Paid Family Leave

Paid Family Leave (PFL) provides benefit payments to people who need to take time off work to:

  • Care for a seriously ill family member.
  • Bond with a new child.
  • Participate in a qualifying event because of a family member’s military deployment.

The Affordability Crisis Is Also a Caregiving Crisis. Just Ask America’s Women.

PUBLISHED 10/31/2026 by

As Americans head to the polls, affordability is top of mind for most U.S. voters: Ninety percent of them say the cost of living is a “very” or “extremely” important issue for candidates to discuss

But when it comes to the “affordability” conversation, one major financial burden often gets overlooked: the cost of caring for a child, an aging parent or yourself in a country without a national paid family and medical leave program. 

Paid Leave for All—the national campaign of dozens of organizations fighting for federal paid family leave—has used the last few weeks before Nov. 3 to travel to battleground states and connect with local communities about the affordability crisis and the need for paid leave policies.

None of the states on the Paid Leave for All bus tour have statewide paid leave policies. (Only 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have paid leave programs in place, leaving paid leave policies up to individual employers in the other 36 states.) 

However, all three—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio—have bills that could improve state paid leave if they move through the legislature in the coming months. And this largely depends on which candidates people vote into office next week.

“However people vote or whatever you identify politically, what happens next week is going to determine what we’re able to do federally,” Dawn Huckelbridge, founding director of Paid Leave for All, told Ms.

War on Women Report: Antiabortion Extremism Makes Its Way to the White House; 28th Woman Accuses Donald Trump of Rape; Arizona Man Wins $68K Settlement After Ex-Wife’s Abortion

PUBLISHED 10/30/2026 by and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide: the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.”

We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—Dolores Huerta, the labor organizer at the helm of United Farm Workers and one of the most powerful women in the movement, passed away on Oct. 28. She was 96. Huerta was also a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, the publisher of Ms. In March of this year, at the age of 95, she revealed that in the 1960s, Cesar Chavez sexually assaulted her.
—Abortion bans may be linked to approximately 135 excess homicides among women of reproductive age between 2023 and 2024, a new study suggests.
—Federal agents searched the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in the last few weeks of her reelection bid. Omar called the search an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”
—Bernadette Greene-Placentia, the Democratic candidate challenging Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, says she was raped while repairing a campaign sign in Sun City on Aug. 14. According to her account, Greene-Placentia was struck in the head and lost consciousness, later waking to discover evidence of a sexual assault.
—A University of Arizona sorority member has reported being sexually assaulted by two men at a Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house on Aug. 26.
—During Trump’s second term, the U.S. Department of Education has drastically reduced its investigations of sexual assault and other civil rights violations at schools and colleges, even though the number of complaints has not slowed.
—A new report from House Judiciary Democrats includes an allegation from Beatrice Keul, former Miss Switzerland. Keul says that in 1983, Trump offered to help her secure a U.S. visa and admission to New York University, and invited her to a meeting at the Plaza hotel.

When she arrived at his hotel room, Trump allegedly raped her in an attack she describes as “brutal.” According to Keul, the assault tore her clothing and caused bleeding and bruising across her body, and Trump told her not to tell anyone about the rape.

… and more.

‘After-School Care Was Helping Me Work’: A Mississippi Mom on Raising Children, Running a Business and Navigating Cuts to Support

PUBLISHED 10/8/2026 by

Front and Center is a groundbreaking series of op-eds created in partnership with the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which aims to put front and center the voices of Black women most affected by the often-abstract policies currently debated at the national level. The series highlights the success of Springboard to Opportunities’ trust, which since 2019 has given $1,000 per month for 12 months to about 100 families per year, all headed by Black women living in federally subsidized housing.

What possibilities could open up for low-income families if financial survival weren’t always top of mind? What dreams would these mothers and families be able to pursue? What activism and community leadership might arise? The series will answer these and other questions, by placing one mother’s story front and center.

Karlonda is a cosmetologist, mother of two daughters with a son on the way, and the recipient of one year of guaranteed income from the Magnolia Mother’s Trust. She runs her own business from home and has also worked in dental assisting and childcare.

“I have a dental assistant certification and a personal assistant certification. I have also worked in childcare. … I was never offered paid time off or benefits in those jobs. … When I had my daughters, I did not get paid parental leave. I had to save money while I was pregnant because I knew I was not going to get any paid leave. I took six weeks off, but I was penny-pinching because I still had to provide and pay bills.

“Six weeks is not a long time. I feel like I missed out on bonding with my babies because I had to go back to work so quickly.

“Every job should offer maternity leave. Most jobs do not really care about people who are pregnant or what they may be going through. …

“My SNAP was recently cut by about $400. At that time, it felt like everything was getting cut: vouchers, SNAP and other help. Sometimes you do not know what is going on unless you go up there and ask for yourself. Normally, you might get a letter in the mail, but I did not get an explanation.”

Beyond Abortion: How the ERA Could Transform Pregnancy, Work and Family Life

PUBLISHED 8/26/2026 by

On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband, John, beseeching him to “remember the ladies” as he and his peers were drafting the Declaration of Independence. She warned, “All Men would be tyrants if they could” and urged him to “not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.”

He ignored her warning when she wrote: “If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”

Now, 250 years later, women are still fighting for inclusion.

The potential for state ERAs to advance the rights of women and girls is tremendous, but only if we have the will—and the resources—to push for favorable state supreme courts and to use ERAs to challenge discriminatory government policies.

While we fight for a Congress that will publish the federal ERA and a U.S. Supreme Court that will robustly interpret it, feminists are building an ERA jurisprudence that will one day achieve Abigail Adams’ dream: for women to finally, truly, be equal citizens and live freely, safely and empowered throughout the United States.

