 I wrote a book last year, and in this book, just by chance, I have a quote from Minister Hornet's predecessor, who's a former Norwegian minister of children and family, Valgaard Hauglen. And this is what he had to say a number of years ago about Norway's philosophy about family and paid leave. So he says, quote, we have decided that the raising of a child is real work. Striking. So simple. Is real work, and that this work produces value for the whole society. Not exactly earth-shattering, but not generally stated by government officials. So he goes on to say, it is only fair then that, quote, that the society as a whole should pay for this valuable service. So raising a child is real work. It is work that is valuable for society. And if it is valuable for society, then society should pay for it, at least in terms of supporting the people who do it. So with that sort of basic proposition, that I think underpins the conversation about paid leave. And I will say paid family leave for children, for parents, meaning children who are taking care of their own parents, for any ill or disabled family member. Anyone who needs care. That care beyond children provides value for society, and we should support it. And pretty much alone, the United States as we know has no maternity leave. We're with Papua New Guinea, and a few other countries in that regard. No paternity leave, and no paid family leave at the federal level at all. We do have unpaid family leave, the Family and Medical Leave Act, but of course that is only for people who are in businesses who hire more than 50 people, and there are other restrictions so effective, and that's unpaid. You keep your job, but you don't actually get paid. So when I travel in other countries, people look at me and say, what does your government expect? Parents just have a baby and go back to work the next week. How on earth can you possibly assume your children are going to be cared for? And I don't have a good answer. So we have people in the audience today who are fighting for paid leave. It is starting to happen at the state level. New Jersey has paid leave. Rhode Island, California, and at the city level. Washington, D.C. is passing paid leave right now. So we're getting there in our sort of laboratories of democracy way, but we have a long way to go. So with those reflections, I want to start by welcoming our star attraction of the evening, Her Excellency Solve horny, who is the... I absolutely love your title. I have to say this says so much. Minister horny is the Minister of Children, Equality, and Social Inclusion for the Kingdom of Norway. I just love the idea. Children, Equality, and Social Inclusion. She has been a member of Prime Minister Ernest Solberg's Cabinet since 2013. She has served in elected office since 1995. And was elected to the Norwegian Parliament in 2005 as a member of the Progress Party. And she's been re-elected for two consecutive terms. So in Norway, being a minister also means being an elected politician, unlike in our system. Of course it depends. And in Norway, Minister horny has championed a whole range of issues related to work, life, and family. Paternity leave policies, a cash benefit that allows parents and children to stay home together for longer when the child is an infant. And I particularly like this. This is maybe the only place the United States is ahead of Norway that I can think of, which is to adopt our custom of date night once a week so that parents can actually find time in her words to be lovers again. So I'm very supportive of that as well, although I can't tell you when the last time my husband and I had a date night. So Minister horny is going to start with some remarks and then we will turn to our panel. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Anne-Marie, for the kind introduction and I almost forgot about the date night. And I remember I have been a minister for maybe two or three months and then the media was talking about date night because I had a conversation with some of the family counseling services and they called me from the Guardian and I think it was the New York Times and asked me, where did you get the idea from? Was it the Obama? And I didn't know. But okay, thank you so much for inviting, once again inviting me to New America's debate on gender equality. And let me just say to you that this debate is also on high on the political agenda in Norway, the parental leave. And also gender equality is a matter of equal opportunities. That's for both women and men to have the possibility of fulfilling working life and at the same time be able to have a family life. And how can we balance this in the best way? For both families and society. And this is a subject that keeps engaging because it concerns us, all of us. And tonight I will address how Norway has designed a family friendly labour market policy for both men and women and the children and also our economy. Norway is often scored as one of the three most gender equal countries in the world on UN and other statistics. Gender equality has been a political goal since the early 1980s for all Norwegian governments also for the present one. Last year I presented a white paper to Parliament on gender equality. Equal, equality in practice. Equal opportunities for women and men. This is a political document where the government lines up future policy in five crucial areas including workforce participation. This is a topic I will touch upon tonight. But I also like to mention that I also about to present a white paper on family policies. Let me share with you some experience from Norway. High female participation in the formal pay workforce has the side effects on a country's economic performance as the Norwegian experience shows. Any country's main assets is it workforce. In Norway, even with our oil welfare is no expectation. In the last 50 years there has been tremendous change in women's participation in pay work in Norway, more than in most others OECD countries. Labour market participation and pay work have been a key to economic independence for women. It has given women the possibility to develop and use their professional skills. Since the beginning of the 1970s the labour participation rates has risen from 44% to 76% for women. At the same time, Norwegian women have had one of the highest fertility rates in Europe. In addition to the benefit of all Norwegians today 8 out of 10 mothers with small children are working. So how is this possible? First, the increase in female employment in Norway took place at a time when there was a rise in demand for labour alongside a remarkable boost in women taking higher education. Secondly, we have invest in reaching full coverage of kindergarten at the subsidised price. In Norway today, 9 out of 10 children aged 1 to 5 years attend kindergarten. Kindergartens for all children of one year of age and older was made a statutory right in 2008. Affordable and high quality kindergartens make it possible for both women and men to combine work and family life. Third, Norway has generous parental