The Paid Leave Podcast

A Study Shows How Paid Leave Policies Help Create Healthy Families and Communities

• The Connecticut Paid Leave Authority • Season 3 • Episode 47

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On this episode of The Paid Leave Podcast, we are talking about paid family leave policies and how they affect families and communities. Drexel University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, has done a study called Making the Case for Paid Family Leave.  The study shows the benefits of taking time off for your own serious health condition or that of a loved one as well as taking pregnancy and bonding leave when adding to your family. Here to talk about this is Natalie Shaak, she is the Associate Director of Communication and Administration at the Center for Hunger Communities at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University.

The study, which included a literature review and personal stories, highlights the physical and mental health benefits of paid leave, particularly for mothers and infants. It found that paid leave reduces postpartum depression, domestic violence, and stress, and improves child health outcomes. The conversation also touches on the challenges of implementing paid leave, including the need for inclusive policies that cover part-time and gig workers. They emphasize the importance of paid leave for workplace culture, recruitment, and retention, and advocate for a national program to ensure equitable access.

To get in touch with Drexel's Dornsife School of Public Health: About the Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health | Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health

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Nancy Barrow:

Hello Connecticut, and welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast. The title basically says it all. I'm Nancy Barrow, and I will be delving into this new state program and how it can help you and your family. This podcast will give you information you should know about Connecticut Paid Leave and maybe just a little bit more. Connecticut Paid Leave brings peace of mind to your home, family and workplace. Welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast. The need for a national paid leave program still exists. However, it remains elusive. Drexel University in Philadelphia has done a study called Making The Case for Paid Family Leave. It's a study aimed at showing the benefits of taking time off for your own serious health condition or that of a loved one, as well as taking pregnancy and bonding leave when adding to your family. Here to talk about this is Natalie Shaak. She is the Associate Director of Communications and Administration at the Center for Hunger Free communities at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. And welcome to The Paid leave Podcast. Natalie.

Natalie Shaak:

Hi.

Nancy Barrow:

I'm really looking forward to having this conversation with you about this study.

Natalie Shaak:

I'm really excited to talk about it. Yeah, so it was a multi disciplinary group of folks from our staff Coordinating Committee across the Dornsife School of Public Health. And we really just came together. And we started by writing down all the big questions we had about paid family leave. How does it impact health? What does it do for kids? What does it do for parents? How does it impact businesses? Kind of all the things that we wanted to know, and then kind of listed some of the common arguments that we hear, both for and against it. It was really important for me to look at both the benefits and challenges of paid leave, because, of course, you know, if it was all really just great and easy to do, we would be doing it already, like it would just have programs everywhere, and there wouldn't be a challenge to having paid leave everywhere. Then what we essentially did is we did a large literature review. Our team combed through all the scientific studies and evaluations from across different fields. We looked at economics, we looked at public health across the United States, at especially the states that have implemented mandatory programs, to see what they've been finding, to see what happens when people had access to paid family leave, what happens when they don't have access to paid family leave, and then we kind of put it all together to see what picture it painted for us, instead of just relying on the anecdotes or the assumptions that we were commonly hearing in The arguments either for or against paid leave.

Nancy Barrow:

And did you interview people in the States, or did you really just go by the scientific stuff that you found?

Natalie Shaak:

We tried to stick with the scientific research. We felt like that painted a good picture. One of the things we did want to do also was include some lived experience. So in the brief we included some stories of folks from Philadelphia talking about their own experiences of not having access to paid family leave and how that personally impacted them. We found that the the interaction between personal, individual stories and the big picture data kind of brings it home a little bit more, because we did want to keep it local, but also make sure we were doing a larger national picture, so it wasn't just so minuscule focused on Pennsylvania or Philadelphia.

Nancy Barrow:

Let's talk about what you did find out about paid family leave in the in the study, and the impacts that you found.

