Ask most parents, and they’ll likely tell you that bringing home a new child is equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion. The first days and weeks following your little one's arrival are a precious time for bonding, caregiving and adjusting to the new demands and responsibilities that come with building a family.
Whether your child arrives via birth, adoption, surrogacy or foster care, the ability for a parent to take time off from work and devote undivided attention to exclusively being mom or dad is critical to a child’s cognitive, emotional, and social development and well-being.
For many heterosexual parents, mothers have historically taken maternity leave from work to spend quality time with a new baby, and fathers are increasingly taking advantage of paternity leave to do the same.
But for parents who identify as LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer), the journey to parenthood is often more complex, and navigating parental leave as an LGBTQ+ parent can be fraught with unexpected hurdles. Here’s what LGBTQ+ families need to consider when navigating paid parental leave.
Barriers to paid parental leave for LGBTQ+ parents
Adequate paid leave offers all parents the chance to learn essential parenting skills firsthand, and offers many benefits.
In a study published by the Journal of Health Economics, researchers evaluated the impact of the length of maternity leave on the long-term health outcomes of children. The study followed children of working mothers whose leave from work ranged from two months to six months following the birth of a child. Over a nearly 20-year period, researchers found positive long-term health effects of the children who had longer periods of care with their mothers, including better social development and decreased child mortality and hospitalizations.
Parental leave has also shown benefits to maternal health, with women who took 12 weeks or more less likely to experience symptoms of postpartum depression.
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But while it’s easy to see how important parental leave is for new moms and dads, a disproportionate number of parents in the U.S. (either heterosexual or LGBTQ+) simply can’t afford or don’t qualify to take leave from work to spend time caring for their children.
According to Pew Research Center, the U.S. is the only country among 41 nations that doesn’t have a federally mandated paid leave program for new parents. For the other 40 countries that participate in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), periods of paid parental leave range from two months to more than a year and a half.
And despite progress in recent years, only 23 percent of civilian and private industry workers had access to paid family leave, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the U.S., women have traditionally taken a leave of absence from work when a child arrives. Unfortunately, the U.S. labor laws that regulate maternity leave continue to lag behind most industrialized countries. Worse, LGBTQ+ parents often fall between the cracks of non-inclusive parental leave policies and laws because they may not be the gestational or biological parents to their little ones.
LGBTQ+ individuals and couples create families through various means: adoption, birth, surrogacy and foster care. But parents who identify as LGBTQ+ often face additional challenges when it comes to accessing paid parental leave — barriers that can be exacerbated by non-inclusive employer policies, as well as state and federal laws that don’t always recognize the diversity, unique needs and circumstances of LGBTQ+ families.
For example, some companies and local laws offer leave to traditional caregivers, mostly mothers (birth and adoptive) and birth fathers. But by focusing leave on a child’s so-called “primary caregiver,” LGBTQ+ individuals and couples who have non-traditional family units and different child care distribution can be penalized. Take one study published in the Journal of Social Policy, which found that gay fathers around the world receive less paid parental leave than all other parents, including lesbian couples and straight couples.
Tips for LGBTQ+ parents when navigating paid parental leave
LGBTQ+ parents often find themselves navigating confusing corporate policies and local leave laws to determine whether or not they qualify for paid parental leave. If they don't, LGBTQ+ parents often resort to stitching together vacation time and unpaid leave from work to spend time with their new children.
The key for LGBTQ+ parents to successfully navigate parental leave — particularly paid parental leave — means understanding your employer’s benefits and policies; researching local, state and federal laws and regulations; and knowing both the right questions to ask and when to push to get support.
Before you welcome home a new child, consider the following:
Know your legal rights
In the absence of federal legislation that grants paid parental leave to new parents, a handful of states and localities have passed laws that support paid family and medical leave, including California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Washington and Washington, D.C.
Three more states, Connecticut, Oregon and Colorado, will implement paid parental and family medical leave benefits within in the next couple of years. Although details and pay caps vary, new parents who live in these jurisdictions can take advantage of this social safety net.
The Federal Employee Paid Leave Act (FEPLA) that went into effect in October 2020 also grants federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave for the birth of a child, or placement of a foster or adopted child.
Know your company’s leave policy
An increasing number of private organizations have stepped up to offer supportive benefits that include paid time off upon the birth, adoption or foster care of a new child. The good news? Many companies offer these benefits to new parents regardless of their gender and legal or biological parental status.
If you're not sure, check with your company’s human resource department or look at the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, an annual benchmarking tool of corporate policies and benefits that support LGBTQ+ employees.
Know the difference between the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and paid parental leave
The passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993 was the first federal law that gave workers job-protected time off in order to care for a newborn, a newly adopted child or to care for any family member. Eligible workers can take up to 12 weeks of leave.
The catch? That time off is entirely unpaid. The reality is that most workers simply can’t afford to be unpaid, and this is especially true for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) parents.
LGBTQ+ parents may have to cobble together a patchwork of options to create a parental leave plan that works: combining vacation time, company-sponsored paid parental leave (if available) and unpaid FMLA time off.
Know when to negotiate
When it comes to parental leave, policies at larger companies tend to be more generous, but also more rigid. While smaller companies (fewer than 50 employees) are exempt from providing FMLA, there may be an opportunity to negotiate a leave plan that works for the new parent as well as the employer.
As for the future of paid parental leave? Despite the many challenges LGBTQ+ parents and families face when it comes to building their families, the good news is that acceptance and progress are happening, albeit slowly. These days, more and more companies are embracing gender-neutral parental leave policies and there's a growing commitment to more inclusive employee benefits.
With a growing chorus calling for more equitable, family-friendly corporate policies and federal laws to support families of all kinds, generous paid parental leave may finally become the norm instead of the exception in the U.S.
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