In her poem “Sometimes,” Mary Oliver gives us instructions for living: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” It is probably no coincidence that these are also instructions for how to build a strong relationship with your baby.
Babies and children grow and develop best when they experience the nurturing, affirming and meaningful back-and-forth interactions with their caregivers. The root of these precious moments of connection is simple: attention. When parents have the bandwidth to give an abundance of attention to their babies, families are more likely to grow in ways that promote children’s healthy development.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that make it painfully hard for parents and babies to connect. Many mothers must return to work before they’ve healed from childbirth. Parents scramble for infant care they cannot find or afford. Too many families lose income, or their jobs, if they prioritize taking time to attend to their newborns.
Related: Child care doesn’t have to be this terrible
As a pediatrician and researcher at Hennepin Healthcare and Children’s HealthWatch, I often meet new parents who are trying to give their children the best start possible while navigating these emotionally difficult choices. But Minnesota’s new paid family and medical leave program (PFML) is a key initiative in the state’s ongoing work to improve child and maternal health.
PFML will launch Jan. 1 and represents the state’s commitment to helping all Minnesotan families and communities thrive.
If you are a parent, you know that infant care is scarce, expensive and mismatched with parents’ work schedules. According to our research at Children’s HealthWatch, families who face difficulty finding child care experience cascading hardship: they are 127% more likely to be food insecure, 84% more likely to be energy insecure, and more likely to have young children in fair or poor health or at developmental risk.
Without leave, parents must return to work during the most critical time in their child’s development, just when child care options are most limited. On the other hand, the health and well-being of parents and children are improved when they get paid leave. Research shows maternity leave is associated with reduced maternal depression, lower psychological distress and reduced rates of rehospitalization after birth. For infants, paid leave is linked to lower mortality, higher birth weight, fewer hospitalizations and better early development.
Even better, the benefits grow with time. Leave longer than 12 weeks is associated with higher infant vaccination rates and increased breastfeeding duration, which boosts infant immunity and reduces mothers’ long-term cancer risk.
If PFML was a stock, I’d be bullish on that kind of compound interest. Because these findings reflect what I see in clinic: parents who have time to recover physically, establish feeding routines and bond with their babies experience far less stress and far better health.
So how does PFML work in Minnesota? Minnesota’s broad policy covers nearly all workers in the state, including full-time, part-time, temporary and most seasonal laborers working for employers large and small. As long as workers have earned $3,900 in the last year, they are eligible.
Related: Does Minnesota’s new paid leave program let all employees take 20 weeks off each year?
The program allows workers to take time off to care for themselves or others and provides between 55% and 90% of their regular wages, up to a maximum of $1,423 per week. Workers can take up to 12 weeks of family leave and up to 12 weeks of medical leave, or up to 20 weeks of combined family and medical leave if both are needed in the same year.
There are only a few exceptions: independent contractors, self-employed individuals and Tribal Nations are not covered by default and must opt in to the program, while federal government employees, postal workers and railroad employees are not covered and cannot opt in.
Ultimately, I believe we will see the benefits of this policy for years to come in clinics, classrooms and communities across the state. Paid leave gives parents the gift of attending to the developmental needs of their child; of delighting in their child, which builds affirming, meaningful, nurturing bonds for both parent and baby. Don’t take my or Mary Oliver’s word for it — ask parents. Thanks to paid leave, they’ll have a lot to tell.
Michael Arenson is a pediatrician at Hennepin Healthcare and principal investigator at Children’s HealthWatch.
