The paid family leave crisis (with Orli Cotel at Mom's First)

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On this week’s episode of the podcast, I chat with Orli Cotel from Moms First about the urgent need for systemic changes to support working moms.  

We dive into the shocking fact that one in four women return to work just two weeks after giving birth due to the lack of paid family leave, and we cover the importance of advocating for better workplace policies, cultural shifts, and legislative changes.  

Orli shares personal stories and practical steps for driving change, making this episode a must-listen for anyone passionate about supporting working moms.  

Topics in this episode:

  • Lack of paid family leave in the U.S. 

  • High return-to-work rates for new moms after childbirth. 

  • Need for better workplace policies and childcare benefits. 

  • Cultural shifts to support working parents. 

  • Advocacy tips from Orli Cotel. 

 Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

Hey working moms, let's talk about paid family leave and childcare benefits.

Did you know that one in four women returned to work after two weeks of giving birth?

Two weeks. I can't even imagine that.

And the reason why is that we are one of the only countries that doesn't have paid family leave. Today on the podcast, I am speaking with Orli Cotel from mom's first about systemic changes that need to take place in America to support working moms in the workforce. Now, most of the time on this podcast, I talk about what you can do at an individual level, to have the life that you wanna have, to not choose between work and home, to advocate for yourself, to say no, to get over those big feelings, to change your mindset.

But today on the podcast, we're focusing on what needs to happen in our companies, in our culture, and in our legislation. You're not going to want to miss this. All right, working moms, let's get to it.

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom. I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.

Why the System is Failing Working Moms in America

Rebecca: Working moms, I am very excited to have a special guest with you today. I have Orly Cotel from Mom's First, and I'm going to have her introduce herself here in just a moment.

I'm just really excited to have this conversation because on this podcast, we oftentimes focus a lot on what we, as individuals, as working moms, can control:

  • the things that we say yes to

  • the things that we say no to

  • how we use our time

  • where we spend our energy

  • how we manage our emotions

  • what we advocate for

I'm here for you as your coach to help you do that.

But we all know that the system is broken and it is not working in our favor as working moms. And there are so many things that can be changed systemically—from the legislative level to the corporate level, to the cultural level.

Mom's First is an organization that I have followed that I think is doing amazing work in advocacy for working moms. And so I invited Orly onto this podcast to share her wisdom and talk about what is ultimately a crisis here in America.

So I'm just excited you're here to pick your brain and to have this really honest conversation around both paid family leave, childcare, and everything related to working moms. So thanks for being here.

Orli Cotel: Thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm just thrilled to be here today. I'm so excited to talk about paid leave, childcare, all of the things.

Meet Orly Cotel: From Environmental Advocacy to Paid Family Leave

Rebecca: Yeah. So good. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I know I just learned you have two kiddos, but tell us a little bit about what you do.

I know you do advocacy work, I think, across the board, not just at Mom's First, but I'm not really sure. So tell us a little bit about you.

Orli Cotel: Sure. Yeah. Well, I've been in the advocacy space my whole career. I started off working on climate and environmental issues, and then I had an experience that I feel like is very common among working parents.

I was doing my work, I was thriving in my career, super dedicated to what I was doing. And then I had my first baby, and I was home on parental leave and just completely shocked by how intense that experience was.

And I remember thinking, if it's this hard for me, and I had all the privilege—I had racial privilege, socioeconomic privilege, I had a spouse who also had parental leave—if it's hard for me, then what is it really like for someone who is working a minimum wage job at Walmart, trying to make ends meet?

So I decided to pivot and leave the environmental advocacy work I was doing. And I joined the founding team of the Paid Leave for the US campaign. We called it PLUS for short. That was the first national campaign to really push for winning change in paid family and medical leave.

And we won paid leave for about 8 million people on that campaign. We won paid leave at Walmart, Starbucks, Target, CVS, and then turned our sights on figuring out how do we really change things federally.

So that was the work that I did. And now I'm at Mom's First, which is a fantastic new advocacy organization that was started by Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code. And we work on all of these systemic issues that we have to change in order to make workplaces work for women and parents.

The Summer Camp Scramble: A Crisis for Working Parents

Rebecca: Yeah, so good. I was thinking about this topic on so many levels, because I, too, have been reflecting a lot on my own privilege and how I have it so much easier than the average working parent out there.

And yet I just went through what I call the summer camp scramble—the worst, awful, awful experience.

Orli Cotel: Yeah.

Rebecca: Of trying to figure out what to do with my kids over the summer. Limited options. Don't want to pay an exorbitant amount, can't afford to pay an exorbitant amount. Want my kids to be happy, not to have, like, a terrible summer where they hate going—which is what happened last year.

They absolutely hated going to where they wanted to go. You know, where the only option I had at the time… it was awful. And I lost sleep over it. And I've spent months—because you have to start this months before summer starts—figuring this all out.

