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"This could be a big week for women and men when it comes to getting guaranteed paid leave to take care of a new child, an ill family member, or yourself. As Think Progress reports, on Thursday, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) will introduce the FAMILY Act (Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act), a bill that could guarantee 12 weeks of paid leave a year for everyone, no matter what size company you work for. (Currently, leave is guaranteed only for people working at companies with 50 or more employees.) Sounds reasonable, right? It&amp;#x27;s no secret the U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that doesn&amp;#x27;t guarantee paid leave for mothers. The Family and Medical Leave Act, signed into law by President Clinton 20 years ago, requires larger employers and public agencies to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. According to the Center for American Progress, only 12 percent of American workers have access to paid family leave. The FAMILY Act is positioned as a paid benefit (like Social Security), with workers and employers both paying 0.2 percent of wages, or two cents for every 10 dollars earned. Translation: This isn&amp;#x27;t a handout&amp;amp;mdash;this is something you and your employer pay for. What would it mean for you? For starters, if you decided to have a child or had to care for a sick parent, you wouldn&amp;#x27;t be forced to take unpaid leave and suffer economic hardship. Current trends show that over 40 percent of mothers take unpaid leave and a quarter either quit or are let go from their jobs after having a child. And men would also receive leave under the FAMILY Act. Currently, 85 percent of men do not get paid leave through their employers. I&amp;#x27;ll say that again: Eight-five percent. And while many men take leave when a new child arrives, three-quarters of them take just a week or less. In California, where paid leave is required, three-quarters of men take it, and for an average of three weeks. According to the Center for American Progress, almost all men want to spend more time with their families and split parenting equally with their partners&amp;amp;mdash;which is something paid leave could encourage. And hooray for that, because according to the National Partnership for Women and Families, when men are able to take paternity leave they are more involved in their children&amp;#x27;s care and more committed throughout the child&amp;#x27;s life. Of course, the impact goes beyond children. While we don&amp;#x27;t like to think about it (we really don&amp;#x27;t like to at all), everyone&amp;#x27;s parents are aging, or our spouse could fall ill and care often falls on family members who can see a devastating financial impact. According to Forbes, fewer than half of workers manage to keep their jobs during a period of caregiving, and 80 to 90 percent of caregivers are women. If the right to paid leave was universal, perhaps more men would take it too, and women would be at less of a disadvantage. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/inspired/blogs/the-conversation/2013/12/paid-family-leave-good-for-mom>