By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady
BLR’s CEO wonders if this country’s flexibility doesn’t provide a more supportive environment for working parents than do European countries’ vaunted social systems.
The conventional wisdom is that the U.S. is far behind the rest of the world when it comes to supporting families and their needs for parenting and child care. We rank at the bottom of developed nations in such things as paid maternity leave and child care. Western European standards make us look like primitives when it comes to many other family friendly policies.
There are ironies to this. You would think policies that reduce the financial penalty of leaving the workforce to have a child would encourage couples to have children. Far from it. European birthrates, with a very few exceptions, have fallen below the replacement level. Unless immigration takes up the slack, Europe faces the prospect of population declines of a magnitude not seen since the Black Death plague. Economists predict this will not be a good thing economically or socially.
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America the Fertile
On the other hand, American birthrates are much higher than Europe’s, even though our policies, on their face, make it tougher to have and raise a child.
How so? A recent New York Times Magazine article by Russell Shorto, after cataloging all of the awful things about American workplace benefits and policies (and the lack thereof), made an interesting observation. Though our policies in many ways are backwards, in some important respects we excel.
The article postulated that European workplaces, even with their wonderful policies regarding leaves and benefits, are much more rigid than their American counterparts. In the U.S., where career changes and flexible hours are pretty common, someone (male or female) can quit a job or take reduced hours, take a few months or years off, and re-enter the workforce in the same or another field with a realistic expectation of, if not catching up, at least not suffering the huge, career-ending penalties seen elsewhere. It’s not perfect in the U.S., to be sure. There are penalties, but—according to Shorto—it is worse in other parts of the world. (Note: I know I’m going to get a lot of criticism for making this statement. I know there are penalties for taking time off; I’m only reporting what many experts believe: American employers are more flexible in allowing people to move in and out of the workforce and/or change careers. This is a national strength.)
As a result, American women (and, to a lesser degree, men) feel they can have a child, retire from the workforce for an extended time, then come back. It is not painless, but it is possible, even commonplace.
The European/American birthrate disparity is most severe in a few specific countries. For example, Italy has the lowest birthrate in Europe, even though its leave policies are comparable to those of its neighbors. Shorto hypothesizes that one of the reasons is that Italian men are not as involved with child rearing as Americans are. Because middle class living standards require most couples to have two incomes, a woman having a child, once she comes back to work, faces greater family burdens than her American peers. The result is that they are not having children.
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What this means is unclear, and I’m sure that many readers won’t be convinced that American employers aren’t Neanderthal, but it does speak volumes about the strength of the American economic system. Our flexible meritocracy, which rewards risk taking and initiative, can help us overcome many policy shortcomings.
For two of my past columns on the subject of family leave, see:
Employer-Paid FMLA Leave: Good Idea? Bad Idea? Idea Whose Time Has Come?
and
Paid FMLA Leave: Our Readers Talk Back!
Google in dreamland?
In a related story, Google was recently in the news regarding its childcare program. The company has made much of its state-of-the-art, in-house child care. Turns out it has around 200 spots (for its 19,000 employees), with a wait list of 700. A heated controversy erupted in late spring when Google announced plans to increase fees, from $1,425 to $2,500 per month (parents of two would pay $57,000 per year). The company has been subsidizing the day care in the amount of about $37,000 per child per year (versus $12,000 for other Silicon Valley firms).
Parents were understandably upset, but those of us watching from the sidelines can only scratch our heads. Google’s employees aren’t all millionaires. Wouldn’t the company better serve its employees by subsidizing a less grand program for a greater number of employees?
Your thinking?
As I say above, I’m not sure what to make of all of this. I’d love to hear your opinions. You can email me at Rbrady@blr.com.