Abby McCloskey and Emily Wielk, Bipartisan Policy Center, November 17, 2025
Executive Summary
Most American parents of young children are working. Yet the United States remains the only Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country without a national paid parental leave policy. As a result, parents are unable to spend the necessary quality and bonding time with their children after birth or adoption. Although private-sector companies and government on the local, state, and federal levels have moved to improve access to parental leave, significant gaps remain for millions of working families and their children. This creates economic disruptions and health challenges that have ripple effects across society. This issue brief lays out a vision for why working parents not only want but need a federal baseline standard of paid parental leave.
Section I covers the various socioeconomic benefits of providing paid parental leave, including improved infant and maternal health, greater financial security for families, and improved economic returns that exceed program costs. Recent research estimates that the societal returns for even a modest public paid parental leave program outstrip the costs by an average of 30-to-1. A paid parental leave program generally costs less than other benefits that the United States provides for workers temporarily out of work, and meaningful policy can still be done in a constrained fiscal environment.
Section II highlights the Bipartisan Policy Center’s original research with Cygnal to uncover what parents of very young children (under 5 years old) want. BPC found that most parents prefer paid parental leave during the first year of a child’s life over other policies like $5,000 of cash benefits or tax credits. This is perhaps a surprising finding given the significant political attention paid to tax credits in recent months, but it is an important insight for policymakers to consider as they craft policy solutions. The challenges facing parents are not only financial, but around the structures of work and care.
Section III outlines a federal paid leave program that would provide a guaranteed baseline level of support to all new parents. While many states and businesses have expanded paid leave policies—and paid leave reform bills have been introduced and passed in Congress this year—gaps in coverage still remain for many workers. Based on the available economic evidence and parental surveys, an important next step for businesses and government is to set a floor of support under which no working parent falls. Setting a common baseline of protection for new parents and their babies would represent a fiscally modest first step to a more comprehensive family and medical leave program while still providing significant benefits to families with minimal workplace disruptions. Sustained bipartisan momentum continues to pave the way for reform that will help millions of parents access protected, paid leave to care for a new child.