And I sat here and I just went, you know what? I'm smart. I have lots of resources. I actually could afford most of these things, and I know most can't. I had options, which is also kind of rare for people. So I had options other than just one.

So I'm in a really good spot, and this is terrible. We have to fix this.

And so this struck a chord with me over the last couple of weeks, as I've been thinking about this. And then I've also just recently had a couple of client conversations hearing about companies that just aren't supporting their people, their women, in the way that they need to, and being scared to share that you're pregnant. And trying to help my clients kind of navigate some of those conversations.

Orli Cotel: Like, this is—

Why America Needs a Cultural Shift to Support Working Moms

Rebecca: This is a crisis. And I've always kind of come back to—since I'm fairly, I was just telling you before we recorded this, I'm really ignorant on a lot of these conversations that are going on. I'm trying to start really educating myself on what's out there and the issues that are there and what's available and all these different things.

But one of the things that has really struck me when I first became a mom, which is now almost ten years ago at this point, was how what is really required is this cultural shift in America.

It's required across the board, in terms of valuing more working moms, working parents generally, and how the discrepancy between pay—not just between women and men, but between working moms and women that don't have any kids. And so, like, so much disparity between these two things.

So I wanted to start here at this cultural level, because that is something that I have been thinking a lot about. And I'm curious. I know Mom's First—that's one of their pillars—is talking about a cultural shift, for sure.

So what do you see as being the culture shift that really needs to take place in America to better support working moms?

The System Is Stacked Against Moms

Orli Cotel: That's a great question. I mean, look, it starts with changing the conversation so that it's not about individual mom guilt, right?

How many moms do you know who are locking themselves in their bathroom to cry? Who are thinking that, like with the summer camp mess that you just described—which is a total nightmare for a lot of working parents—thinking that they can just Excel spreadsheet their way out of this mess. If I just had the perfect Excel spreadsheet, then I could figure this out, right? It's my fault because I'm not organized enough.

No—the system is stacked against us.

And Reshma Saujani, our founder, talks about this a lot. If you look at the fact that the standard acceptable working day in our culture is nine to five—and that's not true for everyone, there are tons of frontline workers and people who have different shifts—but let's just say culturally, we talk about nine to five as work, right?

And school is eight to three or eight to two in some places. So from the minute you wake up in the morning, the system is already stacked against you. You can't Excel spreadsheet your way out of that mess, right?

Why the U.S. Is So Far Behind on Paid Family Leave

Rebecca: So we can't change time and the way all these systems work on some level, right?

Orli Cotel: And you're expected to work twelve months out of the year, but then there's ten weeks where there's literally no school, right?

So all that is to say that these are systemic problems, and so we need systemic solutions. And the cultural conversation has entirely been about individual solutions. But when you try to solve systemic problems with individual solutions, what you get are moms locking themselves in the bathroom to cry, thinking it's their fault and wondering why it's not changing.

So part of what we're doing is figuring out: how do we get those systemic changes in place? And there's different tracks for that.

  • It looks like change in our workplaces so that we can make workplaces work for women and parents.

  • It also looks like public policy change—like every other single country on earth that has acknowledged that these are economic issues by saying, we're going to have paid family leave.

I mean, literally, the U.S. is the only nation other than Papua New Guinea in the entire planet that does not have paid family leave.

So in this country, we're so far behind in that conversation that I actually think it's intentional, because the more you can keep the focus on individual people's problems, the less responsibility folks in power have to actually take for changing it.

And that's what we're trying to do.

Valuing Families and the Next Generation

Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. I've said it way early on when I started helping working moms navigate the challenges that they face.

But there's this need to value not just the individual—the working parents. There's a need to value the next generation. There's a need to value family systems.

For us as a culture, we've become so individualized, and that's where I'm resonating with what you're saying. We've become so individualized that we have lost what it means to move a whole family forward and the next generation forward.

It's such a wide conversation that needs to be happening.

How are you starting to see—I mean, let's move up from culture and start talking about companies. What do you see happening at the company level in terms of conversations and what people are talking about, what needs to happen, and so forth?

The Corporate Landscape for Paid Family Leave

Orli Cotel: There's a lot, but I think it might actually be more helpful to zoom out first and just talk a little bit about the landscape for what paid family leave actually looks like in the U.S., because then that helps give the context for that company/corporate conversation.

One thing I think is really interesting is that—so we already talked about the fact that we're the only nation on earth that doesn't have paid maternity leave.

But when I talk with women in powerful positions, mostly in tech, finance, big corporate roles, right?

Rebecca: Yeah.

The Truth About Paid Leave in America

Orli Cotel: They often say things to me like, why can't we be more like Sweden or Canada? I can't believe that in the U.S., we only have twelve weeks of maternity leave.

And what I have to share with them is that we don’t have twelve weeks of maternity leave in this country. People in certain jobs definitely have it—it’s become table stakes for a lot of employers to provide at least some paid leave in what we call high-quality jobs, professional class jobs.

