Survey of Parental
Leave at Texas Tech University
Yu Hua
Abstract
This project
studied Texas Tech University (TTU) students’ perception of parental leave. A
survey was conducted on 291 participants from TTU community. We found that TTU
students were more likely to support the idea that paternal leave should be
equal to maternity leave or be extended. We also found that Texan students were
more likely to support government control of parental leave than to oppose it. Most
TTU students said that they would take parental leave even if their bosses or
peers did not take it. Furthermore, we found that female TTU students would
prefer companies offering parental leave more than male students would.
Introduction
Parental leave is
getting more and more people’s attention in the United States of America. Many
people believe government should force companies to offer parental leave, since
it is very important, whereas some others believe that government should not
tell people what to do. Many people believe paternity leave is as important as
maternity leave, so men should have equal length of parental leave as women,
whereas some others think that men do not need paternal leave or need fewer
days of parental leave than women.
The United States
is the only developed country not providing government-controlled maternity
leave (Wojcicki, 2014). Lack of maternity leave might
cause huge problems including postpartum depression, less bonding with children,
and lack of breastfeeding (Wojcicki, 2014). May (2016) cites additional
examples of infants who died in daycares away from home and writes how new
mothers have petitioned for increased parental leave time to spend with their
newborn children. A lot of people signed a petition for 6 months’ parental leave.
We, a group in
academic writing class, got interested in this issue and decided to study Texas
Tech University students’ perception of parental leave. We decided to do a
survey (see Appendix) about this problem and find out how the Texas Tech
community feels about parental leave. Texas Tech University is a public
research university in Lubbock, Texas. We are interested in a wide variety of
questions including equal length of maternity leave and paternity leave,
students’ attitude toward government control, whether people would choose to
take parental leave if it is offered, preference of companies while looking for
jobs, and support for presidential nominees who promote parental leave.
Literature Review and Hypothesis
Equal
Length of Maternity Leave and Paternity Leave
Some people think
that women take care of children mostly. However, taking care of children is
the job of both women and men. As a matter of fact, a lot of men want to have
the precious opportunity and spend time with their children. Bluethmann (2016) says
that fathers have the right to take care of their new born babies as well as
mothers. Men also support women through the hard time of delivering children in
both physical and emotional ways. Parental leave is becoming gender neutral; it
is for both men and women (Pinsker, 2016).
Hypothesis. I
hypothesize TTU students are more likely to support than not support men
getting an equal number of days of parental leave as women get. Additionally, I
hypothesize male TTU students support men getting an equal number of days of
parental leave as much as female TTU students do.
Government
Control
Although a lot of
people need parental leave, they may not know how to get parental leave in
their companies. Government plays an important role in changing policies.
Starner (2016) says that parental leave can only be promoted when the federal
government forces companies to do it. Despite this opinion, American people, in
general, don’t believe that the government should tell them what to do (Wike, 2016). In Texas, people are
especially against government control.
Hypothesis. We
think it is reasonable to expect Texan students are more likely to oppose
government control of parental leave than to support it. We also hypothesize
Texan students are more likely to oppose government control of parental leave
than non-Texan Americans and international students are.
Taking
Parental Leave or Not
Even when parental
leave is offered in companies, employees might not take it, or might take just
a small amount of offered parental leave for many reasons. Dearborn (2016) says
that there is a huge gap between the length of parental leave offered by
employers and the length of parental leave taken by employees, which is not
good. Garcia (2016) says that a lot of new fathers choose to not use it,
because they are afraid of being punished in various ways, including
incredulous questions from co-workers, unfair demotion, and losing jobs.
High-powered bosses taking parental leave, in addition to policies getting
changed, is the key to promoting parental leave. For instance, Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg took a parental leave of two months, which is much longer than
most new parents could have in the U.S., after he and his wife had a daughter.
This became an example for the employees in his company, his followers on
Facebook, and other executives, according to Garcia (2016). Mayer (2016)
says that men think taking parental leave shows a lack of commitment, and 36%
of men would not take it even when it is offered by companies.
Hypothesis. Based
on what I have read, I believe that TTU male students will say that they would
not take paid parental leave even when it is offered by companies, especially
if their bosses or peers do not take it.
