Or at least it will be in 2018, when the state budget passed last night, guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid family leave, goes into effect.
New York is only the fourth state to guarantee paid family leave, and its new policy is the country’s most expansive—double the six weeks mandated by California and Rhode New Jersey, and triple Rhode Island’s four weeks.
This isn’t just a victory for working women (though it’s that too). The new policy applies to men and women, and can be used to care for a new child or for a seriously ill relative.
As Rebecca Traister writes in a column putting the new program in context, the success of the paid family leave movement “offers a valuable lens on how a fight that for years has been considered a women’s battle can be won more swiftly when it is recast as a men’s fight too.”