Why paid leave for fathers, matters for women
Paid parental leave for men is critical for women’s well-being and for creating equality in the workplace, not to mention the competitive advantages it creates for businesses.
Maternity leave in the US has been a hot topic as of late. The US is the only developed country with no federal paid maternity leave. And while the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) exists, it only offers 12 weeks of unpaid leave and only applies to private employers with 50 or more employees. [8] Currently, only 10 states offer paid family and medical leave. So for most Americans, this means access to paid time off to recover from childbirth and the adjustment to becoming a parent must come from their employers. However, less than half of US employers offer paid maternity leave. Depending on the studies I found, the estimation ranges from 23% [1] — 40% [2] of American workers having access to paid family leave. This visual timeline, from New America, compares paid family leave, and maternal and infant health milestones. It is an excellent illustration of the conflicts between society’s norm for parental leave and the reality of postpartum and the needs of an infant. [7]
Offering paid leave to new parents means they don’t have to stress about money while they are already going through one of the most stressful transitions in their lives. Being less stressed during their time away from work also means higher productivity when they return to work.
I was one of the lucky moms who works for a company that values families and allowed me to take 18 paid weeks off. (Go IBM!) As a first-time mom, 18 weeks to me felt minimal, but much of the country has less than that so I’m extremely grateful for what I had. I’m also a huge advocate that all women should have a minimum of six months off before returning to work. Pregnancy, labor, postpartum, and beginning motherhood is a big journey, with many changes happening to our minds and bodies over a short time. The physical and mental toll it takes on us is demanding. While I could talk about this forever, I’m writing to talk about why paid leave for men is important for women. Let me be clear about one thing: women need longer leave than currently afforded, but we also need longer leave for men.
*I don’t agree with the term primary and secondary caregivers. Both parents should be equal partners in raising children. So throughout this article, I have chosen to not use this term related to parental leave. Also, I will talk about paid leave for men based on my journey but I assume many of the benefits I discuss exist for same-sex parenting units as well.
My husband and I both work for companies that offer us 18 weeks of paid parental leave to use within the first year of a child’s life. We both feel incredibly grateful to work for companies that understand how critical paid time off is for parents.
While I have many mom friends who have had an equivalent amount of leave, I don’t know any other men whose companies have offered them 18 weeks of paid time off. My male colleagues at IBM have 12 weeks of paid time off, but most fathers I know outside of IBM, have only been offered two weeks of paid leave, except for a few getting six weeks. We are incredibly grateful that VMware offered my husband 18 weeks of paid time off. It has given me the unique perspective to understand why paid leave for men is important for women.
IBM’s Parental Benefits
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave (this includes mothers, fathers, partners, adoptive and foster parents)
• Additional 6–8 weeks of short-term disability for birth mothers
• Adoption and surrogacy assistance
• Breast milk delivery service for moms on domestic business travel
VMware’s Parental Benefits
• 18 weeks of parental leave — Paid 100% Salary or On-Target Earnings
• Maven Membership for employees and spouses which includes on-demand virtual appointments with health practitioners and care advocates, resources for fertility journey, breastmilk shipping, and lactation support.
• Adoption and surrogacy assistance
In our situation, we took the first four weeks of my son’s life off together and then continued to switch off until all but two weeks of our parental leave remained. Our son was seven and a half months old before we had to place him in childcare.
Why paid leave for men matters for women
1. Helps ease the transition for mothers back to the workplace
2. Improves gender equality in the workplace
3. Sustains breastfeeding
4. Partner support increases women’s well-being
5. Delays sickness
Helps ease the transition for mothers back to the workplace
Before having our son, we planned to use most of our parental leave together, and then put him into daycare around the four-month mark. As first-time parents, we thought that socialization for a four-month-old was essential. Once he was born, we realized we were not comfortable putting him into a stranger’s care at such a young age. At four months old, they are still tiny babies. Our son was not yet sitting up on his own, laughing, eating solid foods, or sleeping through the night. Yes, it was important to expose him to people and new environments, but “socialization” through daycare did not feel necessary. Because of these new feelings, we split up our leave to delay the need to find childcare for him until he was between seven and eight months old.
