Why Don't More Fathers Take Paternity Leave?

Many men say that taking parental leave is perceived by their boss as a lack of professional commitment.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The benefits of paternity leave are clear, so why aren't
dads taking it? By Josie Cox. Josie Cox is a
freelance journalist, an author, and associate instructor at Columbia University,
and the author of Women, Money Power, The Rise and
Fall of Economic Equality Read by Stephanie Spencer. About a
year ago, Chris, a thirty nine year old New York

(00:21):
City based financial services professional, returned to his job after
taking eight weeks of paid paternity leave, the total time
he was entitled to under his employer's policy. Chris, who
asked me not to use his full name, said that
taking the time to bond with his baby daughter was
the most important decision he'd ever made and one he'd
never regret. But he also said it came with a cost.

(00:44):
When Chris got back to work, he learned that his
manager had asked a colleague to take over some of
his clients. That made him feel sidelined. Two months after
his return, he found out he was passed over for
a promotion that he'd thought he had a solid chance
of getting. A few weeks later, another blow his bonus,
which had risen each of his seven years at the firm,
stayed flat. The bonuses of his colleagues, none of whom

(01:06):
had taken parental leave, were bumped higher. According to Chris,
there's no way I can prove it, but it certainly
feels like I was punished for taking paternity leave. Chris says,
to my mind, this is a classic case of hypocrisy.
My firm wants to be seen as progressive and committed
to gender equality, but the reality is very different. Paternity

(01:26):
leave has long been hailed as a progressive policy for
leveling the parental playing field, one that can ship away
at the gender pay gap and equalize labor force participation
between men and women. Indeed, research shows that paid parental
leave can have profoundly positive social and economic benefits, reducing
the chances of divorce, enhancing the relationships between children and fathers,

(01:48):
and even bolstering a company's bottom line by fostering staff retention,
boosting morale, and promoting women's labor force participation. But this
potential assumes that men actually feel willing and able to
temporarily give up a job to care for a child
in the way that women have done ever since they
first started working outside the home. In reality, what we're
seeing across many countries, including both the US and the UK,

(02:12):
is that they still frequently don't. When I asked more
than a dozen fathers and fathers to be in Europe
and the US about this perception, a majority said that
taking the leave the're entitled to was or in cases
in which they didn't take it would have been complicated.
Most who did take leave said they felt quietly judged
by their employer for it. Some felt their decision was

(02:33):
perceived as a lack of professional commitment. Many also felt
their managers still considered parenting to be the primary responsibility
of mothers. One man who works in the media industry
and whose wife is expecting their first child in June
told me he was both very excited and very anxious
about the prospect of taking paternity leave. A father working

(02:53):
in private equity who recently took the full six weeks
he was entitled to after the birth of his twins
said that many of his colleagues and managers repeatedly remarked
on his being the first dad to have taken all
of his allocated leave. They didn't mean it as a compliment,
he said, of course, none of this is new. For years,
the cultural stigma of taking paternity leave has been debated, bemoaned,

(03:14):
and analyzed, but it could be about to get worse.
Research shows that younger generations millennials and those considered to
be part of Gen Z, hold more conservative views on
gender than their older peers. A global backlash against gender equality,
alongside the unwinding of many diversity, equity and inclusion policies
in the US, seem to have paved the way for

(03:36):
a growing number of politicians and social media influencers to
publicly extol the virtues of gender roles that align with stereotypes.
When it comes to the expansion of paternity leave policies,
there is some good news. France, where mothers are guaranteed
sixteen weeks of paid leave, recently doubled its paternity leave
allowance to four weeks. In twenty nineteen, Canada updated its

(03:58):
benefits so that parents whose split leave can take forty
weeks total, up from thirty five. In Iceland, each parent
gets six months of leave, with six weeks transferable between them. Sweden,
which in nineteen seventy four became the first country to
replace maternity leave with parental leave, now offers four hundred
and eighty days, with each parent entitled to half. Even

(04:19):
in the US, where there are no federal requirements for
parental leave, individual states have started to step up. In
New York, for example, parents of any gender can take
up to twelve weeks of leave at sixty seven percent
of their average weekly wage, up to a cap of
sixty seven percent of the state's average weekly wage in
twenty twenty four that was one thousand, seven hundred and

(04:41):
eighteen dollars. Evidence of paternity leaves benefits has also never
been more persuasive, in addition to creating stronger bonds between
babies and fathers, encouraging a more equitable division of household labor,
and combating the pernicious motherhood penalty, one twenty nineteen study
in Sweden found that mother's whose partners were given flexible

(05:01):
paid leave a year after their child's birth were less
likely to need antibiotics and anti anxiety medication. A twenty
sixteen study of more than one thousand, five hundred US
employers found that more than eighty percent of those offering
paid family leave reported a positive impact on employee morale,
and more than seventy percent reported an increase in employee productivity.

(05:25):
Another study published in twenty nineteen found that US companies
in tech and manufacturing saw improved revenue and profits over
the years in which they expanded or began offering paid
leave benefits. Despite all of this, the cultural stigma associated
with paternity leaves still seems to be offsetting the arguments
for taking it. A February report from Mackinsey and Co.