benefit schemes and other schemes giving fathers and mothers a unique opportunity to combine work life and family life. The parental benefit schemes entitles parents to pay leave of absence in 49 weeks with 100% pay or 59 weeks with 80% pay. In order to encourage father also to be involved in care for their children, a father's quota of 4 weeks was established in 1993. Today, the quota is 10 weeks and we know the quota has had a positive impact on the father's use of parental leave. Before the father's quota was introduced only 2% or 3% of fathers took parental leave. Today, the quota is 10 weeks and 3% of fathers took parental leave. When I had my first child in 1990, my husband had one day of parental leave. Today, we estimate that about 90% of fathers who have the right to this quota make use of it. In that sense, we have experienced a distinct change in man's attitudes. As a positive result, today it is common seeing fathers with their baby strollers as mothers or men bringing and picking up their kids in kindergarten. Even my fellow minister, the Minister of Education had parental leave when he recently had his first child. For self-employed men and women it can still be difficult to make full use of their parental leave. It is also important that each family must be ensured flexibility and freedom to choose the solution that best suits them. We must also acknowledge that children and families are different and have different ways to solving their lives and their needs. Today, the quota is 10 weeks for both mothers and fathers. The rest of the total of 49 weeks can be shared as the family find best. The main object of the parental leave is to give children the best start in life. It is a flexible scheme that the parents can make use of until the child turns three. It is a main goal that both mothers and fathers can combine family and work life. That's why workers are entitled to work flexible and shorter hours and take pay leave if their child is ill. I would also like to challenge the employees to encourage male workers to make use of their rights to parental leave. I want to stress that these quite generous schemes first and foremost benefit the child. The child gets to have one of the parents at home with pay leave the first year. In addition, the Fathers Quota ensures that both parents participate actively at an early stage of the child's life. This is a valuable investment for the future for both the children and parents. It is good for the child to have two caregiving and engage parents instead of one. It is good for the adults as both of them can experience professional fulfillment and at the same time have a caring and loving relationship to their child. Women's active participation in the workforce is the basis of our welfare state. Our welfare schemes may seem costly, I see that, but they simply ensure a sustainable future. As said, labor force participation in Norway is among the highest in the OECD for men, especially for women. One next step for Norway will be to find ways to encourage women to move from part-time to full-time work. With family provisions and childcare already in place, we believe that this is within reach. Each country must make their own way, and I hope that the experience we have made in Norway can inspire others to new solutions. What I do believe is that talents and abilities are equal between women and men all over the world. And giving girls and women the same access to education, jobs and leading positions as men, we make use of all society's talents and resources. And giving men the opportunity to be good fathers, the whole family will benefit, and we will give our children a chance to live a different life. And that's our common goal, isn't it? Thank you. Can we just please applaud one more time for Mr. Horne? And for the government of Norway for leading the way. We are going to now bring up a panel to have a conversation about very different perspectives on how this problem affects us here at home, in business, in public policy, and personally as parents. My name is Heather McGee. I'm the president of Demos. Demos is a public policy organization headquartered here in New York, just a couple of blocks away. We're very, very glad to be partnering with New America on this event, and very glad to have you and Marie as always leading the way in these conversations. Demos' mission is to create an America where we all have an equal say in our democracy and an equal chance in our economy. And that is why we have taken on the issue of paid family leave. As a research issue, we have a set of reports that are actually here on the table as you leave, called lagging on leave, which is hot off the presses. That really finds an incredible situation here in New York, which is that nine out of ten workers in New York state have no paid leave from their employers. Nine out of ten. That's almost six and a half million workers. The reason why we thought it was important to lift up that new number is that there is a fight going on right here, right now at this very moment. Mayor Bill de Blasio led the way with as much authority as he could do to offer a paid leave for municipal workers, 100% of pay. That happened just a couple of months ago and we have late breaking news that Governor Cuomo's proposal for a paid leave program that would be paid for by a payroll tax like they have in California, Rhode Island and New Jersey has made it into both his budget and potentially the Republican budget as well. I know there are some people in the audience who are heavily engaged in that fight and so I hope in the Q&A we will be able to learn how we can lend our voices. We have an incredible set of three leaders right now, each in their own way. We're going to engage in this panel conversation but just before I invite them each to come up I want to say that for us at Demos this question of how we value our people which is really I think the beautiful way that Minister Horne really brought it home for us is paramount. Demos means the people of a nation and it's the root word of democracy and I often laugh when we often as progressives at Demos compare our social and economic policies to those of countries like Norway and Denmark and Sweden and find ourselves very much lagging. We have to grapple with something very different in the United States which is a multiracial, multi-origin, multi-ethnic Demos that is growing only more so by the day and that fundamental question of do we think that our greatest asset as a country is our workforce, is our people, are our families is one that we are contesting every single day and so when we look at public policy issues like paid family leave like universal childcare like debt free college, like high minimum wages and workers rights protections across the board we're talking about economic policy but we're also talking about the fundamental notion of our social contract which is at all times what we are deeply debating and I think our presidential race right now and the incredible heat, anger, fear and division that we are seeing being sown