Texas Tech University
Study on Parental Leave Policy
Pradeep Vyawahare
December 05, 2016
Abstract
This paper discusses the opinion of Texas
Tech community on the current issue of Parental Leave policy, specifically in
the United States of America. In this paper, a study was carried to analyze the
opinion of TTU community based on a survey. Our class of ESL 5315 course had
questions based on parental leave policy in the United States and decided to
carry out a survey by asking few questions. These survey questions were asked
based on interesting hypotheses which were based on what we think about Texas
Tech community would answer. Interestingly, we found that the Texas Tech
community is more in favor of government involvement, independently take their
decisions, and is not in favor of equal maternal and paternal leave; males are
more in favor of presidential nominees based on their stance on parental leave
and Texas Tech community favors a company more which has existing parental
leave policy.
Introduction
Parental leave is a form
of benefit provided by employer to their employees at the time of expecting a
baby. In various countries the meaning and coverage of parental leave is
different. For example, in some countries parental leave is time off from work
for pregnant women for having their baby, if their child is sick, or in case of
an adoption. Parental leave is also referred to as paid family leave and is
available for both females and males. However, the amounts of leave available
for both females and males are not equal in many countries. The problem becomes
bigger if we consider United States parental leave policies in-to account. In
the United States, parental leave policies are not mandated by government on
employers. Most businesses make their own policies for parental leave, which
creates lot of restrictions on parents who are expecting a baby. Most
businesses provide 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave, in which employees are
expected to go back to work before the allowed time, either to stay competent
in the work, or to stay financially stable. People’s opinions vary upon this
issue; some people think that it is good to provide paid parental leave, so
that it will help parents bond with their children without any financial
restriction, and when they return to work they will be happier and more
productive. Some people believe otherwise, because for them it is unfair to get
paid for not doing work, while other employees have to work during that time.
To learn more about what
people think on parental leave issues, our group of students taking ESL
department course named “Academic Writing: ESL 5315” decided to carry out a
survey. We wanted to know what people think about parental leave in our
university. We are a group of students from Texas Tech University; it is
located in the city of Lubbock, Texas in the U.S.A. Texas Tech University is a public
research university with 36,551 currently enrolled students, according to Toth (2016).
We are interested in problems like, “Should males and females get equal amounts
of parental leave?” or “Will you support a presidential nominee based on their
proposal of policy on parental leave?” Personally
I am interested in a specific question, which is “Should parental leave policy
be made and mandated by the government?” With questions like those mentioned
here, we would like to know the opinion of the Texas Tech University community.
Literature
Review
Parental leave policy
problems do not stop; even when the business provides the leave, it is more
about the trend in the companies or it is more about the culture. The problem
is that if any employee goes for the leave for a considerable amount of time,
then that employee is seen as less aware of the current projects of the
company. So this can lead to an employee being less competent to work on a
particular project. Furthermore, employees who avail themselves of parental
leave will be more likely to receive a lesser appraisal on an annual review,
and this can negatively impact them in reduced rate of promotion in the future.
Due to this problem, employees try to come back to work as soon as possible, to
avoid any kind of negative effect in their career. Yahoo CEO Marisa Meyer took
only 6 percent of her parental leave, and this gives a terrible message to the
Yahoo employees if their leaders do this, says Dearborn (2016). In the U.S.A.
36 percent of men who are offered parental leave do not take it, because they
are afraid to be seen with lack of commitment and less competent by their
company, says Mayer (2016). A survey carried out by the Labor Department in
2012 reported that 23 percent of women take parental leave of less than two
weeks, says Starner (2016). This is to avoid being seen as less committed
towards work.
Another problem with
parental leave policy is the poor coverage. In the United States of America
parental leave policy is not mandated by government which allows businesses to
make their own parental leave policy which is not as good for their employees.
Most businesses provide parental leave which is most of the time not paid,
which puts their employees in financial instability. Furthermore, there is no
proper policy made by businesses which includes other emergencies; for example,
if an employee’s children are ill, what kind of leave they can be availed of?
