When it comes to major life events, people want to know they’ll have the time and financial support they need from their employers. That’s especially true when welcoming a child.

A clear parental leave policy can provide that reassurance while helping employers create a consistent experience for employees across different family circumstances. But even a generous policy can produce uneven outcomes when its parts aren’t defined or applied carefully.

To help you create or review your parental leave policy, I’m sharing two common mistakes I see with employers.

(For a closer look at parental leave benchmarks, costs, and competitive strategies, join our August 25 webinar.)

Understanding Parental Leave Benefits

Before looking at those mistakes, it helps to clarify the purpose of parental leave.

Parental leave provides time away from work to bond with a child following birth, adoption, or foster placement. It may be paid or unpaid. In this article, paid parental leave refers to an employer-provided benefit that replaces some or all of an employee’s income during the bonding period.

An employer’s policy will typically explain who’s eligible, how many weeks are available, whether and how employees will be paid, and when the leave can be taken.

Parental leave is distinct from short-term disability (STD), which serves a different purpose. STD provides income replacement when an employee can’t work because of a qualifying medical condition. Following childbirth, it may provide pay while an employee is medically unable to work and recovering from pregnancy or delivery.

To sum it up, paid parental leave supports bonding, while STD supports medical recovery.

Federal law doesn’t guarantee paid parental leave for private-sector workers. Eligible employees of covered employers may receive unpaid, job-protected leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). FMLA leave may run at the same time as employer-provided paid leave. Other federal, state, and local laws or programs may also apply.

In my work with employers, two mistakes come up frequently, and they often appear in the same policy. One is running STD and paid parental leave together, and the other is providing different amounts of bonding leave based on gender or whether an employee gave birth.

When I refer below to running STD and paid parental leave concurrently, I’m talking about using both pay benefits during the same weeks. I’m not referring to whether FMLA or another job-protection period may run at the same time.

Mistake No. 1: Running STD and Paid Parental Leave at the Same Time

Employers sometimes count the weeks in which an employee receives STD benefits against the employee’s paid parental leave allowance.

Here’s how the arrangement may work:

  • The employer offers 10 weeks of paid parental leave at 100% of salary.
  • An employee earns $3,000 a week.
  • The employee is approved for six weeks of STD benefits.
  • STD replaces two-thirds of the employee’s income, or $2,000 a week.

If the benefits run concurrently, the employee receives $2,000 a week from STD for six weeks. The employer then pays the remaining $1,000 through its paid parental leave program, bringing the employee’s weekly income back to $3,000.

Each of those six weeks also counts against the 10-week paid parental leave benefit, leaving the employee with four weeks of paid parental leave after STD ends.

If the benefits ran one after the other, the employee would receive six weeks of STD benefits during medical recovery, followed by the full 10 weeks of paid parental leave for bonding. In this example, that would mean six weeks at $2,000 a week through STD, followed by 10 weeks at $3,000 a week through paid parental leave.

What This Means for Employees

On paper, the employee received 10 weeks of paid parental leave. But six of those weeks occurred while the employee was medically unable to work and recovering from childbirth. Only four weeks were reserved solely for bonding.

A non-birth parent covered by the same 10-week policy wouldn’t have an STD period tied to childbirth. That employee could use all 10 weeks for bonding. The policy appears equal, but the employees receive different amounts of dedicated bonding time.

The outcome can also vary among employees who give birth because recovery periods aren’t the same.

Under a 10-week concurrent policy:

  • Six weeks of approved disability (the norm for vaginal delivery) would leave four weeks for bonding.
  • Eight weeks of approved disability (the norm for C-section) would leave two weeks for bonding.
  • An approved disability lasting 10 weeks or longer would leave no paid parental leave remaining.

The longer an employee needs for medical recovery, the less dedicated bonding time they receive.

Why Employers Run the Benefits Together

Employers often intend the top-up to help. Without it, the employee in the example would receive $2,000 a week instead of their regular $3,000 salary. By adding $1,000 from the parental leave program, the employer keeps the employee financially whole during recovery.

There may also be a financial incentive. Looking only at the paid parental leave program in this example, the company contributes $1,000 a week during the six-week overlap rather than paying the full $3,000 weekly benefit after STD ends. The paid-benefit period also ends sooner than it would if the benefits ran one after the other.

Match Each Benefit to Its Purpose

One way to look at the policy is to match each benefit to its stated purpose.

Under this approach, the employee first receives STD benefits while medically unable to work. Once the disability period ends, the employee begins employer-provided paid parental leave for bonding.

Employers don’t have to offer a particular number of parental leave weeks. If cost or total time away is a concern, they can adjust the stated parental leave benefit rather than using it during medical recovery.

For example, an employer that wants an employee’s expected time away to total about 16 weeks could provide 10 weeks of paid parental leave, knowing that STD benefits will often be approved for six weeks. If the employee’s medical recovery lasts longer than six weeks, the total absence may also be longer. (This example addresses how the pay benefits are sequenced. Job protection is a separate question and may run on a different timeline under FMLA or other applicable laws.)[

This structure makes the employer’s decision easier to understand. The company is setting the amount of bonding leave directly rather than reducing it through benefit coordination.

