Apr. 22, 2022 — The Army will now allow both parents to take paid medical leave after a new birth, miscarriage or stillbirth.
The change is one of 12 new policies announced Thursday as part of a new Parenthood, Pregnancy and Postpartum Army Directive. The policies are meant to help new parents transition back into duty after birth and allow Army parents to better care for their families.
“The Army will be the only service so far to apply this convalescent leave to male soldiers, acknowledging emotional loss after this very significant life event,” Amy Kramer, the policy lead action officer, told reporters on Thursday.
“So in addition to the convalescent leave provided to the female soldier that undergoes the actual miscarriage for physical healing and emotional healing, male soldiers, their spouses, will also be eligible,” she said.
The changes stemmed from a grassroots movement of soldiers in a Facebook group called The Army Mom Life, where service members shared personal details and asked for advice, Task & Purpose reported. The social media group grew into a broader effort to pushes changes through the Army hierarchy.
“You know the saying, ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ — well, sometimes leaders don’t know that it’s broke. It’s been broke,” Staff Sgt. Nicole Edge, who founded the Facebook group, told the news outlet.
After Edge had a miscarriage during her first pregnancy in 2016, she was only granted two days of convalescent leave. She asked for more time to grieve but was denied, so she took two weeks of vacation on her own “to be able to process and mourn the loss of my family and the future that I thought I was going to have.”
The Army new directive outlines support for fertility treatment, family care plans, parental leave extensions and physical fitness exemptions. Under one of the policy changes, soldiers and spouses will be excluded from permanent change of station moves and deployments for up to a year during fertility treatments.
Soldiers who give birth will also be “deferred or excused” for a year after their pregnancy from duties that take them away from home for more than a normal workday, such as field training, deployments, training center rotations and temporary duty.
The directive requires commanders to create designated lactation areas and notes that a soldier’s need for lactation breaks doesn’t end when a child begins eating solid foods.
Soldiers are also now excused from wearing service uniforms during pregnancy and up to one year post-partum, according to ABC News. Before now, soldiers had to buy new unforms or get their uniforms altered. With the new policy, soldiers can wear a combination of Army uniforms and maternity uniforms.
Many policy changes also apply to parents who don’t give birth, which will support single parents, adoptive parents and foster parents.
“I think it’s all about empowering these young soldiers because they are the voice of the Army,” Edge told Task & Purpose. “They are going to be the future soldiers when I’m out … I think it’s really important that we empower younger soldiers to come forward and raise issues and make sure that they know if you do that, there’s not going to be any backlash.”
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