The armed services' highest-ranking enlisted leaders told members of Congress on Tuesday they support a proposal to extend the parental leave option period for troops following the birth of a child or adoption from one to two years.
Reps. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., introduced a bill in January that would let service members use parental leave at any time within two years of a child's birth or adoption and would standardize the services' requirements for exempting them from performance evaluations while they are gone.
During a hearing held Tuesday by the House Appropriations Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies subcommittee on military quality of life, Bice pressed the top enlisted leaders for their opinions on the proposal.
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She received a resounding "yes" from Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy James Honea and affirmative nods from the other four.
"I really appreciate your willingness to engage in this conversation, because I do believe that if we could expand that to two years, or have a conversation [about it], we could figure out how to get there," Honea told Bice.
Under a policy rolled out in 2023, active-duty service members and activated Guard and reserve members can take up to 12 weeks of leave if they give birth, have a spouse who gave birth, adopted a child or became foster parents.
The leave must be taken within 12 months of the birth or adoption event.
But Honea said that the one-year time frame, combined with the annual leave troops accrue in a year, make it "challenging for someone to execute parental leave inside one year."
"That flexibility would be extremely helpful," Honea said, referring to the two-year option.
In announcing the legislation last year, Bice said the extra year to use the leave would be helpful for service members to plan timing regarding their family circumstances and permanent change of station orders.
"I see a lot of heads nodding," Bice said during the hearing. "Thank you for that."
The services rolled out new parental leave policies in 2023 after Congress required them to provide 12 weeks of paid parental leave to new military parents for members designated as primary caregivers as well as secondary caregivers, the latter of which was once called paternity leave.
The 12 weeks is in addition to convalescent leave for military moms who give birth or adopt a child.
For all branches of the military other than the Army, parental leave can be denied by lower-level commanders. In the Army, only the first general in a secondary caregiver's chain of command can deny parental leave.
The Army was the last among the services to reveal its policy, in large part because of the debate over the denial of leave, with some officials wanting the authority to go to commanders and others wanting the final say to be from a general officer.
The other services allow commanders to deny parental leave.
Other quality-of-life issues addressed during the hearing were the services' approaches to improving barracks for single enlisted personnel and providing additional housing options such as apartments run by public-private partnerships, as well as child care, health care for service members and their families, and educational opportunities.
Nearly universally, the enlisted leaders said that a congressional decision this year to fund the Defense Department without having passed a fiscal 2025 budget bill -- using a continuing resolution based on the previous year's budget limits -- has hurt their services' efforts to improve conditions for military personnel and families.
"The loss of the fiscal 2025 budget, that did have a lot of effects," Honea said. "We're not putting shovels in the ground and building barracks. We're not putting shovels in the ground to build new child development centers."
"The Space Force has operated under a continuing resolution for 51% of our existence, limiting our ability to evolve as necessary," Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna said.
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, said committee members would work to get the appropriations process back on track for fiscal 2026.
"Everyone on this dias is an appropriator. We don't like [continuing resolutions]," Carter said. "We know you don't like them. We don't like them. All that work ... we're the only people who get things done and then they throw us out like trash."
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, asked the services to provide their priorities for projects such as child care centers, housing and other infrastructure that were included in the fiscal 2025 budget but were not funded.
"I was incredibly disappointed by the way the fiscal year 2025 process ended and the missed opportunity for this committee to make the necessary investments to build on our progress in recent years addressing quality-of-life projects," Wasserman Schultz said.
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