The Reason Why Many New Mothers Are Not Taking Maternity Leaves

It might sound surprising but a new study reveals that the number of new mothers taking maternity leaves has remained stagnant over the last tow decades. Published in the American Journal of Public Health, the study was conducted by researchers from Ohio State University. It also reveals that the reason behind this slow change is the fact that more than half of the maternity leaves taken by new moms are unpaid. According to their data,  273,000 women in the United States took maternity leave every month between 1994 and 2015 but this trend has remained the same in all these years without any significant change. The study further indicates that women who opted for a maternity leave were economically better than than other as they were more likely to be married, white and more educated. On the other side, it has been seen that number of men taking paternity leave has increased from 5,800 per month to 22,000 per month over all these years. 
 Despite these revelations, the author of the journal predicts that the number of women taking maternity leave will go up in the following years due to the growing economy and new state laws. To reach this conclusion, data from the Current Population Survey, a monthly survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau was used. As per the laws set in 1993, employees ere covered by the federal government's Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows them to take 12 weeks of unpaid leaves during the first 12 months after the birth of the child. But the study results show that most women who took the maternity were not paid their dues. In fact, only about 47 percent of them seem to have been compensated. Given this scenario, the number of women taking the paid maternity leave are increasing every year but only by 0.26 percent.