I’ve been meaning to post about this news for the past few days: In Great Britain, there’s a push to require that employers offer mandatory paternity leave. New dads will be able to take three months off, with much of their salary guaranteed.
Do I even need to say that I’m in favor of this? More like “What took you so long, and can you please tell everyone over here to get on the same train?”
When my son was born, I was more than a little surprised to find that my employer—a family-run business that, on the whole, is pretty good about employee benefits—offered absolutely zilch. “Paid paternity leave” amounted to “my vacation time,” and since I’ve worked there for a lot of years, I was able to take portions of several weeks to bond with our baby, and to help keep my wife from going nuts. But if I’d been a newish employee, somewhere a little less accommodating? Two weeks and we’ll see you back here, brother, and if the baby gets sick for a couple of days next month, well, we just hope you can find a sitter.
The argument against required paternity leave, of course, always comes down to its potential strain on small-business owners. It’s true that requiring a five-person operation to let one or two employees just vanish for three months would be difficult without some kind of subsidy. Yet somehow, virtually every other country of means manages it. Italy gives every dad three months. (Maybe Berlusconi has plans for one of his girlfriends.) Germany mandates a year, with a salary limit. Most of the rest of Europe caps the leave at a week or two, but quite a few countries allow dads to take some of the (far more generous) maternity leave—that is, if Mom goes back to work after four months, and a seven-month leave is permissible, Dad can take the other three.
Sweden is the country that puts everyone to shame, allowing dads to take 480 days, paid. Four hundred and eighty days. Makes me want to buy a Saab and drive it to Ikea tomorrow, just to support this system. But even countries not known for progressive social policies (Uganda, for example) are better about this than the United States of America. It’s nuts, and—given the intransigence of Washington right now—it’s absolutely not going to change, for a very long time. Not for 480 days, not for 48,000.
Volvo. Saab’s Dutch.
I worked out a deal with my employer where, after using up my vacation and personal time, I would put in my 45 hours over four days, and be home on Fridays to help my wife. And you know, meet my new son.
Claiming it was causing unrest among my coworkers, they reneged after a few weeks and said they’d fire me if I kept it up. I hate this fucking country sometimes.
Saabs are made in Sweden, and you can’t call them Dutch yet–the deal with Spyker isn’t done.
(Besides, if you’re going to be that technical about it, both Volvo and Saab are American–still owned by Ford and GM, for now.)
That said, that’s a really tacky move on your employer’s part. They shouldn’t have reneged on your situation–they should have extended it to everyone else who needed it. Productivity would go up, not down, for heaven’s sake, because you wouldn’t be stressing about making it to the day-care pickup or whatever on time.
I’m probably solo on this, but I don’t see the real point of maternity PLUS paternity leave. Why do both need to be home? And to be paid while doing so? Why should you be paid by your employer for having a child, and staying home with the newborn and mother, when the employer has no vested interest in the child? Isn’t that ‘stay at home and get paid for nothing’ what we call unemployment? Don’t we have enough people in this country getting paid for not doing a damned thing for it?
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for spending time with the children, but when infants spend 10-18hrs/day sleeping, day/night combined, what are you really gaining by staying home?
Again, I’m not trying to ruffle feathers, but I know I will.
And we have a Saab. It’s born from jets, you know 🙂
Rick–that’s a defensible, if somewhat hardass, position. I’d counter it in three ways.
If you want to be free-market-ish about it, one’s employer may have a vested interest in keeping employees contented, creating the perception that they’re valued, and offering a sweeter deal than his or her competitor.
Then there’s the practical issue: My wife herself needed a lot of care after our son was born, partly because she had a Caesarian delivery, and couldn’t (for example) sit up without help for several weeks. Her mom was at our house most days, and that made it far easier for me to go back to work. If we didn’t have a grandparent nearby, it would have been hugely rough on her. As it was, she was beyond exhausted from the constant awakenings. If I’d had a couple of months of leave, we would’ve shared some of the burden.
