[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Hi, I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and you're with The Takeaway.

[background noise]

Like so many others, my huge extended family packed ourselves tightly around the TV on Sunday night to watch the Super Bowl. The closely contested game did not disappoint. Leaving us all leaning in right down to the final seconds.

Commentator: The Kansas City Chiefs blood Super Bowl 50-.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For some of us, the main event was the 13-minute 12-song crimson and cream halftime comeback concert of the incomparable Barbados-born superstar, Rihanna. Yes, she came to work.

[song]

Work, work, work, work, work, work

He said me haffi

Work, work, work, work, work, work!

He see me do mi

Dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt!

So me put in

Work, work, work, work, work, work

When you ah guh

Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now that little clip is from the Fox NFL Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday. After five years away, plenty of us were hoping Rihanna is halftime performance signal the new album would drop this week. Instead, she dropped the mic with gravity to find performance that simultaneously announced she's expecting baby number two. Debuting in The Daily Show Host Chair Sarah Silverman caught the vibe on Monday night.

Sarah Silverman: Seriously, did you see that pregnant woman, did you see it? Rihanna just did a Super Bowl halftime show while pregnant, and you want my seat on the subway, not anymore tip. No way.

[applause]

The bar has been raised so hold it.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: You see that is the kind of maternal power we love to celebrate. A pregnant Cardi B wrapped in a skin-tight white dress delivering Be Careful on SNL in 2018. A golden bejeweled Beyonce serving Sexy Mama at the 2017 Grammys, while expecting twins. Alicia Keys embracing her bump at the 2014 MTV European Music Video Awards less than a month before welcoming her second child.

What doesn't grab headlines? The mom with swollen ankles and rising blood pressure was trying to squeeze out just one more week of work before she goes into labor, knowing there'll be no income coming in for at least a month, or the new mom desperately trying to express breast milk in the public stall of a fast food restaurant during her 15-minute break, just two weeks after giving birth. The new dad who falls asleep at the wheel exhausted after his feverish little one was up the night before.

For millions of Americans without pay family leave, there is no halftime. No rest and little healing with work, work work. It's just simply unrelenting. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Family Medical Leave Act, sometimes called FMLA. President Clinton signed it into law in 1993, and the legislation allows up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for qualifying employees, so they can recover from major illness or childbirth or take care of sick or new family members.

It was a groundbreaking achievement for its time but it is severely limited. According to a Labor Department survey, about 44% of workers aren't even eligible for FMLA leave because they work for small employers who are exempt from the law, or they just don't even work enough hours to qualify. Some people cannot afford to take unpaid leave from work. Now Democratic lawmakers are renewing their push to make paid family leave federal policy. On February 1, Representative Rosa DeLauro and Senator Kristen Gillibrand introduced the Family Act. Two weeks ago, President Biden announced his recommitment to expanding the federal law to include paid family leave.

President Biden: Folks, this shouldn't be that complicated. It gets down to, I don't know word, I guess the average overuse. It gets down to basic dignity. It's about being a country where women and all people can both work and raise a family, and today we're taking another step forward. I just signed a presidential memorandum to make sure that the federal government leads the way in supporting workers.

[song]

Work, work, work, work, work, work

He said me haffi

Work, work, work, work, work, work!

He see me do mi

Dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt!

Melissa Harris-Perry: With us now is Natasha Pearlman, executive editor of Glamour. Natasha, welcome to The Takeaway.

Natasha Pearlman: Thank you for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Right, you all have been doing some reporting on this? Talk to me about why the expansion of FMLA is so important.

Natasha Pearlman: First of all, the commitment to expanding FMLA says that the government recognize that what they're providing for women right now is a complete failure. I think it also signals that they are really committed to pay leave, right now, as you say, I think pay leave FMLA is largely inadequate. I think about it as the internet, the internet didn't exist in 1993, the World Wide Web technically didn't exist in 1993, when FMLA was introduced. We're now in 2023, social media takes over our world, everything is completely transformed, and yet FMLA has stayed the same.

All it does is protect your job unpaid for 12 weeks. Most people, I'd say only that was it, 56% of people can access it, it is not acceptable, it is not relevant anymore. It's like the Nokia phone you have in your pocket from 30 years ago that you wouldn't keep today, it doesn't work.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, and Natasha, the story that you all put together 28 days in the lives of eight women postpartum, I just got to encourage everybody to go to the Glamour's site to see this because it's both a print story, but also includes really painful, poignant, devastating, loving photographs of the reality of what it means to give birth and try to recover. Can you talk about some of the experiences of the women you followed?

Natasha Pearlman: It was extraordinary. When we cast the eight women, we really tried to find a group of women that represented all the different experiences in the country. First of all, it's credibly hard to find women who actually had paid leave. The interesting thing if you think about that, the statistics suggest that there are a significant number of women without access to paid leave. Actually, when we tried to cast our women around the country, the majority of them their husbands or partners, particularly male partners, had better paid leave access than the women giving birth.