Care Is Becoming America’s Strongest Form of Resistance

PUBLISHED 8/20/2026 by and

This midterm season, as courts and legislatures chip away at who gets to have a voice in our elections and governance, shoring up our democratic infrastructure is more important than ever. An unlikely tool in the arsenal of democracy? Care.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids intensified in Minnesota this year, fear spread through neighborhoods almost overnight. Families stopped going to work. Parents kept children home. Immigrant-owned businesses lost customers. Communities began retreating from public life.

Organizers responded quickly with a clear request. They asked people to care for one another.

Moms especially jumped in, providing rides to school, groceries delivered to families afraid to leave home, emergency rent assistance, childcare and meals. Neighbors checked in on each other. They created secure networks to communicate needs and organize responses.

They also reveal something much bigger. Minnesota is becoming a case study in what communities across the country are confronting as federal policies reshape daily life.

While federal policy creates these structural hurdles, the Minnesota model proves they are not insurmountable. But Minnesota offers another lesson. The same networks of care that help families survive also help communities organize. When people know one another through acts of mutual support, they build relationships that make collective action possible. They become more likely to solve problems together, advocate together and defend one another when public institutions fall short.

I Put My Career on Hold to Raise Five Children and Care for My Disabled Mother. America Depends on Women Like Me.

PUBLISHED 7/28/2026 by

Front & Center amplifies the voices of Black women navigating poverty—highlighting their struggles, resilience and dreams as they care for their families, build careers and challenge systems not built for their success. Now in its fourth year, Front & Center is a collaboration between Ms. and Springboard to Opportunities, a nonprofit based in Jackson, Miss., working alongside residents of federally subsidized housing as they pursue their goals.

Christy is a Jackson, Miss.-based mother of five, family caregiver and entrepreneur. She is caring for her disabled mother while pursuing her dream of one day growing her catering business into a food truck.

“Taking care of my children and my mom at the same time is rewarding, but it is also hard. I really don’t get much help with my kids from their dad, so most of the time I’m here with them.

“What would make caregiving for two generations of family easier, is a break. If my mom had places to go, or if somebody could take her every other weekend or even every weekend sometimes, that would give me time to myself to breathe and live a little bit. My siblings are far away, my car situation makes it hard to get around and I’m always here, so having a little peace would help me and my kids too.

“Childcare vouchers … helped a lot with after-school care and transportation, but when I recently had to recertify, I was cut off because I missed getting a copy of my ID in by the deadline and ended up on a waiting list.”

The Myth of the ‘Perfect Birth’: What America Gets Wrong About Pregnancy, Birth and Maternal Care

PUBLISHED 7/26/2026 by

Project 2026’s pronatalist vision insists that America needs more babies—but largely ignores the conditions that make pregnancy and childbirth unnecessarily dangerous in the first place. In this interview with Ms., The Perfect Birth Myth co-authors Avital Norman Nathman and Deborah Wage argue that improving maternal health requires more than rhetoric about “family values.” It demands investments in midwives, doulas, paid family leave, prenatal and postpartum care, and policies that address the racial and economic inequities driving the nation’s maternal mortality crisis.

Drawing on surveys of nearly 3,000 parents and healthcare providers, Nathman and Wage dismantle persistent myths about birth while exposing the structural failures of the U.S. maternity care system—from hospital closures and Medicaid cuts to the medical establishment’s resistance to alternative models of care. They explain why Black women continue to face disproportionately poor outcomes regardless of income or education, why conservative pronatalist policies fall short, and what it would take to build a maternal healthcare system that truly supports families.

No Equality Without Paid Leave

PUBLISHED 6/18/2026 by

The U.S. remains one of the only wealthy nations without a national paid leave program.

That failure has profound consequences for women’s economic security, caregiving responsibilities and ability to participate fully in public life: Every day, workers are forced to choose between caring for a new baby, recovering from illness or supporting a loved one and keeping a paycheck. Those impossible choices fall disproportionately on women, reinforcing gender inequities at work, at home and in civic life.

Paid leave is not simply a workplace benefit; it is a cornerstone of a more equitable democracy. When women are pushed out of the workforce, lose income or shoulder the overwhelming burden of unpaid care, they have less time, fewer resources and fewer opportunities to participate in their communities and shape public life.

Change is possible. States across the country have already demonstrated paid family and medical leave works, and overwhelming majorities of voters support it. If we are serious about creating a more inclusive future, guaranteeing paid leave for all workers must be part of the agenda. Women cannot be equal citizens without it.

(This is part of a new miniseries FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, a special Ms. series examining the next chapter of American democracy through a feminist lens. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the series explores how women and marginalized communities have shaped democratic progress, what lessons history offers for the challenges ahead, and how a more inclusive, representative and equitable democracy can be built for the next 250 years.)

91% of Voters Support a National Paid Leave Program. How Do We Make It Happen?

PUBLISHED 6/2/2026 by

The United States is one of only seven countries lacking a federal mandate for paid maternal or family leave. Within the country, only 13 states and D.C. have paid family and medical leave programs, acting as a lifeline for families.

Often considered by lawmakers to be a program too expensive to start, it’s the cost of inaction that lawmakers should be concerned with, according to Dawn Huckelbridge, executive producer of a new short film Lifelines and founding director of Paid Leave for All. 

“A lot of people miss their baby’s first smile. … They’re not there to hold their parent’s hand because they can’t get the time off work. … However it is funded in the long run, it is putting money back into the economy. It is saving jobs.”