(05:46):
And Mom's First, a gender equality nonprofit, noted that dads
in New York are foregoing as much as one point
six billion in state guaranteed parental benefits by not taking leave.
In twenty twenty one, an academic paper found that US
US fathers who do take parental leave typically take just
a week or less. According to that paper, just fourteen

(06:06):
percent of fathers who take leave and less than five
percent of all fathers take more than two weeks. To
better understand this paternity leave paradox, I turned not only
to fathers and fathers to be, but also to academics, consultants,
and managers. Jessica Calarco, a professor of sociology at the
University of Wisconsin Madison and author of Holding It Together.

(06:28):
How Women Became America's Safety Net, told me that The
lingering reluctance to take leave stems from the pressure that
men face to follow ideal worker norms to show that
they prioritize their paid work over their personal lives and
that they are willing to devote long hours to their
employers and be constantly available on call. This pressure, she added,
is often especially pronounced in the kinds of high paying

(06:50):
professional jobs that disproportionately offer paid family leave to their
employees and that are disproportionately held by men. In other words,
the men most likely to have access to the best
paternity leave policies are also those least likely to take
advantage of them compared to women. Calarco said men may
also still feel more economic pressure to continue working for

(07:11):
pay because of long standing gender pay gaps and motherhood penalties.
Men typically out earn their women partners, which increases their
incentive to prioritize their jobs, she said. Last year, women
in the US earned an average of eighty five percent
of what men earned, according to a Pew Research Center
analysis of median hourly earnings. By some estimates, mothers earned

(07:32):
just sixty three percent of a father's salary on average.
So what's to be done? While many experts hail the
progressive legislation common in some European countries as the most
promising way to sweetened paternity leaves appeal. Others note that
change doesn't have to stem from sweeping, national, regional, or
even firm wide policies or mandates. It can start much

(07:53):
smaller with a single conscientious manager with one thoughtful conversation.
In twenty twenty two, Paul Sullivan, a father of three,
started the Company of Dads, a platform dedicated to creating
a community for what he calls lead dads, fathers who
take on the bulk of child care duties in a household.
When I ask Sullivan what needs to happen to dismantle

(08:15):
the stigma surrounding paternity leave, he first emphasized the importance
of messaging. It sounds simple, but when a male employee
says he's going to take parental leave, resist at all
costs the urge to crack a joke about him having
nothing to do. It's not funny, he said. Also, whatever
you do, don't share your experience of working through important

(08:36):
moments in your child's life. That's not heroic. It's not
a badge of honor. Instead, Sullivan said managers must recognize
that encouraging parental leaf for all parents is an integral
part of ensuring employee retention. There's a clear economic case
for men feeling comfortable taking parental leave, he said, it's
really that simple. Then there's the power of leading by example.

(08:58):
Many of the men I interviewed said they would have
felt more comfortable taking paternity leave if doing so had
been modeled more explicitly by their boss or senior management.
Research on the importance of these kinds of role models
is hard to come by, but other studies in presenteeism
employees compulsion to show up at work even when dealing
with physical or mental health issues, substantiate this notion. A

(09:21):
twenty twenty one study out of South Korea, for example,
found that the behavior of a direct supervisor can influence
a worker's susceptibility to presenteeism, particularly if that worker is
a man. Modeling certain behavior is a way of normalizing it,
and that can be extremely powerful, Sullivan said. Colarco agrees
when men at the top of the org chart show

(09:41):
their own jobs aren't too important to put family first,
it gives other men in the organization permission to do
the same. She said. While the case for creating more
equal workplaces has always been compelling, current dynamics are arguably
making it more urgent. The US and many other countries
are contending with low birth rate, its exacerbated by a
lack of affordable, reliable childcare. Last year, then US Surgeon

(10:05):
General Vivake Murthy issued an advisory on the well Being
of parents, warning and an accompanying op ed that parents
stress and mental health challenges constitute a serious public health
concern for our country. In multiple countries, including the US
and the UK, closing the gender pay gap has also
stalled in recent years. Many women are being forced out

(10:26):
of the paid labor market because of the pressures that
come with parenthood, with return to office mandates exacerbating the
challenges of the working parent juggling act. Amid all this,
the glorification of traditional gender roles by everyone from celebrities
to US President Donald Trump and Vice President j D
Vance threatens to further entrenched damaging norms. Consider, for example,

(10:48):
Meta Platform's ink chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, who in
January said that culturally neutered companies should stop trying to
distance themselves from masculine energyational Football League kicker Harrison Bucker,
who urged graduates during a commencement speech to fight against
the cultural emasculation of men. Normalizing paternity leave is by

(11:10):
no means a panacea for all of this, but it
can certainly make a difference. Chris, the new father, who
felt that his company had retaliated against him for taking
eight weeks of leave, says he's now thinking about finding
a new job. He hopes that others who are in
his position do the same, so that employers who don't
walk the walk begin to realize the cost of not
changing their approach to parents. Companies have to realize that

(11:33):
there's a real bottom line case for being supportive and
encouraging to all parents, regardless of gender, he says. Of course,
this is not just about money, and it's certainly not
just about shareholders, he admits, but if that's the argument
that's going to resonate and change things, then I'm absolutely
willing to make it