Leigh and her husband, Rachid, are both in the lower class with Rachid’s salary bringing just enough money to cover their mortgage and buy food. After their first daughter was born they had learned a few things from the experience. When the time came and they were planning for their second child Leigh wanted as much time off as she could get with her new baby and knew it was a necessity that she keep her new job. They started planning and things in theory would have worked out perfectly. Leigh would follow the Family Leave and Medical Act in order to get her 12 weeks of unpaid leave. This became problematic however because of the time requirements in the Act were going to be tough to meet considering that Benrahou was relatively new to her job. To provide additional help, she paid $40 per month in order to receive 60% of her salary for the first 6 weeks of her leave and $1000 for her stay in the hospital and she decided to save her 2 weeks of paid vacation time.

Using all of this help would have put Leigh back to work in the summer when her mom, an elementary teacher, could watch the children to cut down on babysitting costs. Everything went downhill though when Leigh went into labor one week before the 12 month time requirement in the Family Leave and Medical Act. Because of financial reasons Leigh was left with no choice other than to return to work early, after only 2 mere weeks to be exact.

This isn’t uncommon though. Nearly a quarter of new American mothers, like Leigh, return to work just two weeks after giving birth. These short leaves usually occur because women are afraid the idea of falling behind financially, losing their job, and letting their family down.

The bottom line is, women, specifically members of the lower class, have to get back to work quickly where pay is definite so they can support their families and newborn babies.

Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s Founding Fathers, said in an essay for people going into the workforce, “Time is money …”(1748 “Advice to a Young Tradesman”). Here in the United States, things seem to be streamlined for best production and gain. This leads to the issue of women losing their jobs or a deduction/cut off in pay when they are gone after giving birth. Women are guaranteed zero weeks of paid leave and only a small portion of women qualify for any leave at all. The economy may believe that they would be losing too much money, but the truth is by ignoring this issue, the economy may be missing an opportunity to grow.

A major problem that prevents the resolution of this problem is ignorance. Americans seem to be ignorant towards this problem. The reality is that the United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee women paid maternity leave. The other countries that don’t supply paid maternity leave are small, poor countries. Considering all of this, I think it’s time that America gets it together and begins to offer paid maternity leave to America’s mothers.

The Change in Roles Overlooked by Policy

In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s roles started to change. Before this time men were the sole or primary provider for their family, but during this time the amount women contributed began to increase.

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It’s time that America faced the facts. Times have changed and a Today article by JoNel Aleccia explains that ⅔ of women’s income has become more financially important for families. That means that almost 7 out of 10 women have an increased role in their families financial stability. Aleccia adds that in 40% of the households with children under 18 have mothers act as the primary or sole income provider. Unpaid maternity leave had less of an effect, but now with the country aiming to get more women into the workforce things are a lot different.

Of course, women are sometimes offered a few different maternity leave options. For example, an In These Times article by Sharon Lerner states that some American women are offered paid maternity leave by their employer. Under but under closer inspection you’ll realize that the amount offered this is equal to about 13% of working American women. Another option is for women to follow the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) passed by President Bill Clinton in 1993. This allows women twelve weeks of unpaid leave. But there’s a catch, women must have worked at their current firm for a year and must have worked 1250 hours in that year. Moreover, the FMLA only applies to companies with 50 or more employees. All this cuts out 40% of workers out of the plan. This means that 40% of women don’t only lack paid leave they are unlikely to get much, if any, leave at all.

In fact, because women have a larger role now, a family’s income has been proven to drop when women take time off after giving birth. An article by Christopher Ingraham states that a family’s income can drop up to 10% at childbirth. For single mothers it’s even worse with an income drop around 42% at the time of childbirth along with the occasional decrease occurring beforehand because of work hour reductions from pregnancy-related situations or issues. These income problems are not fixed until women return to work.

Now we’re back to our underlying problem; money. An estimation excluding unexpected costs and college education, shows that it costs more than $233,000 to raise a child from birth to 18 years old. Using this average you can find that it’s about $13,000 a year. That’s a lot of money to just dish out, on top of the expenses that families are already paying especially when your source of income is decreased or cut off for an amount of time after the child is born.

The Additional Things Women Endure to Support Their Families

By cutting maternity leaves short women are forcing themselves to endure problems in their personal lives. Statistics show that more and more women are coming back to work within week or mere days after giving birth. The National Center for Health Statistics show that the average maternity leave in the United States averages 10 weeks. At least 5 weeks were taken by ½ of new moms and 9 weeks was taken by ¼ of new moms. 16% of new moms took only one to four weeks off after the birth of their child, and 33% of women took no formal time off at all, returning to work almost immediately. The problem with this: mothers are getting or giving themselves less time to adjust to the stresses of motherhood, heal, bond with their child, and ultimately get ready to go back to work.

[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]In general it can take months to fully recover from pregnancy and childbirth.[/perfectpullquote]After giving birth, mothers cope with several different stresses while adjusting to the newest addition of their family. They have to adapt their lives to make their child their top priority, deal with sleep deprivation, heal, learn to trust their instincts, deal with feeding times, keep their marriage strong, along with normal things such as housekeeping.

These stresses have little to no time to resolve themselves while mothers are cutting their maternity leaves shorter. Moreover, shortened maternity leaves make it harder to deal with the situations mentioned above and more. For one, it’s not recommended that women return to work before the 6 to 8 weeks following giving birth. This is when women start to feel mostly normal in terms of physicality. Of course, there are some exceptions, normally related to complications or different situations that occurred from giving birth. When women have C-sections for example An article on familydoctor.org remarks that it can take up to 12 weeks for the underlying to heal.