This tradition of employer’s not giving enough freedom to employee is a long
lasting trend, but recently it is changing, due to urge by female employees and
strangely higher awareness from male employees, says Kimmel (2016). Also there
are more issues when females cannot get proper time off after delivering a
baby. Most females who come back to work in a few weeks after delivery have to
keep their children in daycare facilities. There have been a few cases where
moms lost their babies due to not being able to properly care for them, these
babies were too young to be taken care of by others, says May (2016). These
women blamed their employers for not providing them enough time off.
Unequal treatment of men
and women is an old tradition in society and parental leave is also not
excluded from it. While increasing awareness is given to how important it is
for mother to spend time with her child after birth, less attention is given to
father. Father is equally important and responsible for the proper growth of a
child, and children need their support both physically and emotionally, says Bluethmann
(2016). Most of the companies which provide maternity leave for their female
employees do not even provide a few weeks for their male employees at the time
of their child’s birth. However, a few companies are making changes to their
parental leave policy by awarding equal rights to males as well, says Mcgregor
(2016). Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took two month of parental leave, which
shows a good action taken by leader to promote the parental leave among the
employees, but about one fifth of U.S. companies provide parental leave which allows
less than two weeks for males, says Garcia (2016). So this issue still requires
more attention.
Political influence has a
greater impact on social concerns when taken in-to account; these impacts can
be positive or negative, depending upon type of policy that has been offered on
a specific issue. Hillary Clinton announced, in her presidential campaign, her
stance on parental leave. Her stance on parental leave is to increase paid
parental leave up to 12 months. This policy could backfire, according to Henderson
(2016), because business will be less likely to hire pregnant women or women
who have potential to be mothers soon. This is because the cost of parental
leave would be much higher than the work those women can do. Furthermore, there
will be huge financial pressure on businesses to support parental leave.
According to Henderson (2016), if the cost of parental leave is supported by
wealthier taxpayer’s money, then it would not hamper the employees; otherwise,
extension is impractical. On the other hand, Donald Trump announced paid
maternity leave for 6 weeks, which is way less than what parents need, says Bethell
(2016). So, noticing who is selected as President of the U.S. will tell us how
the government will deal with parental leave policy.
It has been seen in the
last few years that tech companies are being very generous about parental leave
policy. Tech companies like Facebook, Google and Netflix provide generous
amounts of paid parental leave. It is not because they are being nice, but it
has more to do with how happy the employees are, according to Greenberg (2015).
But the problem arises when we look at other types of companies, because they
are far behind tech companies in their stance on parental leave. This can lead to
more people applying for tech companies rather than other companies who act
greedier about parental leave. But this depends on how much people care about
parental leave. If people do care, then it can create a misbalance among the
workforce which is not good for businesses or the country’s economy.
On the issues with
parental leave discussed above, people have different opinions about it. To
study the opinions of people about what they believe at Texas Tech, we decided
to take a survey at Texas Tech University. Based on the survey I want to propose
five hypotheses which we want to study.
Hypotheses
Hypothesis
1: Texas Tech community is
mostly American citizens who conventionally believe in making decisions
independently. So, I believe that Texas Tech community will not care in
availing themselves of parental leave, regardless of whether their boss or
peers take the full advantage of it or not.
Hypothesis
2: In Texas people usually
believe that government should allow businesses to grow themselves without any
intervention. So, I believe that Texas Tech community will not be in favor of
parental leave policy being made and mandated by government.
Hypothesis
3: In the United States,
there is an increasing awareness for gender equality. So, I believe that Texas
Tech community will be in favor of equal amounts of parental leave for males as
females.
Hypothesis
4: In the United States
there are more important issues which need addressing; for example, increasing
division between people of different races, foreign policy issue and global
warming issue. So, I believe that Texas Tech community will not care about the
stance of a presidential nominee on parental leave, and they will choose them
based on their policies on other issues.
Hypothesis
5: In Texas, people seeking
jobs look for the companies based on the career growth opportunity and for the
company which will utilize their skills properly. So, I believe that Texas Tech
community will not have any preference in selecting companies based on parental
leave policy.
