Trump’s paid leave proposal could backfire on women and families

It’s no secret that the United States remains the only developed country that has failed to provide paid leave for parents, many of whom are forced to return to work soon after the birth of a child or face the financial consequences of taking unpaid time off. Citing a need to help working women, President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign proposed that he would try to pass a maternity leave policy that provides new mothers with six weeks of paid time off following the birth of a child. Considering that current U.S. federal law is limited to 12 weeks of unpaid leave through the Family Medical and Leave Act, Trump’s proposal would expand our current national policies.  A deeper examination of his proposal, however, reveals it to be lacking in multiple ways that could potentially backfire for women, families, and the U.S. economy.

First, the level of pay Trump proposes is insufficient to keep families afloat at a time when household expenses go up to care for a new child. Trump plan calls to “enhance” unemployment insurance to include six weeks of paid leave to new mothers (although there are questions about whether this is legal). How much these payments are in total depends on the state, but Trump’s proposal claims that it would be about $300 per week on average. That’s less than half of women’s current median weekly earnings of $751 per week. This would leave families with too little income considering that having a child is expensive, and the level of household income during infancy has a sizeable effect on children’s long-term health and well-being. And a plan that slashes pay by more than half might still mean that mothers would have to return to work earlier than they would otherwise.

Then there is the fact that Trump’s proposal only applies to new mothers who have given birth. Of course, women need time to physically recover from childbirth. But providing leave only to new mothers excludes fathers and parents that adopt or have a child via a surrogate, as well as the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, and non-parental caregivers. Even in heterosexual families, a mother-only policy reinforces the assumption that women are the only ones responsible for caretaking while men act as the breadwinner. This notion is woefully out of touch with how families currently look: Today, women are the breadwinners in 40 percent of families with children under 18, while men are taking on a larger share of the domestic and care work. And for many communities, women have always worked.

Excluding men is problematic for pay equity as well. The research shows that giving leave to men as well as women is an important tool in fighting the gender pay gap, which continues to threaten women’s long-term financial security and hurts the majority of families who depend on women’s earnings. At work, there is evidence that work-family policies that are limited to or only used by women can lead employers to single out young women (even those without children) for discrimination, affecting their long term pay and advancement. In contrast, a 2015 report by the World Economic Forum finds that countries that have more gender-neutral paid leave policies are making more strides toward closing the gender wage gap, and have stronger economies because of women’s increased earnings due to their participation in the labor market.

Addressing the gender wage gap also means addressing what happens at home, and giving fathers family leave can make a difference. After the birth of a child, women tend to take on more of the childcare duties, limiting the kinds of jobs they can take and how much they can actually work. But a carefully designed, gender-neutral paid leave policy can help socialize men to help more at home, freeing up time for women if they want to work. One study by Ankita Patnaik of Mathematica Policy Research finds that Quebec’s use-it-or-lose-it “daddy quota” had a “large and persistent impact on gender dynamics within households even years after the leave period ended,” creating a more equal distribution of labor at home and raising the likelihood that a woman was employed full-time. Other researchers show similar findings.

Families today, operating in an era defined by rising income inequality and stagnant wages, increasingly need two incomes to stay afloat. President-elect Trump’s proposal was put forth during the campaign, and there are no guarantees that any eventual policy will resemble the original proposal. But if his new administration is serious about helping women and families—and the economy as well—a policy that lessens women’s earning potential is not the best way to proceed.