Topic: What the law gives you after a child is born
How does United States mark What the law gives you after a child is born?
Everyday topic
There is no federal statutory paid maternity leave in the United States. What exists is the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993: 29 U.S.C. §2612 entitles an eligible employee to 12 workweeks of leave in any 12-month period, for the birth of a child, for adoption or foster placement, or to care for a spouse, child or parent with a serious health condition. And subsection (c) of the same section is blunt about the rest: that leave “may consist of unpaid leave”. That sentence is what makes the United States singular among these seven markets — elsewhere the argument is about how many days, who pays and at what percentage; here the law never says anyone has to pay at all. The FMLA also has thresholds of employer size and hours worked, so people below them do not get even the twelve weeks. Whether the leave is paid falls back to the states and to individual employers, and two people in the same country can end up with twelve weeks at full pay and with nothing at all.
What is this topic?
Taiwan's Labour Standards Act gives eight weeks of maternity leave, fully paid after six months of service. Japan's goes further in a different direction: Article 65 forbids an employer to let a woman work for eight weeks after birth — not a right but a prohibition. Brazil's Consolidation of Labour Laws sets 120 days. Indonesia's Law 4 of 2024 sets a floor of three months and a further three if needed, with the wage percentage written out month by month. The American FMLA says in plain words that the leave "may consist of unpaid leave". And India is stranger still: the constitution requires the state to provide maternity relief, in a part the constitution itself says no court may enforce.
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