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Three not-so-trivial reasons America needs paid parental leave? Happiness, health, and productivity, says Lauren Smith Brody, founder of The Fifth Trimester. Of the 18 top-performing economies in the world, the United States is the only country that does not allow guaranteed paid leave, and it's ranked in the bottom 10 of 193 UN member states. "When you look at the science of what a good parental leave looks like, it is six months of paid leave," says Smith Brody. Research shows that six months is the point at which a mother is much less likely to suffer from a postpartum mood disorder or anxiety disorder, that children are more likely to be vaccinated on time and suffer from less ear and respiratory infections. It's also a boon to the economy, as nations like Norway show by giving 12 months of paid parental leave while maintaining the highest per capita GDP of any top economic country in the world. Paid parental leave is not the drain on resources people erroneously assume, says Smith Brody. The United States could and should have a policy that helps support the economy, and creates a healthier and happier next generation that can contribute in turn. The Fifth Trimester: The Working Mom's Guide to Style, Sanity, and Success After Baby

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LAUREN SMITH BRODY:

Lauren Smith Brody is the founder of The Fifth Trimester movement and the author of the #1 bestseller The Fifth Trimester: The Working Mom's Guide to Style, Sanity, and Big Success After Baby. Prior to launching T5T, Lauren had a 16-year career in magazine publishing, most recently as the longtime executive editor of Glamour magazine at Condé Nast, where she produced the Women of the Year awards, honoring luminaries like Dr. Maya Angelou and Hillary Clinton.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Lauren Smith Brody: The United States ranks dead last in the world in terms of the support that it gives new parents after having a baby. It’s just fact. Of the top 18 economies in the world, the United States is the only country that does not allow for any paid leave at all.

So we do have unpaid leave, which is a little bit of a misnomer. People think, “Oh, well you can get parental leave. If you’re a dad or a mom you can take time.” Well, you can if you can afford it.

First of all, only 56 percent of American workers qualify for FMLA because of the stipulations. You have to be at a company that has 50 employees. You have to have worked full time for a year. You have to be working within a certain radius of your company’s home base. So that automatically disqualifies a lot of people.

But then when you look at who can actually afford to take 12 weeks of unpaid leave per child, the numbers go down even further. And what you end up with is that 25 percent of new American mothers go back to work less than two weeks after having had a baby, which is just so markedly different from how it is in the rest of the world.

And I think a lot of people think, erroneously, that it would be really costly for our country to have some sort of paid leave program, but when you look at the other top performing economies in the world, these other countries that have—first of all, they have parity between moms and dads. They have the same leave for adoptive parents. They have all kinds of things that just make this about actually helping produce the next generation in a way that will make that generation go on to also support the economy.

So in Norway—Norway is consistently ranked as the happiest country in the world. Wonderful. That makes sense. They have almost a year of paid leave. Moms and dads are allowed to share it. It sounds great. But when you look at the economy, they are also the top producing—their GDP is the highest per capita of any top economic country in the world. It’s kind of amazing.

And on top of that, they have more moms who work than any country in the world. They also have more moms who work full time, which is a really important distinction. It’s not just that they have, you know, mothers really involved in the workplace. They have mothers who are REALLY involved in the workplace, are also incredibly happy, have also taken this time away from their jobs. And somehow the economy is still moving forward at a good clip.

This is so far away from what we have in the United States, it’s almost—it’s sad, but it’s almost laughable

The women I interviewed told me that they felt better, kind o...

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