The birth of my daughter is not a disability

The birth of my daughter is not a disability. But that’s how I was being paid the past two months. I’m lucky. My employer offers paid maternity leave (but not paternity leave so I can’t in good conscience call it parental leave¹). Most parents in the United States aren’t so lucky and have to make do with unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and paid vacation². But when I first looked into what my employer offered, I discovered my leave was paid for under the company’s short-term disability insurance. My first reaction was anger. How dare people call my pregnancy and new baby a disability! My child is not the same as breaking a leg or getting sick! Short-term disabilities are by definition abnormal and undesired events.

Once I cooled down, I acknowledged that funding parental leave through the short-term disability insurance policy makes sense. As far as an employer is concerned, time off after birth is a disability. I can’t (or don’t want to) work. Competitive employers want to offer maternity leave, but they have to pay for it somehow. Only a few states offer a normalized way of paying for parental leave (for example, California). So as far as I can tell, the majority of employers who offer paid parental leave use short-term disability policies to pay for it.

Still, the word is offensive. My daughter is not a disability. My body is not a disability. The necessary process by which the next generation is created is not a disability.