Rui Liu
Abstract
Parental leave in the U.S is worse
compared to the rest of the world. Lots of debates regarding this issue have
proceeded for a while. We conducted a survey to investigate how the Texas Tech
University community thinks about Parental Leave. Our results showed that older
people and females cared more about parental leave and wanted more rights.
Also, although Texans did not like government involvement in business, still
more than half of both Texans and non-Texans support parental leave. More people
did not believe Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would actually make a policy of
paid parental leave even if they promised they would.
Introduction
One thing that most young employees
cannot avoid is that they will have a baby sooner or later during their
employment. Once they have a baby, they have to take parental leave to take
care of the baby, which seems natural and reasonable. However, it is not
pleasant all the time; some companies do not give paternity leave to men, some
companies do not give paid parental leave, some companies do not give enough
time of parental leave, some companies give parental leave but at the same
time, give you pressure to not take it, etc. These issues related to parental
leave would be our research topic. We are students from Texas Tech University,
in Lubbock, Texas, with 35,893 students (Barton, 2015). We are taking a
writing class and we are interested in parental leave. We will conduct a
questionnaire survey to TTU students about this issue. We will find out how the
Texas Tech community feels. We are interested in a wide variety of questions:
the length of parental leave, whether government should mandate companies to
offer parental leave, paid or unpaid leave, etc. Specifically, I am most
interested in TTU students’ perceptions of whether dads should take paternity
leave and the length of leave compared to women.
Literature
review
According to Starner (2016) and
Mayer (2016), parental leave in the U.S. is worse compared to the rest of the
world. A study conducted by the Labor Department in 2012 showed that 23% of
polled women take parental leave for less than two weeks. But this amount of
time is clearly not enough; even the 12-weeks’ parental leave suggested by
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is not satisfactory to new parents. A
report from National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(Trachtenberg, 2012) shows that infant death is more common before they reach 6
months. There are already some tragedies that have happened to newborn babies
whose parents spent less than 6 months caring for them before sending them to
daycares, which clearly do not take serious responsibility, and cause infant
death (May, 2016).
The reasons behind poor parental
leave in the U.S. are first, due to the highly competitive working environment.
People are under great pressure and forced to make a choice, family or work,
and most parents choose work. Second, American companies encourage employees
not to take parental leave, ignoring federal solutions (Kimmel, 2016). Even
employers themselves take less parental leave; for example, Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg only took half of the time he offered to his employees; Yahoo CEO
Marissa Mayer only took two weeks off (Dearborn, 2016).
Hypothesis: Texans tend to be more traditional and more aware of
their contributions to family than non-Texans; thus, I think TTU students are likely
to take parental leave even their boss and peers do not take it. But men are
more ambitious and career-oriented compared to women, I think male students are
would take parental leave than female.
Government control seems a good way
to make parental leave come true. However, the idea of government control is
unpopular to Americans, due to their traditional desire to be free of
government’s regulation. Texas itself has its own opinion and laws, thus Texans
are especially against it, at least traditionally.
Hypothesis:
I think TTU students will represent the opinions of Texans, so they will also
disagree with government control on parental leave. We think Texans are less
likely to agree to government control than non-Texans
The good news is this situation is
changing; lots of companies have begun to give this benefit to parents. Tech
companies in Silicon Valley provide paid parental leave, which is not only good
to their current employees, but also helps companies to attract more talented
employees (Greenberg, 2015). This revolution also has swept to the banking
sector; Credit Suisse offers paid maternity leave for up to 20 weeks (Peck,
2015). More and more companies have begun to follow this trend.
Hypothesis: When a person holds a perception, he/she tends to
believe others will also have a similar opinion. So we think older people and
people who have child/children, realizing the importance of paid parental
leave, are likely to believe unmarried men will also favor paid parental leave
as they do. Younger people and people who do not have child/children, not
seeing the problem, are likely to think others will also say ‘no’ to paid
parental leave like them.
To the newborn children, the
importance of dads’ involvement is not less than moms’. Dads have the right to
enjoy once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and develop connections with their
infants. Also, as women go through very hard time to deliver a baby, they need
men’s support, both physically and emotionally (Bluethmann, 2016).
