Millennials Might Not Be Having Babies, But We Should Still Care About Paid Family Leave
I’m part of the millennial generation notorious for ruining all kinds of things, from ‘killing’ industries like napkins and casual dining, to being condemned for our declining birth rates. There’s a myriad of reasons for this, but not least among them is financial stress. While some of these stressors are unique to our generation, the lack of paid family leave policies is not. Still, it can be difficult to understand why young people without kids, or without any intention of having kids should care about the existence of such a thing.
Recently, I spoke with my mom about her experiences having children, and something came up in that conversation which I found particularly noteworthy. She was in grad school while I was still a toddler, and my sister was born at some point in the middle of her education. Since my dad was working too, someone had to make sure we didn’t get into any trouble (not an easy task at the best of times, but I’m told I was a particularly precocious four-year-old). It turns out that the many thousands of dollars of debt my mom still has are the result of taking out student loans to pay for childcare. This early decision meant that I grew up in a household that was never once free of debt. Admittedly, this was helpful preparation for life as a young adult living in the grip of neoliberal economic and social policies, but that’s another story.
I had a lovely childhood, but because no such thing as universal childcare exists, some of my earliest memories involve conversations and arguments around debt, and sensing the stress from my parents. Even as I would count myself among the millennials who aren’t really considering having children, I can draw a direct line from the bizarre refusal of our government to provide families with what should be some basic rights, to my own experience.
“I had a lovely childhood, but because no such thing as universal childcare exists, some of my earliest memories involve conversations and arguments around debt, and sensing the stress from my parents. ”
The United States is an outlier in any number of things, many of which reflect rather shamefully on us. Of no exception is our lack of paid family leave. The U.S. is one of only three countries in the world that doesn’t offer paid time off to all workers to care for a child. There are countries with fascist dictators and far-right governments that offer what the wealthiest nation in the world refuses to, and the pandemic has only exacerbated the problem. Huge numbers of childcare facilities have shut down permanently, and meanwhile many parents are expected to be back at work. There’s the added layer now of states insisting on reopening schools, and we mustn’t fall into the trap of thinking of teachers as babysitters, or substitutes for childcare.
This is far from a new problem. The first International Congress of Working Women convened in 1919 argued for 12 weeks of paid maternity leave as not just a social right, but as an issue of medical necessity. Since then, the United States is the only developed country in the world not to meet or exceed what is now considered an international standard. We might also consider the increased need for people (especially young people) to care for sick relatives, something we can take time off for under the Family Medical Leave Act, but we’re not required by any federal law to continue receiving a salary if we do.
That the issue of paid leave has fallen into the domain of women’s groups and feminist activists is hardly surprising. The group that tends to suffer most for want of childcare and paid leave are women after all. The issues that plagued women around their assumed role as caregivers in 1919 haven’t changed much in the modern age, they’ve just been updated. Women who take maternity leave usually do so at the beginning of their careers, which can mean major setbacks not just for them, but has a role in the gender wage disparities we continue to see. Women of color, working class women, single mothers -- they all bear an even greater burden, and one that ends up affecting the young people coming into the workforce. Frankly, anyone who claims to be any kind of feminist ought to care about implementing universal childcare and paid family leave -- whether or not you plan to have a family.
We can have universal childcare, and help ease some of these disparities. It’s not some pipe dream. 70% of Americans support federally-funded preschool programs that are made available to every child. 82% support paid maternity leave, and 69% paid paternity leave. We’ve even done it already -- under the Works Progress Administration and during World War II, to say nothing of current military child-care centers, which is the only non-means tested, federally-funded, and subsidized program in the United States.
As we look into a post-COVID era, we can’t underestimate the childcare crisis. We can’t rely on only those with families to demand these reforms, because in the end it affects us all. Everyone deserves a decent standard of living, and if we want it for ourselves, we must insist on those standards for others.
