Habibah lives in northern New Jersey. During the day she works for a university, in her free time she is an activist. I watched as her sons helped the film crew carry the equipment into the house – and as they looked at their mother when she wasn’t looking. She has an upright posture, appears composed, almost majestic in her beautiful headscarf. As she talks about how her husband woke up one morning unable to move after a heart attack and stroke, and about his disability in the months that followed, her voice remains calm.
Elizabeth lives in the suburbs of Denver. She works for a non-profit organization and is a lecturer. She belongs to a Jewish community in Denver that meets in backyards, apartments and churches. Her little daughter spins around the room and dances in her tulle skirt. I see Elizabeth cradling her new baby in a rocking chair where she once sat alone while her daughter was in the hospital. She and her husband, Lee, are focused and constantly on the move, loading cars and strollers and baby seats. Despite everything they’ve just been through – more than seven weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit – she’s quick to laugh, even through tears.
Two very different women, two very different families – and yet their stories are anything but rare. Both needed paid leave when the unexpected occurred, and having access to it changed both of their lives. Take it away and you see what so many families struggle with. It is an intolerable failure that this type of support has remained the exception in the United States to this day.
A national failure
As a country, we do not have paid family or medical leave. Half of us don’t even have the right to unpaid leave. Tens of millions of people don’t have a single paid sick day. Although birth and death affect us all, only every fourth In the private sector, people are entitled to paid family leave. Later this month, it was revealed that major corporations were cutting paid leave benefits – and one worker was even forced to attend a meeting from the delivery room before being fired three weeks after returning from maternity leave. And although pressure is growing at the state level, we remain one of the few countries in the world – alongside Papua New Guinea and some small island states – that do not legally guarantee any paid leave. And we all pay the price for this decision.
This spring, while working on the short documentary Lifelines, I spent time with Habibah and Elizabeth and their families—as they navigated care and paid leave, both with childbirth, both with unexpected medical emergencies, all while navigating their own recovery. Your stories moved me deeply. But what I want you to understand – and what became clear while filming – is that they are far from unique. Caring, building and growing and maintaining families, is what connects us all – and yet we have created a system that treats it as an afterthought. The need to both work and care is universal, but it is a reality that we have consistently ignored in politics.
When we founded our organization Paid Leave for All in 2019, this was already obvious. Ahead of our launch, we visited the administration building for Washington State’s new paid leave program. As we walked down the hallway to the entrance, the walls were plastered with family photos. White, black, brown. Newborns, relatives weakly lifting their thumbs from stretchers, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles. It’s a reminder, they told us – a reminder of why they come to work every morning. It has fueled our work ever since.
A movement is gaining momentum
This week, activists and lawmakers from 25 states will gather in Washington, DC, to celebrate a stunning wave of paid leave victories over the past five years—momentum ignited by the pandemic, accelerated by the national push behind Build Back Better, and fueled by confirmation that paid leave is indeed a lifeline. Together, they will chart the path forward: a 50-state strategy to secure this progress now and ultimately enact a federal program that finishes the work. With this in mind, we celebrate our short film “Lifelines” – as a reminder of what is at stake and what is possible.
We have mountains of paid family and medical leave data, reports and surveys spanning decades. The evidence does not change; the case for paid leave becomes even stronger. He saves lives. It strengthens public health, improves maternal and newborn health outcomes, cancer survival rates, and the mental health of entire families. It stimulates economic growth, keeps more carers in the workforce, reduces fluctuation costs and protects families’ salaries. But what we sometimes forget: This experience is what really connects us – regardless of skin color, creed, gender, origin and life paths. It’s about what matters most: a baby’s first smile, a parent’s or partner’s last breath.
In October, Habibah’s husband Rasheed died. A month later, my friend Faith Winter — a Colorado state senator who spearheaded her state’s historic win for paid leave that benefited Elizabeth’s family and later expansion for NICU families — died in a car accident.
Time is not a luxury
This only strengthened my commitment to this movement. Life is so short and we are all so vulnerable. Ultimately, there is nothing more important than being there for the people we love – especially in our most meaningful, vulnerable and profound moments: a birth, a stay in the intensive care unit, an unexpected diagnosis, a death. These are the moments in which we heal, in which we feel the meaning, the limits and the vastness of our humanity.
A significant number of states have adopted paid family and medical leave programs. Most recently, Virginia became the 14th state – along with DC – and the first in the South to adopt paid leave. This year, Maine, Minnesota and Delaware began paying out benefits under their new programs, and Colorado implemented a first-in-the-nation policy for families in the neonatal intensive care unit.
But the lack of a federal guarantee means most families are still struggling. Whether it’s a teacher trying to plan a pregnancy around vacation time, a construction worker dealing with an injury, or an executive worried about not being able to afford the time off, paid leave affects a wide variety of people across this country. It influences our life decisions and paths, our physical and mental health, our ability to simply be present in our own lives.
In political circles right now everything revolves around the issue of “affordability” – the price of eggs, the price of gas at the gas station. This is justified and important. But what is sometimes missing from this debate is time – our ability to spend it with the people we love without jeopardizing our livelihoods. To be deprived of this time is a poverty in itself.
What we stand up for
We need to remember what we go to work for every morning. Why we even get up these days, what gives us joy and meaning. Much of the world takes these things—paid vacation, the ability to care and afford—for granted. It’s time we stop settling for less.
Dawn Huckelbridge is founding director of Paid Leave for All and co-producer of the documentary short film Lifelines.