Methods
To investigate the
opinions of the Texas Tech community, we carried out a survey on topics named
Social Media, Parental Leave and Black Lives Matter. Each member of the ESL
5315 class submitted two questions on their respective topic of interest. For
example, I submitted a question on the Parental Leave topic. After collecting
all the questions from students, we shortlisted questions and agreed
unanimously on our final draft of the survey. The survey was carried out by
individuals in class on six American male Texas Tech students and six American
female Texas Tech students per individual in class. So, a total of around 300
surveys were collected by the ESL 5315 class. Texas Tech University has around
36,551 (Toth, 2016) registered students and surveys carried out were around
300. Even though the survey represented less than 1% of the population, as they
were carried out in various departments, Library and Student Union area, this
represents that students were selected randomly and can be considered a good
representation of the Texas Tech population. Google sheets software was used to
store and analyze the survey data. The purpose of the study was to examine what
the Texas Tech community thought about Social Media, Parental Leave and Black
Lives Matter issues. The ESL 5315 class was divided in to three groups to focus
on each topic separately; however, every student collected data for all the
three topics to have enough data for analysis. The main focus of the group of
which I am a member is on the topic Parental Leave. We wanted to know whether
people in the United States would make decisions independently without caring
what their colleagues did. So, we asked questions like will peers decisions of
taking parental leave affect their decision of taking the leave or not. We
wanted to know whether Texans would not favor government involvement in
businesses policies. So, another question we focused on was the government
involvement in mandating parental leave. Also, we wanted to look at students’
stance on gender equality about parental leave, and we expected the student
generation to be more in favor of equality.
The year 2016 was the election year, and we
wanted to know if the Texas Tech community favored any presidential candidate
based on their stance on parental leave, and we expected that the TTU community
would not care and focus more on bigger issues like Gun Control, Global Warming
issues and Energy policy to favor a presidential nominee. We wanted to examine
whether the TTU community would look for a company based on parental leave
policy or not as well. We expected them to be in favor of businesses that
provide parental leave. Survey subjects were divided in to categories based on
their qualification, i.e. Undergraduate, Graduate, Faculty/Staff, their gender,
their age group, i.e. 18-22, 23-28, 29 or more, their place of origin i.e.
Texas, USA (not Texas) or International and based on whether they had children
or not. The purpose of dividing in to categories was to analyze a few relationships.
For example, we expected that a person from Texas originally would not be in
favor of government involvement in business policies. Another example is that
we expected people without children to care less about the parental leave
policies and mostly not favor them. Also, division based on age group was
carried out to see the relationship of age group with awareness about parental
leave and their opinion on it. Division based on gender was to see if females
favored parental leave more over males. The expectations of the survey were
based on our knowledge of the Texas Tech community, but whether our hypotheses
are correct or not will be discussed in Results section with the data analysis
results.
Results
Data analysis was carried
out on the demographic division of the Texas Tech community based on the
questions asked on topics named Social Media, Parental Leave and Black Lives
Matter. In this paper results are focused on Parental Leave. Surveys were
carried out for males and females in equal proportion to capture opinions of
both genders. Our findings are listed in order of hypotheses and facts for each
hypothesis are provided to either support it or oppose it. Details of why our
hypotheses are supported or not supported will be discussed in the Discussion
section later.
In Hypothesis 1, we
proposed that most Americans in the Texas Tech community don’t like
interference of other’s decisions on their actions. So, Texas Tech students
would take advantage of parental leave regardless of whether their boss or peers
didn’t take it. We found that the Texas Tech community is mostly American
citizens and most of them agreed they would take parental leave without caring
about the decisions made by their boss or peers. To our surprise females and
males both were equally supportive of taking parental leave independently. 86 %
of the Texas Tech community said that they identify themselves from the United
States of America, and 58% of them agreed to take parental leave without any
interference based on decision made by others in the company (see Appendix:
Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2). 59% of American females and 58% of American males
were in support of taking parental leave independently.
In Hypothesis 2, we
proposed that most Texans in the Texas Tech community don’t like government
intervention in businesses and they will not be in support of government making
and mandating parental leave policy for businesses. We found that the Texas
Tech community is mostly Texans and to our surprise most of them supported the
government in making and mandating parental leave policy. However, females were
in more favor of government involvement than males. The Texas Tech community
has 65% Texans, and 52% of the Texans supported the government in making and
mandating parental leave policy (see Appendix: Figure 2). 63% of females and
only 49% of males were in support of government involvement in parental leave
policy.
