Maternity pay calculator

Days before beginning the second post-graduate year of my psychiatry residency, I learned I was pregnant with my first child. I assumed I would have sufficient paid family leave the same way I wrongly assumed most women in America did.

Instead, I was dismayed to learn the unfortunate truth that paid family leave is under no national regulations and all but non-existent for most of the country (in 2021, only 23% of civilian employees in the US were eligible for paid family leave).¹ Even the laws on unpaid leave do not apply to a large portion of the population.

Other than a few Pacific Island nations, the United States and Papua New Guinea are the only countries without a paid maternity leave policy.² It wasn’t until the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 that US employees had any legally protected time off for medical or family reasons.

FMLA mandated that employers provide their employees unpaid leave of up to 12 weeks and guaranteed that they could not be terminated during this time.³ Although a step in the right direction, FMLA has failed to cast a wide enough