If you’re a dad, a non-birthing parent, adopting, fostering, or welcoming a baby via surrogacy, California law does give you the right to take job-protected leave—and in many cases, partial wage replacement while you’re bonding with your new child. Still, most non-birthing parents don’t realize they qualify. Or they think taking leave will hurt their career. Or they get a confusing response from HR and give up.

If you’re self-employed, freelance, a 1099 contractor, or running your own one-person show, you already know:
You are the boss, the HR department, and the finance team—on top of being a brand, an operator, and probably the office janitor, too.

So it’s understandable if you’ve assumed that parental leave just isn’t an option for people like you.

But here’s the surprising truth:
If you’re a freelancer or self-employed in California, you can still qualify for paid parental leave.

So you just found out you're pregnant—or maybe you're deep in your second trimester and starting to think about maternity leave. Cue the Google spiral: “How long is maternity leave in California?” “Do I get paid?” “What the heck is SDI?” And suddenly you're drowning in legal acronyms and state websites that look like they haven’t been updated since 2004