Yes, those workers may have some paid leave. But most people in low-wage jobs—predominantly, disproportionately women of color—don’t have any paid leave. None.

One in Four New Moms Is Back at Work in Less Than Two Weeks

Rebecca: Zero. Yeah.

Orli Cotel: And so in this country right now, we have one in four new moms who is back at work less than two weeks after giving birth.

Rebecca: Wow. Wow. That's a staggering statistic.

Orli Cotel: And you’re a mom, so you know what that means. There is no doctor—no doctor—that is going to approve you to go back to work two weeks after childbirth.

Rebecca: No, there’s no employer that wants me after two weeks. If I would have thought that… I mean, how we even think that’s possible, that one can function—that’s mind-boggling, mind-boggling, mind-boggling.

The Economic and Human Cost of No Paid Leave

Orli Cotel: And so it’s physically dangerous to the health of the birthing parent. It’s morally wrong, and it’s economically a disaster.

Because what happens in this country is when people are forced to go back to work before they’re ready after childbirth, they end up dropping out of the workforce. When their only option is to show up at work while they’re still bleeding from childbirth and can’t walk, they end up leaving their jobs.

And our country suffers economically. If you just compare us to labor participation in Canada, where they do have paid leave, we’re literally leaving billions of dollars on the table when it comes to our GDP.

So that’s the big picture. But I never like to talk about stats without also sharing what that actually means for real people.

Rebecca: Yeah, because that’s—I hear all those numbers and I hear something, but I want to see the person in front of you on some level as well.

Real Stories of Parents Without Paid Leave

Orli Cotel: Yeah. So I can paint that picture for you, but just brace yourself, because this is an emotional rollercoaster.

Here’s what this looks like in real life: I had a conversation with a woman a few years ago who was a nurse at the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit. That’s where the most vulnerable babies go—the babies that are fighting for their lives.

She told me she had a patient who came in on a Thursday and gave birth to a micro preemie, a tiny newborn who was not ready to be out of the womb yet. She gave birth on a Thursday—and she was back at work on her feet as a server at Waffle House that Sunday, because she didn’t have a single day of paid leave.

So every day, she would go work her shift as a server, and then she would come into the hospital at night to sit by her tiny newborn baby’s bedside and cry. That is what we’re doing to families in America.

A Father Forced to Choose Between His Job and His Baby

Orli Cotel: This is not just about women. I had a different, heartbreaking conversation with a dad who was a security guard in New Hampshire.

He called his boss to say that his wife was in labor and he was driving her to the hospital to have their baby. His boss said to him, “Well, sorry, but you don’t have the day off today. Drop her off and come back and come in.”

He said, “No, I want to be with my wife while she’s giving birth.” And his boss said, “Well, if you don’t come in today, you’re fired.”

So he had to choose: be at his wife’s bedside during labor, or keep his job. And that is totally legal in this country.

We can get into this more, but there’s a law called FMLA that protects certain people’s jobs. But millions don’t qualify for it. And for those people, you can get fired just for missing one day of work.

So anyway, I could go on and on, but that gives you a sense of what we’re really talking about.

Why This Conversation on Paid Leave Matters

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. And it’s hard to even know—it’s hard to even know how to respond to that. And I think that’s why this is such an important conversation.

I’m so glad that we’re having it here, at least in this little nook of the world from this podcast, because it’s easy to gloss over it on some level and just move on with life. To hear it, to feel sad, and then think, well, that’s a problem, and then kind of move on to the immediacy of whatever’s going on in your life today.

But that’s why this conversation is being elevated right now. Because we need to do better, and we can play a part in making things better, for sure.

So zooming back out: one in four women return to work within two weeks, and we are the only country that doesn’t have paid family leave. Just because I think this is important, I’ll totally admit it—I told you before we hit record, and I’ll admit it here now—as I was reading some articles before this conversation, I had to write down for myself some of the lingo.

Like: FMLA, PFL… what are these things? Even though I’ve been on maternity leaves, I don’t remember. I don’t remember. And so it’s important to know what we’re talking about and make sure everybody understands, as these terms get flung around—not just here on the podcast, but in legislative conversations and elsewhere.

So tell us: what do we really need to know when it comes to paid family leave and job protection?

What Is FMLA and What Does It Actually Do?

Orli Cotel: Yeah, great question. FMLA is the Family and Medical Leave Act. It’s a Clinton-era legislation that’s been around for decades.

All it does is protect your job if you need to be out for up to twelve weeks—for your own medical recovery, to take care of a baby, or to care for a family member like a spouse with cancer or an aging parent.

So it’s great in that it can hold your job for you, and it means that when you come back, they have to give you back your same job or an equivalent job. They can’t demote you or fire you.

Why FMLA Didn’t Protect That Dad

Rebecca: Yeah. So coming back to the story of the dad—he didn’t qualify for this for whatever reason. If he did, this is what would have protected him in the end.

