The Case for Paid Paternity Leave

lets hear it for the dads 🎶

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There’s not a parent on earth who could deny the all-encompassing joy and exhaustion that together accompany the birth of a new child. To have a newborn is to experience a constant tidal wave of emotion: the delight at their first cooing sounds. The dread of that 2 AM wake-up call. The pleasure of their body curled up on your chest. The frustration of yet another fussy afternoon.

But after having my third child in 2021, my postpartum experience was assisted by having my husband around. K works as a software engineer for an insurance company, and was generously given sixteen weeks of paid paternity leave (I know. Your jaw is on the floor). When I told this to friends, they were shocked—paid paternity leave in the United States remains incredibly rare, especially for any significant period of time. Paid maternity leave might be gaining popularity, but paternity leave remains a sticky subject across the business world.

However, if companies were to offer their male employees better parental leave packages, how would it impact families across the country? 

Much ink has been spilled on the disastrous results of the American fatherlessness crisis. According to recent data, about 1 in 4 US children live without a father in the home. Children from single-parent families (most often being raised solely by a mother) are twice as likely to suffer from mental health issues as those who have two parents in the home¹. Girls with absent or distant fathers are eight times more likely to get pregnant as adolescents² and children without fathers in the home are a whopping 279% more likely to deal drugs or weapons compared to children who live with present fathers.³ The data is loud and clear: having an attentive father in the home gives children a leg up on becoming virtuous, productive members of society.

But the transition into fatherhood isn’t simple or straightforward for many men. Women have the gift of being the biological carriers of their children; our bonding starts as early as conception, when our bodies became carriers for their offspring. For nine months, mothers get to feel their babies growing in their wombs, and they’re also the ones whose laboring efforts bring forth new life. Then, their bodies sustain their children for months or years, and breastfeeding becomes a natural, physical way to bond.

Men, on the other hand, don’t have those experiences. Without the biological connection, men are required to bond with their infants much more intentionally. Bonding with Mom begins at conception, but a bond with Dad can’t really begin until a baby is born—and it’s been demonstrated that fathers who take time off from work after the birth of their baby will be more involved in that baby’s care and development⁴. Most fathers, however, return to work almost immediately after their babies are born. Recent data reports that 76% of fathers return to work less than a week after the birth of a new child.⁵ During those early, important days of a baby’s life, their father is often already back at the office.

And paternity leave does more than increase the bond between parent and child: it also strengthens marriages. When dads have to rush back to the office, moms suddenly shoulder all of the responsibility of caring for their newborn, while physically healing from birth and often juggling the needs of older children as well. Studies have shown that parental couples are significantly less likely to end their relationship when fathers take paternity leave⁶, and paternity leave can decrease the rates of postpartum depression and anxiety for mom⁷.

Why are fathers in a rush to get back to their morning commute? It isn’t because they don’t want to play an active role in caretaking for their infant—most fathers report that they’d take more parental leave if they were offered it⁸. Logic would lend itself to the fact that Dad’s paycheck is often what’s keeping food on the table, and many American businesses don’t provide paid paternal leave.

The United States is one of the few developed nations that doesn’t mandate paid parental leave. Nordic countries, which are well known for boasting generous maternity leave, offer less leave for fathers, but still significantly more than the majority of American companies. Sweden, for example, boasts 11 weeks at 78% pay (source). In Asia, paternity leave is even longer—Japan provides 30 weeks of paternity leave at 67% pay, and South Korea offers 15 weeks with 50-80% pay⁹.

It's highly unlikely that the United States would ever embrace a widespread policy of paid paternity leave. Many businesses don’t have the fiscal capacity to pay their employees without any work received for months at a time, and the US lacks the social safety net that many European countries enact through higher taxes. Conservatives¹⁰ then find themselves in the murky middle, with a longing to see strong families and a desire to avoid unintended consequences of costly social welfare spending programs.

