Do Fathers Deserve more?
The way things currently stand, fathers get the rather short end of the stick when it comes to parental leave. If the partner of a father takes their full maternal leave, currently that said father will only be entitled to 1-2 weeks at full pay. That’s just a small fraction of the leave granted to mothers, which is a more reasonable 26 weeks of ordinary leave. With that in mind, it’s not surprising that with the election just gone some politicians were campaigning for additional leave for fathers and shared parental leave.
Obviously, there’s a lot to think about with extending parental leave, one of those things being the financial burden for the employer. However, it seems that some companies are managing to see past this and are leading the way in changing the status quo. The honourable mention here quite clearly goes to Virgin. Virgin have recently implemented a full year of paternity leave for new fathers with FULL pay. While yes, there are some restrictions such as the full year only being available to employees that have been with the company for over 4 years, it’s still great news for fathers who want to be there for their children growing up.
As we’ve written about before, about 70% of fathers miss huge milestones in their child’s development due to work commitments. This year to settle into family life will alleviate the stress of becoming new parents and make home life much more bearable while also removing some of the financial strain of finding someone to care for your children while you’re at work. And while you may be thinking this is just naive optimism, think again! We’ve got some tried and tested results!
As well as other contributing factors, policy on parental leave in Scandinavian countries leaves them leaps and bounds ahead of us in terms of population happiness. In general, their laws surrounding parental leave are far more flexible than ours and allow the parents to take better care of their children. In addition to the standard parental leave, things like “daddy days” and women being allowed to reduce their hours with no repercussions only help new parents find their feet.
If this is a system that not only works for parents, but also works for the country as a whole, I’m looking forward to the day that more employers adopt the changes that Richard Branson has put in place. Sure it’s important as a business owner to make sure you get the most from your work force, but a happy employee is a productive employee and that’s true of any industry.
With more employers taking on job sharing, extended and more flexible parental leave will hopefully be available to us all. The best part of this is that not only do we get to spend time with our families, we don’t have to put our entire career on hold to do so.
If you’re a new parent, or for whatever reason feel like you could benefit from a more flexible work environment, be sure to sign up with us at ShareYourJob.com. We could already have your perfect job share partner.