In Hypothesis 3, we
proposed that Americans would be in support of equal parental leave because
there is increasing awareness on gender equality, and both males and females
require equal amount of parental leave.
We found that most of the Texas Tech community does not support parental
leave being equal for both males and females. However, we found that most of
them were in favor when we combined the people who supported increase in
paternal leave with people who supported paternal leave being equal to maternal
leave. Only 29% of the Texas Tech community supported equal paternal leave;
however, 60% of people supported it when we combined people who support
increase in paternal leave with people who support paternal leave being equal
to maternal leave (see Appendix: Figure 3).
In Hypothesis 4, we
proposed that the Texas Tech community would not support any presidential
nominee based on their stance on parental leave, because there are other major
issues that people focus more on. We found that most of the community does not
support any presidential nominee based on their stance on parental leave
policy. However, we found that more men will support the presidential nominee
but fewer women will support the presidential nominee based on their stance on
parental leave. Only 49% of Texas Tech community was in favor of supporting a presidential
nominee based on their stance on parental leave. However, 55% of males were in
support and only 42% of females were in support of choosing a presidential
nominee based on their stance on parental leave (see Appendix: Figure 4.1 and
Figure 4.2).
In Hypothesis 5, we
proposed that the Texas Tech community would not be in support of choosing a
company based on its parental leave policy. We found out that most of the Texas
Tech community will choose a company with parental leave policy rather than the
one without it. Both males and females were in favor, but females were
significantly higher than men in choosing a company based on its parental leave
policy. 56% of the Texas Tech community supported the company with parental
leave. 61% of females were in support compared to only 51% of men who were in
support of choosing a company based on its parental leave policy (see Appendix:
Figure 5.1 and Figure 5.2).
We carried out a total of
290 surveys in Texas Tech University. Out of 290 surveys 144 were females and
146 were males. Most of the surveys were carried out on Undergraduates,
followed by Graduates, followed by Faculty/Staff, with numbers 194, 82 and 14
respectively. Total surveys included 248 US citizens (189 Texans) followed by
41 Internationals and one person who did not mention any information of origin.
Based on numbers of males and females, the survey was carried appropriately to
account for both genders to study their opinion on parental leave. A detailed
discussion on our findings and explanations will be given in the Discussion
section.
Discussion
Our class of ESL 5315 was
curious about the opinion of the Texas Tech community on Social Media, Parental
Leave and Black Lives Matter. We agreed on a few questions to be carried out in
a survey based on what we wanted to find out. My interest was on the topic
Parental Leave and we concluded five hypotheses based on our curiosity. Results
were derived from analysis of the survey data and a detailed discussion on the
analysis is provided in this section.
From analysis of the
first hypothesis results, we found that most of the Texas Tech community agreed
on taking parental leave without any influence of peers on them. Most the
community was in favor, possibly because the Texas Tech community is mostly
Texans who give more importance to family over work. In Texas people care about
growth of family together rather than the individual’s success, and give
importance to spending time with their new-born baby instead of working because
of fear of losing promotion. Another reason might be that people in the United States
are strong believers in making their own decisions. In the Texas Tech
community, people don’t like their decisions to be influenced by their peers
specially age group from 18-22 years.
From analysis of the
second hypothesis, we found that most of the Texas Tech community supported the
idea that parental leave policy should be made and mandated by the government.
Based on our hypothesis we expected otherwise. We were wrong about people in
Texas being against the government’s mandating the parental leave policy. The
reason behind this could be that we believed that Texans do not like government
intervention in businesses or they don’t like government to be telling
businesses how to operate. We made our hypothesis purely based on this belief. We should have considered that Texans are
family oriented and would choose government involvement when government is
trying to make policy in favor of their wellbeing.
From analysis of the
third hypothesis, we found that most of the Texas Tech community does not
support equal parental leave for both males and females. We were wrong in
making a hypothesis based on our reason that since there is a rising awareness
about gender equality in the United States, most of the people will be in
support of equal parental leave for both genders. However, we failed to
consider a few points in our reasoning. One point could be that everybody
believes that as a woman is bearing the actual labor of delivering the baby, it
is the woman who is undergoing through physical problems of giving birth. So,
she needs more time to recover and needs extra time to spend with the baby.
