Countries Around the World Beat the U.S. on Paid Parental Leave

Countries Around The World Beat The U.S. On Paid Parental Leave

For the past few months, we have been talking to working parents for a series we're calling Stretched, and what they're telling us is parenting is hard.

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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: It's about the busiest I've ever been.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: When I was in labor, I was responding to emails and receiving calls for work.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Does my life feel sustainable - no.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: You're rushing to get home for your child care. You're not sleeping well. You're probably not eating well.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: Even just pumping one time at work makes getting through the day a lot more challenging.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: In a way, it feels like I'm kind of set up to fail.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #5: I feel like I have three full-time jobs - yes.

MCEVERS: The big reason why life is so hard for many new parents is they often have to rush back to work after having their baby mostly because they don't have paid leave, and they can't afford to go long without a paycheck. All of this makes the United States an outlier. It is the only developed country without a national paid leave law. And that made us wonder what new parents outside the U.S. have come to expect. So ALL THINGS CONSIDERED producer Jessica Deahl went to find out.

JESSICA DEAHL, BYLINE: The story of how paid parental leave became adopted by most of the world started more than a hundred years ago. That's according to Jody Heymann of UCLA's World Policy Analysis Center.

JODY HEYMANN: Beginning in the 1800s with the Industrial Revolution, when women started to go into the formal workforce, leaving working at home to working in factories, countries realized they needed to do something. And they started to pass paid maternity leave.

DEAHL: Heymann says this happened in Europe, in Latin America, and later, representatives from all over the world got together and agreed to international standards on paid leave - just not the U.S.

So what does this difference in national policy mean when it comes to the real life experience of a new parent? To answer that, I called up a bunch of moms and dads outside the U.S. I found a lot of Europeans who wanted to talk about this. BRIGITTE BELTRE: Hi, my name is Brigitte. I live in Toulouse, France. When I had my second child, I left six weeks before the birth as any mom would do. And afterwards, I stayed with him for one year. I was receiving, like, 65 to 70 percent of my full salary, and I would get my job back as soon as my maternity leave was over.

DEAHL: So coming from France, that might not be terribly surprising. But I also heard this from a mom in China.

MENG MENG: My Chinese name is Meng Meng. I'm living in Shengjin, a big city in south China. In China, mothers will have four months to five months maternity leave, fully paid.

DEAHL: And in India, new moms get three months fully paid unless you work for the government like this next mom. She got even more time.

MEDULA: My name is Medula (ph), and I live in a state in India that is Orissa. So when my son was born, I was paid 100 percent of my salary, and I got 180 days of leave.

DEAHL: And finally, our neighbors to the north similar to us in so many ways are wildly different when it comes to paid parental leave.

TATIANA MELLEMA: My name is Tatiana, and I live in Vancouver in Canada. When my son was born two years ago, I was working at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The leave that I got - it was for a full year. And as part of the leave, the government would pay about 40 percent of my wage at the gallery.

DEAHL: By this point, you might be thinking, this cannot be cheap.

BELTRE: You have to know that it's not for free.

DEAHL: That's Brigitte Beltre of France.

BELTRE: In France, you have to work a certain amount of time to have paid maternity leave. You have to give to the system. It's like a savings account.

DEAHL: So in a lot of the world, the leave is paid for through a social insurance fund. It's kind of like Social Security in the U.S. This is one of the most common arrangements, and it's how they do it in Canada, too. Tatiana Mellema in Vancouver told us being able to dip into that fund gave her enough time to bounce back from giving birth and care for her new baby at his most vulnerable stage.

MELLEMA: The financial support was essential to getting us through that year and to giving me that time with him. Had I not have had it, I would have probably had to have gone back to work fairly quickly after I had him, which I can't even imagine doing at that point because my experience of just having that year with him was just so important. DEAHL: Over the years, a few countries have added paid paternity leave, too. And I talked to a few dads about that, like, Per Einarsson of Stockholm, Sweden. New parents there get about 16 months of paid time off to divvy up between them. Per and his partner, Kristina, split that time off evenly. And he says that time helped him be a more engaged dad.

PER EINARSSON: It was nice to be educated, if you may, to learn how to take care of my children and to bond with them. And then of course it was nice to give Kristina the possibility to get back to her job and focus on her career as well.

DEAHL: Their kids are now 3 and 5 years old, and he says that time off set a tone in their home.

EINARSSON: I think in their eyes we were always very equal to them and still are.

DEAHL: Now, most countries don't offer equal leave to men and women. Policies around the world tend to be mom-centric, and I heard over and over again about one unintended downside - when moms get or take more paid leave than dads, it can make it harder for women to get hired or promoted.

Lama Dossary is from Saudi Arabia. Women there get 10 weeks of paid time off. Dad's get three days. Dossary says when she went back to her job at an oil company after her baby was born, she had a hard time.

LAMA DOSSARY: When I went back, I did feel like it did affect how I was looked at, how I was treated. My promotions kind of got stopped for a while. I wasn't given the same amount of work. I wasn't given the same amount of responsibility.

I don't know how it would affect things, but I do think that maybe if other people were able to take such leaves off, whether to take care of their older parents or, you know, a father maybe has to take some time off because he has a child that needs special care for a while - I think that would at least change the perception.

DEAHL: So that's some of what I heard from moms and dads outside the U.S. Now, when Jody Heymann of UCLA looks out at the global picture, she does see one way the U.S. is out front. The American Family and Medical Leave Act offers unpaid but job-protected leave equally to moms and dads and to others, like those caring for an ill parent.

HEYMANN: That's a good basis. The problem is, the fact that it's unpaid means it's unaffordable to many Americans. And all of the caveats that come with the Family Medical Leave Act that have to do with how many hours you've worked, how big your employer is, et cetera, mean that millions of Americans aren't covered.

DEAHL: But there's talk of change. Both major party presidential candidates have expressed support to varying degrees for national paid leave programs. So it's possible the days of the U.S. being a global outlier on this are numbered. Jessica Diehl, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) MCEVERS: Earlier this week we asked for your stories about balancing work and kids, and we heard from a lot of you, like Jenna Pratt (ph) from Durham, N.C. Back in February, she gave birth to a baby girl. After 12 weeks, she went back to work.

JENNA PRATT: Coming back full time was hard, and raising a child has changed our lives. We are so thankful, but we truly work three full-time jobs, the first of which - and most important to us - is parenting. Our paid work somehow always comes second. And unfortunately and sadly, our marriage always runs third.

We're still waking up at least once a night with our baby girl. And I breastfeed and pump at work twice a day every day. My days are packed, and finding the time to pay attention to my spouse is more challenging than any work I've done in the past.

MCEVERS: You can record a voice memo on your smartphone and send it to us at [email protected]. Just make sure to include your name and where you're from. And thanks.