Orli Cotel: Exactly, yeah. That’s what would have held his job for him.

But when you look at the fact that a huge percentage of Americans live paycheck to paycheck—for most people, twelve weeks of unpaid leave would equal eviction, bankruptcy, homelessness.

Most people cannot go twelve weeks without pay without having severe repercussions on their lives. So, yes, your job is protected. But if we really want to win change for the people who need it most, there has to be a way for people to still pay their bills—and not have to choose between recovering from childbirth or paying the rent.

That’s what FMLA is. And actually, when I started doing this work about eight years ago, when I would talk with employers, there wasn’t even an understanding of paid family leave in HR departments.

We’d ask employers, “Do you provide paid family leave?” And they’d say, “Yeah, we comply with the law. We give people FMLA.”

And we would have to say, “No, that’s not paid family leave.”

Rebecca: Right.

How Paid Family Leave Works in 14 States

Orli Cotel: That's unpaid time. So the good news on that front is that there's been a ton of work at the state level, and states have really been leading the way. In certain states—this started in California and now it's in 14 states—there are state laws and programs that will provide pay.

What's interesting is these are public programs, not through your employer. So if you have a baby in California and you are a full-time in-house employee—not an independent contractor, that's a separate story—you file a claim with the state. Your doctor fills out the necessary forms, and the state will send you a debit card with cash on it to pay you for that time.

These programs basically function like insurance. Everyone pays in a little bit, a few hundred dollars a year through a payroll tax deduction. Then, when it's time for you to take leave, you file that claim and you can get paid. It's just like insurance.

Paid Leave: Only 14 States Offer It

Rebecca: Sure. And if I recall, it's like a percentage.

Orli Cotel: It's a percentage. Every state is different. In some states, just the employee pays in. In others, the employer also pays in. But it comes out to a minimal amount—less than the price of a cup of coffee per day.

Then when you need the money, it's there for you. It's been fantastic to see 14 states do that, and it's brought paid leave to millions and millions of people. But the vast majority of states still give people absolutely nothing. And that's where you see people.

Rebecca: Only 14 states.

Orli Cotel: Right, exactly. So my thought is, yes, we need more states to do this and they should step up. But what we really need is to join the rest of the world and have national paid family leave legislation so that everyone can be there for their families.

Two Neighbors, Two Different Realities

Orli Cotel: I live in northern California, so I think all the time about South Lake Tahoe, where people go skiing. It's an interesting little town because half the town is in California and the other half is in Nevada.

I think about the fact that you could have two neighbors working the same type of job, living in the same town, doing the same things. Their kids play together. But when one of them has a baby on the California side, she gets paid leave. The neighbor in Nevada doesn’t. That’s ridiculous.

Rebecca: Yeah, that is absolutely ridiculous. For sure.

Complacency Around Paid Leave and Why It Must Change

Rebecca: And it’s no wonder people then might pick up and move or make big choices. I don’t even think—when I had my first maternity leave ten years ago—I just thought this was the way it was.

By my second, I owned my own business, which was a different story. But with the first one, I thought: this is just life. It’s complicated and hard, and what you do is take a 60% pay cut. Because I do live in California, I did receive that, and we just accepted the pay cut.

But only in the last year or two has it really settled in how much I just assumed this was life—instead of believing it could be better. Looking at how other countries function, other people have figured it out. We could do better.

In retrospect, even thinking back to the repercussions that came to me—I didn’t even think about it at the time. I agreed with it. I didn’t get a bonus the year I came back. We didn’t even talk about it, but I assumed it was because I was gone for four months. I just thought, oh, well that makes sense.

But hold up, wait a second—that doesn’t make sense at all. I had done amazing work in the time that I was there, and I definitely deserved the bonus. But there’s this complacency we have about it.

And again, coming back to the cultural shift: we have to believe that we could do better and that we deserve better to start making change.

Stop Settling for Crumbs: Why 12 Weeks of Paid Leave Isn’t Enough

Orli Cotel: 100%. Yeah. And also it drives me absolutely nuts when I hear people talk, they say things like, well, I want to acknowledge I was so lucky to have my twelve weeks of paid leave or whatever, and like, yes, it's good to acknowledge privilege, but we got to stop thinking so small and feeling lucky with twelve weeks of paid leave.

Right. You know, it's true that there are people that are less fortunate, but look at, you don't have to look to Sweden to see what countries are doing. I mean, Canada, right, Canada extended their paid leave a few years ago from twelve months to 18 months because their lawmakers acknowledged that twelve months wasn't enough for some people.

And so that I just feel like we have to really, this is not just about paid leave. This is about moms in general and women in general. Like, we have to feel empowered to ask for what we really need and deserve. And society has told us that we shouldn't talk about our needs and that what we deserve is so small that we're out there being thankful for crumbs.

And, like, I am done with crumbs. Right? Like, we need the whole thing. We need the supports, and we need it because we are holding up this economy.

