Americans should be rightly alarmed that the country’s birth rates have declined to yet another new low — falling by 23% over the last nearly two decades.
But they aren’t dropping for political reasons — the drop is as stark in Texas as it is in New York.
They’re dropping, I fervently believe, because America is one of only seven countries out of 193 in the world — and the only developed country of those — not to offer national paid maternity leave.
If you are a working woman and have a baby in this country — unless you are in the minority of people who have access to the benefit through their job, or the state they live (14 have a form of paid leave), or have a partner well off enough to support the family on one income — you will find yourself back at work within weeks of giving birth.
In fact, according to a rare study by the Department of Labor, one in four women has returned to work within just 12 days of giving birth.
This feels unconscionable, when — as most women who have given birth know — you will still be bleeding two months postpartum.
You will also be sleepless, exhausted, and out of your mind with anxiety to be away from your newborn.
But you will be back at work because often that is the only option on the table to ensure you have health insurance.
Is it really a surprise then that women don’t want to give birth multiple times (2.1 per American woman, to be precise) needed to keep the population afloat?
It isn’t, as many have argued, because women don’t want to reproduce, or because they don’t know or want the joy that comes from one of the greatest gifts in life. It’s not even necessarily because they can’t afford it.
It’s because right now, those first weeks postpartum are often steeped in a trauma no one can really understand unless you’ve been through it — having to leave your child weeks, months, maybe even a year before you’re ready.
I’ve wondered many times what has stopped us in America from wanting to join the rest of the world in supporting new parenthood in this vital way.
Strong, bonded family units begin by giving moms the time they need at home after having a baby.
I can only speak to my own deeply personal challenges, but after the birth of my first daughter, I was broken — physically and emotionally.
After a difficult and quite literally scarring birth, I couldn’t walk, or sit, properly for at least 7 weeks. I had panic attacks when I left the house. I didn’t sleep because I worried constantly that something would happen to my daughter.
Nothing about the way I thought was rational, and I still get upset thinking about it. Had I not had six months of paid leave — I was lucky enough to give birth in the UK, where a year is standard — I don’t know how I would have survived with my sanity intact.
I mean that completely seriously. And I for sure would never have had another child.
Of course, there are other factors why people are choosing not to have kids — people have cited childcare costs, housing unaffordability, career uncertainty.
But so much of that worry stems from a core concern — that before all of those things comes this: that in the very first days and weeks postpartum, when all you want to do is be a mom, be with your child, forget about the stress of work, you are already worrying about how little time you have left at home.
President Donald Trump became the first commander-in-chief in history to actually do something about it, since the passage of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave act that mandated 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave.
In 2019, he signed into law 12 weeks of paid parental leave for all federal civilian employees — giving access to over 2.1 million Americans. Right now, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will be taking that very same benefit.
Those 12 paid weeks, where federally employed new parents don’t have to worry about covering their bills, are a gift.
But paid parental leave remains out of reach for the majority of working people in America.
I am not naive to the costs, and for that reason alone, there are those who stand opposed. It is an expensive policy — estimated at $325 billion annually if the government were to self-fund it, climbing only higher if the benefit encourages people to have more children.
In fact, even former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) balked at the financing, vetoing paid leave in Biden’s failed 2021 Build Back Better Bill.
But there is another way forward — a path followed by many other countries in the world that offer the benefit.
A national insurance, or additional Social Security-type payment, that is lower cost — because of the volume of people paying it — and self-sustaining. It would likely bring down New Yorkers’ current state-paid leave tax contributions by a significant margin.
Again, there are those on both political sides who can find ways to poke holes in this. Birth rates are still falling in countries with paid leave, but ours are among the worst.
There is no perfect solution to please everyone. But in the meantime, new moms are left to flounder, and birth rates are falling and falling and falling.
And yet paid leave, for the electorate, remains one of the most politically unifying and universally supported policies in the country.
Vice President JD Vance spoke movingly in 2024 during the vice presidential debate about how his wife, Usha, had embraced her access to paid leave for their children, and said about the country’s lack of a national policy, “We could do a heck of a lot better.”
Women are turning away from motherhood at an alarming rate. Mandating national paid leave is a way to show women that motherhood is valued, upheld, honored and sacred.
That time with their children, without the worry of paying bills or putting food on the table, is the most important thing.
That is family first. And I believe it’s what will restore our faith in having children.