from the podium of someone from the highest office really calls that to the fore. So we're going to have a really beautiful I think conversation this evening about children about families, about work about public policy and also about our future and who we are to one another. So I'd like to invite the panel up please without further ado. So I am joined here by three really remarkable people who are each going to give a pretty unique perspective on the topic this evening. We have Renee Wilson Simmons who is the director of the incredible National Center for Children and Poverty if you have not engaged with NCCP's work you are missing out. I encourage you all to follow her on Twitter to go to their website for some of the most important research that is being done on these issues in America. We're also joined by Tom Aum who's the deputy chief auditor of DNB Bank ASA which is a Norwegian based bank who's going to talk a little bit about his experience with Norway's parental leave policy. And then finally here to my right is Amber Scora who is a parental leave advocate here in New York City and this is her first panel where she'll be speaking about these issues so we'll be very encouraging and welcoming to her as she tells her story and we talk about the context here at home. So the first question I had was for you Renee you have been working on these issues for some time. You are able to bring a really a national sort of synthesis to the conversation right now and so I'm just wondering if you can tell us what is the situation here in the U.S. right now what do you think is the case for paid parental leave and why don't we have it? So those are all excellent questions and I don't know if I can answer them succinctly but I will say this because we have a very specific perspective because we're the National Center for Children in Poverty so we're really focused on the need to address paid family leave for that specific population and it's great to hear what's happening New York and D.C. because there are the District of Columbia and 19 other states introduce some type of paid family leave legislation in 2015 or this year focusing on it hoping that it happens and some of them have already sort of introduced it and we'll be reintroducing it because it's just not happening so from our perspective as an organization that focuses on children and poverty I think there are a couple of things we need to keep in mind and one is that 15% of our population that's 47 million people are dying and there are 74 million children in the U.S. and 22% of them are living in poverty so you think about that for a minute the youngest, the most vulnerable to risk to their health and development and the poorest and because we know that children do better when families do better the question becomes how do we support parents to support their children and again from the perspective of families in poverty there are continually negative perspectives about parents in poverty it's why do you have so many children that they're sort of reproductively prejudiced or they're financially inept and they're in the situation they're in because they haven't made good decisions and so it's not our responsibility as U.S. to take care of those families it's their responsibility and I think those are what we know about the importance of supporting families and children for the future of our nation tells us that we just have the wrong perspective Thank you Renee this question of who receives paid leave is one where you really see inequality come to the fore nationwide the most highly paid quarter of the workforce is four times more likely to receive employer provided paid family leave than the lowest quartile college educated workers are twice as likely to have access to paid leave as workers without a high school degree there are racial disparities here as well can you talk a little bit Renee about the effect on children and children's development who are living in poverty whose parents don't and then whose parents do have paid leave well because there are so there's so little data in these two states I mean as you said or maybe have read that there's only California and Rhode Island and New Jersey and we just when I say we NTCP just completed a qualitative research study of parents in New Jersey to understand what the experiences of those parents who actually took advantage of paid family leave and those who didn't and I think lessons from that that we really need to look at because it's not just about passing the legislation it's about what the parameters of the legislation are how much is truly covered what the whether in fact access is truly there how difficult it is to gain access to understand it does that really help is it enough payment because it's only two thirds and it's not a long period of time that you have paid family leave all those questions I think as I mentioned Columbia 19 other states that are considering it but we have to do more than just make sure we pass something because when we talk to those parents who actually took advantage of leave it's still an issue of it wasn't enough time I really needed this to bond with my child but there wasn't enough time the funds that I receiving and receiving sometimes after I came back to work and had to borrow funds in order to make ends meet while I was on leave it wasn't it just wasn't enough so the bonding with the child being able to continue to breastfeed so going back to work early because the opportunities to truly bond and to nurture your child and to help them be all that they could be is limited because of the inadequacy of the length and the inadequacy of the funding that's available Thank you Renee. These are very important questions right now literally as it is being debated exactly what the parameters of the New York state leave are Tom you were an advocate for parental leave by that I mean fathers taking leave in Norway even before the parental quote the father's quote the daddy law I think it's called the daddy quota can you tell us a little bit about your experience as a major executive in the financial sector we are blocks away from Wall Street here in New York and I think if we took a poll of how many traders on the street here in Wall Street actually took months of family leave it would be a pretty small number so please tell us a little bit about your experience well my daughter was born in 1990 I had a two weeks paid leave right after the birth that's what we got but for me that wasn't enough I wanted to spend more time together with her during her first year so I got into discussions with my manager in the bank he supported me but we still and together had to fight the HR department so but after a while they decided that it was a good idea so I got actually one month extra and then I got 100% paid for that month wait just you? no I mean as opposed to your company that would happen I'm sorry back then it wasn't regulated by the law so if you didn't push it yourself you didn't get it so so in 1993 our son was born but then it has changed the law gave me three