Natalie Shaak:

One of the things that, for me, that was really interesting was looking at the difference between paid family leave and FMLA the Federal Medical Leave Act, which is what a lot of people think of when they think of paid family leave. I know when we started the study, this is also very personal for me. I was not planning to have children. It was not something that was in my my life goals or plans. So this was a project that I knew very little about so it was important for me to learn as much as possible. So I looked a lot into FMLA, and I was very, kind of shocked in what I learned about it. I didn't realize that it was unpaid and how few people are actually qualified for this, and that all it really does is it guarantees that your job is protected for up to 12 weeks. You can take this time off to care for yourself or care for a family member, but you're not guaranteed to have any money come into you unless you happen to have paid sick or vacation time that your employer allows you to take during that time. And it only applies to a little over half of the employees in the US, unless states have, you know, different policies. But you have to have 50 employees or more. You have to have been working at your employer for 12 more months or more, and you have to have worked for over 1200 50 hours over the past 12 months. So like I said, like a lot of people don't even qualify for this, which I was kind of shocked. Find out. And then on top of that, only, like three quarters of the population even has access to paid time off or sick time. So okay, you might have access to FMLA or employer, but you might not have sick time. So you can take the time off, but you're not going to get paid for it. So it's really interesting to me to even acknowledge that and think about it. So I was like, All right, this is very interesting. So when we talk about the physical impacts of of having time off, I mean, obviously giving birth is a very physically demanding experience.

Nancy Barrow:

It is, you know, it is a serious health condition. That's what we call pregnancy. It is.

Natalie Shaak:

Exactly like and whether or not you have it through, you know, vaginal birth or a C section, there is recovery that is necessary. There may be more. I try to explain this, I I did end up in the process of working on this. I actually found out I was pregnant and it was unplanned, so I was like, wow, this is way more applicable than I thought it would be. And I ended up having a C section, and I explained that I'm like, this is a major abdominal surgery. Like, they cut through all your stuff, like, you don't realize how big of a surgery it is, everything, layers upon layers in your stomach needs to heal, so that, in and of itself, you need actual time for the physical to heal. So I think that's really important from a physical perspective. And what we found in a lot of the research is most parents, most moms, they went back to work way too fast and way faster than their doctors encourage them to do so, almost a quarter of women went back within two weeks, which, if you have a C section, they don't even encourage you to pick things up within that period. I actually have a friend who works in the restaurant industry, and she had a C section, and she went back in four weeks, and she was lifting kegs in four weeks after a C section, and I almost lost it, yeah, the amount of damage that you can physically do to yourself by going back too quickly is insurmountable. For folks who had access to paid leave, they had children had higher birth weight, they had less premature births, which is really interesting, because I actually think that might be attributed to stress prior to birth leading to longer term. There was lower infant mortality and less death after birth, and there was also it was linked to longer breastfeeding, which has a lot of positive physical impacts on the children as well. And all of these impacts are seen higher and lower income families, and those are usually the ones who are least likely to have on have paid time off. So, so all the physical benefits of paid time off are most likely to impact people who are lower income.

Nancy Barrow:

Yeah, and what about the long term benefits of paid family leave? Oh, my God, start with children or parents, or whatever you want to start with.

Natalie Shaak:

Yeah, I was pretty shocked by this. I mean, obviously physically needing to recover. If you don't long term do that, you can have a lot of internal complications. And the mothers, if they take the time to recover, they are less likely to have long term issues with that. Breastfeeding obviously leads to, you know, other positive outcomes long term, there's there were lower odds of postpartum depression, lower odds of post postpartum rehospitalization. It reduced. There was lower rates of obesity and lower issues with high blood pressure, diabetes, alcohol use, smoking, all of these things were reduced if folks took more time off after childbirth. And I think a lot of that is probably associated with the mental health impact of taking time off and stress, which is awesome, and I think they we saw these outcomes, both for the mother and also for both parents, um, which I think is associated again, with with stress.

Nancy Barrow:

Yeah, well, I will say the one great thing about Connecticut Paid Leave is we're finding that 44% of partners are taking the time off to bond with their babies, which I think is really important when you have both, that's even bigger impacts.

Natalie Shaak:

Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things that we found in the study, is that very few men are taking time off, either they don't realize they have it, they feel like there's a stigma against taking it, or they just don't have the time off in the same way as women do. I think postpartum depression reduced by like 15% when, when mothers took 12 weeks of of time off, versus just eight weeks. And because of that, obviously the impacts of that can be lifelong. I mean, if you're if you're experiencing postpartum depression, that impacts your ability to have good bonding and attachment with your child, which can that can be a lifelong impact on both you and your child, and as we know that is depression and mental health is one of the leading postpartum mortality causes for women is is related to suicide and mental health related deaths, and we're seeing a rise in that and and postpartum deaths in women. So I think that that's massively because of the mental health related issues. There's also family stress is reduced. Domestic violence goes down, which is amazing, because there's less financial stress between partners, like I said using things like drugs and alcohol and smoking, that are just general coping mechanisms are all really important. I can't stress enough the importance of that attachment piece. And I think that also goes back to the benefits for both parents and the child is having that that time to attach and connect with your child is going to be great for the parents mental health, but also the child's ability to learn how to emotionally regulate and cope themselves and develop good mental health for the rest of their lives.