Traditionally it is not common for men to take paternity leave; they do not
want to appear weak to other people, especially to their employers (Bluethmann,
2016). But recently men’s contributions have been recognized and paternity
leave has begun to be agreed to by more employers (Pinsker, 2016).
Hypothesis: Younger people are more energetic, career-oriented and
they do not realize the importance of their contribution to family yet, so they
tend to not ask more rights for paternity leave. Older people are more
family-oriented and are likely to ask more rights for paternity leave. Also, women are more family-oriented than
men; they probably will support equality, so that men could have more time than
before to take care of mother and newborn baby.
Parental leave also has attracted
politicians’ attention. Recently in the American President Election, both final
candidates mentioned parental leave. Donald Trump proposed paid maternity leave
for six weeks, which was criticized as too short and as not considering new
fathers (Bethell, 2016). Hillary Clinton’s policy is to increase parental leave
up to 12 months, which was criticized as too long and as making employers less
likely to hire women; also, the cost of paid parental leave will put too much
burden on tax payers (Henderson, 2016).
Hypothesis: Based on the information above,
both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s policy have shortcomings, which
probably means they did not really think about this problem or they just do not
want to annoy people from big business. Also, American Presidential candidates
have a tradition of giving their people a good promise to win more votes, and
the American people know this point, so we think TTU students do not think they
will make a policy after they become president.
Methods
We had various interests and
curiosity about how Tech people think about Social Media, Parental Leave and
Black Lives Matter. For me, I was especially interested in Parental
Leave. I had some hypotheses; for example, Texans (or females) would be more likely to take parental leave as they
are more traditional and family-oriented, compared to other people in the US;
Texans would be less likely to agree to government control on
parental leave because they do not like government interference on company
business; older people (or people who have child/children) tend to think
unmarried men will favor paid parental leave because they think this is a
benefit to young men; older people (or females) would ask for more rights for
paternal leave because they believe this is beneficial for the family; TTU
students would be unlikely to think Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will make
policy about parental leave, due to its notorious
reputation that American Presidential candidates have a tradition to
make fake promises to win more votes. For my classmates, they have their own
hypotheses related to Social Media, Parental Leave and Black Lives Matter.
So, we made a
survey that was designed according to our hypotheses. For my topic of Parental
Leave, we asked questions like whether they agree parental leave should be
mandated by government; if they would take parental leave when other people do
not take it; if they prefer the job with parental leave; their ideas of whether
unmarried men would vote for paid parental leave; and whether they think the
presidential nominee will make a policy of paid parental leave after he or she
becomes a president. We preferred simpler answers which would be easier for us
to analyze. For example, most of our answers were provided in this way: “Yes”,
“No” and “Maybe/Depends”. But to some questions we wanted to know in more
detail, like the question of people’s opinion about the length of paternity
leave compared to maternity leave. We provided the answers like paternal leave
is unnecessary, sufficient, extended, equal to maternity leave or other/don’t
know. We tried our best to provide options to cover all possible answers. For
example, we did not just provide “Yes” or “No” options, we also provided
“Maybe” or “Depends” or “Don’t know”. I have hypotheses related to age, gender
or place where they are from, so we also devised demographic questions like
“male” or “female”, “Texas”, “USA, not Texas” or “International”, etc. to
distinguish different groups. There were also many questions related to Social
Media and Black Lives Matter in the survey.
All the questions in the survey
were devised by ourselves, modified by Prof. Leverett and printed on paper with
both sides. In order to collect enough information for us to analyze, we made an
agreement. Each of us taking the class should have at least 13 surveys,
including 6 American males and 6 American females, ourselves and any others
from Tech community. We agreed to investigate 6 males and 6 females because we
wanted to get similar numbers of males and females in order to eliminate any
gender bias. We attempted to make our sample representative in gender. We
admitted that in some aspects, it was not representative. For example, as TTU
had more undergraduate students than graduate students, our participants tended
to be at age range of 18-22; students were by and large from Texas, our
participants tended to be Texans; we did not survey every department, so
opinions in departments not surveyed were omitted; most of our participants
were White, we did not get equal number of Black, Hispanic, etc. In the end, we had 290
surveys.
