Elementary art teacher Kathryn Vaughn wasn’t nearly ready to return to her rural Tennessee classroom three weeks after giving birth to her son in 2021.
But Vaughn’s school district, like most in the U.S., offered no paid maternity leave. As her family’s sole wage earner, she felt she had little choice but to go back to work, where she sneaked glances midday of a video feed of her son at home with her husband.
“It’s the sad reality,” she said of the parental-leave policies of her profession, one largely dominated by women and tasked with caring for other people’s children.
Only 18% of the nation’s largest school districts offer some form of paid parental leave, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality. Those that do typically offer less than six weeks—often only partially paid—or require teachers to exhaust their sick time first. Many teachers are forced to use workarounds such as stockpiling sick leave and trying to time pregnancies for summer births.
Some states are trying to change that. Tennessee, Oklahoma and South Carolina enacted laws last year giving teachers six weeks paid maternity leave, joining around half a dozen other states with policies. A proposed California law would require school districts and community colleges to provide 14 weeks of paid maternity leave.