After the first 12 weeks of my son’s life, I went back to work and my husband became the full-time caregiver. I was emotional going back to work, and it would have been 100x more difficult if I had to put my son in childcare at that point. Knowing that my son was with my husband eliminated the worry and anxiety I would have felt leaving my infant with a stranger. I remember on the first day back to work I cried in a one-on-one with my manager when she asked how I was feeling about coming back to work. I wanted to be working again, but at that point, it was hard to accept that I wouldn’t be with my son all day long. I was extremely grateful that I could ease back into work, while still being able to see my son downstairs during breaks throughout the day and know that I still had several weeks of leave upcoming. Having my husband home with my son full-time made the transition back to work possible for me. Without this, I would have seriously considered being a stay-at-home mom. Now that I’m past that emotional time, I can more clearly see why continuing my career is important to me.
In addition, when I returned to work for the first stint, my son was still not sleeping through the night. Because I was breastfeeding, I still had to wake up and feed him in the middle of the night, which can lead to sleep deprivation. Fortunately, my husband’s leave reduced the burden on me as my husband could do the diaper changes, and put him back to sleep after feeding, allowing me to go back to sleep with less disruption. While I was still tired after returning to work, I was not completely exhausted, and this allowed me to focus on my job and stay productive. For families that have less than six months of combined parental leave between mom and dad, this forces them to return to work running on only a few hours of sleep. Without sleep, it is difficult to concentrate and often results in a decline in productivity and quality of work. [11] Not only is sleep important to workplace productivity, but it’s also critical for the safety of the parents and their babies. I know another mother who recently had a car accident on the way to work because she did not get sufficient sleep the night before.
Improves gender equality in the workplace
Pregnancy, labor, postpartum, and motherhood are challenging times, both physically and mentally, for women. During pregnancy, I wanted to be showing up as my best self to work but struggled with one or more symptoms (nausea, headaches, lack of energy, and back pain) throughout my pregnancy. I often tell my friends that my nine months of pregnancy were a bigger challenge or setback than being out of the office for four months on maternity leave. Factor in monthly (and then increasing to weekly) doctor appointments and pregnancy impacts your workplace efficiency before the baby ever arrives.
Pregnancy combined with recovering from delivery combined with postpartum takes a chunk of time away from your career. It has been almost a two-year journey for me. When fathers share the responsibility of parenting after children are born and take time out of their careers too, it equals the playing field. According to the Mercer Global Parental Leave Report, “83% of men will routinely take paid leave — but only 13% of men will routinely take unpaid leave.”[6] When men are offered paid leave, it encourages them to take time off from work and share in the parenting responsibilities with the mother. This ultimately helps to improve gender equality in the workplace by having both parents out of the office for the equivalent time.
Sustains breastfeeding
One of the biggest factors in a mother being able to breastfeed successfully is partner support. According to a study from the Office of the Surgeon General, mothers who experienced difficulties breastfeeding remained five times more likely to be breastfeeding at six months, when their partners were educated prenatally about overcoming breastfeeding challenges.[3]
No one ever told me that breastfeeding a newborn was a two-person job, but for us, it was. We needed four hands to get my son to latch, stay awake, and get milk. He would feed anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes on average and would do this nine times per day. Had my husband not been available to help me those first four weeks, I would have been a sleep-deprived zombie, that likely would have given up breastfeeding. Furthermore, I would have been at a greater risk of developing postpartum depression, as sleep deprivation is one of the major factors for this.
After returning to work the first time when my son was 12 weeks old, the physical proximity to my son allowed me to continue nursing him rather than pumping and bottle feeding (I’m lucky to have a remote role. This luxury would not have been possible if I had to go physically to an office outside of my house.) When breastfeeding mothers go back to work, they usually have to pump. At his age, I would have been pumping at least three times during the workday. I found pumping depressing, time-consuming, and challenging. Each time I would pump it would take around 35 minutes to set up, express milk, and clean up, whereas nursing my son at this age took between 10 and 20 minutes. That was time I got to spend with him, too. I likely would have ended my breastfeeding journey before the recommended one-year mark, had it not been for my husband being home with our son and the support I received from my husband in the early weeks.
