2 weeks of birthleave for fathers

The two weeks would be a good start, but the UK experience when they introduced this showed there can be problems with work cultures. Fathers who have the right to paternity leave don’t necessarily take it, either because they’re pressurised by their employers not to or because they themselves think it shows lack of career commitment to do so. For example, there have been several recent cases of prominent male politicians becoming fathers again and I think many of them, while they support paternity leave, take very little themselves. But then the UK has a culture in which working excessive hours is expected and a lot of people already don’t take the holiday they’re entitled to, for fear they’ll lose out at work. The Netherlands may be different in that respect.

I have to say, Magistra, that my anecdotal experience is that pretty much all fathers take their allocated leave. And I used to work in one of the most excessive-hours professions going. Do you know of any figures suggesting that fathers don’t?

Bearing in mind here that the UK provision isn’t two weeks’ full pay, it is two weeks on Statutory Paternity Pay (c.£112 per week), which might well be a serious barrier for many people.

What are Dutch norms on regular, paid, vacation? Here in Germany, many unionized or salaried positions come with four to six weeks of annual vacation. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for fathers to plan to use some of that time after the birth of a child. This doesn’t affect the equity arguments Ingrid is making; on the other hand, expecting everything to come from the state may not be the best way to start parenting.

Thank you for this post, Ingrid. My wife and I have tried for a long time to defend the argument that paternity leave is an important step towards equality between men and women, as it both advances the cause of women and men. I have always been enraged to hear doubts about hiring a young woman because she will probably take maternity leave at some point, implying both that this is a fair reason for not hiring a young woman and that a young man has no right to such leave.

Secondly, many mothers can use all emotional and practical support after childbirth they can get

Traditionally this is the job of the grandmother. In many of my friends’ cases, their mother was determined to come down after the birth and help. In some friends’ cases, this appeared likely to happen whether the parents-to-be wanted it or not (I suspect the parents changed their mind after the birth).

My grandmothers would come and stay with us when my younger brothers were born. (And presumably when I was born but I don’t remember that).

Of course this is not doable when a woman’s mother is not alive, or is otherwise incapable or refuses to help. But then parental leave won’t help mum if her partner is not alive, or is otherwise incapable or refuses to help.

Fathers can easily withdraw from the hard work of caring for the infant by arguing that if only they were entitled to paid leave, they would be happy to do so, but they do not have such a luxury.

I think a father who wants to withdraw from the hard work of caring for an infant will not be deterred by two weeks holiday. Equally for the mother who wants to be child-possessive.
I once spent a merry time with my husband removing all his excuses for failing to put the washing on. Eventually, he ran out of excuses and I got him to negotiate a deal by which I did the washing and he did some other chore. I think you underestimate the ingenuity of human beings.

It is to be expected that paid paternity leave would contribute to fathers being more involved with care, not just for those few weeks after birth, but for the entire childhood. It is in the interest of children to have two caring and competent parents.

My father did not have paid paternity leave. But he was deeply involved in our care, for our entire childhoods. He was competent in every area except cooking, and even there he did manage to feed us when Mum was away. Though it was a happy day for our tastebuds when he discovered that the supermarket would sell cooked foods, turning dinner preparation into a matter of moving food from containers onto plates. Paternity leave is not a necessary condition for a parent to be caring and competent. How much would parental leave contribute to increased parental competence is the relevant question, which you do not answer.

There is probably a case to be made for much longer paternity leave, and/or for much more generous paid parental leave.
Do you have any case as to when paternity/maternity leave is too much? Is there any point in which you would stop and say that justice does not require any more parental leave?

My understanding of the system in Norway (I’m working from memory so probably have the details at least somewhat wrong) is that fathers have the option of taking a fairly short (perhaps two weeks) _unpaid_ leave or else a longer (maybe 5 or 6 week) _paid_ leave. Some leave can also (like in Sweden, I guess) be transfered from the mother to the father if desired. This was designed to encourage fathers who otherwise claimed they could not afford to take time off to do so. It seems like quite a nice idea to me.

This kind of thread is always makes me appreciate life where the central government doesn’t try to engineer changes in gender relations.

But that aside, I have to say that I doubt two weeks of father’s birth leave would make any difference. Fathers at home with their wives and new babies for the first couple of weeks would almost certainly find themselves running interference (cleaning, shopping, cooking, looking after older children) so that the new mothers could focus even more intensely and exclusively on care of the new infant. I’d argue that, in general, only when fathers care for their young children regularly and for significant amounts of time when the mothers are not present do things really change.

Men being the primary caregivers of young children happens here, in the U.S., more out of necessity than anything else, but it is not all that unusual, really, for that. It seems to occur when the wife earns more (which isn’t typical but is increasingly common), and when there is either a strong family commitment to avoiding daycare (likely to be found among social conservatives, actually) and/or the income of the lower earning parent (after taxes and other costs of working) doesn’t much exceed the cost of day-care.