months with paid leave so and for me that was so important to to be able to take the responsibility as a father and also to make sure that my kids got a very good start in life to be there when they grew up and of course to to be present when they needed me not when I had the spare time to play with them so and I also wanted to be or try to be a good role model for my children now many years into the policy when just remarkable figures that minister home gave that nine out of ten fathers who have the right to take the quota are taking it how has that changed life at the bank for example where you have your male colleagues taking time to be with their children how has that affected the gender balance and opportunity in your workforce well it's actually so natural no we don't talk about it because it's I mean when you became when you became a father now it's you will have that time because that time is something that well if you don't use it during the first year or first three years when the child is at that age you lose a lot you will not be able to bond with them it's like for me when I look at some of my colleagues in other financial institutions here in US I can see that they want to stay at home and even if their company give them the possibility to stay at home with a fine policy and and so on they don't dare to take it because it's that is the same as saying that you actually don't want to succeed in this company that is so narrow minded by the management because the human capital in a company that is actually the only valid asset that you have so if you take the human capital out you have nothing so it's I think it's also important because I think you need to have a kind of change of mindset both by the employees but also by the employer the employees must dare to speak out and stand up for their rights and the employers must be able to to give them that opportunity and I think for me and for the managers that I have had during all my years working for the bank for them it has been an investment in the employees because they know if they invest in the employees that way they will get flexibility and hard working people so I mean it's only upside for both parties only upside only upside for both parties fantastic thank you so much Tom I will say that early research has found that in California the retention of particularly low paid workers who were able to use the paid family leave disability insurance increased I think that's very important that the idea of people who from the business perspective people who have to very much choose between being able to make rent and take even just a sick day off I mean we are living in a country where there's no mandated paid sick days not even a single one and that is a fight across the country particularly for low paid workers it has actually affected retention at low wage firms so now we are going to hear a very personal story from Amber who has become a paid leave advocate despite I think herself and didn't set out to be and I just want to hear your story of how you became an advocate and how other parents sort of responded to your story and made pushed you into this role well first of all what the circumstance that led to me being deciding to take up this issue was that my son died on his first morning at daycare difficult teeth so I unlike to tell further about more background of the story unlike most people in America I actually did have a paid maternity leave maternity leave and when I say short by Norwegian standards it would be considered short but by American standards it would be considered very long and that was three months but right from the time that my son Carl was born I felt uncomfortable with the idea of leaving him obviously when he was a newborn it was my first experience being a mother but from the first weeks of his life I started to really dread that looming date of knowing I would have to go back to work so in general being pretty good at creative problem solving my partner Lee and I were discussing all the time like every week or every day different options like how we could make it work and like most families in America there was not really the option of having just one income especially I think living in New York City and so that was kind of compounded by the fact that I was the one that had the health insurance in our family so my son was on my health insurance so I found like in my short experience being a parent that very often it was felt like a juggling act and you were trying to always juggle all your responsibilities in the best possible way for your child but also being financially responsible and responsible for his care and all of that type of thing so I had asked my employer a few times if I could have more time off without pay my own health insurance or something because we could manage financially for a few months to just tie it over until going back to work but I was told that there was no way that that was possible and that the only option would be to quit so of course I did weigh that option but ultimately it didn't seem like the most responsible thing to do and I had a job that had a children's publisher, book publisher and so they were pretty family friendly so it seems like a pretty bad thing to give up that job and be in the position of being unemployed in a couple months and having to pay childcare and look for a job again so I was already quite both my partner and I were quite worried about going back to work but ultimately we made the choice that we did because also most of the mothers I knew had had much less time than I had and certainly I never envisioned that my son's safety would be at risk I didn't think that was what the stakes were so I chose a daycare that was quite close to my work just two blocks away and I would still go see him and go breastfeed him during the day like every few hours but the first day I was back at work we dropped him off at daycare and I returned at noon to find the daycare worker performing CPR and no they couldn't tell the medical examiner could not tell what the cause of death was so almost of course there's a lot of shock and trauma involved but one of the first I don't know lucid thoughts maybe I had was a conversation that my partner Lee and I had where we were just like we couldn't help but feel that the direct relation of this angst about going back to work leaving our son and having him die of course we don't know that if he had been with me it would have been any different but at least he would have been with me which was where I wanted him to be and I wouldn't have this question of whether it was because someone didn't notice something was going wrong or something like that so what I did at that point as you know a couple months went by and I was able to think a little more clearly I started to just research other women's stories just to kind of get a sense of if I was alone in this feeling like this was wrong that we'd had no opportunities or a lot had no options at that point in our son's life and I started to of course read all the stories that you read