Separating medical recovery from bonding addresses one source of uneven leave. The next question is whether each parent receives the same bonding benefit.

Mistake No. 2: Providing Different Bonding Leave Based on Gender or Birth Status

Some employers want to provide more support to employees who give birth. But when that additional support is included in the bonding benefit rather than connected to medical recovery, the policy may provide different amounts of bonding leave based on who gave birth.

In practice, employers often avoid stating that women receive one amount of leave and men receive another. Instead, they use terms such as “birth parent” and “non-birth parent.” But changing the labels doesn’t resolve the concern if the underlying bonding benefits remain uneven.

For example, a company may offer:

  • 16 weeks of paid parental leave to a birth parent
  • Eight weeks of paid parental leave to a non-birth parent

How Employees May View Unequal Bonding Leave

Policies that provide less bonding time to non-birth parents may reflect older expectations about caregiving. One parent is treated as the primary caregiver, while the other is expected to return to work sooner.

Employees may read that policy as a statement about whose caregiving role the company values.

The policy can also affect the employee recovering from childbirth. When a spouse or partner returns to work after a short leave, that person has less time to care for the child, help at home, and support the employee during recovery.

Providing the same bonding leave to similarly situated parents shows that the company recognizes each parent’s role in caring for a new child.

The Risk for Employers

Providing different bonding benefits based on gender or birth status may raise discrimination concerns.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance distinguishes between leave related to pregnancy or childbirth and leave provided for bonding. When an employer provides bonding leave, it must administer that leave without sex discrimination.

For purposes of this policy discussion, “similarly situated” refers to employees who are eligible under the same policy and are taking leave for the same bonding purpose. In practice, this means eligible employees must be provided with the same parental leave benefits regardless of their gender or birth status. Medical recovery is considered separately.

Employees may also notice how the policy treats different family structures, including adoptive and foster families.

Compare Bonding Leave Across Parents

A straightforward way to look at the policy is to separate the reason for the leave from the employee’s family role:

  • Medical recovery is based on the employee’s medical condition.
  • Bonding leave is based on becoming a parent.

Under that structure:

  • An eligible birth parent approved for six weeks of STD receives those benefits during medical recovery, followed by 10 weeks of paid parental leave.
  • A similarly situated non-birth parent receives 10 weeks of paid parental leave.
  • Eligible adoptive and foster parents receive the same 10-week bonding benefit.

The birth parent may have more total time away because of the medical recovery period. Each eligible parent still receives the same 10-week bonding benefit.

If You Offer Different Amounts of Leave

Equal bonding leave is generally simpler to explain and administer. Some employers nevertheless use primary- and secondary-caregiver categories instead of birth and non-birth categories.

For example, a primary caregiver may receive 16 weeks, while a secondary caregiver receives eight.

For this structure to be independent of gender and birth status, any eligible parent must be able to identify as the primary caregiver. An employer shouldn’t assume the birth parent is the primary caregiver or require a non-birth parent to prove their caregiving role.

Allowing employees to self-designate without documentation may help avoid unequal treatment. Requiring proof from some parents but not others can create another inconsistency.

This model has practical limits. Under a self-designation approach, every eligible employee could identify as the primary caregiver. Two working parents may also both reasonably consider themselves primary caregivers.

For many employers, equal bonding leave is the cleaner approach. Employers considering different leave amounts should have employment counsel review the policy under applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Make Sure Your Policy Works Before Someone Needs It

A parental leave policy should be understandable before an employee has to rely on it.

Walk through the policy week by week using a few sample scenarios. Identify why the employee is away, which benefit provides pay, how much bonding leave remains, and whether similarly situated parents receive the same benefit.

If HR and payroll can’t explain those answers clearly, an employee is unlikely to understand them while preparing for a new child.

Learn More About Parental Leave

Join Sequoia on August 25, 2026, at 10 am PT/1 pm ET for our live webinar: Parental Leave in 2026: Benchmarks, Costs & Competitive Strategies.

We’ll cover current parental leave benchmarks, differences by company size and growth stage, employee expectations, and cost-conscious approaches to designing a competitive program.

Register for the parental leave webinar.

Joshua Lucchina — Josh leads Sequoia’s Leave Advisory practice. With over a decade of expertise in consulting and underwriting, he works closely with large, complex clients to optimize their life, disability and leave of absence programs to align with business goals and workforce expectations. Josh specializes in strategic program design, vendor evaluation and negotiation, financial modeling, self-funding arrangements, and statutory disability/PFML programs. Prior to joining Sequoia, Josh held senior consulting and underwriting positions focused on group life, disability, and absence products at major brokers and insurers. Josh earned a BA in Economics from the University of Connecticut. Josh holds a Life/Accident & Health Producer License, and a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation.