Written and contributed by Drew Sample, The Fatherhood Circle
We’ve made a lot of strides lately as a society on the paternity leave front. Federal employees were recently granted 12 weeks of paternity leave, as well as members of the military. Many large companies are also offering paternity leave of even more than 12 weeks - a friend who works at Deloitte was given 6 months of paternity leave, and he took it all!
While lots of dads still feel pressure to not take their full paternity leave or get back to work earlier, more and more are also not letting social or professional pressures keep them from accepting many weeks of time with their new babies and taking what they’re offered.
This is all undeniably a good thing. And yet…
I also hear from a lot of dads that they simply don’t know what to do with all of this time, or feel like they are somehow wasting it.
Which makes sense when you think about the realities of how most people seem to be using paternity leave time coupled with what it is like being a man (as most dads are) on your own with a baby for weeks at a time.
I was recently part of a discussion on the changing landscape of fatherhood with a group of new parents in DC that included several new dads who were on paternity leave. Each of them asked in some way or another - what the hell do I do with all this time with a baby? They were feeling confused, bored, and sometimes inadequate and frustrated. There was really only so much they could do with their babies (and one did have twins!) and they couldn’t help feeling like there should be more - more happening, more accomplished, more that they could do. It’s the kind of thing I’ve heard from dads on paternity leave over and over.
I should say that mom’s often feel much the same and don’t want to imply that it is worse for dads in some way. Particularly in our task and achievement oriented society, most parents feel unsatisfied, bored by, or unaccomplished in dealing with infants but dads do face their own distinct challenges with such time.
Biologically, dads encounter pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period from a vastly different perspective than moms (particularly, birthing moms). Dads don’t have the embodied experience of pregnancy or birth, they don’t have nearly the extent of flooding hormones birthing moms get (we do get some oxytocin from skin to skin and the like), they don’t have lactating mammary glands to produce sustenance to nourish and soothe infants.
None of that amounts to an insurmountable challenge but it does present specific challenges. A few dads said their babies didn’t bottle feed well or at all, so what were they to do when out at a cafe with their infants and they suddenly start wailing for food or comfort? How could they plan excursions, social or otherwise?
As I’ve spoken with new dads in the DC area it seems that some of these challenges are exacerbated by the way that many are using their paternity leave. Virtually all of the dads that I’ve spoken with are essentially using their paternity leave to delay having to get childcare as long as possible - taking the bulk of their paternity leave after their birthing partner has returned to work.
That makes perfect sense given how expensive childcare is and the many other reasons many people have for keeping their infants at home as long as possible. But it also kind of doesn’t make sense given the biological reality of a dad’s relationship to their infant.
The best experience of paternity leave that I’ve heard someone share was from that same friend who took all 6 months of his paternity leave. He took that leave at the same time as his partner, so both of them had 6 months to be together with their new baby.
When I spoke to them during that leave time and saw them in person a few months after it ended they always seemed remarkably calm, composed, and well-adjusted to life as parents. And no wonder! Neither of them was on their own; they had time to be with each other, as well as with their baby. He had a great time on his paternity leave and wasn’t bored or unfulfilled by it because his role was clear and geared toward the physical realities of his situation - supporting his partner and bonding with his baby - rather than a role that is twisted to fit our society and economy.
Evolutionary anthropologist Anna Manchin, author of Life of Dad, argues that the evolutionary role of a father typically doesn’t really come into the fore until a bit later in a child’s life. It’s when a child is engaging with the world more - as a toddler or child but most of all as an adolescent - that a father’s role becomes as critical as the mother’s is in infancy.
Now, I’m not saying just because evolution says it should be that way is the way we all should behave and organize our lives. Placing the burdens of infancy all on moms would be inexcusably unjust to them, as would withholding the joys of it from fathers. I only got a few weeks of paternity leave for the birth of both my kids but I loved being a big part of their babyhood in the ways that I could and there are many, many good reasons for giving dads a big role in that phase. Particularly in the first weeks of the postnatal period, having some time to just get your bearings and support your birthing partner are absolutely essential.
Going backwards is never the right answer, socially, but neither is being uncritical of where we are. When you take our biology, evolution, and common current practices all into account it seems to me that they don’t add up to the best situation most of the time. Plus, none of this considers the entirely distinct situations and challenges that non-heteronormative couples face.
So rather than having paternity leave be a block of time you have to use in the first year of your child’s life and rather than incentivizing using that time primarily to delay the burdens of hired childcare, what if we took a more flexible approach that allowed dads (and moms) to leverage time when their role in a child’s life is more essential, or at least feels more essential to the dad?
In his fantastic book, Of Boys and Men, scholar Richard Reeves diagnoses the problems men and boys face in American society today and proposes several resolutions, including equal parental leave for mothers and fathers that is fully funded and allowable until the child is 18. That would allow dads to take more time off later in a child’s life, say to coach their baseball team, or give them a life-defining experience at 14, or just take more time to pick up sick kids from school!
Reeves makes many good points about this proposal you can read in the book, including how many parents chose to take the lead role in parenting during different phases of life. “Just because moms are better at breastfeeding a 3-month-old, does not mean they are better at making dentist appointments for a 13-year-old,” he writes.
For as much progress as we’ve made in granting paternity leave, it seems we still have a long way to go before it really fits with the realities of what having babies and raising kids is like. As Reeves writes “the goal of public policy often seems to be to create work-friendly families, rather than family-friendly work.”
So let’s keep pushing for better ways of doing things. In the meantime, we’ll discuss in the next post how to make the most of the paternity leave that we do get.