Most people think they know what their parental leave looks like. Most people are wrong.
Not because they're careless — but because the system is genuinely complicated. There are federal protections, employer policies, state programs, short-term disability plans, and accrued PTO, and they all interact differently depending on where you work and where you live. What you'll actually receive during leave — and for how long — is almost never a single simple answer.
The good news: this is very much a solvable problem. It just requires asking the right questions before you need the answers, not after.
The most important thing to understand first
There is no federal law in the United States that requires employers to pay you during parental leave.
Read that again, because it surprises a lot of people.
The Family and Medical Leave Act — FMLA, passed in 1993 — is the federal law most people think of as "maternity leave." And it does provide meaningful protection: up to 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave if you've worked for an employer with 50 or more employees for at least 12 months. Your job is protected. Your employer-sponsored health benefits continue. But your paycheck? That's not guaranteed by FMLA. That comes from somewhere else — or it doesn't come at all.
This is the gap that catches people off guard, and it's the gap worth understanding clearly before you start planning.
Where the income actually comes from
For most people, paid leave during the parental period is assembled from some combination of the following sources. How much you get — and for how long — depends on your specific situation.
Employer-paid parental leave
If your employer offers paid parental leave, this is the most straightforward piece. Some employers offer full salary for a set number of weeks; others offer partial pay or a combination of paid and unpaid time. The policy is usually in your employee handbook or benefits portal. Read it carefully — the number of weeks offered, whether it's for birthing parents only or both parents, and whether it requires you to use PTO concurrently are all details that vary significantly from employer to employer.
Short-term disability insurance
For the birthing parent, short-term disability insurance is often the primary source of income replacement when employer paid leave isn't available or runs out. These policies typically replace 60–70% of your pre-leave income for a set period — usually six weeks for a vaginal birth, eight weeks for a C-section. The elimination period (the waiting period before benefits begin) is typically seven days, though this varies by policy.
One critically important thing to know: some policies require that you don't have a preexisting condition — like a pregnancy — to be approved, or that you've been on the policy for a certain period of time before accessing the benefit. This means if you're planning to get pregnant, enrolling in short-term disability before you're pregnant isn't just smart — it may be required. If your employer offers open enrollment and you're not currently enrolled, this is worth looking at immediately.
Non-birthing parents generally cannot use short-term disability for parental leave, since it's a medical benefit tied to physical recovery from childbirth.
State paid family leave programs
Depending on where you live, your state may offer paid family leave that goes beyond what FMLA provides. As of 2025, more than a dozen states have paid family and medical leave programs, including California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Connecticut, and others. These programs vary widely in benefit amount, duration, and eligibility — but they can meaningfully supplement or extend what employer benefits provide, and both birthing and non-birthing parents are typically eligible.
If you live in a state with a paid leave program, it's worth understanding how it interacts with your employer's policy. In some cases they run concurrently; in others you can use them consecutively for a longer total leave period.
Accrued PTO
Vacation time, sick days, and personal days can often be used to bridge income gaps during leave, extend paid time beyond what other benefits cover, or cover the elimination period before short-term disability kicks in. Many employers require or allow you to exhaust PTO concurrently with FMLA leave. Know what you have and how your employer handles it.
How to calculate your actual income gap
Once you understand the sources, the next step is to run your own numbers. Here's a simple framework:
Step 1: Find out your total leave period. How many weeks do you plan to take? How many of those are covered by employer paid leave? By short-term disability? By state programs? By PTO?
Step 2: Calculate what you'll actually receive. For each week of leave, add up what's coming in. Employer paid leave might cover full salary for six weeks. Short-term disability might cover 60% for six more weeks. State leave might add something on top. What's left — the weeks where income drops significantly or disappears — is your income gap.
Step 3: Determine how much you need to save to cover the gap. Take your monthly household expenses and multiply by the number of months your income will be reduced. That's a reasonable savings target to work toward before the baby arrives.
This math looks different for every family. A two-income household where one partner has generous employer leave has a very different gap than a single-income household where neither partner qualifies for FMLA. Neither situation is a verdict — both just require knowing the number so you can plan around it.
What the non-birthing parent should know
Paternity leave — or parental leave for non-birthing parents — has become more common, but it's still inconsistent. FMLA applies equally to both parents if both meet the eligibility requirements, which means non-birthing parents are entitled to the same 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave. Whether that time is paid depends entirely on employer policy and state programs.
If your employer offers paid parental leave to non-birthing parents, read the policy carefully — the number of weeks is often shorter than for birthing parents, and there may be requirements around timing and how the leave is taken.
If your employer doesn't offer paid leave for non-birthing parents and your state doesn't have a paid leave program, the honest answer is that your options are limited to unpaid FMLA time and whatever PTO you've accrued. Knowing this early gives you time to save accordingly rather than absorbing the income loss as a surprise.
The FMLA eligibility check
Before you count on FMLA protection, make sure you actually qualify. The requirements are:
- Your employer has at least 50 employees within a 75-mile radius of your workplace
- You've worked for that employer for at least 12 months
- You've worked at least 1,250 hours in the past 12 months (roughly 25 hours per week for 50 weeks)
If you don't meet these requirements — because you work for a smaller employer, you're relatively new to your job, or you work part-time — federal job protection doesn't apply. Your leave options are then governed by your employer's own policies and any applicable state laws, which vary significantly. It's worth knowing your status before the pregnancy rather than assuming coverage.
A note on timing
If any of this feels like it requires action sooner than you expected — it does. The pieces that have the longest lead time are the ones that trip people up most:
Short-term disability enrollment often has waiting periods or preexisting condition exclusions, so enrolling during open enrollment before you're pregnant matters. FMLA requires notice to your employer at least 30 days before your leave begins when the need is foreseeable. And saving toward your income gap requires months, not weeks, of runway.
None of this is meant to create urgency for its own sake. It's just that leave planning is one of the areas where understanding your situation six months early is meaningfully better than understanding it six weeks early. The information is the same either way — but what you can do with it is very different.