Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the cognition and expectation of parental leave of elementary school teachers in Taichung City. In this study, 428 teachers who had children under 3 years old from 62 elementary schools in Taichung City were surveyed. The data were gathered from questionnaires which were analyzed with frequency distribution, Chi-square, and t-test. The results showed that a small percentage of teachers took parental leave, and most of the teachers who took parental leave were female. Besides, most of them had at least 4 children or their family incomes were either above NT$120,000 or below NT$60,000. The major reason for taking parental leave was economic factor. Most of the teachers agreed that paid parental leave was highly desirable. However, most teachers thought that the current system could neither effectively support the incomes of the people on parental leave, nor could it encourage parents to have more babies. Suggestions have also been made with the hope to improve the existing system.