Moms Lose An Average Of $9500 By Taking Maternity Leave, Despite Taking Far Less Time Off Than They Need
Why do we accept this barbaric system?
Alena Ozerova | Canva Pro It's no secret that America's work culture when it comes to new moms severely misses the mark, from our staggeringly unaffordable childcare to our lack of federally guaranteed maternity leave.
A new study puts this situation into perspective, showing just how much harder our systems make having a child, and especially how much it exacerbates an already unequal financial playing field for women and parents.
A survey by WhatToExpect shows maternity leave costs moms $9500 on average.
If you're lucky enough to be in a corporate environment that provides paid maternity or even paternity leave, these numbers may surprise you. However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about a quarter of American workers have access to paid maternity leave — and even for that 27% who do, the leave itself is usually insufficient (more on that later).
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Accordingly, in a survey of nearly 2,300 women 18 to 54 with at least one child under 5, the parenting website WhatToExpect found that more than half had taken some form of unpaid leave to care for their new babies.
This includes moms whose jobs either didn't offer paid leave or, as is nearly always the case in the U.S., didn't offer enough leave for their needs. And for those moms, all those missed wages really add up — they lost an average of $9480 by taking that crucial time off to heal, recover, and bond with their children.
The survey found the financial fallout of this loss of wages during maternity leave is substantial.
WhatToExpect found that this drastic pay cut has dire repercussions for many parents, which is no surprise given that pay is so often insufficient these days in the first place — $9480 is about one-sixth of the average American worker's annual salary.
Even worse, this pay cut arrives right alongside the medical bills parents receive after having a baby, which amount to an average of nearly $3000 out of pocket — IF you have employer-provided health insurance. For those who don't, it's often orders of magnitude more.
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Either way, the financial hit can be debilitating. WhatToExpect found that 43% of families have to cut back on all discretionary spending, 37% had to drain their savings, and nearly a quarter had to start living on credit cards.
As one mom they spoke to put it, "I am using all of my savings to cover my expenses while I'm out of work. In an economy that generally requires two incomes to afford housing, maternity leave, and childcare are two very challenging obstacles to navigate."
The vast majority of moms are not taking anywhere near as much maternity leave as they need.
It would be one thing if these costs were incurred while parents were at least able to take the amount of leave they actually need to both recover from birth, adjust to child-rearing, and adequately care for and bond with their babies.
But virtually nobody is able to do so. In a separate survey, WhatToExpect found that moms were taking an average of 11 weeks of maternity leave. But a full 25% of moms take just six weeks of leave — often the standard amount that is offered by employers with paid maternity leave.
That is woefully inadequate just from a recovery perspective alone, which can take months. But WhatToExpect found that feeling ready to go back to work takes months as well.
Their survey showed that it took moms an average of 13 weeks to feel properly bonded with their babies and to find their groove when it comes to things like breastfeeding, 21 weeks to feel like they've adapted to their new role as a parent, and a full 31 weeks — nearly eight months — to feel like they're actually ready to go back to work.
And when it comes to their partners, the situation isn't much better—29% of respondents said their partner was only able to take a few days off to bond with their new baby.
America is one of just 7 countries worldwide without guaranteed parental leave.
It is frankly bizarre that the U.S. forces parents into this position — even some of the poorest countries in the world provide some level of paid maternity leave to their citizens. The U.S. is one of just seven countries that don't — the other six being tiny nations with a fraction of the resources the U.S. has.
It simply does not make any sense that we do this to parents, even from an economic perspective. When parents are forced to stop spending money to make up for essentially taking a $10,000 pay cut to have a kid, that's an economic drag, after all.
Spending tax dollars on things that actually benefit its citizens has basically been anathema to American politicians for decades now, but this is one area where the current system simply makes no sense.
It's frankly barbaric, and we should stop accepting it from our politicians and employers alike.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.