A Mommy Story

Even though I love to shout my opinions far and wide, it may come as a surprise to some of you that I can be a pretty serious lurker as well. I lurk on some blogs, but more likely I’m lurking on message boards for a wide variety of topics. I enjoy message boards, but with keeping up with so many blogs, I don’t feel I have the time to invest in getting to know everyone on a message board. So I read, occasionally feel the urge to post but suppress it, and enjoy my little one-sided glimpse into the world of others while I keep to the shadows.

Lately I’ve found myself lurking on a pregnancy message board, and a topic that came up over the past few weeks really surprised me. Someone asked the group how long each of them would be taking off for maternity leave. I expected to read that most of these women, well, the ones living in the US, at least (lucky Canadians and your year of paid leave!), would be taking as close to 12 weeks off as possible, per FMLA guidelines. However, my jaw hit the keyboard when I realized what the most common answer was:

2-4 weeks.

At first I thought, are they serious? You can’t possibly be healed and ready to go back to life as normal at 2 weeks postpartum. But many of them were serious – unhappily serious. I don’t think a single woman said she wanted to return to work that early, and if given the choice would stay home longer. The primary reasons for returning so early: money and job loss.

For those not in the US, the Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA) guarantees the American worker 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year to care for a family member or for your own medical condition, without fear of losing your job. Except that it’s not quite that simple. Your job as it stands before you leave is not guaranteed – your employer must simply provide you with an equal job when you return. And if you have worked at a company for less than a year, worked less than 1,250 hours that year, or your company has less than 50 employees, the law does not apply to you, and you have no legal right to time off, unless your employer is kind enough to offer it. If you are not covered under FMLA, an employer has the ability to fire you for missing even a week of work, if you do not have the paid time off available to cover it.

Then there is the money issue. FMLA is unpaid leave, and aside from California, there is no guaranteed short term disability provided by the government. Also, while your employer is legally required to continue paying for your health insurance while you are on leave, if you had to pay a regular premium for it each month (which is common), you are still responsible for paying that premium while on leave.

Some employers do offer short-term disability insurance, which generally provides 6 weeks of paid leave (as long as your doctor thinks it is medically necessary for you to be off work), although the pay is generally at 50-65% of your regular income. And there is still the rare employer out there who offers fully-paid leave, although again generally for only 6 weeks.

So it is easy to see how some of these women are forced into situations where they cannot afford to take the time off for maternity leave, and must return to work as soon as their vacation/sick time runs out for fear of losing their jobs, or being unable to pay their bills. And to add to their stress, many childcare centers in the US refuse to accept children under 6 weeks old, leaving them stuck to find childcare until their baby is old enough to meet the requirements. Many find unlicensed in-home caregivers to fill that void, and simply hope for the best.

With Cordelia, I worked for a company that was large enough to give me FMLA time off. I opted into the short-term disability plan, and paid my $32 a month long before I had Cordy to provide me with paid time off at 60% of my salary, should I decide to have a baby. When it came time for my maternity leave, I took 11 weeks off. The first 2 weeks were the “waiting period” required for my short-term disability before it would kick in, which I filled with sick and vacation time that I had been saving up. The next 8 weeks were paid at 60% of my salary per my short-term disability insurance. (Due to a c-section, I had 8 weeks paid. If I had a vaginal delivery, it would have only been 6 weeks.) The final week was unpaid, and by that point, our finances were slowly crumbling from the loss of income, and I needed to get back to work.

And don’t even get me started on paternity leave. Aaron got 4 days off.

It amazes me that the US can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on an unnecessary war, yet we can’t provide simple social services to give our children the best start in their lives. We clearly are one of the most backwards countries in the world. Isn’t it better for a newborn – who is just learning how to regulate its temperature, how to breathe, how to eat, and how to survive – to be with its mother and father for those precious first months, than to be with someone who may enjoy the baby, but in the end is only paid to care for it? Studies have shown that infant mortality decreases when women are given more paid maternity leave. Are we really so callous as to prefer to deal with the problems of higher infant mortality rather than try to prevent problems from happening in the first place?

And I have to applaud California for taking the step to provide paid family leave to its residents. Everyone in CA has a small deduction from their paycheck (Average of $46 annually per worker) to fund the program, so it isn’t costing the government or the employers anything. Some may argue that they don’t plan to have children, and don’t like subsidizing the maternity leave of others, but this is not just for maternity leave – it is for anyone who needs to care for an ill family member, and could benefit any person. Besides, we already pay for other social services that many of us may never use: unemployment, Medicare, etc. But if you suddenly find yourself in hardship, those services are a blessing.

The United States needs a national paid maternity leave plan, and clearly FMLA is not doing enough to help families get the time off they need with their newborns. I would happily pay a small deduction from my paycheck to fund this program, even knowing that I would probably never benefit from it, since baby #2 is likely my last child. Saving other women from having to push themselves back to work before their bodies have healed, and letting them spend a little more time at home with their newborn children is worth it. Having to go back to work 2 weeks postpartum is criminal.

As for me, our finances are a little tighter this time around, so we’re still not sure how much time off I’ll be able to take. It all depends on when I have this baby. Our short-term disability payments are determined by years of service. If I have this baby before May 23 (my due date is May 21), I will get 6 weeks, part paid at 100%, and the remainder at 66%. If I have the baby after May 23, I will again have 6 weeks, but all of it will be paid at 100%. I can then take another 6 weeks unpaid if I want, but most likely I’ll be unable to take the full 6 weeks.

Did you know the Department of Labor is launching a study about whether or not to scale back FMLA? MomsRising.org is asking for your FMLA stories and will send them on to the Dept. of Labor to urge them to expand FMLA, not scale it back.