The arrangement has been common and normal enough for quite some time. A couple can choose it intentionally and not worry that they’ll be socially ostracized as oddballs who are threats to the social order. My wife and I did so, in fact, way back in the ‘dark days’ of the late Reagan and Bush I administrations.

But if free, state-supplied daycare or long periods of mandated paid maternity leave had been available here, I doubt this trend would ever have gotten started.

Oh, and although it goes against my libertarianish grain to offer suggestions for centralized gender-role engineering, if you really wanted to do it effectively, here’s what I’d suggest:

1. Do not offer full-time maternity leave past the first couple of weeks, offer half-time leave only.

2. Make #1 conditional on the father taking half time parental leave also.

‘This kind of thread is always makes me appreciate life where the central government doesn’t try to engineer changes in gender relations.’

It’s presumably fine for governments to take action designed to make sure that gender relations stay more or less as they are?

“It’s presumably fine for governments to take action designed to make sure that gender relations stay more or less as they are?”

Can you give examples of this? I am not debating her, I don’t have much of an opinion about this, I am just curious what government actions you see as explicitly or even implicitly aimed at keeping gender relations as they are.

I am just curious what government actions you see as explicitly or even implicitly aimed at keeping gender relations as they are.

Please tell me that was meant to be a joke.

Huckabee: I don’t think the issue’s about being against gay marriage. It’s about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that’s important. You have to have a basic family structure. There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived. So there is a sense in which, you know, it’s one thing to say if people want to live a different way, that’s their business. But when you want to redefine what family means or what marriage means, then that’s an issue that should require some serious and significant debate in the public square.

Yes indeed, how lucky Slocum and I are to live in a country where government doesn’t take it upon itself to engineer gender relations.

Tracy W, what you write might be true, but I have the opposite perspective. I want to care for my infants and I fully expect none of their grand-parents to be able to help in any way. Will I be able to do so or will I be bound by professional obligations?

So since you can’t rely on your grandparents, you want to place the burden on your employer? (I presume that your professional obligations are of some value to your employer, if you are in fact a politician I apologise since Belgium and NZ experiences imply that a country can get along quite happily for many months without a formal Government, let alone two weeks).

Worse, will I be bound because the society I live in believes that it is the sole job of my wife to care for infants and thus offers only paid leave to mothers?

Just because a government only offers paid leave to mothers doesn’t mean that you will be bound by beliefs that it’s the sole job of wives to care for infants. When I was born there was no paternity leave in NZ, and as far as I know no maternity leave. However, my parents were part of a society that believed that both parents should share in caring for infants and children (they both went to university in the 60s and 70s, and so did most of their friends so they were fully exposed to the second wave of feminism), and my father was deeply involved in our care. He was completely hopeless at breastfeeding, and as I’ve said, a terrible cook, but that didn’t stop him from washing nappies, bathing babies, reading bed-time stories, cleaning house, heating up cans of baked beans, etc.

Incidentally, just because a society believes something doesn’t mean you are bound by it either. There have been a lot of cases in history where people have gone ahead and changed their society’s beliefs. My own grandmother was the very first woman to be elected to her school board. If you want to be involved in your infants’ lives, I will be absolutely furious with you if you let society stop you.

You ask a personal opinion about a matter of public policies and this is always a bit awkward to answer even if granted this power, I would not decide any public choice on the basis of my sole preferences

What’s personal about it? I have absolutely no desire nor power to make you dictator of the Netherlands, nor do I want the Dutch to be making choices based on your, or Ingrid’s, personal preferences. Instead I want the Dutch to make public choices democratically based on informed and publicly-debated propositions, evidence, etc.

Ingrid’s advocating a public policy. I was asking Ingrid if she has a basis as to what is enough. As far as I can tell, Ingrid’s arguments in favour of paid paternity leave would apply as much as if she took up advocating 1 year, or 18 years, of paid paternity leave per child. I’ve certainly heard parents complain enough about the hard work of raising teenagers, and 18 years of paid paternity leave would give far more opportunities for fathers to get involved in raising their kids than two weeks. The only thing she mentions as a limiting factor is the cost. I’m curious as to what level of obligation Ingrid thinks the general population of the Netherlands have to fund parental bonding.

Only two weeks? That doesn’t sound like a very generous amount even by American standards, let alone European.

She’s talking about two paid weeks for fathers. US law only allows for unpaid family leave.

Plac[ing] the burden on the employer?? Poor employers, so burdened by the fact that their nasty employees aren’t machines, but in fact, human beings.