However, the father just needs the time to spend with the baby and does not
have to go through physical labor. Because of this reason women were more in
favor of having paternal leave equal to maternal leave so that they can
appreciate their husband’s help at home in taking care of the baby. However,
most of the men were not in favor of paternal leave being equal to the maternal
leave. The reason might be because of either traditional thinking or try to be
comfortable in the office and avoid discomfort of helping women with the baby.
From analysis of our
fourth hypothesis, we found that most men were in support and women were not in
favor of supporting a presidential nominee based on their policy on parental
leave. Overall community counted all together was not in favor of parental
leave. We expected the community to be not in favor of supporting a
presidential nominee based on their stance on parental leave, but we did not
expect that men would be in favor. The reason might be because currently the
policy of paternal leave is very harsh on men. Most of the men usually get less
than a week of leave for having a baby. This is frustrating for them because
they feel that they deserve more time to spend with the baby and wife to take
care of them. So, a presidential nominee who is in favor of equal or increase
of paternal leave will be able to help them.
From the analysis of our
fifth hypothesis, we found out that most of the Texas Tech community was in
favor of choosing a company with parental leave policy compared to one without.
We made our hypothesis based on reasoning that people will focus on growth
opportunity and work quality for choosing the company over parental leave
policy. But we were wrong in the reasoning because people take in-to account
how companies treat their employees. If a company does not have parental leave
policy, it implies that it cares mostly about profit rather than the happiness
of employees. Most of the people believe that it is very important for a
company to keep its employees happy to stay stable and remain profitable even
if the company must compensate some profit for that.
Apart from our survey results there were a few
limitations which could be improved. First we had limited time to carry out the
survey. We could carry out the survey only for a week, but if we had been
allowed for at least four weeks, we could have generated enough data to better
represent the Texas Tech community. Most of the survey data was carried out in
engineering departments, as the students of ESL 5315 class are mostly
engineers. Formulation of questions could be improved to carry out specific
conclusions. We tried to be politically correct with our questions to avoid any
conflict with the people surveyed. But in a few questions, making changes could
have helped to investigate and make specific conclusions.
Conclusion
The
detailed analysis of the parental leave survey study showed interesting
results. In some cases, we were wrong about the Texas Tech community and made
incorrect hypotheses based on what we thought. The Parental Leave study showed
us the correct opinion of the Texas Tech community. We found that the Texas
Tech community likes government to be involved in making parental leave policy.
We found that Texas Tech community is more independent in making their decisions
and do not worry about their peers. We found that females were more in favor of
equal parental leave than males because they can appreciate their husband’s
help. However, males may think it is discomfort to stay home and take care of
the baby. We found that more males favor the presidential nominee based on
their stance on parental leave because of current harsh paternal policies for
men in the US. It’s a paradox that men were not in favor of equality in
parental leave but were more supportive for a presidential nominee based on
their stance on parental leave. The reason could be that men might think that
current paternal leave is not sufficient and should be increased but should not
be equal to maternal leave because it could keep them away from work and could
slow their career growth. Finally, we also found that the Texas Tech community
favors companies with existing parental leave policy over the ones without,
because of increasing awareness about the treatment employees deserve in a
company, and they believe it is more productive for a company. These results
could have been improved with more time allowed to capture a higher population
of the Texas Tech community.
Appendix
A
Appendix
B
Graphs for Results
Figure 1.1: Chart for
demographic breakdown with respect to place of origin
Figure 1.2: Chart for
Americans take/do not take Parental leave if their peers do not take
Figure 2: Chart for Texans’
opinion on government intervention of Parental Leave
Figure 3: Chart for
Americans’ opinion on amount of maternal and paternal leave
Figure 4.1: Chart for TTU
females’ opinion on supporting a Presidential nominee based on their stance on
Parental leave policy
Figure 4.2: Chart for TTU
males’ opinion on supporting a Presidential nominee based on their stance on
Parental leave policy
Figure 5.1: Chart for TTU
females’ opinion on preferring a company with its existing PL policy
Figure 5.2: Chart for TTU
males’ opinion on preferring a company with its existing PL policy
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