Yesterday, District government employees received a much-needed and long-overdue boon to their occupational benefits—the ability to apply for up to eight weeks of paid family leave. Announced Tuesday by D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, the new measures allow the city’s 30,000 government employees an opportunity to care of children or other loved ones without risking either their employment or their paycheck. Though a marked step forward, the District’s program will truly achieve success if it serves as both model and motivator for the rest of the country.
The chief factor that sets the District’s program apart is its accessibility by both men and women. While the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 provides for 12 weeks of unpaid maternity and paternity leave, the law leaves employers wholly free to determine whether or not employees will be paid during their time off.
According to Gray’s office, the District’s program place it alongside just 16 percent of state governments and 12 percent of private-sector employers that offer similar benefits. As reported by The New York Times last year, the U.S. lags behind most countries of the world—and all highly developed nations—in guaranteeing widespread parental leave. Most European nations all strongly outperform these select American employers, with the U.K. offering parents as much as half a year in paid leave in some cases and Sweden up to 18 months.
Despite its numerous demonstrated benefits, paternity leave in particular remains disappointingly scarce in the U.S. Arguments in favor of paternity leave range from the feminist to the economical. The practice better involves fathers in the household and mothers in the workplace. It can also boost national productivity in tough economies, promotes gender equality, and can both add more women to the workforce and reduce pay gaps between female employees and their male counterparts.
Implementing such policies on an incremental, yet national scale would likely replicate the benefits witnessed by countries, such as Sweden, in which increased participation in so-called “daddy months” correlates with greater benefits for mothers. A July article in The Atlantic examined an aggregate effect in which dads who took paternity leave resulted in a 15 percent spike in the likelihood that their brothers, other male relatives, or coworkers would do the same.
The District’s program for paternal leave has great potential to mainstream the conversation about paid maternal and paternal employee benefits in this country. Whether you’re a mother, father, newborn, employee, or employer, a survey of the facts unequivocally makes the case that it’s a conversation worth having.
