English 111 72c
Paternity Leave Rights Needed for U.S. Fathers
Introduction
Regarding parental leave from employment when a child is born, that leave is termed “maternity leave” if it is for the mother, and “paternity leave” if it is for the father. The reasons for granting working mothers such leave are fairly clear (both prior to and following the birth), but the reasons for allowing the father such leave are perhaps less obvious. Relevant issues include the reasons for granting paternity leave, how the U.S. compares with other countries in that regard, the impacts of men taking paternity leave, whether it should be paid or unpaid and for how long, and the beneficial or other effects and consequences. This essay discusses those issues – not just for the U.S., which with regard to parental leave in general is out of step with most other nations – but generally, and indicates why paid paternity leave (and maternity leave) should be granted.
How the U.S. Compares with the Rest of the World
The short answer is badly! An article by Hall & Spurlock (March 2013) entitled “Paid Parental Leave: U.S. vs. The World (INFOGRAPHIC)” includes a graphic showing the amounts of parental leave (maternity and paternity) in various countries around the world. Although it is easy to read, the easiest individual entry is that for the U.S., positioned at the top of the graphic, showing a nice round zero. For information purposes, the graphic is reproduced at Appendix A to this essay. The article reported that the U.S. is alone among the industrialized nations not to have legislated to provide paid maternity leave as a national right, and that the only other countries worldwide that do not offer paid maternity leave are “Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.” According to a factsheet entitled “Your Rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993” (revised Aug 2001) available on the Yale website, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 grants eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, subject to various constraints and conditions.
Comparing paternity leave – the subject of this essay – around the world, many countries have such policy provisions, some more generous than others. According to Hanes (Dec 2012) writing in the Christian Science Monitor, and quoting a study by the Harvard and McGill Universities, sixty-six countries around the world (not including the U.S.) “ensure that fathers receive or have a right to paid parental leave.”
The extent of paid paternity leave varies across countries that do provide it – either directly from government coffers or by legislation that compels employers to fund it. Taylor (Feb 2012), in a blog article entitled “Parental Leave in Other Countries” provided a Table (reproduced below) listing and comparing both maternity and paternity leave entitlements in 15 countries (including the U.S.):
(Reproduced from “Parental Leave in Other Countries”)
It is readily apparent from the above Table that paternity leave is available in many other developed countries and is paid either on a flat rate basis, or at some percentage of normal salary level. Certain countries such as Austria, Germany and the Scandinavian nations provide paternity leave that is not only paid at a good level but for a considerable number of weeks.
Ray, Gornick & Schmitt published a paper (revised Jun 2009) with a similar theme, entitled “Parental Leave Policies in 21 Countries.” The authors noted most of the countries surveyed provided some degree of financial support for new parents, with Sweden – the most generous – offering the equivalent of 40 weeks leave on full pay. They concluded that the best solutions comprised what they termed a “gender-egalitarian and flexible parental leave policy” paid for through social insurance contributions; thereby helping more fairly spread the costs of care for young children between not just the parents but with contributions from the employees and their employers, too.
Reasons for Providing Paternity Leave
As a general observation, because women today comprise a greater percentage of the workforce, a typical family has to balance paid employment and familial responsibilities and commitments. That is the subject of a paper by von Doussa (2007) of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, entitled “It’s About Time: Key findings from the women, men, work and family project.” The paper was published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies. There was recognition that many fathers want to be able to spend more time with their young families but also recognize the conflicting priority of earning sufficient to adequately support them. Noting that Australia – like the U.S. – at the time of publication did not have any national system of paid parental leave, the paper recommendations included a national system of paid parental and paternity leave as an important and essential measure for families.
That recommendation for an Australian system of paid parental leave was taken on board by the Australian government, announcing in May 2009 that from the beginning of 2011 a system of paid parental leave would be introduced, as reported by Baird, Freno & Williamson (Dec 2009) in a paper published by the (Australian) National Institute of Labour Studies Inc. They described how whilst there was no national paid leave system in place, there were various provisions implemented in a fragmented fashion for public service employees by the different Australian states; a situation which improved somewhat between 2002 and 2008, as shown the following Table, created from data in Table 1 of the paper.
As can be seen from the Table above, the system for public service employees across Australia was less than consistent, with some improvement from 2002 to 2008, although still very little offered or provided in the way of paternity leave entitlement.
