Meghan McCain recently gave birth to her first child and the experience seems to have changed her views on paid family leave.
The View host, who is often the lone conservative voice on the panel, recently acknowledged her change in attitude about paid parental leave.
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Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late John McCain, recently returned to The View after giving birth to daughter Liberty Page in October. After giving birth, McCain went on maternity leave for three months.
She told her co-hosts that she had to have an emergency C-section to have her baby and also suffered from postnatal preeclampsia. The complications made recovery difficult and, as a result, she took additional paid leave.
“The whole time I was thinking what a privilege it is to have this kind of maternity leave,” the new mom said on her first episode back after here leave. “And then, as I thought about it, the more angry I got that there were woman in the rest of America that didn’t have the same kind of luxury I had working here at The View.”
“We are leaving women in this country without the capacity and ability – unless you have an employer that allows you to – to take care of your child, to heal physically, which is something that needs to happen,” McCain continued.
There is currently no government-mandated paid parental leave, though the Family and Medical Leave Act is a non-paid option for leave that protects a worker’s job during their absence. Paid leave is currently available through select states or is determined by individual employers. As a result, many Americans do not have access to any paid leave after having a child. In fact, just 1 in 5 workers have access to paid leave according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.
As more celebrities and politicians lend their voice to this cause, there is hope that one day a universal paid program will be accessible to everyone.
“I will say having a daughter answers every existential and ontological question a human being confronts in this wild life,” McCain wrote on Liberty’s two-month birthday. “[We] have been so indescribably blessed and experienced nothing but an embarrassment of bliss since having Liberty.”