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Editor's note: Join columnist MP Dunleavey and a group of women as they seek to strip away the myths around money, liberate themselves from debt and find financial sanity. Follow the ongoing quest of the Women in Red every other Wednesday in Dunleavey's column on MSN Money.
Let me tell you about my encounter with a Swedish woman I happened to meet while on my honeymoon in Greece three years ago.
My husband and I were on the romantic little island of Hydra because we were newlyweds. This woman was lounging on the beach with her husband and two tiny daughters because she was on maternity leave.
Like everyone else in America, I'd heard that Europeans have far more generous maternity policies than we do. There she was, all blond and relaxed, lying on a chaise while her toddler played in the sand with Dad, and her 4-month-old lay next to her under an umbrella.
It was hard not to hate her -- or want to move to Sweden -- when she told me the nauseating amount of time off Swedish mothers get: up to 480 days of paid leave.
I am not arguing that women must get a full year off with 80% pay and free meatballs, as they do in Sweden -- or maybe it was Ikea furniture, I don't know. My head was spinning.
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But in terms of time, money and job flexibility, the United States' parental-leave policies lag so far behind everyone else in the world that they're a disgrace.
As a longtime freelancer, when I became pregnant I knew I'd pretty much have to fund my own maternity leave. What I didn't know is that whether you freelance or you're fully employed, it makes little difference: Women and their families face a ridiculous number of hurdles, financial and otherwise, when they try to take time off after the birth of a child.
A flawed law
When I said the United States is way behind in its parental-leave policies, I wasn't kidding.In 2004, Jody Heymann, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, studied maternity policies in more than 160 countries. All of them provided some sort of parental leave, paid for by the government -- except Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Lesotho and . . . the good ol' U.S. of A.
I don't know about you, but the number of weeks I can afford to take unpaid is zero.
Even the National Partnership for Women & Families, which wrote the family-leave law and helped to get it passed in 1993, is quick to point out its shortcomings:
- Many people aren't covered by the law because they don't meet its criteria. You need to have worked essentially full time for one year for a company with at least 50 employees.
- If workers aren't covered by the law, their employers are under no obligation to provide any maternity leave, paid or unpaid. Nor are they obligated to continue health benefits during any leave workers may take.
So how many companies step up and keep that paycheck coming, at least for a few weeks after you give birth? Probably about half, right?
Try 7%. According to a 2005 study by the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit research group in New York, only 7% of companies offer at least six weeks off with some pay.
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