Anyway, seen from the US, a discussion such as this is sadly almost surreal. Paid leave? Not so much. I like the Swedish system, as described above, though.

Do you have any case as to when paternity/maternity leave is too much? Is there any point in which you would stop and say that justice does not require any more parental leave?

I think two slightly different questions are being conflated here… One is to what extent society (through government mandates or payments) wants to subsidize the care of very young children. One can look at this not only from the point of view of benefits to parents, but benefits to the children (and the people the children will live with the rest of their lives). Many societies decided a century ago that it was in the public interest to subsidize the education of children — not because of the benefits it gave their parents, but because of the overall social benefit. And I think there are similar arguments to be made about supporting the care of very young children, at least for societies that still see having children as a benefit to society (which don’t think is really a consensus view in the U.S., where a significant minority would argue children were a “lifestyle choice”).

The second question — once you have a handle on the first — is how to provide that subsidy. Childcare centers? Reimbursement for childcare expenses? Paid leave for one parent? Paid leave for both parents? Those issues get into the question of whether society wants to try to nudge gender roles/relationships into a particular direction. But I think that’s separate from the question of overall support for the care of very young children.

29 is very good. We will have enough paid family leave when (a) we have sufficient investment in the care of young children and (b) the burden of that care is shared equitably between both parents, the employer, other interested parties and society at large.

While — like other Americans here — I think the Swedish system sounds like heaven, i suspect that even there the resources going to the care of young children is less than optimal (by whatever standard) and that the burden of that care falls excessively on parents and especially mothers.

“Will there be professional tradeoffs? Probably yes and yes. But if you live a first-world country, it’s just not likely those tradeoffs will be debilitating.”

This is just silly. I know very few people who could afford to take several unpaid weeks off of work, and even fewer whose jobs would be waiting for them afterward if they did so. You are viewing the situation through a particular socio-economic lens that’s turning the majority of Americans invisible.

Oh, I realize this is about two weeks of paid leave, and I realize that it’s better than what the US government requires — it’s just not as much better than the US as I would have expected. There are already some US companies (like my employer) with better paid parental leave policies than that..

Maybe what this means is just that my prejudices about the well developed European welfare state are wrong, and that some parts of Europe aren’t as far ahead of the US as I had thought.

However, if I lived in a society with paid maternal leave and no paid paternal leave, I, as a father, have to pay an extra cost if I want to take care of my newborn children

z, I’ve been doing some maths. Assuming that you already get two days off a week (weekend), and two weeks paid holiday a year, and in the year you have a newborn child you devote all your weeks and your paid leave to caring for said child, you will have 114 days a year (52*2+10) to spend taking care. If you, on top of your existing days off, get two more weeks of paid leave this will take you to 124 days, or an increase of 9% in time available. Will an increase of 9% really make a difference between you caring for your newborn child or not? (NB, I have ignored public holidays, time spent after work, etc).

my wife, as a mother, has to pay an extra cost because she will likely be discriminated against on the basis that she is more likely than a man to take parental leave

Well yes, as pregnancy can be quite hard on the female body. One of my female friends was so sick when she was pregnant she had
to stop doing her PhD – she was sick for about six months. If employers are going to discriminate against women of child-bearing age then they are going to do so unless one calls for parental leave of about 8 months pre-preganancy and, what, a year post-pregnancy? (Note, I am a woman of child-bearing age, employed in the private sector).

There’s been some very interesting work done recently on the so-called ‘motherhood penalty’, with lots of evidence apparently showing that mothers will attract fewer job offers, lower starting salaries, and worse promotion prospects even compared with identically qualified female non-mothers. On the other hand, fathers are said to attract a ‘fatherhood premium’, where their status as parents increases job offers, salary offers, etc. The reason this is interesting is that it suggests that much of the inequality we observe in the labour market is NOT straightforward gender-inequality (if anything, non-parenting women can often earn more than non-parenting men), but rather that (at least much of it) is specifically an inequality felt between mothers and non-mothers.

Ingrid’s proposal is to be welcomed, but it would not be likely, in my estimation, to detract from the ‘fatherhood premium’. And we would need far more concerted effort (I have no doubt you’re onto this too, Ingrid!) to tackle the so-called motherhood penalty.

@tracy w. I think you should take into account that part of the advantage of better health at a given age is cancelled out by the higher age of grandparents at birth. A few generations ago, a grandmother was typically 40 or 45 when her first grandchild was born, while nowadays 55 to 60 seems more common. But perhaps this increase of the age women get children is less strong in the US.

