Paid Family Leave Would Hurt Families

Marketplace, bless their hearts, ran a story a few weeks ago by Sarah Gardner about Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd proposing to make employers guarantee at least partial family-leave pay for mother’s who have a baby while working. Like most legislation pushed by the Democrats, it sounds nice if you don’t look too deep.

First off, I have some issues with the bias in the article. Is this supposed to be an editorial or an objective piece of journalism? But skip to the end if you want to read that part, let’s talk about the issue at hand.

My claim is that mandating paid family-leave will hurt families. I call as my witness human nature.

Who can get pregnant? Women. If employers are forced to pay employees for time they take off after having a baby, which employees become more expensive in terms of return on investment? Women. Therefore, who will employers hire less of? Women. And if the law were to include provisions for husbands to take paid time off after their wives have babies, married men would also become more expensive, and therefore would be hired less. Who gets hurt? Women and families. Who benefits? Single men.

So let’s legislate that employers can’t discriminate. Well, we’ve already got those laws, but are they working? So we’ll make the penalties for breaking the law worse. But people will still get around them. So then we’ll tell businesses who they have to hire, because businesses can’t be trusted to do the right thing on their own. Great, then we’ve got full-on socialism. That economic system doesn’t seem to be doing so great around the world. What’s the unemployment rate in France? How about unemployment in Germany?

Don’t get me wrong, I think paid family-leave is a great thing. I just don’t want it forced upon me by the government. If a company wants to offer it on their own in order to attract the best talent, that should be their right. If they don’t see it as helping them be competitive, then they should have the right to not offer said benefit. Nobody has a right to get paid unless they are providing something of value to their employer. If the government forces businesses to offer these types of benefits it will only result in the U.S. becoming less competitive worldwide. This will lead to higher unemployment, lower wages, and regression in the standard of living. It will stifle entrepreneurship and business in general. The last thing it will do is help families. Actually that’s incorrect because it will never help families except in the short term. Ultimately it’s just another way for politicians to buy votes, and another step towards socialism, the full adoption of which would bring us down and make us equal with our unemployed friends in Europe.

Examples of Journalistic Bias in the Report

1. Deborah Ness is quoted as saying “I think we’re in a climate when members of Congress are very anxious to support working families.”

Or in other words, if you’re against paid family-leave, you’re not anxious to support families. This is typical politics. Make anyone who is against what you are for sound like a jerk.

2. “Dodd’s effort comes amid worries the Bush administration may try to water down the family leave law.” I can see people listening and thinking “Water down the family leave law? Why would Bush want to hurt families?”

Maybe Bush doesn’t want to water it down, maybe he wants to change it because it’s poor legislation. We would expect the opposing side to claim Bush wants to water it down, after all, it’s their job to make the other side look bad, but why is the journalist saying it that way?

3. “But researchers at Harvard and McGill universities released a study today showing the U.S. is the worst of all affluent countries when it comes to family leave.”

An objective reporter would say “the U.S. has less requirements for family-leave benefits than any other affluent country…” but using the word “worst” is more likely to evoke emotion and feelings of support for the cause this journalist is pushing.

4. “The McGill/Harvard study surveyed 173 countries. 168 guaranteed some sort of paid time off for new mothers.”

“See? Everyone else is doing it.” Didn’t our mothers teach us around age 5 that we shouldn’t do things just because everybody else is? Isn’t the U.S. still the most prosperous nation? Maybe part of the reason is because the U.S. doesn’t mandate paid family leave.

5. “The five that didn’t? Papua New Guinea, Lesotho, Swaziland, Liberia and the United States.”

There’s no reason to include this sentence in the piece other than to group the U.S. with four other countries that are of third-world status in an attempt to make the U.S. look bad.

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By the way, I’m fairly passionate about government, politics, social policy, society, etc., but that’s not what this blog is about. But I can’t take it anymore and need an outlet, and so I’ve decided to set up a blog exclusively as a way to vent about politics and related topics. It will be going online at ClearlyDeparted.com soon.