A maternity or parental leave policy is one of the most legally dense paragraphs a small employer will ever put in a handbook, because it answers to at least five federal statutes and a widening set of state paid-leave programs at once. This article organizes the problem into five things every employer should settle before drafting: the layered statutory floor built from the FMLA, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the 2023 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the PUMP Act, and the ADA; the business case for offering more than that floor, and the tax and insurance tools that defray the cost; how to engineer coverage for a predictable absence without stumbling into interference or misclassification; why the return to work, not the leave itself, is where the value is won or lost; and the counterintuitive rule that a generous "mothers-only" policy can itself be unlawful sex discrimination. It reflects the law as of mid-2025, including the now-permanent Internal Revenue Code Section 45S paid-leave credit and the 2025 appellate and district-court decisions reshaping the PWFA. Every term of art is explained in plain language, doctrinal splits and edge cases are flagged, and invented worked examples show how the statutes actually interlock. This is general legal information, not legal advice.