The Parent Gap: Many Challengers of Birth Control Benefit Don’t Offer Parental Leave Either
After giving birth to her third child last fall, biblical studies professor Amy Peeler took a financial hit in order to stay home with her newborn for nine weeks. Peeler, who is married, teaches the New Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois, one of the religious nonprofits suing the federal government to avoid providing their employees with insurance coverage of certain birth control methods.
Having joined Wheaton’s faculty in 2012, Peeler had not accrued enough sick leave to spend as much time as she wanted with her new baby. Currently, the evangelical college’s policy is for employees to use accrued sick leave hours and short-term disability leave (at a reduced wage rate) to pay for the bulk of their parental leave, said Wheaton’s media relations director LaTonya Taylor, who also noted that Wheaton reimburses faculty up to $10,500 of eligible adoption-related expenses.
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