Even the “Fortunate” Need Paid Leave

Arnel and Sandra Floria

West Grove, PA

My husband and I both come from families with conservative values who believe in education. We both held jobs while we got our college degrees, but our parents contributed substantially to the cost of our tuition. We were very fortunate but still had student debt when we graduated. We both landed well-paying jobs after school. So we considered the debt a worthwhile investment. We were married right after college, lived independently, and managed to pay all of our expenses ourselves.

A few years later, like many young couples, we were happy to discover we’d be expanding our family. In order to sustain this added expense, I knew I’d have to continue working, but I felt that was a privilege, not a burden. I had private insurance and decent medical care, compared to many. But what I didn’t predict — what no one could’ve predicted — was that I’d have a precarious pregnancy that weakened my immune system and eliminated my ability to work. On top of that, I’d contracted a major infection in the hospital, which left me unable to care for my newborn and myself.

My husband took an unpaid leave, which was made less frightening by the Family and Medical Leave (FMLA) Act that Bill Clinton had just signed into law, in 1993. Unfortunately, the law had many loopholes and wasn’t implemented in a way that protected employee rights. My husband still lost his job. That meant we lost health care coverage, and although we’d used it during the FMLA period, we had to drop it afterward.

We were two unemployed people with daily living expenses, student debt, and a newborn. We’d used all of our savings. While my husband eventually found a new job, since he’d been without one for six months, we were financially devastated. And we still had to wait for his new insurance to kick in, three months later. So I was unable to access the health care I needed. 

It took me six years to come back from that major illness because I didn’t have access to the necessary health care. Although I eventually recovered enough to start working part-time, the damage had been done. Our credit was ruined, and we had to declare bankruptcy. 

When my health was halfway restored, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant again. I was both thrilled and scared. Still, I was determined to try to do what I could to support my family after my baby’s birth. But when my second son was born, he had malrotation of the gut. He needed surgery in the first month of his life. Again, my husband had to take FMLA to care for his recovering wife and newborn child.

Again, he lost his well-paying job with decent private medical insurance, thanks to the economic downturn after 9/11. My infant son needed emergency life-saving medical treatment, and we didn’t have health insurance. It was the nightmare revisited. 

This time it took my husband almost nine months to find a new job. He ended up moving out of state without us to get a job to support us. It was a very dark time for our family, but due to the grace of God, we persevered.

We thought we’d done everything right. We’d worked hard to get our degrees and had amassed significant savings before considering adding to our family. We lived independently, never depending on financial support from others. But there was nothing we could’ve done to anticipate or financially withstand the health crises our family faced. A very short period of paid family leave would’ve prevented the devastation that still haunts our family, almost 30 years later.

My health was so severely compromised that, to this day, I have chronic health conditions that make any kind of significant income for me unachievable. Since that period when I was unable to access health care for a random hospital infection, I’ve developed diabetes, had a related stroke, and had a heart attack. I have either a genetic predisposition or acquired mitochondrial disorder. I take life-sustaining medication now, which has made me gain 60 pounds as a side effect and increases my odds of additional poor health conditions. I’m lucky to be alive, but it’s not in any way an exaggeration to say I might not see my youngest son, David, who’s a senior in college now, graduate.

Paid family leave protects families from the downward spiral of devastation that my family experienced. Even by the standards of people who believe that most people bring their circumstances on themselves, we weren’t responsible for the position we found ourselves in. There’s nothing we could’ve done to prevent what happened to us. 

It’s time to close the gap and protect our families. Paid family leave is a family value that our government should establish and protect. It should be at the forefront of every politician’s, Republican or Democrat, platform — and we must continue fighting until it is.