Hanes reported that supporters of the concept of paid parental leave insist that providing it helps retain valued employees, and more than offsets the actual salary costs to the employers and/or the taxpayers, by saving them the costs of recruiting, inducting and training replacements, if employees leave because paternity leave is not provided. Of course the temporary absence of employees during paternity leave could also be a problem for the employer, interrupting continuity of work and temporarily losing expertise in that person’s role within the organization. However, with forward planning and temporary re-assignment of duties, any adverse effects could be minimized for the relatively short periods involved.
And paternity leave really is worthwhile in many ways, especially to the new mother and the infant. O’Sullivan (n.d.) enumerated some of its advantages in “Making the most of your paternity leave.” He cited as major benefits the learning of new skills and getting to know the new baby (and vice versa). He also noted the value of helping the new mother in many ways, including fielding visitors, taking over the housework, looking after the new mother and helping her deal with post-natal depression when it strikes, helping change the baby’s diapers and with bath time, and much more. The arrival of a new baby is a very special time for a family and that time should be shared, which can happen if paternity leave is available. Other ways the father can be involved are with being present when the health visitor comes, sharing the night duty when the baby wakes, and so on. Summarizing, the father can take a great deal of the workload away from the new mother, (who is after all needing to recover from the birth), perhaps at the same time as caring for any older children there may already be. With the help of the father in those early days/weeks, her recovery can be that much easier and quicker.
Lamb (Ed.) (2004) in the fourth edition of the book “The Role of the Father in Child Development” emphasized the positives arising from the father’s involvement in raising the children, and noted that whilst paternity leave is seen to be beneficial in increasing that involvement, flexible working (flexitime) by both mother and father may be even more beneficial in the longer term (p.14).
Rege & Solli (Jul 2010) studied the impact on fathers in Norway taking paternity leave, noting that the result of taking just four weeks in the first year typically causes about a two percent decrease in his future earnings, partly related to the father spending more time with the child and less time at his work. The researchers found that this effect persisted at least until the child reaches the age of five years. Their study also found that a father taking paternity leave is likely to benefit from increased father-child bonding in the long-term, extending even to the child’s later years when that closer relationship continues to help. The authors – in offering further validation of and support for their findings – noted that in March 2010 a European Parliament directive stipulated the minima for parental leave, including four weeks paternity leave.
The Impacts of Paternity Leave
The impacts of introducing a system of paid paternity leave can be summarized as:
- Initial and recurring costs for the state;
- Initial and recurring costs for employers;
- Benefits to the recipients and their families.
A UK Government paper entitled “Additional Paternity Leave and Pay” (July 2007) provided some useful information, much of which could apply in general terms to other countries, too. It pointed out that whilst initial take-up of any such scheme by eligible fathers is predicted to be low; the experience gained by other nations is that over time more fathers are likely to take advantage of it. The paper also assumed that such paternity leave would be taken immediately following the birth of the baby, which is probably a valid assumption.
In terms of costs impacts to the state, there would be initial costs of setting up the scheme. Those would include organizational changes, recruiting staff and associated IT costs. Following the setting up phase, there would then be recurring costs associated with each incidence of a father applying for and receiving paternity leave under the scheme.
Employers would have similar set-up and ongoing costs (albeit on a smaller scale), where the initial costs would include the bureaucratic process of compliance with the state requirements for the paternity leave scheme. Recurring costs would be mainly in the administration of the arrangements for applicable wages and the leave itself. The very small businesses would perhaps see less effect in administrative costs, due to having less automated payroll systems. For many employers, the impact of losing the services of those members of staff could be more significant for their business, requiring either the hiring of temporary staff or organizing work-sharing among the person’s colleagues to temporarily manage without the men on paternity leave.
The benefits to paternity leave recipients and their families are the most important aspect of introducing such a scheme, and the primary reason for its existence. Although those benefits are not as easily quantified as impacts such as costs, they must surely rank higher in importance, particularly when considering the possible longer term benefits – not just to the father and the mother, but to the child also, as a consequence of increased father-child bonding that can be of lifelong benefit to the child in the years to come. The referenced UK government paper summarized the benefits, including:
- Providing the parents with greater flexibility of child care;
- Allowing fathers to spend more time at home with their young children, responding to more and more fathers seeking the opportunity for increased involvement in caring for their child(ren).
Another paper (Cools, Fiva & Kirkebøen, Jul 2011), reported further effects on children’s and parental outcomes from the father taking paternity leave. Their research found that the taking of paternity leave causes fathers to have greater importance in the development of their children’s cognitive abilities, although they also commented that just four weeks paternity leave may be too short a time to have maximum effect. Nonetheless, the research found that by the age of 16 those children whose fathers took paternity leave and were more highly educated than the mother, show increased academic performance, especially in the case of daughters more than sons. Overall, they also found that paternity leave has the effect of causing a shift in the home gender balance.