We used Google Sheets to collect
data. Our Teaching Assistant, Achintha Bandara, made the sheets and invited us
to put our data into the sheets online. The sheets are mainly divided into
three pages, Social Media, Parental Leave and Black Lives Matter.
Results
290 participants from TTU community
took our survey, of whom 144 were females and 146 were males, which met our
expectation to have representative sample at least on gender. But one female
participant did not provide complete information about places to come from and
whether she had child/children or not, so we would not include her when we
analyzed data. 86% of the participants were Americans, of whom 76% were Texans;
24% were from other states of the U.S.A. The rest, about 14% of total
participants, were internationals. Also, the number of participants who had
child/children was 19 and only occupied 6% of the total participants.
Therefore, our study to compare their opinion with the people who did not have
child/children might not be very convincing. In the end, based on the data we
got from our survey, I got the following results related to Parental Leave.
I believed Texans or female students
would be more likely to take parental leave when their boss and peers did not
take it, as they were more traditional and family-oriented compared to
non-Texans or males. However, our data showed no evidence that Texans and
females cared more to take parental leave. Nearly 58% of Texans chose to take
it, while for non-Texans, this number went up to 60%. Females and males both
had the same number of 58% to choose parental leave. When the question went to
if they preferred
companies with parental leave over companies without parental leave, when
other conditions of the companies were similar, Texans still did not
show any family-oriented characteristics as I thought, but more females chose
the job with parental leave. Only 53% of Texas were willing to choose a job
with parental leave, while this number for non-Texans reached 62%. For the
females, 61%, compared to males who had 52%, preferred jobs with parental
leave.
Also, I thought Texan students were less
likely to agree with government control on parental leave,
because they did not like government interference. For example, when President
Obama tried to make curbs on guns, Texas Governor Greg Abbott struck back on Twitter with “COME AND TAKE IT”,
which represented most Texans’ attitude to Federal Government’s attempt to
control (Fields, 2016). Consistent
with my expectation, Texans were more likely to say “No” to government control
on parental leave. 19% of non-Texans from USA did not like government control
on business; however, for Texans, this number went up to 24%. Although people
did not like government control, when it came to mandated parental leave,
still, more than half of the people, no matter whether they were Texans or
non-Texans, agreed with parental leave being enforced by government. In the
data, 53% of Texans agreed with government control on parental leave, and about
the same number, 54% of non-Texans from the USA, held the same perception.
Another of my hypotheses was that
older people or people who had child/children tended to think unmarried men
would favor paid parental leave. That was because when a person held a
perception, he/she tended to believe others would also had a similar opinion.
Older people and people who had child/children, realizing the importance of
paid parental leave, were likely to believe unmarried men would also favor paid
parental leave as they did. Young people, who were not to the step of being
parents, might think parental leave was not their business. Thus they would not
vote for paid parental leave. To my surprise, the result was totally opposite.
It turned out that the more people realized the importance of parental leave,
the less likely they believed unmarried men would agree to paid parental leave:
young people, other than old people or people who had child/children, were more
likely to believe that an unmarried man would prefer paid parental leave. It
was observed that 29% of people at age range of 18-22 chose to think unmarried
men would vote for paid parental leave, while 26% of people at age greater than
22 shared the same idea. To the people who have child/children, this number
dropped to 21%.
I hold the opinion that older people
or females would ask more rights for paternal leave because they believed this
was beneficial for the family. Clearly, the data indeed indicated older people
and females were unsatisfied with our provided paternal leave of 1-2 weeks.
They tended to ask more rights for paternal leave, which in our survey was whether
paternal leave should be extended or equal to maternity leave. 66% of people at
age greater than 22 preferred longer time of paternal leave, compared to 60% of
people at age range of 18-22. Also, 65% of females asked more time for paternal
leave, and this number for males was 58%.
I expected TTU students unlikely to
think Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would make policy about parental leave,
because the community knew that in American history, presidential nominees
always lied to win votes. And this time there was also no exception. Just as I
thought, more people agreed that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would not
actually make a policy of paid parental leave when she or he became a
president. In the data, 28% of people did not think these two presidential
nominees would make a policy, and only 21% thought they would; the rest of the
people said it depends. Truly parental leave policy could help presidential
nominees win votes. The data showed that more than half of participants (51%)
would support a presidential nominee
more than before if he or she announced a proposal of paid parental leave.