Preference
of Companies
Parental leave not
only influences employees, but also influences employers. Greenberg (2015) says
that a lot of tech companies provide paid parental leave not because the
companies are nice, but because parental leave helps to support and keep
current workers, attract excellent potential employees, increase the diversity
of workforces from a gender perspective, reflect more inclusive workspaces, and
get great returns on offering expensive benefits in the long run. Peck (2016)
believes that financial companies are promoting parental leave because of the
parental leave revolution in tech companies including Facebook, Google, and
Netflix.
Hypothesis. I
expect that female TTU students would prefer more than male TTU students would
companies with parental leave when they look for jobs, given that other
conditions of the companies are similar. In addition, I hypothesize that
undergraduate students, compared to graduate students, are less likely to care
because they are less likely to have kids. Also, I believe that international
students are more likely to look for companies that offer parental leave
because their native country might offer paid parental leave to employees.
Support
of Presidential Nominees
Presidential
nominees are aware of this issue and try to get people’s attention by offering
solutions. Henderson (2016) says that Hillary Clinton proposed increasing paid
parental leave to 12 weeks, which would make companies avoid hiring
child-bearing age women to save money. The cost of parental leave could also
shift to other employees that are not taking parental leave. Henderson writes
that parental leave must be supported by wealthier taxpayers so that it would
not hurt employees. Bethell (2016) says that Donald Trump announced a proposal
of paid maternity leave for six weeks. However, Bethell (2016) argues that the
proposal fails to meet Americans’ true need for parental leave. First, the
article says that Trump’s plan has no consideration of new fathers at all,
which is not fair and not good for children, moms, or dads. Second, six weeks
is too short, since a lot of people expect four months, which is what many
modern companies are offering. Third, the article points out that Trump’s plan
does not include cases when employees need to stay with spouses, parents, or
other essential family members (Bethell, 2016).
Hypothesis. We
think that these proposals are influencing people’s votes. I hypothesize that
TTU students with children, compared to TTU students without children, are more
likely to support a presidential nominee if the nominee announced a proposal of
paid parental leave with more days off. In addition, I hypothesize that
students who support a presidential nominee with a longer parental leave will
also believe that the presidential nominee will be able to implement the
policy.
Methods
We wanted to know
Texas Tech University (TTU) students’ perceptions of parental leave, including
the length of maternity leave and paternity leave and government control of
parental leave. We also wanted to know whether TTU students would take parental
leave or not if it is offered, whether TTU students would prefer companies with
parental leave when they look for jobs, and whether TTU students would prefer a
presidential nominee who announced a proposal of paid parental leave. More
importantly, we wanted to study the relationship between students’ demographic
information, including college level, gender, age, origin and parental status,
and their opinions about these issues. We were also curious about whether the
students who chose a certain answer of a question would tend to choose a
certain answer for another question. Two other groups of students in our class
wanted to study TTU students’ opinions about social media and Black Lives
Matter, respectively.
We made a survey
including five demographic questions, eighteen questions on social media, nine
questions on parental leave, and nine questions about Black Lives Matter. In
the parental leave section, we asked students whether they agreed that the
government should make and mandate parental leave policies. We also asked
whether they would take parental leave if other people did not take it, and
whether they would prefer working for companies offering parental leave over
companies not offering parental leave. Furthermore, we asked students whether
they would support a presidential nominee based on his or her proposed parental
leave policy and whether they believed that this nominee would enact the
policy.
Our academic
writing classes consist of one professor, three teaching assistants, and twenty
graduate students. We made an agreement that each of us would recruit at least
six American female students and six American male students to take the survey.
Each of us also participated in the survey. After completing the required
thirteen surveys, we could include as many international students as we wanted.
We further agreed that all the surveys would be filled out by members of the
TTU community since we are members of this diverse population. TTU
undergraduate students tend to be around eighteen to twenty-two years old, and
TTU graduate students tend to be around twenty-three to twenty-eight. Most of
the students are from Texas and they tend to be middle class. We made sure that
the number of female students and male students were approximately equal. It
was possible that the students who have children or jobs did not have time to
fill out our survey, so we did not attempt to specially recruit students who
have children or jobs. Nor did we try to recruit students from all majors due
to time constraints. We went to places like the student union building, the
library, the foreign language building, the mathematics building and so on to
conduct the survey. Although our sample was not representative, we believed
that we would learn a lot about TTU community and improve our writing skills.
