2.5 - Manifesto Point "M"

Mothers need time to have babies. Giving a mother no choice but to come back to work mere days after the birth of a child or face financial ruin is bad social policy. Society needs to share the cost of bringing new life into the world.

ACTION: Mothers want
  1. Paid family leave for parents with a new child in the home.
  2. Short-term disability leave for childbirth recovery comparable in scope to other developed nations.
International Paid Family Leave Comparisons
  • The United States does not offer paid family leave. In fact, the United States is the only industrialized country in the world that doesn’t have paid leave other than Australia (which does give a full year of guaranteed unpaid leave to all women, compared with the only 12 weeks of unpaid leave given to those who work for companies with more than fifty employees in the U.S.).i There is one state in America, California, which implemented a six-week paid family program in July of 2004 for California residents.
  • A full 163 countries give women paid leave with the birth of a child.ii Forty-five countries give fathers a right to paid parental leave as well. iii
  • Canada gives birth mothers fifteen weeks of partial paid leave for physical recovery, and then also gives another thirty-five weeks of partial paid parental leave that has to be taken before the child turns one-year-old. This thirty-five weeks of parental leave can be taken by the mother or the father, or can be shared between the two. The pay during the fifty weeks total of leave related to a new child is 55 percent of the average gross salary over the past twenty-six calendar weeks. iv All in all, there are fifty weeks of partially paid leave available for new Canadian parents to spend with their child.
  • Sweden, with about a year of paid family leave and some time specifically reserved for fathers, is often used as a model of exemplary family leave policy for other nations. v According to the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO), in Sweden, “Parental leave runs for 480 days, of which 390 days are paid at the same rate as for sick pay—i.e. 80 percent of normal pay (up to a ceiling). Parents each have a legal right to take 50 percent of the leave, but one parent can transfer some of their entitlement to the other. However, 60 days of the leave may not be transferred. This part of the leave is called the ‘mother months’ and ‘father months’ respectively.”vi Sweden not only offers a very long paid leave, but that leave is significant because some is reserved for fathers as a way to establish better equality between men and women. By many accounts, this model is working. “Wives earn 39 percent of after-tax family income, the highest percentage in the world,”vii writes Ann Crittenden in The Price of Motherhood of Sweden. In addition, a positive correlation has been found between those fathers that care for their babies and long term involvement with those children.



    • i. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/globalworkingfamilies/images/report.pdf

    ii. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/globalworkingfamilies/images/report.pdf

    iii. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/globalworkingfamilies/images/report.pdf

    iv http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/asp/gateway.asp?hr=en/ei/types/special.shtml&hs=tyt#Maternity3

    v. http://www.eiro.eurofound.eu.int/2004/06/inbrief/se0406102n.html

    vi. Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood, pages 239–250. Quote p. 248