Paid Leave and Childcare Are Core Infrastructure

Orli Cotel: Right. I'll tell you another thing that really drove me wild is, you know, a couple years ago, when there was this Build Back Better legislation, which was this big economic recovery package from COVID and everybody paid leave was on the table for a while.

Like, they were thinking about doing national paid leave as part of that bill. And, they went ahead and they invested in all of these infrastructure projects, building roads and bridges because. And this was like, the actual conversation around it was saying we're investing in roads and bridges because these help people get to work. And our economy needs roads and bridges so people can get to work.

But when it came to paid leave and childcare, like, we need paid leave and childcare so women can get to work, right? This is core infrastructure for our economy, but it's not being treated that way.

And so it ended up on the cutting room floor of that legislation. And our lawmakers, you know, they need to stand up for women that have been holding up this economy. The frontline workers during the pandemic that kept everything moving as soon as the pandemic was over, you know, what do they get in return? So that's.

We’ve Got to Fight for Moms Holding Up the Economy

Rebecca: We got.

Orli Cotel: We got to fight for them.

Rebecca: Yeah, I love this. I wrote this down. Core infrastructure. Childcare is core infrastructure. It has to be core infrastructure for parents.

We learned that in COVID, more than we probably ever had before. How core it actually is, as we saw, you know, a massive leave of women in particular, leave the workforce during that time to take care of children because we didn't have it at the time.

And I know that Moms First has just done quite a lot around talking about childcare and childcare benefits and really rising that conversation up. So now we have, like, we've talked about, you know, FMLA, which is about job security. We've talked about paid family leave, which is something entirely different. And now we're talking about childcare benefits, which is a. Which is another kind of conversation out there that seems to be on the rise as well.

What's kind of happening at the. At the legislative level as we talk about childcare and the childcare crisis?

Childcare Benefits Pay for Themselves

Orli Cotel: Well, I wish more was happening at the legislative level. I mean, I think we're still at the point that we're doing what I would consider case making. Right. We're trying to really show that there is clear economic benefit.

And a lot of what we're doing at Moms First is working directly with employers to help them create and expand childcare programs. And I would say childcare now is really where paid leave was, like a decade ago—that most employers still don't provide it. And when I talk with employers, they don't even know what I mean when I say a childcare benefit, right?

So they'll say things like, we don't provide childcare because we don't have an in-house daycare. And in-house daycare is great, but, like, that's not going to work for every employer. Right?

And so when we talk about childcare, there's a whole suite of benefits that companies are starting to provide. Whether it's childcare FSAs so you can use pre-tax money to pay for your childcare, backup care benefits, straight-up stipends where they just give you cash, or tools that help employees find childcare because that can be hard. There's a lot of stuff companies can do far before they even get to the on-site daycare situation.

ROI of Childcare Benefits: What Companies Are Learning

Orli Cotel: So anyway, we work with companies to do that, and then we also work with them to help talk about how this is financially very important.

We just did this great study with BCG that we launched at the US Chamber of Commerce last month, where we looked at case studies of five very different types of employers—ranging from UPS to Etsy to Fast Retailing (the parent company for Uniqlo and Theory). Very different types of companies. Steamboat Ski Resort.

And we looked at all of their very different childcare benefits, and we tried to see what it would look like if we measured the ROI—the return on investment—across all those companies. And we found that it was phenomenal.

Basically, childcare is a benefit that pays for itself, and you don't have to take our word for it. That's why we did the study with BCG, right? They're going to be really diligent with the facts here. It pays for itself.

UPS Success Story: From Almost Fired to Promoted

Orli Cotel: So when companies invest in this stuff, even just as a private sector benefit, they end up seeing a big reduction in absenteeism, plus improvements in recruitment and retention.

UPS had a great story that was part of this study where they shared that they had a mom who was an employee working part-time in one of their facilities. She had three kids, single mom, and she was calling out for work all the time due to childcare disruptions.

Originally—and I think this is true for tons of companies—they thought they had an absenteeism problem. They didn’t realize their absenteeism problem was that they were paying the price for our systemic lack of childcare investment.

So anyway, she was calling in sick. She didn’t have childcare. UPS started a pilot program where they built an on-site emergency backup daycare where, if your childcare fell through, you could drop off your kid that day.

She was about to lose her job because she had so many absences. She was on probation. They were going to fire her. But after they built that center, she got promoted. So she went from almost getting fired to being promoted because they solved the childcare problem for her.

So I thought that was a great story to share.

Shifting From Mom Guilt to Advocacy

Rebecca: It gives me a little chills just thinking about that. I love that, and I love how the conversation is shifting in this way. It's so important. What do you think we as individuals need to start doing?

Orli Cotel: I think there's a ton that people can start doing, but the most important thing is to stop thinking that this is your fault, to stop taking the blame and feeling the mom guilt, and to realize that these are systemic problems and we need systemic solutions.

