Men are trying to get more time with their children. So why aren’t they taking parental leave?
Tom Matlack’s post, Why Being a Good Man is Not a Feminist Issue, has garnered hundreds of comments covering all sides of the debate. But in one small corner of the comments, a very specific conversation about parental leave in the workplace was started. When it comes to equality, it’s a no-brainer that pay for equal men and women should be equal for equal work. But what about men who work longer hours? What about men who want more time with their children? If men are offered parental leave but don’t take it, does the task of taking time off for kids fall onto the mothers? And should they get paid for working less?
These are the questions we like to dive deep into on The Good Men Project. Below is one small slice of the conversation. We would love more people to continue the conversation in the comments. Thank you.
Kacey: “It’s often the case that women can’t work longer hours because they have to take care of their children — 84% of custodial parents are women. I have had personal experience with pay disparity as well.”
Mark Neil: ”Why are feminist groups opposed to fathers rights groups and equal parenting? You can not blame patriarchy for the actions of feminist groups such as NOW and the women’s bar association. Men are actually trying to get more time with their children, I hardly think it’s fair to pretend that women are being burdened by an activity they refuse to give up. And if that is impacting their incomes, then it can not be deemed a result of discrimination, unless you are willing to acknowledge it is a result of discrimination against men.”
Lisa Hickey: ”Mark, this is a REALLY important point, and one that we need to explore in much greater detail on this site. We advocate a great deal for men spending more time with their kids, having a work/life balance, not being viewed as the “provider”, being seen as someone for whom parenting is just as inherently natural it is for women. I haven’t seen a man here who doesn’t wish they could spend more time with their children.
If I were the lobbying kind of feminist, I’d be spending all my time lobbying for equal parenting and father’s rights *precisely* because that’s the only way we are going to make up any last bit of disparity in pay between men and women, or solve the problem of women not being in top jobs. It seems so obvious to me, I just don’t get why other people don’t see that.”
Karen L. O’Connor: ”I am a lawyer, and I practice labor and employment law. My practice consists of litigating lawsuits against employers (management side) that involve harassment, discrimination, etc. I also advise clients on leave law issues, and teach HR professionals about leave laws. In my 15 years of practicing in this area, I can safely report (based on my personal experience, which granted is limited to the Pacific Northwest and a very small set of the population), that, frankly, men don’t often take leave to care for their children. It drives me CRAZY. Women take it, all the time – certainly for births, but also for other family related issues. Men, oh, they’ll take a week, or a month at most. They so incredibly rarely take the leave – and the fact of the matter is that it will never truly be accepted or “normal” in the workplace unless and until they do. We will never solve the pay disparity until it is just as likely that a woman will take time off to care for her family as a man would…which seems so far away.
And, let’s add something to that: women will expect/demand/lobby for flexibility from their employers (or policy changes) to deal with their family needs – but they do NOT ask or expect that level of assistance from their husbands. Why is that? Why do women seem to think that it’s okay to ask their employers for a “favor,” or to suggest that the workplace needs to be more flexible (and, full disclosure, I do believe the workplace needs to be more flexible in so many ways!) but they won’t ask (nor, sadly, do their husbands offer) their husbands/ partners to leave work early to drive the lacrosse carpool or get the kid to piano lessons? Unless and until women do so, men won’t “need” to press the issue at work, so they don’t, and we continue to see what I believe are FAMILY issues – work/life balance issues that affect FAMILIES not women or men – characterized as women’s issues, and thus too easily marginalized.
I am troubled that the statistics are so depressing – the number of men who use family leave (which I believe is a reflection of how many men do advocate and work for work/life balance, and involved/engaged father/parenthood) is pathetically low. They simply don’t do it – even when they are at a socio-economic level such that economics can’t explain it. I have sat at so many dinner tables and listened to my friends announce that, well, “Bob can’t really take time away from the office.” Really? Why is that? Why are men’s jobs more important than women’s? Why is it that I can step away for 3 months and come back and it’s no big deal, but men seem to think their worlds will crumble if they surrender the iPhone for 12 weeks?
The men who visit/read GMP are, unfortunately, such a small part of the population – how do we convince more men to advocate for work/life balance, and actually use what is available to them? How do we convince women that, in fact, they are well within bounds to expect that their husbands will pick up the kids or come to a school conference or otherwise be engaged as active dads – like the men who read GMP?
