Paid family leave will never work

It didn’t work.

“We find little evidence that [the Paid Family Leave Act] increased women’s employment, wage earnings, or attachment to employers. For new mothers, taking up PFLA reduced employment by 7 percent and lowered annual wages by 8 percent six to ten years after giving birth.” As a rather significant side note, it reduced fertility as well.

Paid leave is one of those concepts that sounds good in theory but rarely produces the intended results. Unless paid leave was offered for a period of 3 years (which would cripple small businesses, creating an entirely different problem), rather than for the proposed 12 weeks, it’s counterproductive. It just doesn’t keep women in the workforce.

It also doesn’t address the reality of motherhood or parenting in general. I remember talking to a husband and father who’d recently had his first child. He noted that America “has this maternity leave thing all wrong.” Twelve weeks in, he said, is when things just start to get good.

He’s right. During the first few months at home with a new baby, parents are simply trying to keep their heads above water. The three-month mark is when the fun begins.

That’s one of the reasons California’s 2004 Paid Family Leave Act backfired. The intent was to get mothers back to the office, but the mothers who took advantage of it had more time to bond with their babies. Yes, that’s a good thing. But it’s also far more likely to make these women want to stay with their babies than it is to leave them. Many did just that.

Others wound up transitioning to more flexible work arrangements or cutting back their hours altogether. Even more interesting is that the reduction in employment and earnings was greater for unmarried women. How this group managed it is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, what the test run proves is that, ultimately, paid leave is up against maternal desire. That’s a very hard thing to penetrate.

The bigger question is, why are we trying to penetrate it in the first place? Nearly half of the country believes children are better off when one parent stays home. That’s also what most mothers want to do. The number one choice of most women with children (67%) is part-time work or none at all. A policy that reflects this desire would make more sense.

Finally, “affordable, high quality” child care, one of Ivanka Trump’s stated goals, is impossible. In order for any daycare to be “high quality” (to the degree that it can be), there must be a very small child-to-caregiver ratio. Moreover, those caregivers must be willing to stick around for the long haul — and they rarely do.

That has always been the underlying challenge of daycare. There just aren’t enough smart, healthy, stable caregivers who are willing to stick around to take care of other people’s children on a full-time basis. Daycare centers are notorious for their high turnover rates, and the only way to potentially change that would be to pay those caregivers the big bucks. In order to do that, daycare centers would have to charge families significantly more. Ergo, “affordable” and “high quality” can never coexist in child care.

The only way daycare has a fighting chance is if fewer families use it. If child care remained in effect for lower-income families, rather than be open to anyone who simply wanted to use it, its quality would improve. Think of the difference between Home Depot and your neighborhood hardware store. The neighborhood store may be more expensive, but the quality of the service is far superior.

Trump should stick with what he knows best, rather than kowtow to his daughter. Clearly, neither one knows what most mothers want and, more importantly, what children need.

Suzanne Venker (@SuzanneVenker) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is an author, columnist, and radio host. Her newest book, WOMEN WHO WIN at Love: How to Build a Relationship That Lasts was published in October 2019. Suzanne’s website is www.suzannevenker.com.