online about women who had to go back to work after two weeks still not recovered from surgeries there was like the story of a woman who had her baby was on oxygen at four weeks old and the boss was understanding and would let her bring the baby in to be breastfed a few times a day by the mother-in-law and I as I read the stories I started to actually feel a little guilty as in like who am I to complain I had three months because so many women have suffered so much and maybe the outcome wasn't as tragic but still I almost started to doubt myself and feel like I was the lucky one and then I was like no my son died it's the worst possible scenario so I started to think about the way that this our culture kind of devalues our children or the caregiving of our infants so much that even as parents ourselves we sometimes start to feel bad or feel that we shouldn't speak up and ask for more time or question these things so the next step was what do I do about this I mean I have no experience as an activist I don't have any organizations that I worked with but I had been taking a class that was talking about the progressive era and I found really inspiring because I noticed the parallel the obvious parallels where they're at that time the our society the early 1900s a women couldn't vote but corporations really sort of like were dictating government policy and there was a lot of social problems there was no welfare for children there was food safety issues and what I found kind of heartening being not very organized myself was that at that time there wasn't like a lot of organization but a lot of women especially just acted they just did what they could everyone just whatever voice they had they used it to push forward one of these issues that maybe happened to fall in their lap or that they noticed and in the end that power of people writing talking about it maybe they had panels back then ended up causing a lot of change to happen so that was why I decided to write an article that eventually was published in the New York Times that basically talked about this experience and called for parental leave Thank you so much Amber that is I think many of us in this room particularly if we're here in New York remember reading Amber's story and hearing about it and being deeply heartbroken and and of course so many parents lose their children in our country but so few of them make that private pain into a public cause so I really just want to applaud you for being an advocate for this issue and for parents everywhere so thank you so I really want to open this up to conversation and questions now because I'm sure there's a lot that are on your hearts and minds at the moment so yes okay so I think that there is going to be a mic coming so the first question is right here and if you wouldn't mind just identifying yourself keeping your question brief so that everyone can have a chance who wants one and then also making it a question not a speech Okay I'll do my best Amber everyone in the audience I think is grateful that you were able to use that very tragic experience to mobilize others so thank you for that I guess my question is about the connection between the U.S. and the New York high maternal and infant mortality rates and the racial disparities which may in fact be somewhat connected to the low wage workers not even having a day off and low wage workers not having the time to breastfeed that's why I would argue for at least six months but the health imperative I would like you to talk about Renee do you want to take that first Sure and the system of breastfeeding as I said we completed the qualitative research doing focus groups and interviews with parents in New Jersey who were eligible for paid family leave and took it and those who were eligible and did not and for those who in both categories this issue of the need to breastfeed an adequate time to do that was at the top was a real issue that and the bonding and we know the importance of breastfeeding but if in fact you have so little time off and you have to go back to work and you're in working situations where you can't even pump and you certainly can't bring your child and see not to do it at all and so it's a huge issue and I think when we're talking about pushing forward paid family leave we have to think about how much time is really an appropriate amount of time and really push for it as opposed to what I am tending to hear people say is well we just want to get something and getting something is something but it's not enough not getting something question one of the major fault lines often in the policy design as legislators in the United States legislators are very solicitous of at least the perceived interest of business and the idea that we don't want to burden small businesses right so like with the national family and medical leave act there is often a debate about whether or not there should be a size threshold for employers if the children of parents who work at small employers are somehow more resilient and able to not be taking care of by their parents than ones who work at large employers and that often also has as well the issue of how long an employee has to have worked there the part time status these are the details that really do make a difference in the lives particularly of parents of color and low paid workers because oftentimes those with not long tenure who are younger and of course at their prime child-bearing age are those who really need the benefit they're working for smaller companies and they are not able to get even the guaranteed family leaving right now what we are hearing here in New York is that in the Republican budget they want to carve out smaller employers so that is definitely going to be a fight yes thank you I think that last point was really pertinent particularly to me I had the benefit of being someone who worked in the state of New Jersey and moved to Germany six months before I gave birth and so I had the benefit of having New Jersey's very generous maternity leave policy and also being the beneficiary of one year paid medical leave in Germany however what I experienced was that while my company I realized at three months I thought I was ready to go back after six weeks as a very career focused woman I wasn't ready to go back after six weeks I wasn't ready to go back after three months and quite frankly I really needed that one year and I breastfed until 17 months at that point having conversations with people in Germany and particularly women with the one year paid three year guaranteed job back it actually had a negative effect on career focused women in the workforce so where do we strike that balance between how do you offer women and men for maternity and paternity leave the opportunity to create that opportunity for bonding for appropriate breastfeeding but also make it economically feasible not only for small businesses but mid-sized businesses and in my case I was working for a Fortune 500 company how do you make that business case for getting them back in the workforce creating that that