December 12, 2013
December 2013, Heather Boushey, Jane Farrell, and John Schmitt
Twenty years ago, the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, was signed into
law. The FMLA granted certain workers new and important rights, including the
ability to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave after a birth or adoption, but
it fell short in at least two important respects.
Without downplaying the historical significance of the FMLA’s guarantee of
job-protected leave for a majority of U.S. workers, this review of Census Bureau
data from the first two decades of the FMLA suggests that the law had a limited
impact on the frequency of parental leave and no impact on the likelihood that
parental leave is paid.
Report – PDF 