I’d also argue that a job should stretch to accommodate a big life event. Salaried employees get sick days; even though you don’t turn up at the office, you get paid, because being sick is just part of life. Same for snow days: In theory, you COULD be coming in, if you put yourself at risk or selflessly moved to a home that’s closer to the office, but you’re not expected to, because bad weather just happens. So too raising children–although it’s a choice, it’s a choice that the vast majority of people make, and time to raise that kid is a reasonable thing to want.
Never owned a Saab, but I do love the Swedish iron. My first car was a Volvo 164E. I still miss it. And my childhood neighbors had a series of the old weird Saabs, including the lumpy-looking ones from the early sixties, and they’re just great.
Complications and/or surgical deliveries, I tend to look at in a much more empathetic way.
Rereading my post, I see how it was taken as hardassed. I tend to be that way, IRL, probably more than I should. a month or two, even three, for the given scenerio you have presented, I can fully understand. Sweden’s 480 day deal is just insane, in my mind.
Take into account that my upbringings were not “cityslicker” mentality. Having grown up on on a farm, and in that environment, where work is 24/7/365, and having been raised that way, I tend to still carry that thought process. However, now in my forties, I’ve started to stray away from that, more and more. I’m trying to teach myself patience and slowing down in life, to myself as well as my children, and it’s a daunting task. I think teaching the kids has been easier 🙂
And I’ve had a lumpy Saab, too. 1976 Saab 96L. V-4 engine, 4 speed column shift, and about as big as a hot-tub. Having also owned a Volvo 242t, 262 Crown Bertone, and a couple others, my Scandia love is deep.
How about this angle: Societies that don’t make it economically possible for working families to have children suffer population decline (cf. Singapore, Japan) and therefore either contract or have to import immigrant labor—a solution that doesn’t usually please the hard-asses who say, “Why do you both need p/maternity leave?”
Or you can always ban abortion. 🙂
So glad the dads are taking up what is usually pushed to the side as a mom-only issue. Really, what are women supposed to do after major surgery (or even totally routine childbirth where your practitioner tells you not to lift anything for two weeks) that includes someone demanding to suckle on you every two hours, if dad can’t help out? I truly don’t know how each individual family makes it through–and somehow we do.
(Maternity) leave alone, unfortunately, doesn’t solve the two-parent-work problem–kid sick days still happen, schools do not cover working hours, and maternity leave encourages employers to think of child-bearing women as perennial part-timers. Paternity leave–but spread out over the course of the child’s life–would in fact go a long way to redressing the problem–or, as France and other countries have done, instituting quality, low-cost day care (in the US, it’s called paying the nanny off-the-books).
As for the farming mentality, in my rosy backview, farms had families come with them: Grandmas and grandpas and cousins and all that, who used to fulfill exactly these functions.
There are a zillion studies (don’t you love it when someone says that and doesn’t link to anything?) that show that the more accommodating a work place is in terms of things like maternity/paternity leave, flex-time, telecommuting — for all employees, not just parents — the more loyal the employees are. Recruiting, hiring and training are a huge expense. It makes sense to have a stable staff, from a bottom-line perspective.
Really, how much do U.S. companies suck? [<– Rhetorical – they suck a whole bunch in this area.] I happen to work for a large not-for-profit health care provider whose senior management is 60% female and whose primary clinical workforce is at least 90% female. I got zero paid (maternity) leave. I had to draw down against all of my various leave banks to be able to take 3.5 months off.
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I have never owned a Saab or a Volvo, but I do live in Sweden, and I can vouch for this – it is paradise if you are a parent of small children.
I am currently on eight months of paid paternity leave with my younger child. Took six months with the older one, plus long summers and winter breaks. I get to work part-time by law and am paid if I have to stay at home with my sick kid.
And my employer does just fine, thank you. All it takes is a little flexibility. And it is not like I will be having kids for 30 years …
We spent my older child’s first year in the US, so I can appreciate the contrast. Yeah, my taxes are high. Yeah, there is no option for a stay at home parent, as you need two incomes.
But I will take the warm embrace of the welfare state any day. And am happy to pay taxes so everyone else gets taken care of too.
It almost makes the dark worth it.
I am blogging about this adventure in Daddyland, as I call my leave, by the way — nathanhegedus.wordpress.com