bridge for a one year or longer maternity leave and making it beneficial to everyone because I think that's a really really difficult balance to strike maybe in Norway they've mastered that certainly in Germany that's not the case where there is significant gender disparity because of the very generous maternity leave policies I'm not familiar does the German law have a quota for fathers as well I'm sure it's not a year or three years actually it's one or the other so the father can take the leave or the mother can take the leave only one of them gets paid for the first year but there is that you cannot guarantee your specific job when you come back but you're guaranteed a place within the company when you return and often times what I've heard is that if you don't come back within that 12 month period you are offered a job but it may not be at the same level or qualification or the specific job set that you left with Tom do you want to talk about this? I think of the solution you end up with that is a challenge that you will face how to deal with it I know that very much of the debate in Norway these days are regarding equal rights and equal opportunities for a career for the women so of course I think we must be that honest to say that we face this kind of situations or problems or challenges in Norway as well but I don't think it's any quick fix on how to get the best solution for both the corporates and the employees and to get women back on the track in the career I think that's that's a difficult question Do you want to I saw you whispering over there Do you want to answer the question but we have a law in Norway they say that you should have the same job after you're coming back from the parental leave so it's not possible for the employees to give the job that you had before to another so that's a guarantee and I think that's also one of the strong discrimination legislation that we have in Norway that is illegal to discriminate women or men or also the breastfeeding you have a lot to do that also but it's a good question because we need that women can make career too and I think that that father is participating are taking the quota and that they can also if father should take the quota in Norway the mother has to go back to be in activities in the work so some of the Scandinavian what do you say used the way to also to solve that women need to go back to in the work first they cannot take the weeks together all the time okay other questions yes back there and then in the front great panel hello in the United States we often talk about other countries but we're also a nation that doesn't like to look at the rest of the world we have this exceptionalism so I guess my question is how do we make the case to policymakers I think in our we also have a very different ethos in the United States I think it has to be an economic case so that's my first question is how do Americans make this case and two is I'd like to know more about the some of the mechanics of it the take up rate based on the replace the cap on replacement of salary because I know that data shows that men even in European countries are not taking up paid leave opportunities if they're not in line with what they need to make and this of course for their families and this of course affects gender inequality so I will say that requiring employers to offer paid leave is actually enormously popular in the United States among voters even though it is not apparently very popular among our legislators it is overwhelmingly popular among Republican voters the family act which is the federal paid family leave law gets I think three out of no five out of ten so 55% of Republican women support it it is one of those issues where there is just a massive golf not between left and right but between sort of inside the halls of power and outside the halls of power I do think the fact that California and New Jersey a Demos fellow named Sharon Lerner did a great report about the business experience in New Jersey of paid leave there are great reports about the California experience employers overwhelmingly find no administrative work or employee disincentive and there are even those benefits to very high turnover workers and industries as well so there is a business case to be made there is a bipartisan case to be made you know we know that because of our inequalities of voice in our democracy whether it's campaign finance lobbying or the structural gaps in who is registered to vote that unfortunately organized business just has a much louder voice in policy making than working in middle class families that's where we are today both at the state level and at the federal level so I think you are seeing that more than the idea that there is not an empirical business case or that it is actually so polarized among voters I do want to answer have someone answer your question about the replacement rate to say what I think I know is that in Norway it's 80 or 100% of pay and that obviously is a massive incentive to actually using the program I said I promise someone over here yes go ahead Hi for a little bit of background I run an agency that fills parental leave via a network of freelancers and so I'm working with a lot of the trail blazers who already have parental leave policies or announced them last year because 18 companies last year announced new paid parental leave policies but what I'm finding out which is interesting because I see the light at the end of the tunnel that this is going to happen but what's interesting is they have these policies but they don't have any systems in place to support them which in particular affects their coworkers I'm curious what the panel has to say about okay when we get paid parental leave what else do we need to support it to make it something that everyone supports whether they have children or not so yeah Thank you very exciting I think back to what I said about changing the mindset as a guest in the US I should be very careful about giving critics to the country it's a little bit about not always thinking about me and I but thinking about we and us I mean if you look at it most of us get children when we are in the 30s then we still have like 30 35 years in the work lifetime again so for me personally I don't understand why not people can put the career on hold for a year or two you still have more than 30 years to make that career and make it happen because if it's a meaning that you should have a career you will have it so you have to contribute with something you have to give something so but of course for many people it will be hard to accept to take that step back but if you don't take it well you won't get any further with this question so it's a little bit also I mean if you decide to have a child why do you want to outsource it for a couple of weeks then why should the child have any bonds to you you're just another stranger like any other people so it's I don't see the logic well let's look in on that one alright Amber in the internet I was also thinking about what Tom said how no one even talks