What is Parental Leave Benefits? A Complete Guide

Parental leave is a work-protected leave that parents of newly born children can avail if they want some time off to care for their child.

Parental leaves are a workplace amenity, but many still wonder, exactly, what is parental leave benefits?

The paid vacation itself has a lot of benefits, still not privy to many working in the industry, which makes it all the more important to talk about and integrate into our corporate culture.

This article covers the many different benefits of parental leave, and the reason why parental leaves such as maternity and paternity leaves are important for new parents, and for society.

Featured Posts

– How to get rid of apron belly without surgery

– How to make a pregnancy test positive with soda

– Where do you feel hiccups if baby is head down

What is Parental Leave Benefits?

Although parental leave was not recognized or provided as a labor force benefit in numerous countries until 2018, many nations now offer paid parental leave to support their employees who require time off to attend to their children.

This type of paid leave offers several benefits for both society and individuals, which we will explore in the following sections.

There are a lot of benefits of paid parental leave for new parents.

For example, it retains the company employees, provides them room for new developments in their lives, and also attracts new employees for the firm.

Not only that, but it also boosts morale and increases worker productivity, as well as improving the mental health of the parents and their children.

Here’s a list of all the societal, financial, and health benefits that parental leaves provide to new parents along with reasons why parental leave benefits the company:

What are the benefits of paid parental leave for society?

Paid parental leave has a lot of fringe benefits in exposing our society.

When new parents get the time off to not only recover their own health, but also focus on the well-being of their children, it creates better homes and stable households.

This contributes to a better society, since stable households are happier and better able to take part in healthy societal and communal activities.

Paid parental leaves also help mothers and fathers adapt to the demands of raising a child and the responsibilities that come with parenting.

This helps avoid burnout, as the parents can now focus on just parenting during the leave, not having to juggle work and personal life at a very crucial time of development in their lives.

Consequently, this improves the physical and mental health of both the parent and the child, giving them time to bond and pay attention to their child, making sure that they don’t grow up neglected and needy for affection.

By doing so, the parents make sure their children grow up to be contributing individuals to society’s development.

Paid parental leave benefits for companies

Apart from societal benefits, parental leave policies also have a lot of benefits for the company offering them.

According to KBI Benefits, it costs a lot to replace employees, and what’s more, 1/3rd  of the working female employees quit after they have children because they don’t have parental leave to allow them to manage their time properly.

This is a grave problem for companies, as it only increases costs and reaps no benefits.

However, if the company were to have a proper parental leave system in place, it would not only retain its female employees, but also promote workplace productivity, by giving them time off whenever they go through tedious childbirth.

Apart from this, a company with good paid parental leave policies is more likely to attract more employees to apply for a job there, as they too would want to work at such an inclusive place.

This reduces the advertisement and search costs for firms whenever they want to conduct recruitment drives.

Why is parental leave important?

Parental leave is important because it helps avoid a majority of societal issues, including but not limited to: increased depression in new parents, neglected children growing up to be delinquents and troubled individuals, mental health problems, and financial instability if employees take unpaid days off to care for their children.

It is also important for companies to incorporate parental leave policies into their handbooks, as it helps curb employee dissatisfaction and reduction in workplace productivity.

You also shouldn’t miss:

• Does Parental Leave Get Taxed?
• Can I Work While on Unpaid Parental Leave?

Why is paid maternity leave important?

Parental leaves, especially paid maternal leaves are important for maintaining the mental and physical health of new mothers.

Women need time to recover from postpartum exhaustion and trauma, as giving birth can be a mentally and physically draining process.

Not only that, they need time to adjust to breastfeeding their child, along with the new family dynamics.

Paid maternity leave is also important for women who have had miscarriages, or are recovering from stillbirth.

The loss of a child can be emotionally painful to mothers, and to make them work while they’re recovering would be both insensitive and cruel.

Importance of paid paternity leave

A new concept within the realms of parental leave is paternity leave; paid days off for the fathers of newborn babies.

This is also important in its own right, since fathers can help the mothers recover and take care of the child during the mother’s recovery.

According to McKinsey, this promotes gender equality and gives fathers the time to bond with their children and partners.

What is flexible paid parental leave?

Some countries offer a flexible paid parental leave, which includes a continuous period of 1-2 months off as leave, plus a month off for when you want to take time off within the 2 years of your child’s birth.

Flexible paid parental leaves have significantly more days off than the normal paid parental leave and allow you to take time off intermittently within the work year.

Summary

Parental leave benefits provide ease for both working fathers and mothers.

Not only that, the policy has proven to be a productive and efficient addition to many companies, as it improves their productivity and reduces their losses, as well as increasing employee retention and boosting the company’s reputation.

Frequently Asked Questions