[Parents are] making crazy decisions to try and figure out how to keep their jobs, make enough money to provide for their families and still have time to spend with their kids. Nearly one out of every four women who gives birth in the United States goes back to work just two weeks later.

While a number of major companies have made significant strides in providing paid family leave this year, and the benefits of these policies are widely reported, a majority of the U.S.’s top employers still lag far behind.

The paid leave arms race isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. While some employers—notably those in consulting and tech—have recently made splashy updates to their leave policies, the vast majority are staying quiet.

For women who struggle with conflicts between work and home life, there is a moment in the film, “Equity,” that is ruefully familiar. The drama takes place at an investment bank where ambitious women are delicately managing career moves.

British actress Keira Knightley is Harper’s Bazaar UK December cover star, and yesterday, she received the magazine’s Theatre Icon award during their Women of the Year Awards ceremony. Inside the magazine’s pages, Knightley touched on her personal life by commenting on the state of parental leave and child care.

There was a time not long ago when employees were supposed to leave family issues at home. The stress of caring for an elderly parent, a sick spouse, or a newborn was something better left outside the confines of the office. It was even taboo to take too much time off to deal with something personal, other than a short maternity leave.

New York state and San Francisco passed new paid leave laws in April. Etsy, Twitter and Deloitte are some of the latest companies to implement generous paid leave policies that raise the bar for all employers. And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made headlines when he took two months off for the birth of his daughter.

For many people, economic policy brings to mind issues like taxes, trade, and interest rates—the subjects that dominate the financial news. Child care and family leave go into another basket typically conceived of as “women’s issues” and implicitly treated as irrelevant to economic growth and prosperity.

A new Deseret News/BYU survey finds that paid family leave is popular among Americans, with slightly more than half saying the government should require employers to offer it. An additional 14 percent support mandating unpaid leave.

In the two-story breakfast room on the 25th floor of Hilton’s Conrad Miami, Florance Eloi mans the omelet stand in front of a panoramic view of the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. The bubbly Miami native says, laughing, that guests routinely tell her, “Stop making the omelets, you need to turn around and look!”

Chobani wants to give working parents ample time off to bond with their children. The yogurt company announced Wednesday that it will bump up its parental leave policy to six weeks of 100% paid leave for mothers and fathers who have given birth, adopted a child, or had a foster child placed in the home, according to a company statement.

All of the jokes about parenthood are true: You stumble through life bleary-eyed, eager to spend every moment with your child yet desperate for the next break. If you intend to throw your life into real chaos, however, try pulling off parenthood without paid leave and affordable child care.

When Yalimar Panell gave birth to twin daughters, she felt sore from her Cesarean section, exhausted from running back and forth to the neonatal unit, and oddly grateful that her husband was unemployed and able to help. Yet, if it wasn’t for her employer offering 16 weeks of paid parental leave, Panell says she would have been less grateful and more frantic about the financial stress on her family.

Last week, Twitter became the latest tech company to announce an expanded parental leave policy, offering all new parents 20 weeks of paid time off. The tech industry seems to be leading the way among industries offering robust family leave—something most Americans don’t have access to—and it may be thanks to a counterintuitive factor: The industry’s notable lack of women.

At this time of year, as students return to campus, I always find myself reflecting on why I became a professor and the principles I’m about to teach the business leaders of tomorrow. But this year has been especially exciting, as employers have increasingly announced family-friendly policy changes.

At some point in your career, you will probably need to take time off from your job to care for yourself or a family member, or to welcome a tiny new human into your life. But because the federal government doesn’t require your workplace to offer paid family leave, it’s possible that you will have to choose between earning money and looking after a loved one – the latter which, yes, is pretty darn hard to do without an income.