about paternity leave because it's just a norm and it's kind of like we have vacation days at work and nobody thinks about that with a lot of angst I think that eventually what happens it just becomes part of the culture and people adapt that's what humans do and businesses form such as the business she mentioned where people fill the niches and the needs that arise as a result of parental leave has parental leave and it works so we might be really worried about the details but we have a lot of people we can ask how to manage all of that alright, Vinay you wanted to jump in so I feel like I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight because all I'm thinking about is Norway and what kind of programs they have there and we're so far from it we're so far from it that the question becomes what is it that we can achieve and I'm not one to say let's do the best we can but what's reasonable and what's achievable and what can we show the public really is going to make a difference and in terms of it again I have to speak from the perspective of low income parents who also want to have families but you can't make the decision that I'm going to take the time off because at least as the program exists in New Jersey first of all you get very little time and secondly you only get two thirds of your pay and that's part of the reason that the majority of parents who take it in New Jersey are women because they have to take it I mean they want to but I mean you have to you have to take at least some of it because you're going to have the child for men at least the few that we've had in our focus groups they can't afford to do that they would only make two thirds of their salary they feel like the mother should take it if anyone's going to take it she should but neither one of them can afford to take some long period of time and unfortunately because of the lack of promoting its availability the many of those who took it it was quite a struggle to even learn about it and learn there was access to it and for many of them that we did focus groups with who didn't take it the first time they ever heard of it was in the focus group so we ended up having to because we realized then we were off topic because they were asking questions about the program and could you look at because they were saying oh it's nice if the employer gives it to you it's not even something the employer gives you you're paying for it so I think that there are all kinds of issues about the way in which it's presented the way in which people understand it that enables them to even take it and take advantage of it so that's one thing and the other piece of it is based on the number of states that are considering it what can we learn that can make it better for those that are trying to move forward so Henry wants to weigh in I just wanted to say one word two things about how we can normalize it and understand this way that I think are particularly helpful one is that all managers are required to have extended coverage plans so at least in many corporations if you're a manager part of being a good manager is having a succession plan the argument is you know you get hit by a bus tomorrow who's going to take over and if you haven't done that then you're not doing your job and extended coverage is the same idea that if anybody in your workforce something happens and obviously it could be a child it could be an accident it could be anything you need to figure out with your team how that's going to be covered so that's one and the other is again this is not just children I always say you can choose or not but you can better choose whether or not to have children you can't choose whether or not to have parents and so you just emphasize okay you know you may be picking up more now but someday you are likely to have that responsibility so is that you're saying five minutes you want a question okay hi so I just wanted to come back actually to the question that the lady here and the second row made when I was preparing for this event I read a great deal of data on maternal and child mortality and at how it's dropped actually I read Norwegian studies because we're working in Norway but it's our infant mortality rate is three times higher than it is in Norway our maternal mortality rate we're the only country in the OECD where it's actually on the rise and parental leave paid leave has been found to have really dramatic effects on just you know these very basic things and so I wanted to sort of note that but also to ask maybe Rene if you could to sort of expand a little bit on the sort of the impact that the lack of paid leave has on like lower income families and on the decisions they have to make about childcare their ability to bond with children parental stress that actually and the effects that that has on the health of their children I know you've done work that showed that workers who don't have paid leave are less likely to take their children to the doctor they're less likely to go to themselves but on the effect that that has throughout childhood and adolescence that those upheavals can have and the way that perpetuates some of the inequalities that we see in this country I can't really make the association between paid family leave or not and some of these health and development issues because as I said we don't have I mean there are so few places that have paid leave in the US and the programs are different than those three states that do and we're just not collecting the kind of data that would enable us to say something in any definitive way about it but I will say this and when we do the kind of qualitative research that we did in Duke Jersey to get at more than the numbers and sort of understand the kinds of issues and difficult decisions that poor families have to make when what's available to them just isn't enough are the kinds of things that we can then learn enough about to try to do kind of research on that would enable us to say some things that have strong association I just can't based on what we know now say I can point to research that would tell you that now I could point to research around issues of maternal depression and the high rate of maternal depression among poor women as opposed to the general population I mean rates of maternal depression are as high as 50 to 60 percent in examples of poor families with children and we know there's a connection between maternal depression immediately after pregnancy and some of the issues that we're hearing from women who didn't have paid family leave couldn't stay away long those that did but still couldn't stay away long and we can make some kind of sort of guesses about what that means but we can't make some kind of guesses about what we're hearing from our associations are there organizations here in the US that are looking at comparative data from countries that have enacted paid leave policies the Norwegian studies were longitudinal studies looking at families before and after paid leave and they actually found that looking at the same populations that were enacted