Marissa Mayer announced a progressive paternity leave policy at Yahoo! Especially considering recent Yahoo! decisions, these policies represent an important step forward for working dads everywhere.
Fair or not, when Yahoo! hired Marissa Mayer as their CEO, Mayer had to know that her status as a thirty-something first-of-her-generation new mother female CEO would attract a lot of attention, and that many would look past her impressive qualifications (degrees from Stanford, a staggeringly productive career and rise up the ranks at Google), and focus instead on the symbolic nature of her position- especially when it came to work and family considerations.
The early returns on that front, well let’s just say, were not so good.
The first visible management decision Mayer made was to ban telecommuting at Yahoo! (while building a nursery in her executive suite). At the time, I called the move overly blunt, on the wrong side of history, short-sighted, and unsupported by research- in short, a step backwards.
Upon reflection, I ultimately found the ban as unnecessary and largely beside the point– all downside and no upside. Less than 2% of Yahoo employees worked primarily from home, and while the ban targeted them, the many other productive Yahoo! employees who relied on part-time and ad-hoc telecommuting for work-life balance were equally punished. Worse, the whole flap may have resulted in a chilling effect on workplace flexibility beyond Yahoo’s offices.
The decision caused a media firestorm (lots of smart businesspeople, writers and academics- see here andhere– largely agreed with me. Some contrarians did not) that served to raise the issues of work-life balance and workplace flexibility- and, as I stated on NPR’s Morning Edition, I welcome any debate on these topics as the more one looks into them, the clearer the business case for them becomes.
I stand by everything I wrote about Yahoo! and Mayer. And, today, I am more than happy to give credit where credit is due. Mayer and Yahoo! recently announced the following policies:
- A doubling of paid maternity leave from 8 weeks to 16 weeks
- Offering 8 weeks paid paternity leave to new dads
- A gift of $500 to help the new parents with new baby expenses
While I do question why maternity and paternity leave are not put on equal footing, let’s leave this aside for another day. I’d like to focus on the positive. And there’s a lot here to like.
As Nanette Fondas (who is awesome, you should follow her), writes in her Atlantic article:
The new Yahoo policy holds potential not only to change a father’s behavior during the eight weeks he spends with the baby while on paternity leave, but also to inch the country toward parity between the sexes in parenting.
The explicit mention of paternity leave is consistent with other efforts to make paternity leave more socially acceptable. As Catherine Rampell states in her NY Times Magazine feature:
[Paternity Leave] still has a stigma in both the United States and Europe. To remedy this bad rap, countries like Sweden and Norway have recently introduced a quota of paid parental leave available only to fathers. If dads don’t take it, they’re leaving money on the table. In Germany and Portugal, moms get bonus weeks of maternity leave if their husbands take a minimum amount of paternity leave. All these countries have seen gigantic increases in the share of fathers who go on leave.
And we really do need societal expectations to change. According to the Boston College Center for Work and Family’s “New Dads” study (which I’ve written about here and here), a vanishingly small percentage of fathers take a paternity leave upon the birth of their children. Instead, new dads cobble together a short leave using vacation, personal and sick days. From the study:
75% of our sample took off one week or less and 16% did not take any time off at all following the birth of their most recent child. While government and corporate policies (or lack of policies) often make if difficult and financially challenging for fathers to spend any significant time off with their newborn children, it is nonetheless a clear opportunity missed for the fathers to spend time bonding with their new offspring and caring for their needs
This lack of real and perceived ability to take paternity leave is at odds with a male workforce that is increasingly involved at home, and aspires to be even more involved going forward. The New Dads study found:
- 70% of working dads, when asked about their family lives, stated their family role was to be both caretaker and provider (as opposed to less than 10% who chose only one role or the other), and 65% agreed that both parents should equally share caregiving responsibilities.
- While the majority of respondents said they spent between 2.5 and 4 hours per day with their children (significant progress from past generations), only 31% reported they met their stated standard of equal caregiving.
Societal and corporate support for paternity leave would go a long way to helping today’s involved working dad be there for his family. And, of course, we all benefit from having more involved fathers.
Culture changes slowly, as an accumulation of small decisions. I am very glad that Yahoo! (like Major League Baseball, as I wrote about last month) is taking a visible step forward to changing our culture. And, as I stated before, I welcome any discussion on the topics for work-family balance and workplace flexibility (especially for dads), as the more one looks into them, the clearer the business case for them becomes.
So, at least for today, I do Yahoo!
What do you think about Yahoo’s decision? about paternity leave? Any experiences to share? Let’s discuss in the comments section.
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When I first heard the news of yahoo’s paternity leave policy, I couldn’t help but think of Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber. Enjoy:
This was previously published on Fathers, Work & Family.
Read more on Work/Life Balance on The Good Life.
