In the United States, paid family leave has long occupied the political backburner for policymakers. Often dismissed as either impractical or too expensive, Congress has allowed legislation tackling the issue to languish painfully in committee for years. Decades of inaction and obfuscation have resulted in a messy, complicated, and overly bureaucratic policy that is neither effective nor helpful to parents. Within the context of the recent global pandemic, this stagnation is now more harmful than ever. It’s time that the United States transitioned to a paid family leave model, joining the rest of the developed world in guaranteeing financial protection to parents and breathing new life into an increasingly small labor market.

The American experience with family leave programs has historically been limited. Beyond the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, for decades federal law on the topic was nearly non-existent. Even today, the only major piece of legislation which addresses the topic is now over 30 years old. Passed in 1993, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) mandates that large companies provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave. Signed by President Bill Clinton, the law was a breakthrough for its time, as its protections extended to fathers as well. However, by modern standards, the protections stipulated in the legislation are wholly inadequate. Even at the most basic level, the program has so completely failed to safeguard families, that millions of new parents don’t even qualify for support.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the FMLA is that effectively, it is financially toothless. While the law does mandate a certain amount of guaranteed leave, that period is entirely without compensation. Under federal law, no regulation requires these companies to provide financial support. Going 12 weeks without pay on your own is expensive enough, but with a child, such a deficit is simply impossible to manage. On average, raising a child costs $16,000 a year, excluding any common medical complications that can drastically alter that number. Simply put, parents cannot afford to take the time off.

In addition, the scope of the legislation is comically limited. The law only applies to companies that have 50 or more employees, and even then, the employee must have worked at least 1,250 hours in the last 12 months. This stipulation is incredibly problematic, not only because it excludes recently hired employees, but because over 15 million businesses in the U.S. have fewer than 50 employees.

The results speak for themselves. For mothers, 40% don’t qualify for FMLA protections, leaving them dependent on friends and family. Additionally, 89% of small businesses have fewer than 20 employees, leaving those workers entirely without protection. This unmitigated disaster ultimately results in the most telling data point of all, which is that 40% of mothers are forced to return to work after only two weeks of leave.

Attempts at reform, particularly that of a bipartisan nature, have proven exceptionally difficult to solicit. The clear failings of the FMLA, and the subsequent burden it’s placed on families, have so far failed to arouse any genuine interest among lawmakers to solve the problem. There have however been some promising, if not limited, exceptions. In August of 2018, with Ivanka Trump standing behind him in solidarity, Republican Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced the Economic Security for New Parents Act, which effectively would have created a pseudo-government-backed paid maternity leave program that would allow new parents to temporarily withdraw from their Social Security accounts during the first 12 weeks after pregnancy. Ultimately, Rubio’s colleagues in the so-called Party of, ‘Family Values,’ lacked interest in the bill.

The partisan discourse that permeates and defines policy conversations around paid family leave is unwarranted. By most reasonable measures, providing support to new families who need it most is clearly the conscious decision. But more than that, such a program could ignite an economy which is increasingly running out of workers and ease the welfare burden that Republicans are so fond of referencing.

Since 2000, overall workforce participation has continued to steadily decrease. Nowhere is this statistic more prevalent than with women, where overall participation decreased by nearly 4% between 2000-2017. Research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that this change was most prominent among women who did not attend college and women with children. These changes reflect the growing economic reality in the United States that often, an individual must choose between having children or maintaining a career. Eliminating the necessity of this decision, and crafting a more supportive federal policy, could encourage women to return to work in the long term. Furthermore, studies are showing that paid family leave policies have more immediate benefits than just increasing the labor pool.

In 2012, the University of Rutgers conducted a study that examined the linkage between welfare policies and paid maternity leave. They found that women in New Jersey who received paid leave were 40% less likely to apply for food stamps. Another study by the Southern Economic Journal found that an extra week of paid maternity leave among industrialized countries reduces infant mortality rates by 0.5 deaths per 1,000 live births.

It’s no secret that the United States has lagged behind the rest of the developed world in terms of social welfare policy. This is particularly true with family leave policies, especially when compared to its overseas allies. European states began adopting early versions of maternity leave as far back as 1883. It was not until the 1960s that modern European models for family leave would emerge. Even after the United States, the next most limited family leave policy is still a month with pay. In Bulgaria, Hungary, Japan, Lithuania, Austria, Czech Republic, Latvia, Norway, and Slovakia, parents have access to as much as an entire year of paid leave.

Certain U.S. states have endeavored to correct this imbalance at the regional level. Currently, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington all offer some form of paid family leave. This has eased the crisis somewhat, but despite these efforts, 73% of people in the private sector still don’t have access to paid family leave.

Politicians and pundits alike will try to tell you that paid family leave in the United States is a complicated issue. That a free-market economy cannot sustain a social welfare program of that magnitude, nor should it have the obligation to do so. However, the economic realities of the 21st century demand a dramatic shift in our outdated family leave policies. As a firewall for American families, the FMLA at its core constitutes a paper tiger. Individual efforts at both the state and private levels, while admirable, are not enough to pick up the slack from the federal government. What is needed, now more than ever, is sweeping reform specifically designed to keep new families afloat during one of life’s most precarious transitions.