It’s Mat Leave Monday! Today I’m talking about Canadian maternity and parental leave, and how it works in adoption, surrogacy, and other ‘special cases’. I touched on all of this briefly in my original post about Canadian Maternity Leave, but today I will go into much greater detail.
In Canada, what we popularly refer to as ‘maternity leave’ is actually a combination of 15 weeks of paid maternity leave, and 35 weeks of paid parental leave. The big distinction is that to qualify for maternity leave, you must have given birth to a baby. Period. This means that adoptive parents do not qualify for maternity leave, nor do those who use surrogate mothers.
One adoptive mother challenged this rule, taking her case against the Canada Employment Insurance Commission to the Federal Court of Appeal. In 2007 she lost her challenge, and in 2008 the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear her case. So the rules remain as they are.
What are the grounds for restricting maternity leave to birth mothers? The commission and the court of appeal state that maternity leave allows mothers time to recover from the “physiological and psychological experience” of pregnancy and childbirth. And so only those who have actually gone through that experience are eligible to receive maternity benefits. This means that birth mothers or surrogates who surrender the baby at birth may receive maternity benefits, while those who grow their families in this way may not.
Many adoptive parents take great exception with the laws as they’ve been written and interpreted. Adoptive parents have been fighting for nearly 20 years to receive the same benefits as birth parents. They argue that their children are being shortchanged, since they are not receiving the same chance to bond with their parents. They also point out that while they may not have given birth, there are often additional challenges that accompany adoption.
I’m not sure why the government is holding firm on this. I imagine that there would be some additional costs associated with expanding the program to include adoptive families, but it’s likely a drop in the bucket. As someone who has given birth and suffered serious complications I know that it does take time to recover. However, it’s not as if I gave birth, went away to recover, and then started to parent my children. Certainly by the time my babies were 8 months old (which is when I would have had to return to work if I’d received only parental leave) that was long in the past.
The other countries that I’ve researched, including the UK, Australia and New Zealand, offer nearly identical benefits to adoptive and birth parents. So although Canadian maternity benefits generally compare very favourably with those offered in other countries, for adoptive parents we fall short. The fact that we treat some families differently than others is unfortunate, and a real sticking point for many Canadian families.
After all, a parent is a parent is a parent, no matter how their family came together.
PS – There’s still time to win a diaper bag! Click and read to enter the draw.
Then what benefit should be extended to the birth mother who gives her baby up for adoption? Or the surrogate mother who has just gone through birthing a baby? We are very blessed in Canada. It was only a few years ago that maternity and parental benefits totalled only 6 months. I’m not sure when the shift happened, but I have friends who took their mat leave under the old plan. In the US, many people have to go back to work after just 4-6 weeks. I don’t think I’d be supportive of adoptive parents getting the full 50 weeks because, as I said at the beginning, those who actually gave birth still need time to recover. I’m not sure what I think about that with international adoption, though. I would, perhaps, support a shortened ‘maternity’ leave portion and a longer ‘parental’ leave. Most people are physically over the birth within about 4-6 weeks. I had a c-section and I was kickboxing at 7 weeks.
To clarify, I’m not arguing that birth and surrogate mothers should not get maternity leave. I suppose I think that both birth and adoptive parents should receive it. Yes, there would be a few cases where two people are receiving the same benefits, but like I said I think it’s probably a drop in the bucket financially speaking.
One of the other problems is that people can go on mat leave up to 8 weeks before their baby is born. If you do that, then you probably really do need the remainder of your mat leave (9 weeks if you count the 2-week waiting period) just to recover.
I took 10 weeks for Q-ster and then 14 weeks for my “longer” leave with Buster. Still blissing over the idea of 15 weeks!
In California, adoptive parents are not eligible for “pregnancy/childbirth leave” but are entitled to the same Family Medical Leave. It’s just all shorter down here.