Family Leave Quotes

With women composing nearly half the American workforce and increasingly serving as the primary breadwinner for families, we can't afford to treat pregnant women differently than their counterparts, especially when slight job modifications could help them stay in the workforce at no risk to their health.

The best antidote to poverty remains simple - a paycheck. Policies like paid family leave, workplace flexibility and affordable quality childcare can make the difference for two-parent or single-parent working families who struggle to make ends meet.

Equal pay, paid leave, paid sick days, workplace flexibility, and affordable childcare - everywhere I go around the United States, as I talk to working families, these are the issues they raise... We have over 43 million Americans who don't have a single day of sick leave, but everybody gets sick. Everybody's children get sick.

I'm not sure if I want to continue to work when I have kids.

We need affordable childcare and paid sick leave so workers don't have to choose between their health and their livelihood.

I'm going to do everything I can to bring our policies in line with the way families live and work today by guaranteeing paid family leave and making child care affordable.

I am a fierce advocate for the economic empowerment of all women. In the Congress, I am one of the leaders of an initiative called 'When Women Succeed, America Succeeds.' It is an economic agenda for women aimed at making sure women have equal pay for equal work, paid sick leave, and affordable child care.

It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.

As I travel around the country, I am inspired by leaders who know that offering paid leave - whether sick time or family leave - isn't just the right thing to do: it's essential to building an economy that works for everyone.

Your U.S. military has the best child care in the nation. Full, paid family and medical leave benefits. Why aren't we doing that to empower our workforce?

It's embarrassing to be in the only westernized economy that doesn't have paid family leave and flex scheduling, and that disproportionately helps women.

The United States has got to join the rest of the industrialized world in making sure that working families of the middle class have benefits that they absolutely need. We are the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right. We are the only major country on Earth that does not provide paid family and medical leave. There are many countries around the world which make sure that public colleges and universities are tuition-free. In our country, it's becoming increasingly difficult to afford to go to college.

I'm not taking maternity leave from 'Big Brother.' I e-mailed my boss over there this weekend and I said, 'Don't worry. I can still do the show!

We need a national family leave policy that will allow both men and women to take paid time off from work to care for a newborn or a sick relative.

You see we're a country that talks about family values. But we haven't passed anything to help family values since the Family and Medical Leave Act. And the Family and Medical Leave Act was one of the first things I voted on when I came to Congress. It was very thrilling to me, because when my first child was born, I was terrified of being fired. When my second child was born, I was a member of the city council, and in some ways it was easier to respond to 250 constituents than it was to respond to one employer.

In an economy where women now make up half the work force, we're going to have to address the treatment of pregnant employees more systemically. The passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would better protect against the discrimination pregnant job seekers face.

Europeans fought for shorter workdays, more vacation time, family leave, and all these kinds of things. Those haven't been priorities in America: it's been about money. You see, in the countries that fought for time, they cook more often; they have less obesity. There are real benefits to having time.

We shouldn't think of family leave as an elite benefit, only available at some companies. Everyone in Maine, whether they have a child or are caring for a sick family member, should have access to this same benefit. It should be like unemployment insurance, there for you when you need it.

That’s not me. I wouldn’t [take paternity leave.] Quite frankly, I would have said C-section before the season starts. I need to be at Opening Day. I’m sorry.

I know that we can pay for it because we are going to make the millionaires pay for it.

Male athletes don't get dropped when they father kids.

It's absurd we remain the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people and paid family and medical leave.

Creating paid family and medical leave will create a foundation for healthier families, healthier workplaces and the chance to have a growing and thriving population of families in Maine.

Paid family leave, for instance, has strong backing in scientific literature as an effective means of enabling families who want kids to have them.

Everywhere in the OECD, childless women in their 20s earn more like men than older women with children. And in the United States, those women actually earn more than childless women in their 20s.