Ultimately, 12 states and the District of Columbia had implemented measures requiring at least some private sector employers to offer maternity leave packages to its employees. Even in the absence of this formal legislation, employees in other states often obtained maternity leave through collective bargaining. Employees frequently held enough bargaining power to influence employer policies and negotiate for the inclusion of maternity leave protection. Despite some localized employees' access to maternity leave, there was growing pressure for national maternity leave legislation in the early 1990s. Many new mothers continued to be excluded from such maternity leave provisions despite growing national demand. Women now enjoyed greater employment opportunities and changing gender norms that encouraged increased labor involvement. This increased female employment extended to mothers as well who now were now more likely to engage in the workforce even if they had a young child. The labor participation rate of mothers with children under the age of 1 rose from 31% in 1976 to 54% in 1992. The contribution of women's earnings to her family income rose from 26.6% in 1970 to 36% in 2008. In spite of a high labor force participation rate, only an estimated 40% of working women had access to explicit maternity leave protection. This inadequate national coverage provoked intense protest and growing national consensus on the value of maternity leave. Ultimately, the increased salience and galvanized national support prompted the 1993 enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act mandating maternity leave. Although the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 required employers to guarantee job-protected, unpaid leave up to 12 weeks after the birth or adoption of a new child, an estimated 41 percent of employees in the United States were not covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act in 2012. Nearly ⅔ of mothers had to work during their pregnancies between 2002-2008. By 2016, only 14% of US workers had access to paid family leave as an employee benefit. About two-thirds of employees (68 percent) had access to paid sick leave, and 38 percent had access to short-term disability benefits. Prior to FMLA, the term “family” referred to a nuclear family where with two parents of opposite sex and the “mother” could bear a child. This was the only definition acknowledged by medical and economic research done before the LGBTQ rights movement. Only recently, studies have caught up to a modern and more inclusive definition family. In the U.S. parents and family are federally protected under The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) to go on maternity or family leave after the adoption or birth of a child. Under this law, legal parents are protected for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave (per year).