healthline.com). Without an alternative source of income and the pressing need to support a family, many mothers are left to leave their children at childcare centers in order to keep their jobs. Childcare is no small expense. In California, the annual cost of childcare for an infant is $13,327, and for a preschooler the annual cost is $9,106. Here in Sacramento County, the annual cost to leave an infant at a childcare center is $12,296, and the cost for a preschooler is $8,668 (kidsdata.com). Even if working parents could provide the funds to leave their children at childcare centers, the option is not widely available. The availability of licensed childcare for children with working parents is only 25 percent in California. In Sacramento County, the number is slightly higher, with 28 percent availability of licensed childcare for working parents. The lack of availability combined with costly expenses makes childcare an insufficient solution to keep working families at work. This highlights the need for paid family leave to be a staple not only in California but across the rest of the United States as well. Although the U.S. is lagging in paid family leave, California is one of only three states (Rhode Island and New Jersey) that has taken a stride. California was the first state in the country to introduce paid family leave in 2002. Paid Family Leave, which provides up to 6 weeks of partial pay (60-70% of wage) to employees who take time off from work to care for a seriously ill family member or to bond with a new child entering the family through birth, adoption, or foster care placement (edd.ca.gov). Although the PFL offers partial pay, it does not offer job protection. California should continue progressing with their parental leave policy as an example to the rest of the U.S. The year 2019 brought Gavin Newsom as California’s newest governor, and within the first month he has already addressed the issue of paid leave. In his proposed budget, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed extending the 6-week paid leave to six months for each family after the birth of a baby. This proposal, although hopeful, does not have a financing plan as of today. However it is planned to be funded, California will ultimately benefit from extending its family leave. Paid family leave is an issue that has been around for decades now, but recently it has been gaining momentum especially since the last presidential election. The 2016 election brought Donald Trump into power. In his first State of the Union address, President Donald Trump mentioned a paid parental leave plan in his proposed budget for 2019. The measure would let new parents borrow from their future Social Security benefits in order to pay for their child-related leave. This policy, pushed by Ivanka Trump, would guarantee new parents up to 12 weeks of paid leave, at around 45 percent of their salary, but require they pay for it with an advance on their Social Security benefits. The plan only covers new children; paid time off to care for a sick parent or to battle a personal illness isn’t included and recipients of the leave would have to delay their retirement by an undetermined number of weeks. This proposal has received many criticisms by various op-eds and government officials. Regardless of the backlash, President Trump showed assuredness in his 2019 State of the Union Address when he said that he is “the first president to include in [the] budget a plan for nationwide paid family leave — so that every new parent has the chance to bond with their newborn child.” For the upcoming 2020 presidential election, it seems that paid family will have more of a spotlight than it did before. Kirsten Gillibrand is a Democratic presidential candidate for the 2020 election, and she is putting paid family leave at the forefront of her candidacy. It looks like the 2020 election will be a defining moment for national paid family leave, but meanwhile, California should take the reins and show how designing a paid family leave policy should be done.
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AuthorUndergraduate student generated content. Blog posting and updating done by Kristina Flores Victor, Assistant Professor of Political Science at CSUS Archives
March 2020
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