page_title: Maternity leave in the United States
section_title: Motherhood penalty
hierarchical_section_title: Maternity leave in the United States / Impacts of United States maternity leave / Economic / Motherhood penalty
caption_attribution_description: English: Women's earnings as a percentage of men's, median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers, by age, 2008
context_page_description: Maternity leave in the United States is regulated by US labor law. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 requires 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for mothers of newborn or newly adopted children if they work for a company with 50 or more employees. Additionally, several states have adopted laws extending the requirements of FMLA to smaller companies. For the majority of US workers at companies with fewer than 50 employees, there is no legal right to paid or unpaid leave to care for a new child or recover from childbirth. Studies show the current laws disproportionately impact minorities and low-income women, who are less likely to take unpaid leave.
  This is below the 16-week minimum recommended by the World Health Organization. The United States is one of the only countries in the world, and the only OECD member, that has not passed laws requiring businesses and corporations to offer paid maternity leave to their employees. As of 2017, there had been no significant change in the proportion of women who received maternity leave in the past 20 years.
context_section_description: Available maternity leave options may also help lower the impact of children on career advancement, or the motherhood penalty. There currently exists a "family gap" between the pay of mothers and nonmothers. In the United States prior to the passage of the FMLA, mothers typically earned 70% of men's wages while nonmothers earned 90%. These earning disparities partially stemmed from insecure employment return prospects. Women without maternity leave protection were often forced to start over with a new employer following their absence. This interrupted their career progression and burdened them with the additional task of seeking new employment. Such factors ultimately impeded equitable access to income and career opportunities. Women as a group notably experience increasing income inequality as they age illustrating the impact of motherhood on their wage prospects. However, the implementation of FMLA addressed some of these impediments through the introduction of mandatory maternity leave. Mothers now are more likely to return to their previous employer due to this increased legal protection. The policy minimizes some of the negative externalities of motherhood by maintaining women's employment options even following maternity leave. Many policy experts though suspect that the remaining gender imbalance is largely attributable to the dearth of paid leave options. Women who worked for companies that provided paid maternity leave before they gave birth are more likely to take such leave for up to 12 weeks, and more likely to return to work more quickly thereafter.
caption: US - women's earnings as a percentage of men's in 2008 by age group
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