Nancy Barrow:

We found, too that it was pretty interesting when we found that parents maybe had their first child in a state that they didn't have paid leave. And then they moved to Connecticut, and they had another child, and they were able to take time off. The fathers noted that they had better relationships with the children when they would bond a closer connection. I talked to a father, and he's like, it just hurts me so much that I didn't have that with my first child. You know that it that that first child missed that opportunity to be able to bond with both parents.

Natalie Shaak:

They've also found that when the father can take off more time, they're more engaged in just general caretaking, which leads to better relationships. And I would love to see some research that that connects men taking time off for leave and the length that they take off to divorce rates later on. Because I've been I've been reading a lot about the division of labor in families after having children, and that is slowly becoming one of the number one reasons that people are getting divorced is women taking on all of the emotional and physical and home labor. And I think part of that is because women are home and figuring it out and having routines during this this postpartum period, and if men are going right back to work, they're not being a part of that routine. That's there's multiple reasons, but I think that might be a part of it. And getting them a part of the routine right away, and having them be integral in the caretaking from the beginning can help address some of those pieces. Because I've heard a lot of men say, like, what is there for me to do at this point? You're the one taking care of the breastfeeding. I can't do that for you, but there's so many other things you can do and those beginning stages that can be helpful, that then can carry on through the rest of that child's life and through the rest of your relationship together, that can create a healthy relationship.

Nancy Barrow:

Yeah, one of the good things about Connecticut

Natalie Shaak:

Because that would be great. I know my Paid Leave, I find, is that say the father only takes the first month off. He can take those other two months, anytime during that first year that the baby's born, so that bonding leave can you know it can come at any time during that first year, which is, which is helpful, partner saved a week of of his time for when I went back to work, right? So that transition, and knowing that it would be a challenging time for me to go back to work, then he could take off, and we can, can kind of stagger that, because I think that's also, I think, an important piece of it is we are a society now that it used to be community raising children, and now we're families and insular, and you're on your own, essentially. So when there's not two people there, or more or multi generational families, it can feel very lonely. To be at home by yourself with a newborn and to not have another person with you can be very challenging, very and I think that's probably why we see so much postpartum depression, is you have essentially a potato that doesn't talk to you, and you're home by yourself for eight hours like that. You're not getting the interaction. It's stressful. It's new, challenging. You're not getting enough sleep, you're not taking care of yourself, probably as well as you should. You don't get a break. Like that starts to build and that's not great for anyone's mental health.

Nancy Barrow:

Oh, that makes total sense. That makes total sense. Yeah. What about health equity? What did the Drexel study find?

Natalie Shaak:

Yeah, so access. Well, I think just having children in general obviously disproportionately impacts women and their potential earning later on. But we found that, obviously, lower wage workers, people of color are tend to be in less likely to have access to pain leave. I think that's just it's it's an unfortunate piece that we found is a lot of these policies, they don't apply to part time workers or gig workers, or our folks who don't have the long history in a specific job. And I think that is where the challenge comes in. If you're in an employer like, like, I used to work in the restaurant industry. My partner still works in the restaurant industry, and it's a very it ebbs and flows, and you may not have consistent employment or consistent hours, and that can impact your ability to even be eligible for things like FMLA or even some some states their their paid leave policies, so they're less likely to have access to unpaid leave or paid leave, even in states that offer it.

Nancy Barrow:

That's one of the things I love about our state, and that we really do focus on, the fact that we really do want to hit those part time workers, you know. And like you said, it's so important, you know, they want to, they want to be able to get covered, because if they're not working and they get hurt, they're not getting paid. So we really want to be very inclusive with with part time workers.