So instead of crying in your bathroom, go cry in front of your legislator's office.

Rebecca: I did do that, actually. I did cry in my bathroom. I cried.

Orli Cotel: We've all done it. But I think what we can all do is we can become advocates in our workplaces, and we can become advocates for public policy.

Moms First runs a program where anyone who wants to help encourage their workplace to improve their paid leave or childcare, we run a free workshop. You can sign up, join it, and we will train you and give you all the tools and tactics you need. Then you can go and be part of our workforce that's going out there and trying to talk to HR and get them to change.

But then, on the public policy side, we need to get loud, right? We need our lawmakers to hear from us and to stop thinking that it's just like a nice side dish they can serve sometimes to women.

Like, we are the main course. We are keeping this economy going, and they need to be doing things like passing national laws that will support us.

The Economic Impact of No Paid Leave or Childcare

Rebecca: Yeah, you mentioned this before, actually. I'm glad that you brought this back up because it resurfaced a question in my mind.

You talked about how much of an effect on our economy the lack of paid family leave and childcare is having. And I'm curious, without getting probably too technical, what do you see as that impact? What should we know about the impact that that's having?

The Economic Cost of No Paid Leave

Orli Cotel: I mean, just, it's real. It's an impact on our GDP. Right? It's billions of dollars that our economy is leaving on the table because women aren't participating in the workforce—because they drop out after having kids and they can't get back in.

When women have more time to heal from childbirth, bond with their babies, and feel comfortable getting care for their kids, they will return to work. People want to. Many people want to. But no one's going to return to work if they feel like their baby’s not ready, or if they feel like they’re not ready.

What we see in all these other countries is when they provide longer paid leave and better childcare, women go back to work.

Learning from Canada: Paid Leave + $10 a Day Childcare

Orli Cotel: In Canada, I think this is a really interesting piece of the puzzle. They've instituted a program where they have $10-a-day childcare. They're investing in their childcare system. It's only $10 a day, but they can do that because they also have longer paid leave.

When you look at part of the crisis we face with childcare, the most expensive part of the system is the infant stage until about 18 months. Infants require different ratios of care—that’s the most expensive. But if parents have paid leave for a year and can be home with their baby, then the system only has to solve for the less expensive part of childcare.

But I also think we can't talk about the change we need to win for moms without also talking about the change we need to win for dads.

Why Paternity Leave Matters Just as Much

Rebecca: Okay, tell us a little bit about that.

Orli Cotel: I think that's a really important piece. There are tons of companies that are now providing maternity leave, and that's great, but they're still leaving out dads. They're leaving out non-birthing parents.

I always think about Annemarie Slaughter—she has this quote that I come back to over and over. I'm going to paraphrase here, but it’s something along the lines of: We won't win equality for women in the workplace if we don't also have equality for men at home.

What that looks like: if you're in a heterosexual relationship and you’re a woman working full-time, but then you also come home and do the full shift—all the childcare, all the household management—you know as well as I do, that’s impossible.

But when men get involved and take on a much bigger role in the home, it enables women to thrive in their careers, too. And that doesn’t happen unless men take paternity leave.

Setting Patterns of Caregiving Early

Orli Cotel: The first few months of welcoming a new baby are when you set all the patterns for caregiving in your house.

I can talk about my own life and how this played out for me. My husband had paternity leave. When our second baby was born, his employer gave him four months of paternity leave. We took that first month together so he could really help me recover from childbirth. I had some medical stuff I needed to deal with, and it was really helpful to have him there.

Then he went back, and I was home with the baby. When I went back to work, he stayed home for three months with the baby. That enabled me to return to work feeling very confident, because I knew the baby was with her dad.

And he developed such a close bond with her because he had to learn how to do all the things.

Breaking Stereotypes: Dads Can Do It Too

Orli Cotel: There was none of this, like, “Well, my wife just plans the birthday parties because she’s better at it.”

I hate when men say that. The man saying this is often an executive who manages 20 people at work. And I’m like: you can definitely handle the complexity of a four-year-old birthday party.

But those caregiving patterns get set in that early time. For years, when our daughter would wake up in the middle of the night, she would call out “Mama, Dada. Mama, Dada.”

Because she knew either of us could come meet her needs.

Breaking Stereotypes: Moms, Dads, and Shared Responsibilities

Rebecca: Yeah. I love that. I love that with this conversation comes so many other conversations around stereotypes and breaking through some of those barriers as well. Certainly that's a lot of conversation I have with women who—yeah, the dad says that, but the mom believes it as well. Like, “I'm just better at this, and so I do it.”

And we take on all these things. There's a lot that we as women have to break through, too. Coming back to owning my own ignorance about my own leaves—what I could advocate for and what I couldn't—and just kind of the complacency of this is just the way it is.

Instead of saying, no, that's not the way I want it to be. I get to be a part of that conversation on how I change it moving forward—certainly in my own family unit, but then beyond that as well.

