After the end of the World War II the question of family and parental leave was brought to the forefront of America's mind. Women took over the jobs men typically had during the war, and, after the end of the war, they didn’t want to simply return to staying at home and raising children. With their wish to stay in the workforce, employers for forced to figure out what the policies would be if women were to become pregnant. The question of paternal leave was not prevalent at this time because it was still believed that the mother figure would do the majority of the work caring for the child.
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The government has taken on the issue of parental leave both paid and unpaid. One of the earliest bills was the Family Employment Security Act (FESA) in 1984. The FESA proposed 26 weeks of unpaid leave, job protection even though activists actually felt the leave should be paid rather than unpaid. The law was not passed and later chanced to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) after several changes to the law and its name. This law required the individual to work at a company of at least employees and had to work at least three months or 500 hours at the company. The law also included the care of children, a spouse, and an elderly family member but the time allowed is 36 weeks over a 2-year time frame. The FMLA was ultimately vetoed by President G. Bush twice. Eventually, it was passed by President Clinton after his election in 1993. The FMLA was amended and changed the definition of spouse in order to also cover same-sex couples. Although many states have their own laws about paternal leave activists are still looking for a national ruling to have a unified ruling in regards to paternal leave in the United States.
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This article, What’s the deal with Parental Leave in America? written by Sam Vickars and Michael Hester in December of 2018, talks about, you guessed it, parental leave in America. This article compares America’s laws regarding parental leave to other developed countries around the world. Of the developed countries, America is the only one that doesn’t offer government-sponsored, paid maternity leave. Sweden offers more than a year, coming in at sixty-eight paid weeks of maternity leave and eighteen weeks of paid paternity leave at eighty percent for both. More specific to America, the article talks about the average time of paid and unpaid leave per company. While there is no law that requires leave, many big companies still implement it in their policies. The list of the top ten U.S. companies ranges from five to twenty weeks of paid maternity leave and zero to twelve weeks of paid paternity leave. The average paid maternity leave in America, comes in at eight weeks for maternity and four and a half for paternity. While this is a movement in the right direction compared to the past, it is still nothing like the rest of the world.