I participated in a radio program this week for our local NPR affiliate, and was saddened to hear the youngest panelist announce that no, she didn’t think things really were changing….I so desperately do NOT want to agree with her, but my oh-so-involved husband (who is one of the few men who did take family leave, works from home, coaches the soccer team, drives to piano lessons – you get the picture) seems to be a precious rarity.”
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Please add your own voice to this conversation below.
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photo by basheertome / flickr
About the Editors
I am currently in the Army and I can say that we are given 10 days of “free” leave when our legally married spouse gives birth to our child. (“Free leave” being leave which is not subtracted from the 30 days we earn each year (2.5 days a month)). Neither our pay nor benefits are impacted on this leave.
Many new and new-again fathers I have known take this leave to be with their growing families while their peers fill in the vacancy until he returns. Even as my unit is deployed, those who had children plan to take this leave.
This is a great example, thank you.
“Why is it that I can step away for 3 months and come back and it’s no big deal, but men seem to think their worlds will crumble if they surrender the iPhone for 12 weeks?”
I’m curious how many companies actually pay out 100% salary and benefits during paternity leave, do you know? It is my understanding that in Canada, you can take parental leave at 55% of your salary (might even be up to a maximum per week). Some companies pay the difference for maternity leave, some also pay the difference for paternity leave, but it’s not mandatory. Furthermore, it is my understanding that any parental leave taken off by the father comes off of the mothers maximum total covered.
So given these factors, I must ask, how is it practical to have two people off, both earning less than maximum salary, for 12 weeks, only to have the result of both having to go back to work earlier and have to pay for child care, which is often very expensive, especially for that age?
It is my understanding that women require, IE doctors orders, 6-8 weeks to recover before going back to work, meaning you generally need to take the time off anyways. men will often take a week or two to help get everyone settled in, but finances being what they are, can’t afford to take too much time off, both for the current family income, and for the long term childcare. Now, if the mother is the higher earner, and wants to return to work, this is where I believe the stay at home dads come from. But that is only a recent dynamic, and still largely relies, to my understanding, on the mothers choice.
Under Title VII (federal anti-discrimination law), a company cannot pay a mother during her parental leave unless the company offers the same benefit to their male employees. Either the Company needs to offer paid leave to BOTH sexes, or it risks violating the law. Usually, if women are paid during a parental leave, it is through a short-term disability policy (which is not usually a full payment, either, but partial payment, and capped out at a relatively low level). In addition, most companies will let you use accrued sick and vacation time during your leave, so both men and women have access to equal benefits there.
More interesting, though, is that if we accept that it’s about money, you would expect that as you move up the socio-economic ladder, men would be more likely to take the leave because they can afford to do so – and that is simply not the case. In California, for example, employees are eligible for paid leave off to care for family members (through a payroll tax). While there has been an uptick in the number of women taking leave since the passage of the law, the number of men who do so has not budged at all. At core, it’s not about money. There is something much more elemental (and difficult to change) going on.
“Under Title VII (federal anti-discrimination law),”
Same laws would suggest it’s illegal to discriminate against men with woman only hotel floors, woman only domestic abuse services, VAWA clauses stating programs and shelters for women only is ok but programs and shelters for men must also serve women. Our own governments don’t always follow the anti-discrimination laws. I’ll ignore the insistence on the gender wage gap being a result of discrimination despite these laws.
“which is not usually a full payment, either, but partial payment, and capped out at a relatively low level”
Exactly. Why cut two paychecks in half (or whatever percentage) when one will suffice.
“More interesting, though, is that if we accept that it’s about money, you would expect that as you move up the socio-economic ladder, men would be more likely to take the leave because they can afford to do so”
Not necessarily. Depending on how high up the ladder you go, other factors can start creeping into the equation. Increased standard of living often comes with increased socio-economic status, and the loss of the mothers income is even greater, resulting on more pressure on the man to provide that standard of living. As you go further up that ladder, the man’s importance in his profession increases, his professional responsibilities become far more significant, and the ability to temporarily replace him far more difficult. Replacing a department manager for a few months is a lot easier than replacing a VP or CEO for a few “months”. As I said previously, where it is the mother who’s the primary source of income, this is where I suspect stay at home fathers prop up. But I suspect, even in those homes, where the father clearly is involved in the child care, I suspect both parents don’t take time off at the same time. Ultimately though, I think projecting an idea of men’s motive or what they think, based on the elites choices and actions, is hardly reasonable. Do keep in mind the comment I was referring to… the one that claimed what men think, and that it was that the world would crumble if they failed to work.
