The Millennial View: Paid family leave is no pipe dream

Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate featured quite a few ambitious proposals: free college for all, reducing income inequality, breaking up the big banks, moving the United States to a 100 percent clean electric grid.

Paid family leave is often couched as some extremist, socialist, feminazi flight of fancy, something that sounds nice but is wholly unrealistic and would probably destroy the U.S. economy.

Paid family leave is presented as something only those extremely liberal Californians do (and have done since 2004) — or perhaps those crazy Swedes.

When paid-leave advocates want to pull out the big guns, they sometimes note that paid leave is something “every other industrialized country” already requires, or “every other rich country,” or “every other major country on Earth,” as Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt., put it.

[...] almost every country in the world requires some form of paid maternity leave, according to a recent report from the International Labour Organization.

The reason I emphasize the fact that paid maternity leave exists nearly everywhere else on Earth is to illustrate not its moral merits but its feasibility.

See, Americans already think paid maternity leave is a good idea.

Paid leave promotes “family values” (moms gets to spend more time bonding with their newborns without facing serious financial repercussions), as well as economic growth (productive workers aren’t forced out of their jobs just because they’ve had kids).

[...] paying for leave through a social insurance system (as we do with unemployment insurance) seems preferable to placing the cost burden entirely on employers.

[...] finding ways to encourage fathers to also take parental leave — both so they’re more active parents and so employers are less likely to discriminate against women in the hiring process — is a worthy goal.