Proposals to have the federal government help new parents take paid leave from their employment have generally come with serious disadvantages.

If the government makes companies eat the cost, it might also make them less willing to promote or hire women of child-bearing age. If the government instead makes taxpayers as a whole pay for leave, then it penalizes families that have chosen to have one parent stay out of the paid labor force to take care of children. This seems especially unfair since those families have lower average incomes than two-earner families.

A new proposal on paid leave, however, avoids these pitfalls. It would instead let new parents finance time off from their jobs by slightly delaying the time at which they would collect Social Security benefits. Kristin Shapiro, a lawyer in Washington, explained the idea in a recent paper for the Independent Women’s Forum. She estimates that new parents could finance 12 weeks of leave in return for a six-week delay in taking Social Security checks.