Paid Leave Principles for Congress

Supporting new parents around childbirth is one of the most straightforward examples of a pro-family economic policy. Families must account for additional expenses—carseats, diapers, and clothes, to say nothing of the cost of childbirth itself—at a time when parents must take time off of work to either give birth or support mom. One can find statements in support of a federal paid leave plan from various points across the political spectrum, from left-leaning advocacy groups to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Compact magazine’s Sohrab Ahmari. 

How you design such a program, however, makes all the difference. Some progressives have long prioritized paid leave as a part of their vision for what the federal government can do for families. At times, some writers will offer a “conservative case for paid leave,” which largely takes the design as a given, while nodding to Republican concerns about employer mandates and budget deficits. The right can do better.  

Today, Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) will be chairing a hearing entitled “Exploring Paid Leave: Policy, Practice, and Impact on the Workforce.” With the House of Representatives frozen in a mess of its own making, and global tensions pulling Congress’ focus elsewhere, it’s unlikely we’ll see a concrete paid leave program making its way through the legislative process any time soon. That makes hearings like this week’s the perfect opportunity to hash through the principles that should undergird any paid leave program and lay down a marker for how policymakers should think about future efforts. 

A recent letter addressed to Congress from myself and IFS Senior Fellow Brad Wilcox offers three principles for a federal approach to paid leave. We offer a way of thinking about paid leave that is grounded in fundamental beliefs many conservatives share but are certainly not exclusive to the right. In addressing paid leave, we believe policymakers should: 

• Offer a policy solution that focuses on new parents
• Recognize that new moms experience unique needs dads don’t
• Treat all families fairly, and not implicitly assume all parents are on the career track 

The progressive vision, laid out in Build Back Better, treats welcoming a child as equivalent to many other types of paid leave, from personal sick time to caring for an elderly neighbor. This not only inflates the price tag, which makes such a package even more difficult to pass in an era of rising deficits and high interest rates. 

But it also holds support for new parents hostage in service of a broader transformation of the relationship between employee and employer. Paid time off may indeed be worthwhile, but given that 71% of respondents with children, including 62% of Republican parents, in last year’s IFS/EPPC/YouGov poll supported paid parental leave, it’s best to start with what can receive bipartisan support today. 

As opposed to chronic illness or hospice care, support for new parents can be designed to be time-limited and difficult to claim fraudulently. (For instance, requiring paid parental leave recipients to provide a birth certificate or certificate of still birth produced by a state’s department of vital records would make a parental leave program virtually impossible to defraud.) In an era of rising deficits and high interest rates, any paid parental leave program must be targeted and prudent. Focusing on parenthood, rather than an expansive paid leave approach, such as the one included in Build Back Better, will help keep the price tag down and contain an inherent and compelling rationale. 

Conservatives should be offering a set of principles grounded in a fleshed-out understanding of the family, a healthy caution of undue governmental influence on decisions about work and parenthood, and a celebration of new life and the distinctive and complimentary roles that mothers and fathers play in welcoming children.

That rationale should include a recognition of the fundamental imbalance in bearing the burdens of reproduction. As Erika Bachiochi, my colleague at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has written: “Simply put, women get pregnant; men do not. This sexual asymmetry underlies the natural vulnerability that women (and their children) experience.” Mothers bear unique physical, psychological, and emotional burdens during pregnancy that their partners do not, and deserve time to recover before facing the demands of the economy. 

Including time off for dads or adoptive parents to bond with a new child or support a new mom in her recovery is worthy of support. But any paid leave program worth its salt must prioritize mothers who are recovering from childbirth.

Some paid leave proponents insist that any paid parental leave program should offer the same benefits to “birthing parents” and “non-birthing parents.” Linguistically, this is an effort to weaken the importance of mothers and the unique burdens they bear. And some see parental leave as a vehicle to increase gender equality within the household.

How families want to allocate their time after childbirth should be of no concern to the federal government. The messy, painful reality of childbirth, postpartum depression, and associated complications means that policymakers should prioritize mothers first. 

In so doing, it should celebrate and support all mothers, regardless of their career track or earnings history. Many of the paid leave plans proposed by groups in Washington, D.C. and adopted by progressive-leaning states like California, Colorado, and Vermont are premised on a model of work-life balance that presumes parents are intent on delaying childbirth until they are financially successful, work 40 hours a week, and have predictable career paths. 

As Matt Bruenig of the crowd-funded progressive think tank People’s Policy Project has pointed out, every state paid leave plan currently leaves out parents or potential parents. Rhode Island’s offering is the worst on this metric, with only half of women estimated to be eligible for the state’s paid leave program. 

The simplest fix would be to ensure that any paid leave program includes a minimum benefit for which all parents, regardless of work history or earnings, are eligible. Because paid leave is focused on a month or two after birth, this would not create the same concerns around dependency and work disincentives as have been raised in debates over the Child Tax Credit. Another approach would be to make eligibility contingent on the household’s labor force participation, ensuring that families with two parents would be able to meet any requirements in the manner they deem fit. But providing benefits only to individuals who fit into the model of career-oriented, full-time work would do a disservice to parents who find meaning elsewhere. 

While states that have experimented with paid leave approaches should be commended, many states lack the fiscal capacity to do so on their own. There is an entirely appropriate role for the federal government to provide new mothers and fathers with a little cushion around the time of childbirth, insulating them at a time when expenses are high and earnings unpredictable—and it doesn’t have to break the bank. In a policy paper for IFS, I sketched out a modest paid parental benefit that would cost about $15 billion annually. Coupled with an expansion of job protections in the Family and Medical Leave Act, this proposal would give all parents a little more piece of mind.   

Conservatives should be offering a set of principles grounded in a fleshed-out understanding of the family, a healthy caution of undue governmental influence on decisions about work and parenthood, and a celebration of new life and the distinctive and complimentary roles that mothers and fathers play in welcoming children. Ignoring these insights will lead to imperfect policy and too many parents left out of new programs at a time when they could use them the most. 

Patrick T. Brown (@PTBwrites) is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes from Columbia, South Carolina.