Image credit: TechCrunch/Flickr
I love the idea of giving everybody a sabbatical now and then. The world would be a much better place if every employee was allowed and encouraged to be a whole, balanced person and have a whole life, of which work was a part, instead of the “ideal worker” norms we have now. I disagree with the notion that workaholics are only ‘hurting’ themselves on their climb up the ladder. They set the pace. And just like trying to keep up with an alcoholic, trying to keep up with the work-addicts is making us sick – literally physically unwell and… Read more »
The truth is, in high tech, taking a lot of time off can kill your career whether you are a man or a woman. I’ve lived in Silicon Valley for 20 years and it is not a “family friendly” place. The majority of high tech employees are male and many are from other countries on H1B visas and they would laugh at the idea of taking a month off just because their wife had a baby (grandma will probably come stay with then for a few months to help out.) There are also many single people or non parents who… Read more »
Of course there are childfree and childless people out there who are workaholics. (I challenge anyone to produce stats showing that parents are less likely to be workaholics than non-parents.) But, it’s a tired old stereotype that if you don’t have kids you must be obsessed with your career. That’s a common stereotype many parents have about non-parents, probably because it’s so hard for many people to imagine a healthy, balanced person who doesn’t have children. It’s hard to tell if single people or non-parents really do “live to work” when they don’t get much time off. Maybe, just maybe,… Read more »
I’m starting to rant, so let me back up a little. I suggest a flexible, pragmatic solution that would benefit more people and even benefit parents a little more. My company has a system where you can donate your sick leave to other workers. I say we do something similar to “personal leave,” which can be used for parental leave or vacation or time off for whatever reason you want. Make it so that you can buy or sell your leave to other people in the company. If you’re a workaholic non-parent and you live to work, then you can… Read more »
Of course, I didn’t mean that single and/or childless/free people are per se workaholics. But high tech IS brimming with workaholics and those are the people gunning for your career while you are taking a month off.
I see your point. What I keep hearing is that parenthood is the most rewarding thing in the world, and the upsides of parenting outweigh the downsides, and it’s best not to let your career run your life. If all that’s true, then parents really won’t need much time off. We may as well let those overly ambitions people pass you on the career ladder. They’re just headed for their own doom, while parents are experiencing the best life possible. Let those pathetic careerists ruin their lives in the fruitless search for meaning — they’re only hurting themselves, right? Come… Read more »
They kinda do get and they kinda don’t get it though. As others have said they increased maternity leave to make it 2x the length of paternity, which stills says “Mom is 2x as important as Dad”
I hope that women who adopt don’t get more time off than men who adopt. That would be lame. That would mean lesbians who adopt would get twice as much leave as gay men who adopt. Totally unfair.
Hi- First, thanks for reading and commenting on my article. Here’s the business side of it for Yahoo!: The turnover rate for employees during their first year of having a kid is higher than in any other year. Offering parental leave greatly reduces this voluntary turnover. Further, employees who are in demand and can choose among employers see work flexibility and acknowledgement of family needs to be among the most important reasons to take a job. So, putting aside the whole “why should breeders get something from their employers when singles/non-parents don’t” argument, Yahoo! is acknowledging a business concern. Their… Read more »
Fair enough. Let’s say it’s about dollars and cents, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If childfree and childless employees want the same considerations, they need to walk off the job in equal numbers. They need to organize themselves as voters, as stockholders, and as workers. They need to talk about disincentives and unfair treatment and how companies need to do more to retain them. So, this means that increasing parental leave is not so much about fairness or equity. It’s about retaining employees who’ve demonstrated a marked tendency to quit more often than other kinds of people. In… Read more »
You’ve got points: things happen in our lives that take up our time and energy away from work. The problem is that jobs have taken over our lives. Most people I know count themselves lucky to have two weeks of vacation time a year. Babies may be a matter of choice, but people need to have babies, and they’re going to have them. It’s not like we’re going to stop reproducing, or that the workplace should be set up to encourage us to all stop procreating (as it currently does; the disincentives are steep.) Rather, workplaces need to accommodate the… Read more »
Again, I’m not suggesting that we take away parental leave. I’m suggesting that we extend that same leave time to EVERYONE whether they have children or not. How would it inconvenience parents to give the same leave to nonparents? I’m not seeing what the problem. Humans come in all shapes and sizes and motives. Some humans raise children, some humans do not. (In fact, anthropologists estimate that in every society a bare minimum of 10% of the population doesn’t have children, and in America today it’s well over 20%, not counting people with grown children. People with young children make… Read more »
I’m not a big fan of the way the language here treats having babies. The article talks about “after the birth” or “upon the birth,” as if a baby just plops out of the sky, like the stork drops one down random chimneys. Let’s be real. You got pregnant or you got a woman pregnant or you adopted a child. You did it. Your company didn’t do it. The government didn’t do it. You did. You chose to do all that, and are now asking your company to help you. I may as well get to ask my boss for… Read more »
Here’s what we’re talking about. Group A and Group B are identical, except Group A has made a personal reproductive choice that Group B has not. Group A made that choice, chose to work at the company, finds itreally hard to do both, and therefore quits more often than Group B does. So, the company adds more leave time to Group A to make it easier on them. How is this a good business strategy? You’re rewarding people who are more likely to quit, and the reason they are more likely to quit is because they made an unsustainable set… Read more »
Adding paternity leave as well as maternity leave is a step forward. It’s better than doing nothing, half a loaf is better than none, and all that. You know there’s a “however” coming up, though, right? However #1: She increased maternity leave so that maternity leave is now TWICE as long as paternity leave. So, a step towards gender equality combined with a step towards continued gender inequality. However #2: Having children is a choice. If you have a child, it’s because of dozens of choices you have made. If you have kids, it’s because you have decided to live… Read more »