At the end of the 20th century, the American workforce was undergoing significant changes.
In 1965, 35 percent of mothers with children under 18 had participated in the labor force.
By 1992, 67 percent of mothers were in the workforce.
In half of all two-parent families with children, both parents now worked.
Single-parent families had grown in number too, from 16 percent of all families with children in 1975, to 27 percent of them in 1992.
Meanwhile, with the population aging, more working Americans had to take time off from work to attend to the medical needs of elderly parents.
All of these changes created a growing need for family and medical leave for American workers, but businesses had not been responsive to this need.
For example, in 1991, only 37 percent of all private sector employees had maternity leave available to them, and only 26 percent had available paternity leave.
As then president Bill Clinton put it, this forced too many Americans to choose between their job security and family.
Acknowledging that workers should not have to make this choice, Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, or FMLA, establishing the country’s first national family and medical leave policy.