In the survey, we
did not ask about students’ race in the demographic part. Most of the questions
were multiple choice questions; we gave them choices like “yes, no, or don’t
know/don’t care/depends/maybe” or “totally agree, somehow agree, neutral,
somewhat disagree, totally disagree” for some questions. For some other
questions, we also asked the reason that the participants chose a certain
answer. We discarded the surveys that were only half completed.
After one week, we
collected 291 surveys. Then we used Google sheets to enter the results of the
surveys and shared with each other the information we collected. We analyzed
the data and drew some conclusions.
Results
In general, people
in the TTU community were friendly, and it was not hard to get surveys. Our
data was representative of the TTU community with respect to gender and origin,
and our data was representative of the young people in the United States with
respect to gender. Our data included 50.2% male students and 49.8% female
students. It included 65.3% Texan students, 20.5% non-Texan students of the
United States, and 14.2% international students. However, our data was not
representative of the young people in the United States with respect to
parental status. 93.4% of the respondents did not have children, and only 6.6%
of the respondents had children.
Equal
Length of Maternity Leave and Paternity Leave
I hypothesized
that TTU students were more likely to support than not support men getting an
equal number of days of parental leave as women got. Our study found that TTU
students were more likely to support that paternal leave should be equal to
maternity leave or be extended. 28.8% of TTU students thought that paternal
leave should be equal to maternity leave, and 33.3% of TTU students thought
that paternal leave should be extended. However, only 20.0% of TTU students
thought that the existing proportion was sufficient, and 5.3% of TTU students
believed that paternal leave was not necessary.
Additionally, I
hypothesized that male TTU students would support men getting an equal number
of days of parental leave as much as female TTU students did. It was clear from
the results that female TTU students supported men getting equal number of days
of parental leave more than male TTU students did. 38.2% of female TTU students
supported men getting equal number of days of parental leave while only 19.1%
of male TTU students did.
Government
Control
We thought that
Texan students were more likely to oppose government control of parental leave
than to support it. Our data showed that Texan students were more likely to
support government control of parental leave than to oppose it. 53% of Texan
students thought that a parental leave policy should be made and mandated by
the government while 24% of Texan students thought that a parental leave policy
should not be made or mandated by government.
We also
hypothesized that Texan students were more likely to oppose government control
of parental leave than non-Texan citizens of the United States and
international students were. Our data showed that Texan students were more
likely to oppose government control of parental leave than non-Texan students
of the United States and international students. 24% of Texan students opposed
government control of parental leave, whereas 19% of non-Texan students of the
United States and 15% of international students opposed government control of
parental leave.
Our study also
found that international students were more likely to support government
control of parental leave than both Texan students and non-Texan students. 73%
of international students supported government control of parental leave,
whereas only 53% of Texan students and 54% of non-Texan students supported
government control of parental leave.
I believed that
TTU male students would not take paid parental leave even when it was offered
by companies, especially if their bosses or peers did not take it. It was clear
from the results that most TTU male students would take parental leave even if
their bosses or peers did not take it. 59% of male students chose to take
parental leave while only 14% of male students chose to not take parental leave
when it was offered by companies. Our data also showed that female students and
male students had the same opinion on taking parental leave or not. The
percentages of choosing “yes”, “no”, or “maybe” were identical between female
students and male students.
Preference
of Companies
I expected that
female TTU students would prefer, more than male TTU students would, companies
with parental leave when they look for jobs, given that other conditions of the
companies were similar. Our study found that female TTU students would prefer
them more than male students would. 62% of female students would prefer
companies with parental leave over companies without parental leave while 52%
of male students would prefer companies with parental leave.
In addition, I
hypothesized that undergraduate students, compared to graduate students, were
less likely to care, because they were less likely to have kids. Our data
showed that undergraduate students cared as much as graduate students did about
whether companies offer parental leave or not. 56% of undergraduate students
would prefer companies with parental leave over companies without parental
leave, and 56% of graduate students would prefer companies with parental leave.