And only 18% of participants would not change their position.
Discussion
Our data indicated that older
people and females were unsatisfied with our provided paternal leave
of 1-2 weeks, and tended to ask more rights for paternal leave. This was
because older people and females were more family-oriented, so they wanted
fathers to spend more time to take care of the family. This result also gave me
some memories. I lived with my mother and my wife, who took care of my
two-month old girl. I instead spent most of my time on campus, escaping my
responsibility. It turned out that older people and women had stronger feelings
about the men helping at home, while the men themselves were more ambivalent
(in many cases, they were actually more comfortable at work). The survey showed
this point that older people and females needed fathers to be involved more
with the family.
Our result showed that Texans did
not show any family-oriented characteristics, but more females preferred to
choose jobs with parental leave compared to males. The possible reason was that
Texans were not family-oriented as originally thought, or probably they were
more involved in business than family. This could be tested by asking more
direct questions. This gave advice to social scientists that an investigation
had to be made before a conclusion was made.
We found that young people, other than
old people or people who had child/children, were actually more likely to
believe the unmarried man would prefer paid parental leave. This was probably
because older people who thought young people did not know anything about
parental leave, tended to criticize and did not trust young people. In this
case, older people did not appear to think objectively. They came up with their
opinion based on their attitude to young people, which would interfere with the
result. Of course, this was human nature. An advice to social scientists, the
question devised should lead participants to think objectively rather than emotionally.
The data for participants who had child/children may not quite convincing,
because only 19 people had child/children. This could be solved if more people
participated and people with child/children were specifically targeted.
We found that a parental leave
policy could help presidential nominees win votes. But the truth was more
people did not think Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would actually make a
policy of paid parental leave when she or he became a president. This indicated
that people were actually in contradiction. On one hand they hoped their
president made a policy for parental leave, but on the other hand, they did not
trust their president nominees would do that. This was owed to its notorious
reputation that American Presidential candidates had a tradition to make fake
promises to win votes. Our survey conveyed a dangerous sign to an American
President: if he/she made a promise to his/her people, he/she should carry out
the promise; otherwise, he/she would lose trust from his/her people. The power
was given by its people; if its people lost trust, they would take back this
power.
We also found out that although
Texans did not like government involvement in business, more than half of both
Texans and non-Texans still support parental leave. The reasons could be we
thought wrongly about Texans, and probably they liked government control. This
could be found out by devising a more direct question to find people’s attitude
about government control. Or the participants who were ‘Texans’ may not
actually be Texans; they may have moved from other states and settled in Texas,
so they probably did not represent the idea of ‘real Texans’. Or, Texans might
be against government involvement, but they were more in favor of parental
leave. This result was similar to the result we got from our survey about
Social Media, only about one third of people agreed government control on
personal privacy, but when it came to social media violence, nearly half of
participants supported government interference. The suggested that most people
were rational: they would not blindly be against a policy for no reason just
because they did not like government control.
As for the limitations of the study,
we only had 290 samples, which made some of our data not convincing. But if
more funding was provided, we could have more people who participated and have
more accurate results. Also, some questions failed to meet our expectation. But
if more time was given, we could devise more comprehensive questions and find
more representative participants to get closer to truth.
Conclusion
We
did a survey to investigate TTU community’s attitude toward Parental Leave. Anyone
who tries to make a policy about Parental Leave should know how people feel
about it. We made a questionnaire and 290 people participated. We found that
older people and females were unsatisfied with our provided paternal leave of
1-2 weeks, and tended to ask more rights for paternal leave. Texans did not
show any family-oriented characteristics on parental leave as I originally
thought, but more females preferred to choose jobs with parental leave compared
to males; young people, other than old people or people who had child/children,
were actually more likely to believe the unmarried man would prefer paid
parental leave; more people did not think Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
would actually make a policy of paid parental leave when she or he became a
president; although Texans did not like government involvement in business,
more than half of both Texans and non-Texans still support parental leave.
Appendix
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