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We have to change the conversation around paid leave. As currently framed, it is too easily caricatured as a demand by working women to be paid by hard-pressed employers to stay home and take care of babies whom they should be home with in the first place. In fact, most American women working for pay do so to provide for their families, just as their spouses do. Indeed, all conversations about paid leave might profitably begin with a reminder that middle class American families have maintained their standard of living since the 1970s almost entirely through having Mom go to work alongside Dad.
Still, the culture wars surrounding support for working families continue when it comes to working women. We cannot remind Americans often enough that the Comprehensive Child Development Act, a bill creating a federally subsidized network of daycare centers available to all families, passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan majorities in 1971. President Richard Nixon was set to sign it until it got tangled up in his historic visit to China. Opponents of the bill began to argue it would constitute the “Sovietization of American children,” allowing the federal government to meddle with their minds. Nixon adviser Pat Buchanan wrote the veto message and added in the conservative evangelist claim that it would weaken American families. A rift opened between mothers working inside and outside the home, which has only widened.
So let’s start over. Let’s make clear that paid leave is not so much for parents as it is for children. Suppose we pitched a set of policies, including “paid attachment time,” to give children their healthiest and strongest start in life. “Healthy Start” or “Strong Start” has intended echoes of “Head Start,” but for all children. As businesspeople, economists, psychologists and sociologists, we should pound home the point that providing for our children’s development is the single best economic, social and security investment we can make. An array of scientific studies have found marked improvements in infant health, brain development and long-term flourishing when parental leave is extended, ideally to 25 and even 40 weeks.
It’s time to make clear that paid family leave really is for families—children first, aging grandparents second. The adults who are working to provide for these families need the time and ability to turn their dollars into care. That’s a public investment that will yield economic, social, political and moral returns.
Anne-Marie Slaughter is the CEO of New America and the Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2009-2011 she served as the director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State, the first woman to hold that position.
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