But paid paternity leave may be required to start as a cultural mindset shift. Even in the above-mentioned Nordic countries, fathers don’t take as long a paternity leave as they’re offered¹¹—reports have shown that Norwegian dads are only taking about 20% of leave available to them, with Danish dads only taking 10%. Social norms are difficult to shift, and for some families, the idea of dad needing to spend a significant amount of time with a new infant who relies on mom for sustenance is foreign. Sweden went so far as to encourage parents to split their state-subsidized parental leave time equally, incentivizing couples to share the parental leave benefit more equally through various programs. But the idea that dads needed to be home during those early days of life still didn’t unanimously click—a recent study showed that 18% of fathers who had children born in 2017 still didn’t use their leave allowance¹².

So the lack of parental leave isn’t solely a financial problem. It also appears to be a question of importance: does it really matter if Dad witnesses those first few milestones?

Strengthening the role of the father, and encouraging bonding between dads and infants, would lead to better outcomes across nearly every measure—less drugs on our streets, less violence in our schools, and less mental health problems among our kids. It’s been demonstrated again and again that the moral character of a child is shaped first and foremost in the home, and it’s exceedingly difficult for parents to shape that character without a foundational bond. There’s no doubt that mothers play an essential role in the raising of newborns, and even those who reject any notion of government involvement in family-leave spending wince a bit at the idea of a mom heading back to work six weeks postpartum. But if society is truly going to lean into fatherhood as an essential role in the nuclear family, paternity leave needs to part of the conversation. Breastfeeding is a job exclusive to mom—bonding with a newborn is not.

The benefits of paid paternity leave aren’t simply a more pleasant parenting experience and a less tired mother. They’re even more far-reaching than any individual’s family’s bank account. A society where fathers have stronger bonds with their children and prioritizes the role of fatherhood in the home would have a radical impact in every corner of our culture.

Happy early Father’s Day to our proud male readers—I’m grateful, today and every day, that good dads exist. ❤️

On My Nightstand 

• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles: My dear friend Kate leant me this book + I loved it. Towles is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite novelists. It’s the story of four boys on a cross country road trip in the 1950s, and learning the true meaning of atonement. A bajillion stars.

• Hormones Aren’t From the Devil: Caitlin’s newsletter provides a holistic look at women’s health & has become one of my favorites. I can totally relate to the idea of feeling defensive about hormones, but also leaning into their reality.

• In China, Ruled by Men, Women Quietly Find a Powerful Voice: So inspiring. Whenever I feel shaky saying what I think or feel, I consider women in places like China who put their actual lives on the line for the betterment of society. “Frustrated by the increasingly narrow understanding of women by the public, Nong He, a film and theater student, held a screening of three documentaries about women by female Chinese directors. ‘I think we should have a broader space for women to create,” Ms. He said. “We hope to organize such an event to let people know what our life is like, what the life of other women is like, and with that understanding, we can connect and provide some help to each other.’”

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In case you missed these Letters:

• The Young Trad Priests and The Angry Boomers

• 3 Things I’ve Changed My Mind About

• You’re Being Sold a Lie About Masculinity

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1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/pdf/lnq-81-378.pdf

3. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ985577

4. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13668800701575069

5. https://www.zippia.com/advice/paternity-leave-statistics/#:~:text=45%25%20of%20companies%20offer%20paid,the%20opportunity%20for%20unpaid%20leave.

6. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-social-policy/article/abs/if-i-take-leave-will-you-stay-paternity-leave-and-relationship-stability/CC7147C0B13AD3521C98EFF5D43F880B

7. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/paternity-leave-postpartum-health/

8. https://www.zippia.com/advice/paternity-leave-statistics/#:~:text=45%25%20of%20companies%20offer%20paid,the%20opportunity%20for%20unpaid%20leave.

9. https://www.zippia.com/advice/paternity-leave-statistics/#:~:text=45%25%20of%20companies%20offer%20paid,the%20opportunity%20for%20unpaid%20leave.

10. To be clear—conservatives of good will want this. I try to give the most generous reading to people I can. Are there obnoxious conservatives who say things like “I gave birth in a truck and went back to work the next day, you can too!!!”? Absolutely.

11. https://www.norden.org/en/nyhed/earmarked-paternity-leave-effective-way-change-norms

12. https://isf.se/publikationer/rapporter/2023/2023-04-04-fathers-who-do-not-use-parental-leave