In general it can take months to fully recover from pregnancy and childbirth. It’s obviously different for everyone, the chance that anyone heals well enough to return to work after just a few weeks of mere days, as mentioned above, comfortably is remarkably slim.

Women not only physically suffer after childbirth, but also mentally. The Mayo Clinic writes in an article that women suffer emotionally when they return to work after a shortened maternity leave. Likewise, JoNel Aleccia states in her article that new moms are more likely to get postpartum depression or their depression may worsen after these short leaves.

By returning to work as soon as they can and taking less maternity leave women are forced to rush things such as physical and mental recovery along with having to hasten their adjustment to the new stresses in their lives.

Would Paid Maternity Leave Really Hurt the Economy

Some people would argue that giving paid leave could result in damage to our economy, but the truth of the matter is that test results are showing the opposite. The Washington Post article by Christopher Ingraham about maternity leave claims that the lack of paid maternity leave is, “bad for the economy” and continues to push that point saying research shows that, “paid maternity leave is associated with better job performance and retention among mothers, increased family incomes, and increased economic growth” (The World’s Richest Countries Guarantee Mothers More Than a Year of Paid Maternity Leave. The U.S. guarantees them nothing.).

This idea is currently being proven by three of the fifty United States that are testing different types of paid maternity leave. These states are California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. Records have shown that so far none of these states have experienced any economic loss so far. Furthermore, it’s been proven in other countries that it actually has a positive impact on the economy. An article by Jessica Deahl explains that by providing paid leaves other countries are encouraging women to join or stay in the workforce while also supporting women while they take the time to care for their family.

How the Future is Affected by Unpaid and Unguaranteed Maternity Leave

Of course we can’t forget the future or in other words the brand new baby. There’s proof that shorter maternity leave 

may have a negative effect on the development of children along with some negative effects on their health.

First of all, shorter maternity leaves can force mothers to end some important things early. One of these things is breastfeeding. An article on WebMD describes breastfeeding as a, “nearly perfect mix of vitamins, protein, and fat” and something that will protect against several different medical related issues as well as increasing IQ level, bonding, and security for the child (Breastfeeding Overview). A Today article by JoNel Aleccia mentions that, “Shorter leave can interfere with recommended breastfeeding duration. Which would cause these children to lack the protection and benefits of breastfeeding.

More evidently than that though, it’s known that the lack of paid leave can result in several social and emotional problems among babies. To start, it’s been proven that love, affection, and attention are the base to a child’s development in addition to things like good health care and nutrition. It’s important to note that babies’ brains make up to 1000 synapses connections per day. Heather Marcoux wrote in an article that this synapses, that’s used in the first few months, gets stronger with stimulation parents on leave can provide, but weakens and can even disappear without it.

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An article about child development and early learning points to the idea that how well children develop social, emotional, and learning skills is directly related to a child’s early experiences. Some things that parents can offer more of on leave include supportive touch and skin-to-skin contact, near constant affection and attention, and the characteristics of a loving nurturer. For example, by exposing a child to supportive touch, parents are impacting how they process touch which can benefit a child’s learning, social, and emotional connections. Likewise, skin-to-skin contact can also aid cognition and communication skills.

The appearance of loving nurture in the emotional, social, and cognitive development is powerful to say the least.

One more important thing, love and nurturing is essential in order for children to develop trust and security resulting in confidence as the child grows.

It is a vitality that parents and their child are supported during this time to promote attachment. When provided love, affection, attention, encouragement, and mental stimulation babies grow, learn, and develop more rapidly. Furthermore, without the good bond formed by these actions, babies are less likely to grow into happy, independent, and resilient adults.

Since paid maternity leave is more likely to be taken than unpaid leave, by giving paid maternity leave to women not only are we showing we are able to make smart economic decisions, but we are actually investing in America’s future.

Here’s the Deal…

Financial situations trap women. Every mother wants the best for her children and family, and in order to obtain the best for them money is a necessity. With more and more women entering into a workforce the financial strain on families when their new child enters the world is becoming more of a problem. As explained above women are guaranteed a frustrating zero weeks of maternity leave. Meaning that women feel obligated to return to work as quickly as they can so their family is not financially knocked down.

Women should not have the stress of financial strain while trying to recover and adjust mentally and physically after giving birth. They endure it anyway, all of it, from rushed recovery to the additional stresses that come up throughout the whole process.

Furthermore, we can’t forget something vital to the future of the country; children. Children are the future of the country and the right amount of love, affection, and attention can all affect the person that a baby will become. Basically, if we want our country to potentially thrive in the future, changes to how the child grows up in the early stages of its life can make huge impacts. Longer paid maternity leaves would give mothers a better chance to instill good qualities into their child along with creating a better mother-child bond and healthier opportunities for the baby.

Paid maternity leave although some would speculate the opposite, can have positive effects on our economy. More women would be likely to join or come back to the workforce given this opportunity. Paid maternity would allow families, especially ones with lower incomes, to keep a level financial status.

Benjamin Franklin was a smart man and his points were made well, but America seems to be obsessing over the “time is money” idea to the extreme. If people took a step back they may be able to see that there are other ways to help the economy and keep this idea alive our country could do even better.

T0 sum all of this up, paid maternity leave is followed by a ton of benefits for the economy and America’s families alike. Change needs to occur and by doing so we could make huge impacts on the future of our country and improve America’s reputation. Life for people like Leigh Benrahou could be completely changed. America would go from the only industrialized nation without paid maternity leave to a place with a changing and once again growing economy.

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