Hearings were held in California, Illinois, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., to receive testimony concerning the Parental and Medical Leave Act of 1987, a bill intended to promote the economic security of many families by providing job-protected leave for parents upon the birth, adoption, or serious illness of a child, and temporary medical leave when a child's serious illness prevents a parent from working. Testimony concerned: (1) support, difficulties, and barriers encountered by employed mothers and fathers of adopted or seriously ill newborn and older children in arranging leave time from work to care for their children; (2) briefly, the effect of the ability to comply with a medical treatment program and schedule on long-term survival rates of seriously ill children; (3) California State and community personnel policies and legislative initiatives similar to the proposed Act; (4) Oregon's parental leave legislation; (5) the General Accounting Office's estimate of the costs of the Act; (6) the Department of Justice's objections to the Act and legal scholars' counterarguments; and, very extensively, (7) viewpoints and arguments of representatives of businesses and organizations, such as the National School Boards Association and the Institute for Women's Policy Research, opposing or supporting the Act, in particular regarding the issue of federally mandating the Act's provisions. (RH)