Women in the Workforce: Comparing the U.S. and Canada

Rebecca: I want to circle back, because I've never really thought about this before. Again, I admit I came into this conversation doing some research and have been much more interested in this conversation in the last several months, but still very ignorant.

To your point, you said there's almost no way I could ever really get well versed in it—it’s super complex, obviously. But circling back to this idea that we have less women in the workforce, and that that's a problem, I’m curious how that compares.

Maybe you know this statistic, maybe you don’t. Maybe there’ve been studies, maybe not. But because we have a lack of women in the workforce, how does that stat compare in America to other countries? Do we have less women in the workforce at various levels in comparison to other countries, as much as we can compare that?

Orli Cotel: Yeah, it's a little bit outside of my area of expertise. I don't have great stats on it. But I do know one of the best points of comparison is Canada. We have very similar economies, a lot of similarities between us and Canada, and they just have more women in the workforce than we do.

And economists attribute that to the social policy—things like paid family leave, childcare, all the other supports that enable people to participate.

Raising the Ceiling vs. Raising the Floor

Rebecca: I mean, I would assume then that would go to all of the various subcategories of women. Women of color, for example. We’d see more women in higher ranks in business, more women overall—not as much separation between the types of jobs, the levels of jobs, and pay. That’s probably true in Canada across the board.

Orli Cotel: I would say the cultural conversation in our country around women in the workforce has largely been about how do we raise the ceiling?

How do we get more women in the C-suite? Why are there only a few women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies? How do we change that? And that is a very important conversation.

But I think it is morally irresponsible to have a conversation about raising the ceiling without also talking about raising the floor.

Our focus on working women often centers on the stereotype of a white woman in a suit in a corporate setting. But working women are doing all kinds of different jobs. The pandemic really opened up the cultural conversation around what it means to be a frontline worker—the folks that are really fueling our economy and are essential to our functioning.

Those are the people we need to invest in and deliver for.

When we talk about raising the floor, what I mean is making sure that if you're in a minimum wage job, you have paid family leave you can actually take, and childcare you can rely on that doesn’t break the bank.

Rebecca: Right.

Orli Cotel: The kind of the very basic supports that help people get to work.

How Managers Can Lead the Change for Parents

Rebecca: Yeah. Okay. So we've talked about advocacy, reaching out to legislation, and how Moms First has a workshop. I was also coming into this conversation thinking about many of the listeners—most are at a managerial level.

My listeners and clients are at a point in their careers where they have people below them. That puts them in a unique position, because they have direct influence over others who may need parental leave and support.

So if we start talking about what we can do as leaders of other people, what does that conversation start to look like?

Orli Cotel: I love that question because there's so much you can do as a manager.

If you're listening to this, I’d say:

  • First, depending on the size of your company, if you don’t have a paid family leave policy—or if you think yours is inadequate—your voice matters. As a manager, you should go to HR and talk with them.

  • If HR wants to expand their benefits, have them reach out to Moms First. Everything we do is pro bono. We’ll work directly with your company to help you develop a better policy, give you benchmarking, data, and tools.

There are also no-cost things any company can do right now that you, as a manager, could push for. For example:

  • Make sure there’s an official policy where childcare disruptions are an excused absence. Right now, companies don’t even know they have a childcare problem, because employees are just “calling in sick.” Often, it’s fake sick because they can’t say, “My grandma called in sick and can’t watch the baby.”

  • Have a way for employees to report childcare disruptions.

And as a manager, there’s so much you can do directly with your reports:

  • If you have men on your team and they tell you their partner’s expecting a baby, encourage them to take their fullpaternity leave. As long as only women are taking full leave, it becomes a liability for women in the workplace. But if men take it loudly and proudly, they normalize it.

  • In every check-in, end with this question: “Is there any other feedback you have for me about what I can do to help support you?”

Ask it as an open-ended question.

Rebecca: Open question. Open question.

Listening to Employees Opens Doors for Advocacy

Orli Cotel: You'll be so surprised at the kinds of things that your employees will tell you, and then you can really find out what they need and show up for them and help advocate for their needs.

Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. Another one that comes to mind that I talk a lot about with my clients is advocating for how you want your career to be pre and post leave.

So often, bosses—with the best of intentions—don’t want to overburden someone who has taken a leave. And that can have very detrimental career effects on people. Not assuming any of that, but instead having really open conversations around career progress, growth, and what people really want in an open dialogue that includes being a mom, being a parent, or whatever that might look like, is also another important one.

That is a no-cost option. It doesn’t cost anything to be the one having that crucial and courageous conversation as well.

Companies Can Take a Stand on Paid Leave Policy

Orli Cotel: Absolutely. I totally agree with that. I also think if you're in a leadership position—if folks listening are in senior management, senior leadership, or the C-suite—you can also encourage your company to take a stand when it comes to public policy.