On the other issues I think you are going a bit fast. The traditional grandmother-helps-out system was very much based on the idea that she lived nearby, even in the same town, and didn’t have much to do anyway, since her own children were grown up and child raising should be women’s only important task. Even if this picture wasn’t correct for many actual granmothers, it is the picture from which the social norm that grandmothers should help was derived.

z – you are right, I was thinking about the wrong things. I have heard calls for less government spending on military issues or on social welfare problems. What I should have said is that, while I hear calls for governments to completely stop doing something, I can’t ever recall hearing a call that, while what a government has done itself is good, it’s done enough and there’s no need to spend anymore. My apologies for not covering this off in my earlier comment.

There is the odd abstract economic theory where the marginal benefit is set equal to the marginal cost, including the administrative costs and dead-weight losses of taxation. But no one calling for such a project seems to actually do the statistical work to locate when marginal benefit equals marginal cost.

because it shifts the perception of the society

I am confused. If it is the perception of society that taking care of kids is the job of the father, why would a democractically-elected government in that society support parental leave anyway?

let me ask you this question: assuming a society has decided that the amount of paid parental leave is not zero, which is best, that couples can choose freely how they split parental leave between them or that the mother always gets a fixed amount and the father another fixed amount (presumably much smaller)?

I don’t know. All my friends and relatives who have had kids have wound up in far more complications than the question of a few weeks of parental leave seems relevant to. Working part-time, Mum at home, Dad at home, the birth was so bad that Mum can’t go back to work regardless of what she planned, baby was born at the same time the calves were being born so Dad kept working, Dad earns so much money that it just made sense for him to keep working, Mum timed the pregancny so the babies arrived two weeks after university exams finished, Mum quit one job, had baby, then started a new job, Mum went straight back to work (okay, this wasn’t a friend or relative, but Ruth Richardson, who was an MP at the time and a snap election was on).

I really don’t live in a society where people just stick to the mandates of government.

But perhaps this increase of the age women get children is less strong in the US.

Not being an American, I don’t know everything about what happens in the US and I can’t be stuffed hunting for stats on the web. I quoted the NYtimes article because I read it months ago and it interested me, not because I am an American. The age a woman has her first child has gotten older in NZ. However, when it comes to grandmothers helping out, what strikes me as relevant is the total spread of years of childbearing. A mother who has just had her fifth child strikes me as much in need of a helping hand around the house as the mother of a new-born baby. I don’t think the upper age of childbearing has risen significantly, laying aside the odd case of a woman past menopause being able to have a baby due to modern medicine advances.

The traditional grandmother-helps-out system was very much based on the idea that she lived nearby

Indeed. However the world has changed. When I was a child, one of my grandmothers lived about 400km away, and the other lived further. They still travelled to give my parents a helping hand. They either flew or drove (I don’t remember which). Travelling has gotten cheaper and faster over time. Social standards should evolve to stay with it.

child raising should be women’s only important task.
I think that in modern times we can agree that child-raising is an important task that it is worth spending time on by people of both genders. Look at it this way, if child-raising is so unimportant that it isn’t worth while a grandparent spending time to give a helping hand, why should the government spend money for that purpose?
Traditionally a grandmother would have personal experience in breastfeeding which a granddad wouldn’t, which for most of human evolution was the only way of feeding small babies (leaving aside the rich who could pay for wetnurses). Since the invention of formulae, and the medical fad for it for a significant chunk of the 20th century, grandmothers may more often lack this experience, so the arguments for it being the grandmother rather than the granddad who comes to give a hand are rather less compelling now.

In my family it was the case that the grandmothers came to help because one grandad was dead and the other a farmer who couldn’t leave the farm at short notice.

leederick-

The contradiction isn’t in my argument, but in reality. Alienated, deskilled labor does make it easier to enact policies like mandatory family leave. And in the short term — and in the context of specific debates like the one described in the original post — paid leave is a good way of recognizing & accomodating worker’s humanity.

In the long run, as you say, we’d like more workers to be engaged as human beings in the workplace and not as interchangeable parts. In which case, family leave would make less sense as a way to deal with work-family conflicts and family-friendly workplaces (nurseries, flexible hours, greater acceptance of breastfeeding and infants generally in the workplace) would become more important.

Nothing weird about all that — lots of bad things have certain benefits and lots of policies only make sense in a particular context. You just gotta think dialectically.

This is just silly. I know very few people who could afford to take several unpaid weeks off of work, and even fewer whose jobs would be waiting for them afterward if they did so.

O RLY. Have you never worked in a corporate environment where staff take long service leave? are seconded to new temporary positions? Attend conferences or study leave?

Why is childrearing so full of “cooties” it’s death to your career, while these others aren’t?

Take it from me, and I’m seeing this happen in my corporate environment: once the males in the organisation take this sort of leave, watch how quickly it becomes respectable / shakes off the cooties.

You are viewing the situation through a particular socio-economic lens that’s turning the majority of Americans invisible.

Once the dads start doing it, as I say, watch attitudes change…