Court Ruling Spurs Talk of Fathers’ Rights

It was a victory for motherhood, contemporary style. Now, what’s to be done about the rights of fathers?

That was the widespread reaction this week after the U. S. Supreme Court upheld a California law that gives pregnant workers the right to a four-month leave, with a guarantee of getting their jobs back.

More specifically, this was the response:

In Los Angeles, pioneer feminist Betty Friedan hailed Tuesday’s decision as a catalyst that will “spur our efforts to get parental leave for women and men alike.”

In Washington, Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), concurred, “If the Supreme Court can understand, hopefully the House and Senate can.” At month’s end, Schroeder and Rep. William L. Clay (D-Mo). will reintroduce a bill guaranteeing up to 18 weeks of unpaid leave and job security for new mothers and fathers.

“We’re celebrating,” Schroeder said, “but I think the high ground is still left. Either a male or a female should be able to stay home with the child. I don’t see why you dictate only one can.”

‘Very Encouraging’

But Phyllis Schlafly, who heads the pro-family and politically conservative Eagle Forum, wasn’t going along with parental leave for mothers and fathers, which, she said, “benefits high-income, two-earner yuppie couples. The poor strata of society don’t get to cash in at all.”

Of the Schroeder bill Schlafly said, “It’s a big racket. Males or females for almost any reason they can dream up can take an extended leave . . . the father and mother could go off to the Caribbean for a vacation . . . the father doesn’t even have to be married to the mother.”

Still, Schlafly added, it is “very encouraging that the Supreme Court clearly recognizes that there is a difference between men and women and that they can be treated differently. . . . I believe in special protective legislation for women in the work force. It recognizes factual differences.”

To Lesa Webster, a Southern California Gas Co. employee-on-leave who gave birth Saturday to a daughter, the court’s affirmation that women should not have to choose between keeping a job and having a family was “long overdue.” Still, she said, “I think it’s important for the men to have that time, too. Not everyone has a mother or a neighbor or an aunt. I think it’s the father’s responsibility to be there to help.”

Discrimination Against Dads?

“It’s just the beginning,” said Los Angeles feminist attorney Gloria Allred, who acknowledged having “mixed feelings” about the California law, in that it may discriminate unconstitutionally against fathers solely on account of their sex. She cited the importance of fathers being able “to bond with their children and practice their parenting skills as soon as possible. I think such an amended law (including both parents) would be very pro-family. . . .”

The Supreme Court, in its 6-3 ruling, agreed with the Coalition for Reproductive Equality in the Workplace (CREW), which filed the amicus brief in the case of Lillian Garland, a receptionist at California Federal Savings & Loan Assn. in West Los Angeles who lost her job on returning from three months’ maternity leave in 1982. Stated CREW, “A female employee subject to an inadequate leave policy is forced to choose between exercising her right to procreate and keeping her job--a choice her male co-workers never face.”

Diana Soltankhah, 25, an administrative assistant in the graduate division at UCLA who expects her second child in two weeks, is one of the women workers of childbearing age who understand that dilemma.

“I’m going to work as long as I can,” she said, and will then take three months’ maternity leave (six weeks of it paid). “It will be a financial burden.”

After the birth of her son, Saman, now 19 months, Soltankhah took 10 weeks, including a doctor’s extension of two weeks and two weeks’ vacation but found, “It wasn’t enough time to spend with my son. He was so young and I didn’t want to leave him with just anybody. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my husband was unemployed at that time and he was able to stay with the baby.”

She added, “I do want to work and have a career, but I am torn. My mother didn’t work until we were in kindergarten. I wish I could do the same but money has a lot to do with it.”

“Gosh, I think it’s great,” Soltankhah said of the high court’s ruling.

Soltankhah goes along with the concept of parental leave--to a degree. “I think my husband (a security officer who works nights) should have some time off,” she said, “but only a week or two at the most, in the beginning. I don’t totally agree with men having the same maternity leave that women do.”

“If men could have babies, they’d be just as entitled,” said Hyla Cohn, a market administrator for Pacific Bell, “but they can’t so what are you going to do?”

Cohn, who began maternity leave on Tuesday and expects her second child the first week in February, said she felt “lucky” to work for a company that is “very supportive” of women who want to have families. She plans to take six months off and, on her return, will be guaranteed her salary and her title, but not necessarily the same desk.

