Last week, on August 2, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was asked what the Democrats—if they won the Presidency, Senate, and House this November—should pass first in 2025.
Walz could have chosen from a menu of issues, problems, and ground we have to make up as a country. But his answer? Paid family and medical leave. “We’re the last nation on earth basically not to do this,” he began. “It is so foundational to just basic decency and financial well-being. And I think that would start to change both finances, attitude—strengthen the family.”
As someone who has argued for years that issues of care and paid leave are core economic concerns for working families, and that they are political priorities candidates of all kinds—not only women—must prioritize, I felt relief. I felt joy. And then to have him be named the nominee days later and join Vice President Kamala Harris to form the most pro-family, pro-care, pro-paid leave presidential ticket perhaps ever, I felt profound hope and pride. Harris and Walz have both put paid leave in their opening stump speeches, in their reintroduction to the nation, in the illustration of their priorities. And by doing so, they have changed the game.
This is the moment many of us have been waiting years for: to finally have working people’s and families’ needs heard. As a lifelong advocate and also the founder of Paid Leave PAC, I’ve never given up. Although sometimes, when it came to paid leave and care, I felt many in the political and funding world had.
But not this Presidential ticket. It’s noteworthy that both Harris and Walz have had a long and substantive commitment to the issue.
Governor Walz was a sponsor of the FAMILY Act for paid family and medical leave going back to his time in the House of Representatives in the 2000s. He campaigned on paid leave when he ran for governor in 2018; he prioritized it once elected and passed one of the strongest and most inclusive state paid leave programs in the country with the slimmest of majorities. He’s tweeted about it nearly a hundred times, and continues to laud it as his legacy.
Vice President Harris has consistently campaigned on and led on paid family and medical leave since her career in the U.S. Senate began in 2017. Harris had the strongest proposal for paid leave of any presidential candidate—ever—when she ran in 2019. She sponsored paid leave legislation that moved through the Senate, from the FAMILY Act to the Healthy Families Act. In the White House, the Biden-Harris Administration put paid family and medical leave in their economic agenda and landmark legislative framework, and released the strongest budget proposals for paid leave and care to date.
Together, Harris and Walz are the strongest champions for paid leave on a presidential ticket in history. They understand innately how it resonates with the American people. This is the ticket that can, that I believe will, pass paid leave for all in the United States.
So why does this matter?
Paid leave — and, to be clear, its related issues of care, family, and reproductive freedom — is one of the most transformative, popular, and desperately needed policies in the country.
We are one of the only countries in the world — one of seven — that guarantees no form of paid leave for its people. And only 27 percent of private sector workers have paid family leave through their jobs. As Glamour has lifted up time and again, the reality of this is devastating. Women go back to work just days after giving birth, broken and bleeding. The sick and aging decline, and too often die totally alone. Too many of us are forced to choose between our lives and our livelihoods, our work and our family, our jobs and our health.
These are impossible choices much of the world does not have to make. And what does this translate to? Enormous and compounding financial losses. Working families lose more than $22 billion a year in wages alone without paid leave. But also it leads to lost promotions, savings, opportunities. It leads to an unconscionable maternal mortality rate, particularly for Black women. It leads to worse physical and mental health outcomes for whole families. It leads to a country that has become more and more stressed, unequal, unwell, unhappy, and barely able to financially survive. A recent Pew study points to the rising number of adults in America who simply don’t want kids. Of course, everyone has their reasons, and many factors abound, but 36 percent of adults 18 to 49 cite not being able to afford a child as the reason they do not want any.
I remember some of the challenges I faced when I had my own son nine years ago. I was financially forced back to work well before my child was sleeping at all, well before my body had healed. I remember the days of pumping in storage closets, mind-blowing exhaustion, pain and complications. And yet I was one of the privileged ones. I had a few weeks of paid family leave. I was able to have grandparents help. And to save up over years of work the money required to put my son in child care.
But the experience rocked me. I’d never felt so physically sick, so financially and emotionally stressed, so abandoned by a whole social structure, so invisible or isolated. It changed me forever. It was certainly a big part of why I never had a second child. And it’s an important part of why I’ve taken on the fight to deliver families in this country what they deserve—the freedom, time, and ability to heal, bond, and care for themselves and the people they love.
And yet, some in the political mainstream still don’t see issues of paid leave or care as important enough. They may cite the cost of the policy, while ignoring the cost of inaction for working families and our economy every day, and the fact that nearly every other country in the world has implemented paid leave in some way. And importantly, they don’t take into account the human cost—emotional, financial, physical. This comes down to whose work and labor we value or don’t.
Recently, when the question of what it costs not to have paid leave in America was posed online, the answers that flooded in were about money, yes, but many were even more profound. It cost me my milk supply, one person replied. Others said: My mental health and well-being; My marriage; My home; My recovery; My career; My ability to bond with my family. The one that floored me most: It cost me everything.
Here’s the thing — whether you want to birth or care for children yourself, or whatever form your family takes, we need stronger community in this country. We need the common-sense policy infrastructure that allows you to be financially secure while also living a whole life, and being able to care for yourself and your loved ones. We should already have paid family and medical leave, we should already have affordable child care and aging and disability care. We should absolutely have the fundamental freedom to decide whether or not to have a family, and the freedom and ability to support one if we do.
Many of us have fought for this for years. But something remarkable is happening. Both about the changing notion of political leadership and power itself, but the issues that inform it. And paid leave is connected to it.
Issues like paid leave, freedom, and family are kitchen table economic issues. They’re common-sense solutions to complex problems. But they’re also issues that unite us, across geography and demographics and walks of life. They’re issues that remind us why we are indeed here and alive, that remind us what matters most. They’re the issues that allow us health, prosperity, and security. They’re the issues that allow us to be present for moments of birth, of beauty, of loss, and of life. In a world that feels increasingly chaotic, it’s a reminder we are all connected.
We nearly passed paid leave for all in 2021, in fact we were essentially a vote away from it becoming law. The paid leave and care movement has been growing ever since, and the vibes and vision of a country alongside it. We need something that brings us together and allows us to look after ourselves and our families with dignity — like paid leave and care.
As Vice President Harris says, we are imagining what can be, unburdened by what has been. I think we’re ready to be a part of something much bigger than ourselves — and the Harris-Walz ticket is right on time.
Dawn Huckelbridge is the founding director of Paid Leave for All, Paid Leave for All Action, and Paid Leave PAC. She has spent her career in gender policy and political organizing, and before her work for Paid Leave for All, served as Communications Director for Supermajority and Coordinated Program Director for Community Outreach Group at Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She has written for Newsweek, MSNBC, The Hill, and more.
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