Companies With The Best Paid Parental Leave Policies: The Big Winners And The Runners-Up

Paid parental leave is important for many employees because it helps families take care of their children. This is the reason why many companies in the United States are attracting workers by improving their policies on family leave.

Yahoo Parenting has compiled a list of the top 14 companies with the best paid parental leave policies in 2015. Find out which among them you'd love the most to be part of their workforce. 

The two big winners include: Gates Foundation which offers its employees a one-year paid parental leave policy for mothers, fathers and even adoptive parents, followed by Spotify -- offering six months of paid parental leave for all types of parents.

The other three big winners are Microsoft, which gives 12 weeks of paid parental leave for new parents and up to 20 weeks for birth mothers; Adobe, for giving 26 weeks of paid parental leave for birth mothers and 16 weeks for other types of parents; and, Facebook, which provides four months of paid parental leave for all kinds of parents including same-sex parents.

The runners-up include Stonyfield Farm which offers six months of paid parental leave to mothers and the primary caregiver in a same-sex couple; the U.S. Navy, for giving 18 weeks of paid parental leave for female sailors and marines; Johnson & Johnson, which provides 17 weeks of paid paternal leave for mothers and eight weeks for fathers and adoptive parents.

Other runners-up are Blackstone Group, Fidelity Investments, Vodafone and Zillow for offering 16 weeks of paid parental leave for birth mothers; Netflix, for providing up to one year of paid leave for new parents and only one month for employees in the DVD-packing division; and, Amazon, which gives 20 weeks of paid parental leave for birth mothers and six weeks for their partners.

"A more in-depth study by Ruhm (Ruhm CJ. Parental Leave and Child Health. Journal of Health Economics 2000) confirmed that paid leave was associated with reductions of the death rates among infants and young children," the Child Encyclopedia says. Hopefully, more companies in the U.S. will improve its paid parental leave policies.