Building a culture of life via employer leave policies

The United States is one of the few developed countries in the world that does not require employers to offer working mothers paid maternity leave. As a result, only 24 percent of private-industry workers in America had access to paid family leave in 2022. For those workers who had access to paid family leave, the average leave given was just over four weeks.

Nearly 1 in 4 working mothers in the U.S. returns to work within 10 days of giving birth.

These are startling statistics for an industrialized nation. Those postpartum weeks are important for the baby, mother, and the entire family. But it’s understandable why, when faced with the pressure to pay their living expenses without continued income, many working parents choose to return to work as fast as possible. Still, research shows that this swift return to work is linked to a higher likelihood of postpartum depression, psychological distress, and a negative impact on infant attachment.

Pope St. John Paul II taught in his Letter to Women that “a greater presence of women in society will prove most valuable, for it will help to manifest the contradictions present when society is organized solely according to the criteria of efficiency and productivity, and it will force systems to be redesigned in a way which favors the processes of humanization which mark the ‘civilization of love.’”

As a Catholic organization, Ascension is trying to reflect John Paul’s vision in its leave policies. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 12 weeks of leave for new mothers, so Ascension announced this year that it would offer 12 weeks of fully paid leave for maternity and six weeks for paternity. It also now offers fully paid leave for adoptions (up to six weeks), pregnancy loss (up to 12 weeks), and caregiving (up to four weeks).

A growing number of companies offer better parental-leave packages to attract and retain top talent, but many of these packages include benefits in opposition to Catholic bioethics and the sanctity of life. For example, some benefits include coverage for IVF and egg freezing, or even paying for the costs associated with traveling to a state that offers abortion. These policies not only undermine the building of a culture of life, but employers also may actually encourage these options because they represent a cheaper alternative to covering the cost of a birth, parental leave, and adding a new child to the company’s insurance plan.

While the cost of increasing family leave policies is significant, there are ways to offset these costs to help promote a true culture of life. One strategy at Ascension is increased employee retention. The average company in the publishing industry had a turnover rate of 37 percent in 2022, but Ascension’s family-friendly and employee-friendly policies led to a turnover rate of less than 4 percent. That allowed funds that would otherwise be needed to hire and train replacement employees to be reinvested back into employee benefit programs like family leave. Another way to offset these costs further is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which allows employers to claim a partial tax credit for paid-leave events covered under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The work of developing sound policies that “mark the civilization of love” while controlling costs and ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local laws is difficult. Other Catholic organizations can use Ascension’s example as a starting point in the development of their own policies. Together, Catholics can advocate leading the change for family-friendly employment policies that directly support the building of a culture of life.