Children in Indiana suffer when their parents cannot afford to provide love and care during the first months of their lives. Women in Indiana suffer when they are forced to choose between keeping a job and raising an infant. Our society suffers when we fail to provide parents with the opportunity to raise a stable and healthy family that will ultimately strengthen our state and our country. Indiana legislators can help fix this by supporting paid parental leave for all families in Indiana and the United States.

The United States remains one of four countries worldwide that does not provide paid leave--maternal or paternal--to parents attempting to raise a newborn child. We lag behind both developed nations--the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Japan, among others--and less developed nations, such as Iraq and Nigeria. It is time that we join the rest of the world and reclaim our leadership in the support of strong, healthy working families.

We can start by supporting legislation such as H.R. 517, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act of 2013. This simple act would ensure 4 weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees. Similar legislation must be supported at both the federal and state level in order to ensure healthy development for families and workplace stability for mothers and fathers across the United States.