Bryce Covert has a fascinating article in the Nation right now about how baby-having can put you deep in debt — not just because babies are expensive, but because U.S. parental leave policies put impossible financial strain on new parents.
When it comes to taking time off for a new baby, the best-laid plans often go awry. Sonya Underwood had worked at a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, for eleven years before getting pregnant with her third son. As a single mother, she prepared to cover the income she would lose during her unpaid leave, hoarding paid time off and taking out disability insurance. And then real life intervened. Doctors told Underwood that she had an incompetent cervix and put her on bed rest three weeks ahead of schedule. Then her son arrived at twenty-six weeks. The twelve weeks of leave she is guaranteed by the Family and Medical Leave Act soon ran out, as did the insurance, even though her son remained in the NICU. “I didn’t have any money left,” Underwood said. So she went back to work and visited him at the hospital every day.
But once her son came home, Underwood’s situation quickly became untenable. Daycare centers wouldn’t take a medically fragile baby. Her human resources department informed her that her only choice was more unpaid leave. “It didn’t help out my situation because I still had rent due, my car note due, utilities, everything else,” she said. After she exhausted that leave, she was let go from her job, lost her car and couldn’t qualify for unemployment insurance because of her role as her son’s caretaker. The only places left to turn were Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and a loan she already knew would be difficult to pay back. “I’m a victim of FMLA because it didn’t help my family,” she concluded.
Disgusting. Paying to birth your baby is bad enough, but racking up bills because said baby is early or ill? It’s callous. Losing your job because your baby is gravely ill? That is brutal.
Seems like building a happy and healthy family is, like most things in the US, solely for the rich. Dysfunction, poverty and struggling to survive seem like the default. But, y’know, contraception and abortion are WRONG, so don’t even think about them, even if you can afford them.
There are countries with paid maternity/paternity/adoption leave, free contraception and abortion, socialised medicine and welfare. These countries have not collapsed.
It sometimes seems like the US might actually be engineering (and benefiting from) the poverty of it’s people. I hate to think why, it’s too scary.
I see this as more about our general lack of a social safety net than about parenting, though having a baby is one of the events that can highlight it.
The long version of this is Ann Crittenden’s “The Price of Motherhood.” It was written about ten years ago, and I can’t speak to it’s accuracy today, but the sentiments are the same. Until mothers are rewarded in any tangible sense for the creation of human capital, we’re fucked.
I disagree that she is a “victim” of FMLA–she’s a victim of the fact that FMLA is so completely inadequate. It’s okay, but not great, if you have a healthy, on-time delivery, a baby with no unusual health problems, either a second income or enough savings to get through three months without a paycheck, and access to child care when your 12 weeks are up. It’s useless if you have to stop working before your baby is born because of medical complications, if your baby is born premature or ill, if you can’t get by without three months of pay, or if affordable quality childcare of some kind isn’t available once your time is up. All FMLA does is allow you to take time off to care for a baby without losing your job. It’s really not enough.
I’d love to see something done. My son was healthy at birth, despite being a touch premature, but then had to have surgery on his skull at three months old.
I was lucky. My husband’s insurance covered it adequately, although we had to pay out about $3000 for the helmets he needed the first few months after. I worked at home, so the 2-3 appointments a week after weren’t impossible. I can’t imagine how a mom working outside the home would have done it. The amount of time off for doctor’s appointments, the little extra bits of general care required the first three months after the surgery… that would have been awful if I had had to be at work at certain times.
FMLA’s a start, but not nearly enough. I was lucky in my job’s flexibility, but that’s not true for most families.
I completely agree with Jennifer! It isn’t about parenting but a lack of social safety net. It’s kinda scary to think that the one [male politician] who “engineer” the policy is someone who “will never pay” for the price of being a mother bearing a child.
If only they were to “walk in our shoes”…
Dawn