Real Men Know How to Take Paternity Leave

By Allison Stevens

WeNews correspondent

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Allison Stevens knows all about the guy who puts in long hours at the office. He's her husband. But he's also the same man who recently took paternity leave--and had the best time of his life.

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One Complaint

allison stevens One lingering complaint, however: He couldn't use his deep well of sick leave during this period (which was when our son was 6 months old) because of his gender. As a father, and not a mother, he was apparently not entitled to use sick benefits to care for our child because a certain limited amount of time had passed.

But he did exhaust his vacation leave--and then some--to care for our children after I went back to work, and I cannot overstate how fabulous it was for our family.

During these two months I was married to the equivalent of a traditional wife and mother, with all the benefits that bestows on any bread earner. What a gift!

But my husband was the greater beneficiary. He has often said since that those two months (he tacked on a couple weeks of unpaid leave) were the best of his life. He lost two weeks pay and ignored warnings about the risk to his career, but he came out ahead, way ahead.

Sporting a beard, a baby carrier, and his version of a gender-neutral diaper bag (a black backpack) spilling over with diapers, wipes, my pumped breast milk and all manner of other infant accoutrements, John headed out--often with the dog in tow, too--every morning to the park, the museum, the playground, wherever, to spend some quality time with his kids.

Loving Every Last Minute

He loved every last minute of it. When I asked him how he felt about going back to work, his eyes began to water.

Now, my husband is no crier. He didn't cry when he proposed to me. He didn't cry during our wedding ceremony. He didn't cry during the birth of our first and second sons.

Like most men, John expresses neither joy nor sorrow through tears.

To be sure, my husband loves his job. But the mere thought of returning to the long days and late nights of his working world--and missing out on uninterrupted weekdays with his children--brought him to an emotional precipice.

John and I are now talking about ways he can spend more time with the kids, from job-sharing to flex-time and all the other options women often wind up considering after we become mothers.

It's the kind of discussion we all need to have, not just us women. Men may be seen as less macho in the work force if they alter their schedule for their children, and perhaps they'll pay a price in the same way that women do if they attempt to find that precarious balance between work and family.

But the discussion alone can yield incalculable rewards.

Talking about ways fathers can spend more time with their children could open up more options for dads and will push the work-family movement forward--and it may just make a few more overworked fathers well up with tears of joy.

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Allison Stevens is a writer in Washington, D.C.

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That might sound a bit condescending, but bear with me. As you touched on, workplace culture still encourages and rewards the work-a-holic male. Men still grow up with images of the wealthy, powerful man as something to strive for and are conditioned that becoming that man is the best thing he can do for his family. Do we want to be at the kid’s soccer game on Saturday? More than anything, but if I don’t go to work and Bill does, guess who gets the promotion first (to better take care of his family?) In short, men are torn like never before.

Herein lays the challenge for many men and many employers. For some time, we’ve held up at home dads as the gender benders fighting to have dads seen as the equal caregivers we are capable of being. It is now time to hold up men like your husband, who had the courage in the face of what most men still see as an act detrimental to their careers, to put his family first.

One of the biggest inhibitors to men being more involved dads is workplace culture. It comes in the form of expectation that a man striving for promotion will work long hours. It comes in the form of policy which allows a woman but not a man to use sick leave to raise his children. And it comes in the form of men feeling immense pressure to be, first and foremost, a breadwinner.

We need dialogue, and lots of it, to change things. Even in progressive workplaces which have gender neutral polices on workplace flexibility or leave, men tend to just slip out the back door when no one is looking if they need to take their child to the dentist. Why? These policies, though gender neutral in language, were ultimately designed for working mothers. Men fear getting labeled as “that guy who is always leaving to look after his kids.” Until employers start to recognize the evolving role and desires of a father -- until they champion fatherhood-- things aren’t going to change any time soon. Unlike women, men don’t seem to be rallying together to push to be recognized equally as parents and career people—even if that is what their heart desires. In short, men are about 40 years behind women in this whole work life balance equation.

I run a company in Vancouver BC called Bettermen Solutions (www.bettermensolutions.com) I help companies improve employee retention and workplace productivity. How? By showing them the truth—more men than women are now saying they can’t cope with work life balance and opening their eyes to some of the issues touched on in this article. I give workshops on what, both employers and employees can do to improve work life balance so companies, employees and their families can thrive.