underzealous

It's good to know that we're in such good company with national policies on maternity leave:

To put it another way, out of 168 nations in a Harvard University study last year, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave, leaving the United States in the company of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

What's the 168th one?

The rest of the article generally says that the impediments come from two things: 1) no need to increase birthrates (but that's true a lot of places!?); 2) someone would have to pay for a fund or something of that sort (namely businesses, a la workmen's compensation) to pay for maternity leave.

Well #2 could be true, but California has another system:

California went a different route, and last year introduced family leave with around 50 percent pay for six weeks, paid from a fund that employees, not employers, pay into.

I don't know what the solution is, but the current policy's encouragement is for women to stay home. You would think businesses would recognize that that's not the most efficient solution either.