Parental Leave: What the U.S. Can Learn from Sweden

If you were born in Sweden, your life as a baby would be much different than if you were born in the United States. For one, your father might tote you around in a sling or push you in a stroller while meeting up with other ‘latte dads;’ happy dads living the good life and getting paid 80% of their normal pay to stay at home and enjoy the first few months with their children. In Sweden, parents receive 16 months of paid parental leave, and the days don’t expire until the child is 8 years old.

It’s become commonplace and acceptable there for fathers to stay at home on paid leave while moms continue their career advancement or stay at home if they choose. Children get quality bonding with both parents, parents benefit financially from dual incomes, and the economy benefits from keeping women in the workforce. The only costs, of course, are higher taxes and the larger government associated with Sweden’s social democratic welfare state.

As such a state, Sweden’s economic concept of universalism means that all citizens have the same access to benefits that are not determined by income. Although it’s not realistic or practical that the capitalist economy of the United States would be able to fully mimic this model anytime soon, there are still things we can learn from Sweden; namely how cultural shifts themselves can improve gender equality, and what happens when feminists stop focusing on women and start focusing on men.

Background

Sweden has been consistently ranked as one of the best countries in the world for its paid parental leave policy. Sweden’s parental leave insurance is also recognized internationally as the premiere parental leave policy addressing gender equality.¹

The U.S. is one of the few developed countries in the world that doesn’t have a national paid parental leave law. The others are New Guinea, Suriname, and a few South Pacific island nations. The existing Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) allows a woman to stay home with unpaid leave for 12 weeks, and women can’t qualify even for this unless they’ve been working full time for the company for at least a year. When they do decide to return to work, they often have to take lower-paying jobs, which helps explain some of the gender wage gap.

The U.S has failed at passing parental leave policies in the past partly because the proposed plans just didn’t make practical sense, were too complex and costly, and therefore didn’t reach agreement in Congress.

The FAMILY Act, the Democrats’ main legislation which was introduced in 2013, funds time off for different types of qualifying life events through a national payroll tax. Under this plan, people can also take time off to care for elderly parents. The problem with this bill is that it’s too complex and would be too expensive. Any paid leave policy needs to be as simple and straightforward as possible.

Sweden Policy

Before Sweden enacted it’s parental leave policy in 1974, it was much like the U.S. in terms of traditional gender stereotypes. Although legally able to work, cultural norms were such that women typically stayed home to care for newborn children, while men continued to work. This was the natural order of things since women were clearly the ones providing direct nourishment to the child. Then Sweden experienced a great economic boom, a massive labor shortage, and low birth rates. There was a strong demand for women to enter the workforce, which prompted the Swedish parliament to do something quickly.

The U.S also had a similar demand for women to enter the workforce during WWII, but instead of getting a policy that would keep them in the workforce, they returned home and raised the baby boomers after the war ended.

With goals of improving gender equality, economic prosperity and child welfare, Sweden’s policy was more of a social one than economic and had a goal of creating a seismic shift in past constructed gender stereotypes in the family and the workplace. It was more than just paying mothers to stay at home and care for children, the more obvious solution.

What sets the policy apart is its focus on men as a solution: How to influence them to stay home more, allowing many women to continue working and at the same time allowing children to bond with their fathers just as much as their mothers. The policy had the added benefit of shattering gender stereotypes and gender discrimination in the workplace because women and men would equally be taking paid leave.

At the same this policy was in progress, Swedish society saw the rise of a men’s liberation movement which aimed to reduce the pressure men felt from society to achieve economic success. Whereas the U.S was seeing a feminist movement demanding women should earn more and achieve more at work, Sweden was seeing the opposite: Men who wanted social acceptance for earning time at home with their children. This men’s movement achieved in Sweden what women wanted in the U.S.; women who were liberated to receive equal pay for equal work, with the support they needed to succeed at work and at home.

Over time there was a cultural shift. Swedish lawmakers took notice of it and acted by appointing a family policy commission to investigate how to change social policy to support mothers and fathers taking parental leave. The most shocking result of these changes was that social democrats and conservatives supported gender equality in parenthood, and thus the new policy was born.

This program was unprecedented, but the riskiness Sweden took is a lesson that U.S policymakers can learn because although it’s good to stick to the values that make our country strong, being courageous and open-minded has its payoffs when mixed with the right fiscal ingenuity and responsibility.

Like any new invention, however, Sweden’s policy didn’t come without its flaws. One lesson Sweden learned was what happens when women and men are offered equal amounts of paid parental leave. Without policy strategies that encourage fathers to leave the labor market, mothers will naturally do most of the leave-making¹. Up until the 1990s, men in Sweden were only taking 10% of the original six months of paid parental leave. Cultural stigmas were still keeping men from staying home and women ended up staying home longer. This exacerbated gender inequalities as women lost more traction in the labor market. Sweden tweaked the original policy with the use of a “use or lose” leave policy for fathers and tax credits for fathers who took the leave.

Takeaways

The first big take-away of the Swedish model: That it was the need, the high demand for women in the workplace that galvanized the policy process. According to new research, most Americans actually agree that workers should get paid time off to take care of a new baby. The problem is moving the issue to the forefront, which isn’t likely to happen without a demand because there are too many other political issues receiving attention. Sweden experienced this demand because of a labor shortage and low birth rates, but the U.S. can create more of a demand for women in business if business leaders come out and publically profess the value of retaining women in the workplace. For example:

“When we increased paid maternity leave at Google from 12 to 18 weeks, we discovered it wasn’t just good for mothers, it was good for business, doubling our retention rate amongst mothers.” — Susan Wojcicki, CEO, YouTube

The second takeaway was the cultural shift that prompted parliament to take action on the issue. Influential writers and social scientists Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, who wrote the book Crisis in the Population Question in 1934, shaped the Swedish public opinion in the 1960s and influenced a cultural shift about gender norms.¹ The growing desire to liberate men from the rigid expectations of economic and social success developed and ideological support for changing men’s roles also gained traction, with a few men’s centers opening to discuss the impact of traditional male stereotypes on men.²

The Swedish parliament took notice of the advocacy and cultural shift in Sweden; recognizing that the people overwhelmingly wanted a world in which children were able to grow and bond with both parents, and parents were able to choose freely whether to stay at home or work without worry of social stigmas or poverty. This changing understanding of gender roles led in part to the Swedish Parliament appointing a family policy commission to investigate how to change the social policy to support fathers and mothers taking parental leave. Then the rest was history.

Social workers and parental leave advocates should not underestimate the power of influence. Just as writers influenced Swedish public opinion in the 1960s, social media is a powerful public platform for advocates to share stories, publish research, and attract attention to this critical issue today.

Additionally, if the U.S had a culture of men who demanded a paid way to stay home with their new children, either from the private or public sector, then there would be created a higher demand for women in the workplace and a prosperous society where all genders would equally be able to enjoy raising children while simultaneously maintaining a thriving career: This is true equality.

1. Carlson, Juliana (2013) “Sweden’s Parental Leave Insurance: A Policy Analysis of Strategies to Increase Gender Equality,” The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 40 : Iss. 2 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol40/iss2/5
2. Hass, L. (1992). Equal parenthood and social policy: A study of parental leave in Sweden. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.