Also, I believed
that international students were more likely to look for companies that offer
parental leave because their native country might offer paid parental leave to
employees. Our data showed that non-Texan students and international students
preferred companies with parental leave more than Texan students did. 54% of
Texan students preferred companies with parental leave, whereas 63% of
non-Texan students of the United States and 58% of international students
preferred companies with parental leave.
I hypothesized
that TTU students with children, compared to TTU students without children,
were more likely to support a presidential nominee if the nominee announced a
proposal of paid parental leave with more days off. Our data showed that TTU
students without children were more likely to support a presidential nominee if
the nominee announced a proposal of paid parental leave with more days off. 52%
of the students without children supported a presidential nominee whereas 37%
of the students with children did. Notice that we did not get enough parents in
our data, so further study is needed for this result.
In addition, I
hypothesized that students who supported a presidential nominee who proposed a
longer parental leave would also believe that the presidential nominee would be
able to implement the policy. It was clear from the results that most of the
students who supported a presidential nominee thought that it depends. 25% of
the students who supported a presidential nominee with a longer leave would
believe that the presidential nominee would be able to implement the policy, while
59% of the students who supported a presidential nominee with a longer leave
thought that it depends.
Discussion
Equal
Length of Maternity Leave and Paternity Leave
We found that TTU students were more
likely to support the idea that paternal leave should be equal to maternity
leave or be extended. It was possible that TTU students cared about equality of
paternal leave and maternity leave and knew the importance of paternal leave to
children, parents, and country. It was possible that both female and male TTU
students wanted to spend time with and take care of their children, especially
when the children were very young. It was also possible that some TTU students
did not understand what paternal leave or maternity leave was. It could be
better if the definitions of paternal leave and maternity leave were given
before the questions on parental leave in the survey. Or the order of the
choices might influence students’ answers to the questions. Students might
choose “Paternal leave should be extended” without reading the following choice
“Paternal leave should be equal to maternity leave”. The survey might be better
if all the choices were listed in different lines and easy to read. A few
students chose two answers for one question. We could have eliminated this by
clearly stating that only one answer could be chosen in the survey or by giving
an online survey where only one answer could be chosen for each question.
We also found that female TTU students
supported men getting equal number of days of parental leave more than male TTU
students did. It was possible that a good long paternal leave was extremely
beneficial to a woman, who was hardly able to walk or take care of her children
for weeks, and needed her husband’s help around the house, especially with
taking care of older children. But it was much less beneficial to the man, who
worked full time either way, and who often didn’t even try hard to get paternal
leave at his office. We could have figured it out by asking why the students
chose a certain choice. It was possible that men preferred jobs over childcare,
or they felt more comfortable in the workplace than at home. It was also
possible that female TTU students like equality of everything and tend to agree
with other people’s opinions. We could have figured it out by asking some
questions about equality of something else or asking the question in a better
way in our survey. For example, we could have asked them the length of paternal
leave that they thought was proper.
Government Control
We thought that Texan students were more
likely to oppose government control of parental leave than to support it. We
found that Texan students were more likely to support government control of
parental leave than to oppose it. It was possible that Texan students realized
the importance of government control of parental leave, and they thought that
parental leave could not be implemented without government control. We could
have been wrong about Texans’ attitude towards government involvement. Or the
young Texans in the TTU community were different from the Texans who were
advanced in years. Or Texas might be against government involvement but more in
favor of parental leave. It’s important to us to learn about Texans since we
are in Texas. This study was done with only 294 people, but could have been
done with 3,000 people given the proper resources. And we could figure out the
reasons.
We also found that international students
were more likely to support government control of parental leave than both
Texan students and non-Texan students. It was possible that international
students had parental leave in their countries, for example, Germany, Korea,
Australia, and Mexico. It was possible that international students were more
used to government control than the students from the United States. For
example, in countries with large populations, including China and India,
government took control of a lot of issues. It was also possible that our data
of international students was not representative for all the international
students. The international students who took the survey were mostly the
graduate students in our academic writing class. We could get to the bottom of
the questions if we do careful representation and get more international
students in the future.
