Parental Leave

Parental leave is leave from a job taken to care for and bond with a newly born, adopted, or fostered child. It is a general term rather than a single legal entitlement, because in the United States the pay and job protection attached to it come from three different places: an employer's own benefit, a state paid-family-leave program, or the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides job protection without pay. Whether any given worker's parental leave is paid, unpaid, or a mix depends on which of these apply to them.

The federal baseline is job protection, not income. An eligible employee can take up to 12 weeks of leave to bond with a new child under the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the employer must hold the job and continue group health coverage, but the statute expressly allows that leave to be unpaid. The FMLA also carries eligibility conditions that leave many workers uncovered, so a large share of new parents have no guaranteed job-protected leave at all. No federal law requires a private-sector employer to pay for parental leave.

Paid parental leave therefore comes from one of two sources. The first is the employer: many companies offer a set number of fully or partially paid weeks as a benefit, often on top of FMLA protection and sometimes structured so the paid weeks run at the same time as the unpaid FMLA entitlement. The second is a state paid-family-leave program. A growing number of states fund such programs through payroll contributions and replace a percentage of wages during bonding leave; the details vary by state and the roster keeps changing.

There is one federal paid entitlement, and it is narrow. Under the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act, covered federal government employees may take up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave for births or placements, a benefit that applies only to that workforce and not to private-sector workers. The distinction between bonding leave and medical leave also matters: the birthing parent's own recovery may be covered as a medical condition under a disability or leave program, while a non-birthing parent's time is bonding leave, and the two can carry different pay and duration.

In practice a new parent's leave is assembled from the pieces available to them: any employer-paid weeks, any state paid-family-leave benefit, and the unpaid job protection of FMLA if they are eligible, often stacked or run concurrently to reach the length they want.

A hypothetical shows the paid-versus-unpaid mix. Suppose Rosa earns $1,500 a week and her employer offers six weeks of fully paid parental leave, and she is FMLA-eligible. She takes the six paid weeks and receives 6 × $1,500 = $9,000. She then takes six more weeks of unpaid FMLA leave to reach 12 weeks of bonding time, during which she receives no wages from the employer. Over the full 12 weeks she is paid $9,000, half of what she would have earned working, and her job and health coverage are protected the whole time. If Rosa lived in a state with paid family leave, that program might replace part of her wages during the six unpaid weeks, changing the total.

What parental leave provides

• Time to recover from childbirth and bond with a new child without losing the job, where FMLA or a state program applies.
• Continued group health coverage during FMLA leave, so insurance does not lapse at the moment a family grows.
• Paid weeks where an employer or state program provides them, cushioning the income loss.

Where it is thin

• Federal law guarantees no pay, and the FMLA's job protection reaches only workers who meet its eligibility rules.
• Employer-paid leave varies enormously and is entirely voluntary; two workers doing the same job at different companies can get very different benefits.
• State paid-leave programs exist in only some states, and their pay levels and durations differ, so where a person lives shapes the outcome.