For Father's Day, CBS Highlights The Country's Lagging Paid Family Leave Policies

Paid Leave

On Father's Day Sunday, CBS' Sunday Morning highlighted the importance of paid family leave policies for parents in the United States and how our country's related policies drastically lag behind those of other developed nations.

During the June 21 edition of Sunday Morning, network correspondent Lee Cowan reported on America's abysmal family leave policies. Pointing to data from the United Nations, Cowan noted that “71 countries offer paid leave for new fathers, but the United States isn't one of them.” In fact, “the U.S. also lags behind in paid leave for mothers" -- It's one of only two countries in the world that doesn't offer guaranteed paid maternity leave. CBS noted that paid leave policies are overwhelmingly popular with the public, with a recent CBS News and New York Times poll finding that 80 percent of respondents supported them.

As noted in the segment, although President Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act into law in 1993, granting up to 12 weeks of paid leave for employees, that time off is unpaid and only offered to full-time workers at companies and organizations with more than 50 employees -- disqualifying over 40 percent of Americans. According to the National Partnership for Women & Families, only 13 percent of workers in the U.S. have access to paid family leave at their jobs.

CBS' Father's Day coverage was a vast improvement from last month, when Sunday news programs were noticeably silent on paid family leave and maternal health on Mother's Day.