The Best Parental Leave Law in the U.S. Still Has Nothing on Sweden

Moms and dads in the City by the Bay need paid leave to pay for rent, er, baby.

(Photo: Dann Tardif/Getty Images)

Apr 6, 2016· 2 MIN READ

Culture and education editor Liz Dwyer has written about race, parenting, and social justice for several national publications. She was previously education editor at Good.

Lately, San Francisco’s gotten a bad rep for its sky-high housing costs and the story of a tech bro who complained to the mayor about having to look at "homeless riff-raff." But thanks to a new parental leave ordinance, the City by the Bay is proving that its progressive roots aren’t gone for good.

On Tuesday the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a groundbreaking law that grants six weeks of fully paid parental leave to new moms and dads employed by companies with more than 20 employees that operate there. Beginning in 2017 employers will pay 45 percent of the salary of an employee who takes parental leave, while the other 55 percent will be provided by California's worker-funded state disability program. The ordinance, which is the most extensive of its kind in an American city, will apply to both birth and adoptive parents.

“Our country's parental leave policies are woefully behind the rest of the world, and today San Francisco has taken the lead in pushing for better family leave policies for our workers,” Scott Wiener, the board member who proposed the ordinance, said in a statement.

The United States is the only nation in the developed world that doesn’t mandate paid leave for new moms. The Family and Medical Leave Act allows workers at companies with more than 50 employees to take 12 weeks of leave—but that doesn’t mean an employer has to pay people who take time off, and many new parents live paycheck to paycheck. Only 12 percent of American workers have access to paid leave through an employer, according to the Department of Labor. As a result parents are left to cobble together their limited sick leave and vacation days.

“We shouldn't be forcing new mothers and fathers to choose between spending precious bonding time with their children and putting food on the table,” said Wiener.

How out of step is the United States? New moms in Sweden can spend 60 weeks at home with their baby and receive 80 percent of their salary during that time, while in Norway, they can stay at home for 46 weeks and receive 100 percent of their pay.

Research shows that paid parental leave “improves child health outcomes, including increased birthweight, decreased premature births, and decreased infant mortality,” according to the U.S. Department of Labor. It also makes parents less likely to rely on public assistance, encourages women's participation in the workforce, and boosts men’s involvement in their families.

San Francisco’s ordinance comes on the heels of several prominent tech companies and the U.S. Navy expanding their leave policies to keep top talent. Netflix offers one year of paid parental leave, and last year the United States Navy announced that it would provide 18 weeks of paid maternity leave, which is on par with what Google provides.

The recognition of the need for more generous (and realistic) leave seems to be growing nationally. In January New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a law that mandated six weeks of paid leave for about 20,000 public employees in Gotham. (San Francisco already had a similar law that benefited about 30,000 public sector workers.) On Monday New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law that will phase in 12 weeks of paid leave for private sector workers in the Empire State by 2021.