Thursday, June 19, 1997

Women need months of paid leave to bond with their babies at first, professor insists

By DIANE EVANS / Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Did you know we're the only industrialized nation where employers aren't required to give mothers a paid leave of absence after the birth of a child?

Ed Zigler, the Yale University psychology professor who co-founded Head Start, shared that bit of information when we talked by phone, after he received an award from Working Mother magazine for his advocacy on behalf of families.

"We are the richest nation on the face of this Earth without a paid leave policy," Zigler went on, as if he still couldn't believe it after dealing with this issue his whole career. Even 30 nations in the Third World provide some form of paid leave for working parents. Zigler wrote the book "Parental Leave Crisis: Toward a National Leave Policy."

"The point is, there's a huge disconnect between the policies of this country and what we know about the development of the brain," he told me. "Mothers need the opportunity to be with their infants for several months after birth. These are critical months for brain development. This is when the mother figures out the child, and learns the baby's signals and the baby learns hers. It's essential to brain development. Yet we don't guarantee this to mothers."

Surely mothers know the value of early bonding. Zigler argues with research what they know instinctively. Just recently, he testified on this issue before a Senate subcommittee. Zigler believes that we're kidding ourselves if we think the Family and Medical Leave Act helps most families, when all it does is require employers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Surveys have confirmed that participation has been low.

"The economic situation of most working families is that they can't take unpaid leave," Zigler said. "This country has got to go with paid leave."

He advocates a six-month leave policy, with pay at 75 percent of full salary for the first three months and no pay for the last three months. Either parent could take the leave, but not both at the same time.

You can imagine the opposition that big business would mount. It took 10 years to win approval of unpaid leave in a law that only covers full-time employees in companies with more than 50 employees. All the while, business predicted doom.

Can you believe, we're four years into the family leave law, and we've yet to see the devastation? Maybe we had to take this small step first, to have a foundation on which to build support for greater benefits. Clinton, by the way, supports expanding benefits to include limited days off for children's doctor appointments, for example, and school activities. This would still be unpaid time.

Zigler raised the potential consequences of not supporting families adequately. Child-care issues affect two generations of workers - parents currently in the work force and children who will fill tomorrow's jobs.

Family leave isn't the only issue. Child care is perhaps an even greater concern. "Business should be terribly interested in the quality of child care," Zigler said. "Employees won't be very productive if they're always worrying about their children.

"Business can do a couple of things. They can be family-friendly, with flex time, for example. I think the most important role of business is to be an advocate."

Maybe in the lifetime of babies born today. Women still make up a slim minority at the very top levels of management. So who's to advocate for working women?

We hear business leaders bemoan the academic performance of students and the quality of family life. Yet do they look hard at the question of what they can do to help through their lobbying efforts and corporate policies?

We all need to be concerned about family values - especially top executives, who by their decisions, control the economy and the conditions under which people live.