Partner support increases women’s well-being
When men support their wives through the transition of becoming parents, it increases women’s overall well-being. When they work for companies that offer time off, flexible schedules, and remote work options; they can focus on their family and share the physical, mental, and emotional load that mothers have historically carried for the family. A study conducted in France examined the effect of partner support on postpartum depression and found that “women who have the perception of greater social support have less postpartum psychological distress.”[4] And according to a study from Ohio State University, when men take paternity leave it “reduces the burden on mothers”, and is associated with “greater marital stability.” [5]
My husband impresses me daily with how supportive and involved he is. Our house is truly an equal partnership when it comes to parenting. I remember the single time it didn’t feel this way and how unsupported I felt. It was 100% related to him returning to work. We both used four weeks of leave immediately after Cameron was born, and we decided my husband should return to work and save the rest of his leave to use later. The dynamic overnight shifted to me covering 100% of night wakings, feedings, and housework. When I approached my husband to talk about this dynamic shift, the response was since he was back at work; he needed to get sleep. He now was back to his full-time job, while I remained on leave, meaning my job was caring for our son. We continued to talk and find the right balance where I felt supported, but at that moment I realized how most moms feel with husbands that have much less leave than mine. I’ve talked to multiple friends who have had this same conversation with their husbands.
Pregnancy has a tremendous impact on the mother’s body, and it takes months to recover. Since my son was born (10 months ago) I’ve had to see 10 different doctors. For the past 10 months, I have had between two and six doctor appointments a month. And that was just my doctor’s appointments. This did not include the visits my baby was required to receive. In the first year of our son’s life, he will have had eight “well-visits” to the pediatrician. My husband’s parental leave and flexible work schedule helped to reduce this burden on me as well.
Delays sickness
Because my husband and I switched off who was watching our son during the day, we could delay putting him into childcare for seven and a half months. This meant we could delay daycare illnesses in addition to the amazing bonding time we had with him. This relieved a lot of worry for us and kept us fully available for our jobs when we were working. I have many friends with kids in daycare and it seems like someone in their household is always sick. One kid brings it home, then the next child gets it, then the parents get it, and this pattern just repeats over and over. My pediatrician told me that the average child gets six to ten colds a year and that number increases when they are in daycare. That is a lot of time that parents have to take off work to care for themselves and/or their children. Being able to delay daycare-induced sickness for our family after returning from my maternity leave has helped me stay focused and productive when returning to work.
Extending parental leave for both women and men is needed
In summary, longer parental leave for men is beneficial for women. Parental leave for men is critical for women’s well-being and for creating equality in the workplace. It is not only a benefit to the entire family unit, but also to businesses. Not every employee is at a place in their lives where family leave time is important to them, but for my husband and I, it is the single most important benefit a company can provide and is a major reason we have not considered leaving either IBM or VMware.
I’m grateful to IBM and VMware which offered this benefit to our family. The positive impact that this benefit had on our family unit cannot be understated. I had my eyes opened as I watched other families who were not as fortunate with their company’s leave policies struggle through what should be some of the happiest times of their lives. I hope that one day, our society will better recognize the needs of families and place higher importance on parental leave.
Sources:
[2] Mercer, US Survey on Absence and Disability Management, 2018
[5] Richard J. Petts, Daniel L. Carlson, Chris Knoester, “Paternity leave and Marital Stability”, 2019
[6] Mercer, Global Parental Leave Report, 2018
[7] New America, “A Timeline of Paid Family Leave”
[8] Rebecca Lake, “How long is the average maternity leave?” March 2020
[9] Mercer, “Want to improve gender equality at work? Help men take parental leave.” October 2018
[10] New York Times, “Paternity Leave has long-lasting benefits. So why don’t more American Men Take it?”
[11] Fort Healthcare Business Heath, “Sleep deprivation and work performance”