Natalie Shaak:

Yeah, one of the things they found out in California when they rolled out paid leave is that it the largest increases they found in people taking leave were actually non college educated, unmarried mothers who may not have realized they had access to certain leave so now they did a really good job in promoting that the the paid leave program, and that really increased those opportunities. So certain paid leave programs, if they're rolled out and it's shared correctly, can really try to level the playing field a little bit more, because typically the jobs that have access from a private standpoint, the private employers who offer it are usually employers where you have to have a college degree or a certain kind of credential. Higher wage jobs, you know, they're not usually offering, you know, six months paid paid leave to entry level workers. That's usually a benefit that's seen at higher wage jobs or something CEOs get, you know, those kind of things. Those are not, you know, offered to retail workers or things like that. So by offering this where it's it's wider availability, it is really starting to level the opportunities a little bit more to folks who have not traditionally gotten that opportunity.

Nancy Barrow:

Yeah, we try really hard to do a lot of outreach, like with this podcast, we really try to educate people about who's eligible and how they can get into the paid leave program, and just going to our website that that's how they can find out more about it, at ctpaidleave.org. But let's talk about paid family leave and business. How does paid leave affect workplace culture? How does it affect businesses?

Natalie Shaak:

Yeah, this was the the area that I was the most interested to find out, because this is where a lot of the arguments are made against paid leave is, oh, it's going to be too costly for the businesses. They're not going to want to do it. It's going to impact their productivity. It's so hard when people go out on leave and all this kind of stuff. So this was what I was most interested to find out. A lot of the impact actually is benefit beneficial. So it has offering paid leave, and this is from like, a private perspective, like, if a company offers it on their own, it has a massive impact on culture. There's a lot of loyalty and connection to the company if they offer this as as an added benefit. They've also found it's really great for recruitment and retention of employees. A lot of surveys and research show that people will seek out employers who offer that as a benefit and that is seen as highly desirable to potential workers. So that's really important. It actually increases productivity, which actually makes sense, because if you come back too early and you're constantly you're not healed, you're unhealthy, you're stressed out, you're not really there. And that goes for caretaking too, because that's the other thing is, like a lot of these paid leave, they don't just cover having children. It's caretaking. If you have, you know, a child with special needs, or a family member that you're caring for, and you're just not really fully there, because you're you're dealing with something that's happening at home, your productivity is going to tank, versus if you can just take. The time off, go deal with your the situation that you need to at home and come back when things are taken care of, that's going to be better for everybody in the workplace. And that's what they have found. And then a lot of folks worry about small businesses and how it will impact them. They're like, Oh, this is only something that big businesses can afford, they build that into their bottom line. And there was a couple of studies that we found, and some of them showed there was a little bit of cost, but that they found that long term, it really didn't increase their costs too much. And that was like a large majority. I think it was like 80, almost 90% said it didn't increase their cost long term, but that it actually balanced out by reducing their turnover. Because a lot of times, what they find is that, especially women, after they've had kids, they are less likely to stay in the workplace if they come back too soon, they get burned out, they're working in a not family friendly workplace, and they're likely to leave, and then you have to fill, you have to do a search, you have to fill their position, and then you have to retrain somebody that's really costly, as opposed to keeping a strong employee and making an environment that works well for them. And then, like, people are going to have kids, like it's going to happen, they're going to need to need to care for a person like this happens, and it's better for businesses and organizations to, you know, have a good program, than to just kind of hope it doesn't happen. And it's better to plan ahead for it and have a process so that when people do need to go out on leave, it's better than just be like, Oh no, it happened, and now, like you're throwing it together willy Nilly.

Nancy Barrow:

You can take intermittent leave or reduce schedule. So if you know that you're going to be helping someone Monday through Friday, you can take that reduction. And it doesn't have to be all at once. You don't have to take that lump three months like it leaves it a little bit more flexible for people, so they don't think that they have to quit their job.

Natalie Shaak:

Yeah, like you never life throws things at you. You don't know that a family member isn't going to get diagnosed with cancer, and you need to go with them to their treatments, or you're going to have a child that has a serious illness, and you need to go with them. So it's not always like you can foresee something like a pregnancy, like you know it's coming, you have right plan for that and go out on leave, but some of these are things you don't necessarily have the time to plan for that, and it's nice to have some security and know that your employer is is going to back you up like that creates a sense of loyalty and feeling supported that right now is really important, especially for younger generations. I know that the younger generation of employee, of employees, a lot of them, are not thinking about having kids in this environment, in this economy, but also they are feeling a little bit jaded about the work world, and they are much more likely to be drawn to employers that are creating this kind of safe environment that shows that they they're cared for and that they matter, versus employers who are kind of like good luck with that.

Nancy Barrow:

Tell me some of the implications of not having a national paid leave program.

