Maternity Leave Periods across the Americas

Almost every country in the world warrants maternity leave periods to women so they can spend time with their recent newborns. One of the reasons to grant this benefit is that the first months of the child’s life are crucial for his or her health, cognitive and emotional development. Weeks of paid absence vary across countries from 9 weeks to 18 weeks. As we can see in the graph, the United States is the only country which provides an unpaid maternity leave period (some individual US states and possessions, however, do provide for paid maternity benefits, including Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Jersey, California, New York and Puerto Rico);while Chile, Cuba and Venezuela grant 18 weeks of paid maternity leave period.