Inadequate paid maternity leave has devastating effect on families

I frequently hear from women in Hawaii who work full-time jobs and also serve as primary caretakers for their loved ones — children, elderly parents, an ill spouse. 

Their stories are heartbreaking: one woman developed complications while pregnant with twins. She was able to use her sick leave so that she could stay home, thereby decreasing the risk of miscarriage. She exhausted her small amount of sick leave by her due date. 

Her twins were born via cesarean section, and given the underlying complications prior to their birth, this should have warranted at least eight weeks off for her alone to recover. 

She made a heart-wrenching decision, knowing that her family could not financially stay afloat if she remained on unpaid leave, and there was a chance she could lose her job. 

Two weeks later, she found herself handing her two small premature babies to a stranger and she was back at work.

Nearly 1 in 4 women in the United States go back to work within two weeks of childbirth, to devastating results, according to new data released in Sharon Lerner’s article "In These Times." 

Lerner painfully followed multiple new parents who have had to make an unthinkable decision: Do I stay home to care for a new baby and possibly lose my job or foreclose on my home? Or, do I return to work so that I can keep my job?

Lerner found that a growing number of American women choose the latter because most cannot afford to take unpaid leave and an even larger number do not qualify for the 12 weeks of unpaid leave offered through the Family and Medical Leave Act. 

Our own Hawaii Family Leave Law protects very few workers, and only applies to individuals employed at businesses of 100 employees or more, offering much less: Four weeks of unpaid leave (even for childbirth). 

Lerner’s research revealed the devastating effects on families, on our economy, our workforce and our children: Paid leave can be a matter of life and death for our children, as infant mortality decreases when paid leave was increased. 

Shorter maternity leaves are associated with an increase in depressive symptoms and an increase in the likelihood of severe depression. 

Shorter maternity leaves may also have a negative effect on the development of early motor and social skills, and later on, vocabulary. 

These effects are even more pronounced for low-income women, who lack access to leave and other support systems to help them stay afloat during a difficult time. 

Lerner noted: "Without adequate options or support, low income workers, who are more likely to live paycheck to paycheck and less likely to have access to any type of leave, often have little choice but to power through. … Less educated women, who tend to have lower paying jobs, are likely to take less time off after having children. Often, that means not just going back to work early, but going back to very long work hours, very early."

The woman who shared her story with me had a difficult time returning to work. She limped to work the first few weeks. She tried to pump breast milk for her twins while she was in her car during her lunch break. She cried when she returned home, sad that she was missing out on a time with her babies that she wouldn’t ever get back. 

There are 2.5 million employees who need time off from work to care for themselves or another but cannot afford it, creating a problem of epic proportions.

The silver lining: We have the means to fix this problem. But, do we have the will?