Another paper justifying paid paternity leave being provided as a norm, indicated that fathers in general are less likely to take leave following the birth of a child because of the economic consequences (Malin, 1998). Malin pointed out that on the whole, women in the workplace earn significantly less than men, even doing the same job. Hence, if paid paternity leave is not an available option, the impact of the father taking time away from work is that much more costly in terms of lost earnings. Malin shared the view expressed by others (e.g. Cools, Fiva & Kirkebøen, Jul 2011) that the children of fathers who had taken paternity leave found themselves higher in the academic rankings in later school life. Malin also found a link between the amount of paternity leave taken following the child’s birth and the father’s degree of involvement in care of the child as he/she grows up. The link was more pronounced if the father took at least 20 percent of the total amount of parental leave taken by both partners.
Conclusions
There is little doubt that paternity leave has significant positive benefits and outcomes for the family and more especially for the child. Not only have studies shown that a father’s involvement with the child – beginning with taking paternity leave in the child’s first weeks of life – can bring long term benefits for that child including improved academic achievement, but it has also been shown that the consequent father-child bonding is enhanced with perhaps lifelong benefits for both. Some research has shown that employers also benefit. Not only are fathers who are given paternity leave less stressed in the workplace, they are less likely to leave to look for a new job, allowing employers to save the considerable cost penalties involved in recruiting and training replacement staff. There are of course costs associated with paternity leave. Both the state and the employer suffer cost impacts, but these are relatively minor and should not be considered to be in the same league of importance as the benefits mentioned.
Regarding the particular case of the USA, it is one of just a handful of countries that does not yet have a nationwide government-sponsored paid parental leave scheme in place. Whilst the FMLA is a beginning, it is just that and no more, granting limited unpaid maternity leave to eligible employees only. It is still a long way from the provisions for paid paternity leave now available as a right in many other nations. It is clear that paid paternity leave should be a right for new fathers everywhere, though for the time being at least the duration of such leave should be realistically limited to (say) between two and four weeks, reflecting the current fragile state of the U.S. and other economies worldwide.
Works Cited:
“Additional Paternity Leave and Pay.” Department for Employment and Learning. (July 2007). Web. 20 March 2013.
Baird, M., Freno, B., & Williamson, S. (Dec 2009). Paid maternity and paternity leave and the emergence of “equality bargaining” in Australia: an analysis of enterprise agreements, 2003-2007. National Institute of Labour Studies Inc. Web. 19 March 2013.
Cools, S., Fiva, J., H., & Kirkebøen, L., J. (Jul 2011). Causal Effects of Paternity Leave on Children and Parents. Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Web. 20 March 2013.
Hall, K., & Spurlock, C. (March 2013). Paid Parental Leave: U.S. vs. The World (INFOGRAPHIC). Huffington Post, Issue 38 March 2013. Web. 18 March 2013.
Hanes, S. (Dec 2012). Parental leave global comparison: US still among least generous. Christian Science Monitor. Web. 19 March 2013.
Lamb, Michael, E. (Ed.). The Role of the Father in Child Development. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2004. Print.
Lewis, J. (May 2012). Paternity leave: We all benefit if new dads stay at home. The Telegraph. Web. 19 March 2013.
Malin, M., H. (Feb 1998). Fathers and Parental Leave Revisited. Chicago-Kent College of Law. Web. 20 March 2013.
O’Sullivan, J. (n.d.). Making the most of your paternity leave. DAD.info. Web. 19 March 2013.
Ray, R., Gornick, J., C., & Schmitt, J. (Revised Jun 2009). Parental Leave Policies in 21 Countries. Center for Economic and Policy Research. Web. 19 March 2013.
Rege, M., & Solli, I., F. (July 2010). The Impact of Paternity Leave on Long-Term Father Involvement. Social Science Research Network. Web. 19 March 2013.
Taylor, T. (Feb 2012). Parental Leave in Other Countries. Conversable Economist. Web. 19 March 2013.
von Doussa, J. (2007). It’s About Time: Key findings from the women, men, work and family project. The Australian Institute of Family Studies. Web. 19 March 2013.
“Your Rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.” Yale University. (Revised Aug 2001). Web. 19 March 2013.
Appendix A
Parental Leave: U.S. versus Rest of the World
(Reproduced from “Paid Parental Leave: U.S. vs. The World (INFOGRAPHIC)” originally published in the Huffington Post, Issue 38, March 2013)