“I got pregnant feeling very secure,” she said, “and I left feeling very secure.” Two-and-a-half years ago she took six months’ leave for the birth of her daughter, Lauren. She noted that Pacific Bell invests considerable time and money in employee training and “they don’t want to lose you, so they give you that time hoping you’re going to come back.”

Still, she said, for financial reasons “some women come back as early as eight weeks.” She has worked things out so that, with her salary plus state disability, she will receive six or eight weeks’ full pay, depending on whether the delivery is vaginal or Caesarean.

The Supreme Court decision, Cohn said, will reassure other women “that they can have a family without feeling their jobs are in jeopardy. It would be a real shame if our population didn’t grow because you’re afraid you’re not going to get your job back. It’s tough enough to go back to work.”

Lesa Webster, a 35-year-old, single, first-time Lesa Webster, a 35-year-old, single, first-time mother, said Southern California Gas Co. policy is to guarantee the same job back to women who have an uncomplicated birth and return within six weeks.

Nevertheless, she plans to take at least six months. Webster, whose daughter Zaneta Joi was born Saturday, said, “I think six weeks is ridiculous. A lot of women have to return because they have huge house notes, or other children, and heavy financial obligations.”

She feels the court decision is important “because there’s been so much talk about how we’ve gotten away so much from the family. More important, women just aren’t looked on as valuable in the work force. If pregnancy is taken into consideration, it’s taken negatively. The Supreme Court is saying it’s important. I still think it’s peanuts, four months. To me, it is not enough time. . . .

At a CREW news conference Tuesday at USC Law Center, Betty Friedan spoke of the ruling as a boost to what she has called the “second stage” of the women’s movement, the stage that moves beyond granting equality to the sexes to provide the structure to enable women to participate as equals in society.

The World War II baby boomers, facing the ticking of the biological clock, have had to postpone families, she said, “because 60% of the women in this nation are not covered by any pregnancy leave.” Only 15 states have some pregnancy laws in some form.

She emphasized that “care-taking leave,” for men and women, is the ultimate goal.

UCLA law professor Christine Littleton, who was counsel of record for CREW’s amicus brief, said the decision is a “green light” to feminists and civil rights and civil liberties groups in other states to lobby their legislatures.

To those who would criticize the California statute as discriminating against male workers who are disabled, Friedan said of the opinion written by Justice Thurgood Marshall, “It’s interesting that the language of the decision keeps saying ‘pregnant workers.’ We would not discriminate against any man who would become pregnant.”

The NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund opposed the California statute in a brief to the high court. But NOW’s Marsha Levick, legal director of NOW/LEDF, said here Wednesday, “I’m glad the decision went this way” as it assures that thousands of California women will retain their benefits and “I think it does open the door to gender-neutral benefits in this area.”

Kathy Spillar, coordinator of Los Angeles NOW, concurred: “We’re very happy with the decision.”

Denying that there was a significant split among feminists in the case, she explained the NOW/LEDF position: “We argued that the court should go even further and require that similar disability benefits and job guarantees be extended to all employees. But the court did not have a male litigant and so it had no basis on which to act. The court decision didn’t go as far as we would have liked.”

The debate focused on whether the objective should be full equality, or whether biological difference should be taken into account, and NOW has argued that granting of differential treatment to women (such as the protective labor laws of the ‘40s and ‘50s) ultimately works to the economic disadvantage of women.

Spillar, like others, contends that the decision is another step toward a federal parenting leave bill: “I think the court is beginning to recognize in its own decisions that the workplace has changed dramatically in the last 20 years and we’re looking at problems that working parents face as opposed to just working women.”

Allred, addressing the possible pitfalls of a policy applied only to women, said, “We’re aware that many employers may use that as an excuse not to hire women . . . so what may seem to be a benefit may end up backfiring and hurting women.”

But Friedan disagreed. “Not when women are nearly 50% of the labor force. The economy would fall apart and so would the economy of every family.”

Allred currently is representing a 36-year-old attorney who is seeking damages as a result of being terminated, allegedly without warning, two weeks into her maternity leave in 1982.

The client, who did not wish to be identified, said she felt it was significant that all the partners in the firm were men.

Rep. Schroeder, assessing the broader implications of the decision, said, “I think what the court was saying was that men and women don’t have equal roles in child-bearing” but “do have equal rights to have families.”

And, Schroeder said, the “traditional” family is not a realistic option when “a car costs what a house cost” 25 years ago.