Natalie Shaak:

Yeah, so I think by not having a national program, it kind of leaves things to be a little bit like patchwork and inequitable. I think it's really interesting to look at Pennsylvania, for example. So we will have folks who live in New Jersey and work in Pennsylvania and vice versa, and that can be a real challenge. It can be very confusing. If someone changes jobs Camden to Philadelphia and vice versa, they may have access in one place and not have access in another place because of the different state policies. And that can be problematic. It can also leave folks you know, with inequitable access, leaving, you know, folks high and dry if they lose a job or they need to change jobs for for some reason, I think it's really interesting when we look at the states that have passed paid leave policies versus the states that have not. And there are some, some, some themes. And if you look at the states that have some of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates. They also tend to not have paid leave policies. They also have some of the harshest abortion restrictions, the lowest minimum wages, the highest poverty rates. It's really setting up inequity for women. It's, I mean, I hate to say women, but also, I mean a lot of people, but it's really targeted at women. They're going to have no choice to have a child have no support after they're born, and then, you know, they are going to be challenged to work in a world to make enough money to take care of that kid. And then those states also don't have really great public assistance programs.

Nancy Barrow:

You're located in Philly, but why doesn't Pennsylvania have a paid family leave program yet? And do you know if there's advocates that are working on this right now? Because it took Connecticut a long time to get it It took almost like seven years for for it to pass.

Natalie Shaak:

Yeah, there's been conversations, and at the state level, they've been having conversations in Harrisburg for quite a few years. Sometimes it gets out of committee. Sometimes it doesn't, and a lot of the conversations and the hang ups have been around the structure of the program, who's going to pay for it, whether it's going to be the employees, the employers, taxpayers, and who's going to be covered and how so it's I think there's an agreement that paid leave is important and that that folks need it and that it has benefits. I think the challenge is getting lawmakers to agree on the funding and design so they can move it forward to be to be voted on. I think it's a challenge because almost all of the states surrounding the state of Pennsylvania do have a paid leave program. New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Maryland, have all passed policies. And I think the state in order to remain competitive and not lose high quality workers to those states, we see it as an important policy that needs to be passed. From that perspective, as well as you know the need to support people.

Nancy Barrow:

What would you like people listening to this podcast? To take away from this Drexel study Making the Case for Paid Family Leave.

Natalie Shaak:

I think the big takeaway is that like caregiving leave or family leave, it's not just like a perk or a benefit. I think it needs to be like a part of our basic infrastructure as a country. We need, we need this to be a healthy and productive society. It needs to be essential, not just like an added bonus. We need to be advocating for this at the state and federal levels. But I also do think, like I said, we we need to be expecting it from businesses too. Like, yes, we can have the state and federal policies, but we can also want the places where we work to be providing it and adopting their own policies too, that they can, like I said, go above and beyond and provide even more than just, like, we don't have to just do the bare minimum of the 12 weeks. You know, we can move towards what other countries are doing to make it more family friendly. And I think that's the other piece of it. Is this paid leave is just one piece of what it means to be family friendly. We have parents, we have caregivers, we have families that that they need lots of things. They need lots of supports. This is like the first step in those supports. They need paid time off. They need sick time. They need flexible work schedules and flexible work locations, affordable child care and nutrition programs, you know, affordable food and things like that. They all kind of work together. And in our country, a lot of these programs are so patchwork and they don't connect. So what we really need is for like, to think about building healthier families and family friendly workplaces and a family friendly friendlier like society. And to do that like this is a piece, but we need all the pieces to come together to really do that, because I think once we do that, we're going to be stronger communities, stronger economy, and just healthier in general. And I think that's the ultimate bottom line of what we're looking for, is for us all to be more connected and healthier. A step in the right direction right!

Nancy Barrow:

Step in the right direction Natalie, absolutetly! I want to thank you so much, Natalie Shaak for joining us on The Paid Leave Podcast. Natalie is the Associate Director of communication and Administration at the Center for Hunger Free Communities at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. Thank you so much for all that information that was amazing. It really, was really wonderful talking to you.

Natalie Shaak:

Thank you so much!

Nancy Barrow:

For more information or to apply for benefits, please go to ctpaidleave.org This has been another edition of The Paid Leave Podcast. Please like and subscribe, so you'll be notified about new podcasts that become available. Connecticut Paid Leave is a public act with a personal purpose. I'm Nancy Barrow, and thanks for listening.

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