Taking Parental Leave or
Not
We found that most TTU male students said
that they would take parental leave even if their bosses or peers did not take
it. It was possible that they were telling the truth and they would take
parental leave if it was offered by companies. It was also possible that they
never thought about this problem and had no idea about peer pressure. Although
most TTU male students chose to take parental leave in the survey, they might
not take parental leave in real life. We could figure this out if we follow the
students who took the survey and ask them to fill out a survey several years
later, after they find a job.
Preference of Companies
We expected that female TTU students would
prefer more than male TTU students would companies with parental leave when
they look for jobs, given that other conditions of the companies are similar.
We found that female TTU students would prefer companies offering parental
leave more than male students would. It was possible that female TTU students
cared more about their families and were willing to spend more time with their
children. This result is important to social science and the world. Offering
parental leave to employees might motivate them working efficiently and
effectively for companies. Companies that want to attract female employees can
make effort to provide parental leave.
Our data showed that undergraduate
students cared as much as graduate students did about whether companies offer
parental leave or not. It was possible that a lot of undergraduate students
worked part-time as well as most graduate students and they cared as much as
graduate students. It was also possible that the students who took the survey
were mostly students majoring in mathematics and engineering. Our data was not
representative with respect to major. It was possible that the students
majoring in business majors cared less about whether companies offer parental
leave or not. We could have got students from all majors, including business,
law, nurse, history, and so on, to make our data representative with respect to
major. The students who were in the SUB might not have had a job and would have
had more free time. It was possible that the survey was a long survey, and only
students with free time took the survey. Those students might like to have free
time and care about whether companies offer parental leave or not. We could
have got students who were in the library, in their offices, and in their work
spaces to figure this out, given more time and resources.
Our data showed that non-Texan students
and international students preferred companies with parental leave more than
Texan students did. It was possible that non-Texan students and international
students cared more about family and wanted to spend more time with their children
compared to Texan students. It was possible that Texan students had the faith
that they would get as much parental leave as they wanted, so parental leave
was not an issue to them. It was possible that companies’ policies about
parental leave were not important, as much as personal relationship that
created job happiness, to Texan students. It was also possible that non-Texan
students and international students at TTU were attracted to Texas because they
liked Texas culture. We could make the data more representative if we get some
surveys from other states in the future.
Support of Presidential
Nominees
We found that TTU students without
children were more likely to support a presidential nominee if the nominee
announced a proposal of paid parental leave with more days off. It was possible
that students without children thought that parental leave would be important
for them in the future. However, we did not get a large enough number of
parents in our data. Given more time and resources, we could get more people,
including more parents, in our data, and make our result more representative.
Also, the questions could be asked in a clearer way. Instead of asking “Will
you support a presidential nominee more than before if he or she announced a
proposal of paid parental leave?”, we could have asked the question in a
comprehensive way, such as "Will
you support a presidential nominee if the nominee announced a proposal of paid
parental leave with more days off?" Better wording of the question would
help us get more accurate information.
We also found that most of the students
who supported a presidential nominee thought that whether the presidential
nominee would be able to make a policy of paid parental leave depends. It was
possible that it depended on whether the president nominee had any allies in
Congress, and had any influence with the Congressmen who were there. It is
important to further study what people think it depends on and understand
people’s opinion about presidential nominees making policies.
Conclusion
We wanted to know about TTU community’s
perception of parental leave. We made some hypotheses and studied the TTU
community’s perception of parental leave by conducting a survey on 291
participants. We analyzed the data and found that TTU students supported the
idea that paternal leave should be equal to maternity leave or be extended. Most
Texan students supported government control of parental leave. Most TTU
students said that they would take parental leave even if their bosses or peers
did not take it. Female TTU students would prefer companies offering parental
leave more than male students would. These results gave an idea to the people who
are trying to have legislation about parental leave. Although the number of
children is a small percentage of the whole population, children are 100% of the
future. The policies of parental leave in companies, states, or countries
reflect their attitude to the future and effect children, parents, employees, employers
and the whole country.
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