From my own experience, I believe that fathers being able to spend more time with their partner and child following birth can only be positive thing.
I was lucky enough to have the first five weeks of my daughter's life at home. We all know that when a new baby arrives, it's all hands on deck and the parenting unit whirs into action. I remember filling every waking moment with the multitude of new (and already existing) tasks we needed to get done, from feeding, sterilising, and dealing with the after effects of leaky nappies, to the usual cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping – anything I could do to take pressure off my wife.
Although my eventual return to the workplace was still challenging, it did feel like we'd had enough time to get into the groove of our new roles, and for my wife to recover somewhat from the strain of giving birth. But I also found it to be an irreplaceable time of bonding with our daughter – and this has continued since we swapped home and work roles, and I became an at-home parent.
I feel sorry for fathers who don't experience more than two weeks at home with their new family – and I believe many men feel short-changed by how minimal an amount of time it is. There's plenty written about how difficult mothers find it when their partners return to work, but little about the emotional stress it puts on fathers, who have to leave their new family unit all too soon for life back at work. I know I would have found it difficult given the unexpected depth of emotion that came with becoming a parent.
An increase in statutory pay would allow parents to feel more comfortable about an inevitable drop in income over the first month – an important factor when there's an additional mouth to feed. It would also help to reinforce paternity leave as an expectation rather than an exception, and the idea of a father as an at-home parent as the norm.
The current parental leave gender imbalance doesn't just potentially create distance between father and child in the early months – it also disproportionately affects the career prospects of all women. A bias against employing women in their thirties because of a fear that they will take maternity leave would be greatly reduced – or even disappear entirely – if there was an expectation that men would share this leave with their partners.
When mothers return to the workplace, it's still widely assumed that only they require flexible working conditions – not fathers. This serves to reinforce the outdated perception that parenting is ‘women's work’. Not only does it give women the anxiety of being perceived as a ‘hassle’ by their employer if they want to work flexibly, but it also discourages fathers from asking for the same allowances.
Sheryl Sandberg talks about the need for women to at work, suggesting that they should be bolder about negotiating pay and promotion. But I think men need to lean in too – for their rights as working parents. They need to demand equal parental leave, pay, and flexibility with the same confidence and tenacity that they put to use when negotiating salaries and career advancement.
I'm sure many employers still see parenthood as a drain on their resources, or a disruption to their productivity – but this means they are excluding talented, qualified, ambitious people from the workplace simply because they're women. And on the flip-side, why are we discouraging at-home parenting as a viable option for fathers, who may thrive in this role?
I believe anything that encourages fathers to be more involved parents will yield a great many benefits: to themselves, to mothers, to employers, and, of course, to their children. But whilst the IPPR's recommendations sound wonderful, they would be a small step. What we need is a progressive attitude from employers - we need to understand that, in the modern world, being a parent is both mum’s and dad’s role.
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Guest post: 'Doubling paternity leave won't work - unless we change society's perception of stay-at-home dads'
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MumsnetGuestPosts · 17/06/2014 15:59
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