This has many problems though anyway as it just offloads most of the financial burden but doesn't offload the organizational one. It also doesn't make any sense to make the employer responsible for maternity leave as it doesn't make sense to make them responsible for healthcare (which Europe gets right). If you're someone who wants to pay above market rates then you're a target as maternity leave depends on your salary. The problem is difficult because we need a system in which having children at young age isn't a career suicide. Maternity leave as implemented in Europe is definitely not it as the incentives are to first get to a decent salary and only then have children.
One idea which I think makes sense is to allow children to have % of their taxes to go to their parents directly. Allow children to opt out to punish especially shitty parents. This I think aligns the incentives pretty well (to have children while young, to take good care of them, to educate them etc.)
However the government handing out welfare checks is not very popular. Even taking welfare brings up images of government cheese. Often middle class people won’t avail themselves of these programs even if they qualify.
So from a policy perspective we solve this by making the employer administer the welfare program and call it an “employment benefit”. Now it goes from a source of shame to a marker of status. Benefits are something enjoyed by middle-class professionals.
This all works out fine for large companies, where the law of large numbers makes these costs statistically predictable and easy to hedge. But it’s a huge unmanageable risk for small business. If you’re in a four person startup and one person goes on paid maternity leave for a year, your company is pretty much dead.