The Dad Shift

Ok, major rant warning for the below, which I consider to be very much an issue relevant to career development and thus appropriate for LinkedIn. Those of you who know me will not be surprised that I’m getting on this soap box. Parental leave is something I feel strongly about, and now there is finally some momentum to address the UK government’s outdated approach to it, thanks to The Dad Shift. I urge you to read and sign.

“Guy from Sweden thinks parental leave is important”. I know, stop the presses. However, I don’t think people from outside the UK fully realize how insufficient the government-guaranteed leave in this country is for parents, and for fathers in particular. Conversely, I’m not sure people who have only lived in the UK grasp just how far behind this country’s policies are, and that, importantly, it does not have to be this way.

I know it is annoying, but one thing that people who traverse cultures can contribute is perspectives from different systems. As a foreigner in the UK, there are many things that impress me with this country, and others that make me feel like I have moved to a developing country. The rules for parental leave belong firmly in the latter category.

There are at least three fundamental assumptions about parental leave that I regularly run into, and disagree with, as a Swede leaving in the UK.

First, Brits (like Americans) think of parental leave as a matter primarily to be resolved between employers and employees. I find this mindset frustrating. Surely, any serious welfare state ought to recognize that the government should have a role in ensuring that, and footing the bill for, children?being cared for by their parents. Thus far, that has not been the case in the UK, especially as far as fathers are concerned, where the approach seems to be one of governmental abdication; save for two weeks’ guaranteed leave with compensation set way below minimum wage, the government leaves it to employers to sort out paternity leave on an ad hoc, contractual basis directly with employees. This is unacceptable. Some of us are lucky to have employers who recognize that parental leave is essential, but most people are not that lucky (nor does everyone have an employer, for various reasons). Leaving it to employers to assume responsibility for something as important as a child’s right to spend formative time with its parents fails to recognize the issue for what it is: a basic right, which should be universally available on equal terms to all children and their parents.

Second, the British system is built on the assumption that there is a primary parent (in a straight couple: read “the mother”) and a secondary parent (in a straight couple: read “the father”), with most rights being assigned to the former, and in some circumstances transferable to the latter under the complex and burdensome "shared parental leave" scheme. While there is of course some validity to this biological distinction as a general proposition, especially in the early months of a baby’s life, it is old-fashioned and more than a little insulting to lock in society’s support to families exclusively on this basis. In my home country, the government does not make this distinction, but rather grants each child a certain amount of days, which that child’s parents can then divvy up between themselves. I simply do not understand why this could not be the case also in the UK: scrap the old-fashioned expectations on mothers to take 95% of the leave, and instead recognize that because the leave is intended for the child’s benefit, each family should be able to freely decide how to divide the time, free from government-imposed diktats that it is better if the mother carries the heavy load. Part of this involves a shift away from thinking in terms of (more generous) “maternity leave” and (less generous) “paternity leave”. Why don’t we simply recognize that mothers and fathers are both parents, and that many children do not have one mother and one father, and therefore think of it simply as “parental leave”?

Third, and relatedly, this is not about “men’s rights”, nor is it an attempt to detract attention from legitimate fights for women’s rights. As The Dad Shift correctly identifies, there is overwhelming evidence that inadequate paternity leave is bad for everyone: mothers, fathers, children, employers, and society. The good news is that a more significant uptake in paternity leave is a silver bullet for equality in the work place. In many ways, allowing dads to take more time off is more beneficial to mothers than allowing mothers to take more time off: research shows that parents sharing leave is the most effective way to chip away at the gender pay gap, and to create workplaces that are more equal in general.

The above only addresses workplace perspectives. Needless to say, there are many more benefits to modernizing the parental leave system: doing so would allow fathers to be more involved in their children’s lives, would contribute to shifting societal expectations on parents, would recognize the need for work-life balance (for mothers and fathers alike) which is so famously cherished by the generations of workers now having children, would reduce the rates of postpartum depression for mothers, would recognize that not all families look like the 1950s nuclear family which the current system assumes, and so on, and so on.

As far as I am concerned, it is a no-brainer to support The Dad Shift. Please join me in expressing support, in whatever way you are comfortable with.

The UK's paternity leave is the worst in Europe - just two weeks at ￡185 per week. That's less than half minimum wage.

The Dad Shift is a new grassroots campaign bringing together men, dads and co-parents to call for better paternity leave. If you agree we need paternity leave that's fit for the 21st century, add your name to their open letter:

https://action.dadshift.org.uk/a/open-letter?utm_source