Shortly after writing "The Myth of Underpaid Women," I was messaged by a friend who provided me with a link to "The Mommy Tax" by Ann Crittenden, which discusses the financial toll women take when deciding to have kids--losing out on hundreds of thousands (and in some cases millions) of dollars throughout their lifetime due to maternity leave. The immediate suggestion which came up was a government-sponsored maternity leave to help reduce the income disparity between genders.
I have a big problem with this. Anytime anything is "government sponsored," it actually means "taxpayer sponsored." Every time the taxpayer must step in to foot a bill it means less disposable income for the people. That being said, let's play a numbers game. In 2009, 72,019,000 women were in the civilian labor force, 66,208,000 of whom were employed (U.S. Department of Labor). So let's pretend that the number of employed women hasn't changed, and that it will stay constant forever. In that case, 66,208,000 women are employed and roughly 80% of women have children at some point in their lifetime. 80% of 66,208,000 comes out to 52,966,400 women who would have to be subsidized for having children at one point or another. Now, this can get messy because we then would have to analyze the average number of children that women would decide to have, but for sake of brevity, let's solely analyze the cost for having one child. If we assume paid maternity leave is 16 weeks (as it is in France), and there are 52 weeks in a year, where the average woman with a bachelor's degree age 25 and up is making roughly $40,000 per year, each woman is entitled roughy 12,300 dollars. Throughout a lifetime, the rough total cost for the taxpayers comes out to $6,518,941,538,000. While this is a very, very rough estimate, nonetheless I think it makes a point that it is not a cheap entitlement to run.
The other suggestion would be a mandate that forces business owners in the private sector to pay for their female employees' maternity leave. This is another terrible idea, that would force businesses to cover more compliance costs, hindering ability to expand and hire more employees, generating more wealth. Since I like numbers so much, here's a little more food for thought. Let's say a small business owner employs 30 people, where 15 are female. Let's say that of these 15 women, 10 were hired straight out of college, and, sticking with the idea that ~80% of women have children, 8 of these women decide to have kids while employed for said business owner. If each is getting paid ~$30,000, using the same 16 week paid leave example as before, it will cost the business $73,845 for eight separate maternity leaves. What does this mean for the other 22 employees and employer? It means each having a shortened pay of $3,210 for these eight leaves. However, if the workers are unionized, I doubt that the union will stand around and take that, meaning the business owner would have to bare all of the costs him/herself. This may mean not taking home a paycheck for a few months, or this may mean limited expansion and investment for a few months, pushing back potential hirings. Not to mention, the women are not obligated to tell their employer that they are or plan to get pregnant. This makes the environment more unpredictable, especially when the owner doesn't know the costs that he/she will have to cover in the near future, and with the tens of thousands of pages of regulatory burden, not to mention compliance costs, taxes, and the constant threat of litigation, this would only add to an already hostile environment for business owners.
This is not being sexist or chauvinist, I feel the same way about paid paternal leave (which is covered in France, no surprise there). Unfortunately those who are anti-business treat employees like helpless puppies and the business owner like the master of the pound, but in reality, a good employee is equally or more valuable than the pay they receive. Any time a woman needs to leave for maternity leave, especially a talented and skilled one, it already hurts the business enough.
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