That really is reflective of the statistics around the country, which suggests that the high earners have paid leave. Of course, the difference in wages, it's often the men and it's the lowest quarter of earners who have the least access to paid leave. In fact, that was our biggest challenge at the beginning was finding that big spread of women who have paid leave. Two of our women went back to work within two weeks of giving birth, Karina after six days, and Shakira within the two weeks.

Karina was a self-employed chef, she had two businesses and her husband Eduardo had three jobs. He was a music teacher in two schools, and also taught privately at home. Despite all of their income coming in, they could really only afford to lose one of cleanliness jobs, and that was the restaurant that they ran in her house. Six days after giving birth, she continued her job, which was supplying doughnuts to this brilliant local café. That meant that she was up midnight till 7:00 AM, four nights a week baking because they all had to be fresh to be delivered at 7:30 in the morning. Every single one of those hours, those hours where she should have been resting while her baby was asleep.

I remember, she sent me in a photo that her husband had taken of her, which she had passed out on the floor in the middle of the day because she was so physically tired. Even though adrenaline's carrying her through, and I remember I interviewed the women every 4 or 5 days for 28 days, and every time I spoke to her in the middle of it, she was like, "I am fine, I can do this, I have to do this, I'm feeling great."

At the end of the project, when I spoke to her again, when we kept doing our wrap-up calls, she said, "I can never do this again. I don't know if I can ever have another child if I have to do it this way." It was too much. I think this is the situation she's in. She explored buying herself her own medical insurance. She said it was costing her more to pay for this as a self employee in it as business owner, and it was to simply go back to work for her. I think that's the real challenge that we have without a national program is that even if you potentially have the money to-- you are running your own business, you cannot afford to pay yourself to take the break.

That's the same with people who-- one of our nurses Stephanie, she was a single mother. She's done it by choice. She was really incredible, so empowered by her choices, and yet, she could not afford. She didn't have enough paid leave, in fact, she had almost none with her job. She had 100 hours of holiday pay, and she was going into debt. I remember speaking to her as the weeks were going on, she said Natasha, "I'm really scared now because I wanted to take 12 weeks, and I'm a neonatal nurse, I know how important it is, but I'm not being paid, and my sick pay that was brief is not covering my mortgage. I'm going into all my debt. All of my savings are being eaten up."

This is the reality of women. Even if you want to take it unpaid, it's not unpaid, it is actually debt. That is why we wanted to follow these women and I think it's such an unseen period, that 28 days postpartum. We actually asked them to keep voice notes with videos that we filmed them so you can hear their voices when you go to the [unintelligible 00:09:48].

Voice note 1: It is currently 3:16 in the morning, had some frustration with breastfeeding, super sore, and feeling defeated. Breastfeeding has always been a challenge for me and tonight I just could not get baby to lunch. I was crying and he was crying. I decided that I am going to be pumping at least from now on to give myself some relief.

Voice note 2: It's been a pretty tough journey for me. Yesterday it was really hard. I found myself breaking down and crying a lot. I thank God for my husband being so supportive.

Natasha Pearlman: They tell you about what happens when you've got a child in the NICU, and what happens when you can't breastfeed, and what happens when you are stuck in hospital for nine days, like Abby, who also had no paid leave, and was completely worried in those first few days that her hospital bills were so high that she would never be able to take the six months unpaid that she'd saved for it. In fact, she couldn't.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: We're talking FMLA with Natasha Pearlman, Glamour's executive editor, and we're right back right after this.

[music]

We're back with Glamour's executive editor, Natasha Pearlman, and we're talking about the FMLA. Obviously, this reporting these realities are now happening in the context of a post-Roe v. Wade world where-- these are all people who wanted these pregnancies wanted to go forward but there are also fewer choices for so many millions of women across the country. I'm wondering if as painful as it may be, there may be a capacity to build bipartisan support for paid family leave in a context where having children may become a more almost required reality for so many.

Natasha Pearlman: I have made that point to some of the Republican teams I have been speaking to about this. I say this, and I don't disagree with you if we are going to be living in a world where women really are given very little choice about whether to have a child or not. It's outrageous to me that we wouldn't support it. I do think that that is an argument. It's not a trade-off. It's not, "Oh, well, we'll sacrifice Roe and we'll take family leave."

If you are really, really saying to women, we are not willing to give you the choice about whether to have a family or not and we are also taking away the ability for you to care for that child that suddenly becomes a very difficult argument for those who object to the right for women's abortion to object to that.

I think that it is very hard for those people who may be on both sides of the aisle to object abortion to object to supporting the growth of a family. I am hopeful that there really feels like there is momentum behind it. There is the launch of the bipartisan working group on paid leave, which is pretty groundbreaking. I think that signals a real commitment.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Natasha Pearlman is Glamour's executive editor. Natasha, thanks for joining us today.

Natasha Pearlman: Thank you so much for having me.

[music]

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.