That makes a tremendous impact. I mean, I'm looking right now at Pennsylvania, which is the next state that has the chance to pass paid leave. They could become the 15th state with paid leave this year, and they're at a tremendous economic disadvantage when it comes to recruitment and retention.

Because you said this earlier, right? You said, “Why wouldn’t you just move to another state if that other state has such better benefits for parents?” So Pennsylvania—most of their neighboring states already have these programs. New Jersey has a great paid leave program. Delaware does, too. And Pennsylvania doesn’t.

So companies are now getting involved in Pennsylvania and saying to the governor and to the lawmakers in Harrisburg, “We want you to create this paid leave program because it will help us have a stronger, wider, and richer talent base.”

Rebecca: And economy.

Orli Cotel: So companies can take a stand on that stuff. And they need to, really, because we also need to position them as core economic issues.

Resources to Stay Educated and Engaged

Rebecca: So good. This has been such a helpful conversation. Orly, thank you for being here.

If you were to point listeners to other resources to educate themselves and follow along—besides Moms First obviously being one, which I follow on LinkedIn and get newsletters from—what are some other key ones that you think are really useful for people to follow along with?

Orli Cotel: Yeah, well, you know, I definitely would say follow along with Moms First. Follow us—you can come to our website, momsfirst.us. We have tons of resources.

You can also follow us on social. I post a lot on LinkedIn about these issues, and I post opportunities for people to engage—like our workshops, petitions, and other advocacy opportunities. So you can follow me on LinkedIn.

Transparency in Paid Leave Policies

Rebecca: I think recently I followed you and saw a post around, I think it was with you, around company transparency on paid family leave—so that people can make hiring decisions or decisions to seek out companies that have transparent leave policies.

So that if you're pregnant—because there are lots of women looking for jobs while pregnant—they’re at a huge disadvantage because of all these things that we're talking about anyway. So I know there's been a lot of work happening right now to get companies to be more transparent about this as part of their hiring process.

I followed along, and that set me down a great rabbit trail of looking into that issue in particular. So, for sure, you're a good one to follow.

Orli Cotel: Yeah, that's also a great resource I would recommend too. So, you're probably referring to a project that we did with The Skimm. They have a database called #ShowUsYourLeave. If you just Google The Skimm and “paid leave” or Show Us Your Leave, you'll probably land there.

They have a database of hundreds and hundreds of companies that have publicly disclosed their paid leave policies so that you can find employers that are actually doing right by their employees—and then go apply for those jobs. So that's a great resource, too, for sure.

“Being in the Tunnel” as a Working Parent

Rebecca: Love that. So good. Well, thank you again for your time, for what you're doing around this issue and this subject. It's clearly your life's work, and it's so needed. I just appreciate you and appreciate your time.

Orli Cotel: I appreciate you and everything that you're doing to bring this information to your audience, too. Can I add one more thing?

Rebecca: Yeah, of course.

Orli Cotel: I just want to say—you know, I posted recently on LinkedIn about this, and it got a lot of traction and attention—but I think there’s a real issue where a lot of working women, when they have young babies, the phrase I use is, I call it being in the tunnel.

You’ve got a baby, and up until the time that baby goes to elementary school, life is really hard. You’re just trying to stay above water, right? You’re exhausted, you’re sleep-deprived, dealing with all the germs they bring home from daycare or preschool—you can’t even handle it.

And then your kids get older. The post I did was a photo of my kids, who are now six and nine, walking off alone together towards school. And this wave of emotion hit me, realizing I’m no longer a little-kid mom—which had been part of my identity for so many years.

I don’t carry a diaper bag. I haven’t done that for years. I’m not in that phase anymore. But when parents are in the tunnel, that’s when they feel most passionate about these issues, when they’re fired up.

Rebecca: To fight for it.

Orli Cotel: And it’s also when they’re the most exhausted, the most stretched thin, and don’t have the bandwidth or time.

So the only way we’re going to win change on these issues is if people who aren’t parents of young kids—people who haven’t had kids yet, or folks with kids off in college—use their extra time to pay it forward. That’s when you fight for women, parents, and caregivers in your workplace and help win that change so that our own kids, when they become parents, don’t have to confront the same problems we’ve faced.

Paying It Forward Beyond the Tunnel Years

Rebecca: I love that. So good. I did read that post, and it struck me a lot because it is 100% true. It’s almost like we forget—we want to get out of the tunnel vision.

Orli Cotel: I need to watch that

Rebecca: Get out, move on. And we do, on some level. And it’s also the time to pay it forward—when we have that little extra bandwidth to put toward those conversations and brain space, brain cells to put to those things as well.

So, appreciate that. Appreciate that for sure.

All right, working moms, I hope that you have enjoyed this conversation, that you will follow some of these resources, join the conversation, reach out to your legislators, do all the things to keep moving this conversation forward.

And until next week, let’s get to it.

Rebecca Olson