they had fewer behavioral problems in school lower rates of teenage pregnancy do these things surprise you that it can have such a far reaching effect no not at all but in terms of what we're looking at and what the research is telling us about the US and the parallels with other countries those countries are so different that we can't make those kinds of comparisons we can just say what's happening in those countries is better it is there but when I hear what those programs are I come back to that same question of what's going to be possible here let's be realistic about we want a good outcome but what is it that we need to push for that we truly believe is going to happen Amber you want to? I was just thinking along the lines of Catherine's question is just that I think this is why we come together and why we have Norway we can learn children are the same in Norway where they are in America and I think that it's true we don't have the exact same ability to study since we don't have that kind of benefit but we can certainly see from those Norwegian studies that it does have a real effect on outcomes for children when the longer the paid leave goes on so I think that's something that maybe we can use is the fact that we know it doesn't matter what country children are from their development is still affected in the same way that our primary parent with them I do want we're winding down in terms of time if there's anyone in the audience who wants to give a little advertisement for what people in the room can do to help advance paid family leave in New York that will be helpful I'm Nancy Rankin I'm director of research at community service society and on the steering committee of the New York State paid family leave campaign and so I actually had a question it's a question for all of you the entire audience and that question is what are you going to do tomorrow because paid family leave whether you get it or not as a New Yorker is going to be determined by our state legislature in the next three weeks by the end of March now the governor has put forward a proposal that would cover all workers all size businesses it's 12 weeks it has job security and notice that New Jersey in California their paid family leave don't have job security it has two-thirds wage replacement and it includes not just parental leave but family leave to care for seriously ill family member with a broad inclusive definition of family it's critical is that our legislators and the governor's office need to hear from all of us particularly the leadership of the senate the republican leadership because everyone has now agreed that New York should have paid family leave their proposals in both the assembly and the senate and in the governor's executive budget but the question is the details and every one of those is at risk of the republican senate is there a website that folks can go to haven't contacted your legislator don't know what to say you can do it by contacting you can look at our website at cssny.org and the paid leave part you can AARP also has a call through number that will patch you into the next two or three weeks senator you can talk to me afterwards but the next two or three weeks are absolutely critical and I want to give a shout out to Nancy in the community service society because her organization as well as the center for women at Rutgers University New Jersey citizen action statewide parent advocacy network and advocates for children of New Jersey were all partners and I want to learn how to improve the program in New Jersey all right so unfortunately we're running low on time so I'd love to just hear final few sentences from each of our panelists and then they will be here over wine I know fortunately I think Amber can't partake which is very very exciting okay so Renee do you want to start just closing thoughts yeah so closing thoughts you know I have this binder up here able to share some words from some of the participants in the program who talked about the importance of the of the program to them so I will try to find the positive because a lot of what I found here was about how the program could be improved how they can learn about access what will be better but the all in terms of the group who were part of the program were saying that it made such a difference to them it enabled me to bond with my child it gave me the time I needed not all the time I needed but enough time that I really felt that there were some important connections I made to my child that my husband continued to work and it would have been nice if he had an opportunity to spend some time with my with our child as well so those who took it said it made a world the difference to them they just wished it would be a longer program and a with more with a higher percentage of coverage of their their their income when they're off thank you so much Renee thank you for the work that you do Tom parting words just want to give an advice to all the men that are planning to be a father when I was born my parents were very young my mother was 17 my father was 19 they didn't have much money so but they rented a small apartment actually only one room my bed was next to the record player and my father was a huge Frank Sinatra fan I grew up with Frank Sinatra so he was one of my closest friends and he has actually given in one of his songs it's called Soul Illiquid there he give the script on how to become a great dad how you should bond with your kid and how you should love and care for your child it's what's first recorded in 1963 it's 8 minutes long but it's well worth of both watch it up on youtube there you can see old blue eyes when he deliver the speech that is one of my favorite songs and it has meant so much to me I got my kids thank you Tom wonderful I guess I would just like to say that I think that it can be very discouraging in the current political climate to feel like this is such a left-right issue and I try and always think of it this way that in the entire world except for here and in Papua New Guinea there's all different kinds of political systems and philosophies and ideologies but in all of these different countries people can agree that this issue it transcends politics that our children are important enough and this is important enough that we give them this time with their parents so I think that the key is for us as individuals not to just sort of give up but there are ways as the lady mentioned to lobby our government we can't just give up because the businesses have so much power we have a lot of power too it's easy to lobby their representatives at the federal level we have a website that we made called 4carl.com and you can go there and put in your zip code and easily send an email a tweet or call your representative and just tell them your support and it doesn't have to be parental leave you can put in whatever it is that you want to support but just don't forget to contact your representatives because that's what we can do thank you so much please join me in thanking New America and Norway for putting on this event