One of the people quoted, Karen O’Connor, states that her husband “works from home.” I have met and read about many women with stay-at-home husbands, and almost to a woman they refer to their husbands as “working from home,” “small business owners,” or “pursuing [making furniture/writing an album/finishing that novel].” On the other hand, I have heard (and read) about men whose wives I know do many things other than just act as a primary caretaker for the kids, yet those men (and their wives) describe what the wife is doing as “stay at home mom.” The 5-10 hours a week (if that) the husband puts in working on that album a week do not match up with the 60-100 hours he is putting in as a SAHD.
I am not stating that Karen O’Connor is lying. What I am saying is that there is a tendency for women whose husbands stay at home with the kids to describe what he is doing as ANYTHING other than SAHD, even if it is completely unrealistic.
Reese, to be clear, my husband works for a fortune 500 company, full-time – he just does so mostly from home due to the nature of his work. Because he is fully employed (yes, 40+ hours/week), but does so mostly from home, I don’t refer to him as a SAHD, because he also has a full-time job which must get done, and because neither childcare nor our household maintenance is his primary responsibility – we share those. And no, he’s not a writer, or working on an album, or a small business owner – he’s a manager at a large company. If he were NOT employed, but staying home with the kids as his full time job, then he’d be a SAHD. Or that’s my definition at least – I’m sure others feel differently. None of this really goes to the point that men don’t seem to take family leave offered by employers, even if it’s available to them….
Three things – you ignore relationship dynamics here. Men don’t want to risk any hit to their income because we know that women judge us by our income relative to their own. As such, we cannot risk losing any income after we’ve started a family (this greatly increases the odds a woman will file for divorce), nor can we actually risk true pay equality (because if the average woman makes as much as the average man, the average women will refuse to date/mate with the average man). Women have made their bed on that one; they want to cling to sexism when it benefits them, and discard it when it doesn’t.
Second – Take a look at real (adjusted for price and inflation) income over the last thirty years (particularly the last ten). Now look at average family wealth in 2004, and look at where it stands in 2012 (almost half what it was). Note that debt remains largely unchanged. I point these facts out because clearly, they don’t exist in the world (or more likely, economic class) of the author. I know this because he actually suggests that we ‘eliminate’ pay inequality, not by driving women’s wages up, but by bringing men’s down (by getting them to take leave, and forcing them to suffer the negative consequences of that leave to their career. So obviously, he has no clue whatsoever that the average American family cannot withstand any hit to their income at all.
No compassionate person ever proposes immiseration as a way to achieve inequality. That’s the move of a rich man trying to play two poorer ones off against each-other.
Men don’t do things if they don’t have to. Sacrifice isn’t big in the male spectrum from my experience. Sure they do things, if they’re asked or forced to.
A man who first born son, on the day of his birth, his first day as an independant human on this earth, left to go hunting. His reason?? “Hunting on Thanksgiving only gets to happen once a year.” (apparantley he thinks being there on the first day of his first born’s life happens all the time) He went hunting the day his daughter was born also.
This is what a man with choices chooses to do. and you wonder why men don’t take time off that is offered to them? probably because they’d rather be anywhere than with the family that they helped create.
“Men don’t do things if they don’t have to. Sacrifice isn’t big in the male spectrum from my experience. Sure they do things, if they’re asked or forced to.”
Be sure to tell that to the next firefighter or police officer who comes to your rescue. To the millions of men who died for their country and their loved ones in the great wars. Be sure to tell that to your father and grandfathers.Be sure to tell that to the 95% workplace dead who died doing dangerous jobs that had to get done, so they could provide for their families and give society the tools and resources it needs.Be sure to tell that to the families of the survivors of the titanic.
This is a callous and bigoted thing to say. And it ignores much of history. Men have always put honour, duty and women before themselves.
Firstly, just a request to keep the conversation civil. Telling someone they’re being “callous and bigoted” isn’t likely to generate constructive conversation. Secondly, just want to point out this bit “Men have always put honour, duty and women before themselves,” is only really part of the picture. There have been people, men and women, throughout history who have put others before themselves. They should be celebrated. That isn’t gendered, though.
That being said, claiming that “mend don’t do things if they don’t have to,” is a very negative sweeping generalization Lil Bit. And so totally inaccurate. Being selfish and lazy isn’t gendered either.
I suppose countering a generalization with a generalization wasn’t really the best tactic, was it? LOL
Basically. Difficult not to do, though.