Jeb! Bush was
visibly displeased to be asked about paid maternity leave during a recent Iowa campaign event. A paid-leave activist with the group Make It Work put Bush on the spot, drawing surly, abrupt answers as Bush turned away almost before he finished blowing off the question:
Q: "The United States is one of only two countries in the world that does not have paid maternity leave."
Bush: "That's a state decision."
Q: "So you're not interested in making sure we catch up with the rest of the world?"
Bush: "I don't think we need more federal rules."
So, no, he's not interested in catching up with the rest of the world. If women want to stay home to recover from childbirth and care for their babies, they should marry rich men (and get a strong pre-nup to be sure that a divorce doesn't leave them high and dry after years of staying home), find a job with a company that offers decent paid leave (and hope the company doesn't change its policies), embrace poverty, or move to one of the three states—California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island—with paid family leave programs.
As Bryce Covert points out, the lack of paid family leave has major effects not just on families but on the American economy:
Without paid leave, however, many families suffer severe financial consequences. A third who get either partial pay or no pay when they take time off for a new baby either borrow money, dip into savings, put off paying bills, or a combination of all three, while 15 percent have to enroll in public benefits to scrape by. And the lack of a paid leave mandate is part of why other developed countries are outpacing the U.S. in women’s labor force participation.
But as president, Jeb! Bush wouldn't consider those issues any of his business. Because he can always fall back on Republican catchphrases about how paid family leave is just another burdensome federal rule that he opposes in the name of freedom (the freedom of employers to screw workers), not a lack of common decency and an economically damaging, shortsighted opposition to women- and family-friendly policies.