Kudos to Chris Dodd

Here’s a reason to be sorry Chris Dodd has bowed out of the presidential race: Dodd is the original author of the Family and Medical Leave Act, which for the first time in U.S. history required employers to grant family leave. Okay, so it’s a minimal little law—the leave is unpaid, only large employers are covered, and you have to have worked in the job at least a year. But still. It was a good start.

Dodd also has sponsored a bill that would finally require employers to give paid family leave, His Family Leave Insurance Act would provide eight weeks of paid leave. The bill has gone nowhere. But let’s give the man credit for working on it.

Still, not too much credit. As a savvy politico friend of mine noted, unlike John Edwards, who has used his candidacy to bring issues of inequality into the national conversation, Dodd didn’t use his candidacy to draw attention to the issues of family leave and work–family life balance. I’m still waiting for a candidate to do that. I’ll keep you posted on the proposals of other Democratic candidates on these issues.

Meanwhile, as Joanne Bamberger has noted at the Huffington Post, the Republican candidates to a man are silent on the practical difficulties mothers (and fathers) face and how to solve them.