About
Becoming a parent is a series of operational decisions, most of them with strong feelings attached. Cribs and car seats. Pediatrician interviews. Daycare waitlists. The one that quietly costs the most is parental leave coordination, and we know because we did the math at our own kitchen table. A typical household leaves $5,000 to $10,000 of paid benefits on the table. Even with an MBA, a CPA, and a Nurse Practitioner between us, planning our own leave took weeks of work. So we built this. We handle the one headache. You keep the money, the weeks with baby, and the brain space for everything else.
Founder & CEO
Christine is a Nurse Practitioner with more than a decade of frontline clinical experience in surgical and trauma critical care. She's a military spouse, and her first child, a daughter, arrived in summer 2026.
At Parental Leave Pro, Christine owns the clinical content, the customer-facing voice, and the relationships we build with OB-GYN practices, doulas, and lactation consultants.
Co-Founder, COO & CFO
Steven is a Navy veteran, a CPA, and an MBA, with prior experience building and operating early-stage companies.
At Parental Leave Pro, Steven owns finance, operations, the product architecture, and our non-dilutive funding strategy.
27%
of U.S. workers had access to paid family leave through their employer in March 2024.
16 + DC
states + DC with mandatory or voluntary paid family leave programs in 2026. Up from 5 in 2020.
Most eligible parents never claim the leave they qualify for. Research from Moms First and McKinsey found that only two in five eligible parents used any state paid parental leave across New York, New Jersey, and California, leaving $6,000 to $10,000 per parent unclaimed. Nearly 60% of them did not know the benefit existed, because the rules across federal FMLA, state Paid Family Leave, short-term disability, employer policy, and PTO don't coordinate the way most people assume.
We are not exceptions to this problem. When we started planning our own leave, even with an MBA and a CPA at the kitchen table, it took weeks to get a clear picture. Most parents have neither the credentials nor the time.
So we built Parental Leave Pro. It runs the eligibility math for every state paid family leave program in the country, and we write a guide for all 50 states and DC, including the 34 with no program at all, because "your state has nothing" is an answer people need too. It generates a personalized plan. It writes the email you send to HR. And for couples, it coordinates leaves across two employers, two policies, and one shared timeline.
The longer version, including the spreadsheet that started it, is written up here.
Paid leave of at least two to three months is where the mental health benefit becomes consistent, across a review of 45 studies. Most single benefits do not get you there alone.
The average U.S. childbirth costs $20,509, with $2,854 in out-of-pocket costs for the insured.
Roughly 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2024.
Postpartum depression symptoms ran 11.7% in states with the most generous paid family and medical leave, against 13.3% in states with the least.
California's paid family leave program more than doubled how long the typical new mother stayed home, from around three weeks to six or seven.
We keep the full evidence base, including the findings that came back null, on why parental leave matters.
We are not raising venture capital. Bootstrap discipline keeps us focused on the customers who pay us, lets us be patient with pricing and product decisions, and preserves the founder alignment that makes us trustworthy. Non-dilutive funding only.
Every other product near this category sells to employers or insurance carriers. Parental Leave Pro sells directly to parents because the parent's interests are what we want to optimize for. No HR intermediary, no carrier in the middle.
We don't obscure pricing, don't bury fees in fine print, and don't use dark patterns. We aim for plain-English explanations of complicated rules.
We're proud to be a veteran-owned and military-spouse-led small business. We participate in veteran and military spouse entrepreneurship programs and value the perspective our community brings.
Parental Leave Pro is listed on VeteranOwnedBusiness.com, a directory of businesses owned by veterans and their families. If you're looking to support veteran-owned companies, it's a good place to start.
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