The Case for Universal Paternity Leave

-- By MichaelBerkovits - 05 Apr 2008

Paternity leave, unknown for much of the last century and still rare today, serves several functions. For employers, it is an attractive benefit to dangle in securing employee talent. For family advocates, it is a means of ensuring that more children grow up with involved fathers. For the women's movement, paternity leave counteracts the traditional female monopoly on child-rearing and its contribution to the paucity of women in powerful positions in society.

Women remain underrepresented in significant part because of continued expectations - by men, women, and employers - that women are far more likely to interrupt their careers to raise children. So long as women, including those well-educated, do so in vastly larger numbers than men, the problem of female underrepresentation will continue.*

Maternity Leave: A Partial Solution

The creation of maternity leave, its enshrinement in law, and the increased availability of paid leave has allowed some women to forge successful careers who would not have done so under the older system.** Since The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), most large employers are required under federal law to offer new mothers at least 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Some employers offer more generous programs, in an effort to attract and retain the best female talent. Overall, however, no more than 15% of American women have access to paid parental leave.***

Even paid maternity leave programs (MLPs), however, do not solve the female underrepresentation problem. First, firms that instituted leave policies purely in response to the FMLA may well discriminate against female candidates for hire or promotion on the theory that they will take advantage of FMLA protections and hence be inefficient investments relative to other candidates. Second, even at firms with generous MLPs, women surely fear - accurately, no doubt - that taking a lengthy break mid-career retards career advancement, if not precluding promotion entirely.

Paternity Leave: One Step Better

MLPs mitigate the female underrepresentation problem by incentivizing some women to begin careers that would otherwise be inconsistent with their vision of family life. In contrast, PLPs ensure that more men take time off to help raise children. The more men who take paternity leave, the less parental leave is a distinctly female issue and the less it operates to exclude women from privileged positions.

Paternity leave has gradually become more common. Indeed, the FMLA treats males and females symmetrically. However, while many employers go beyond the minimum requirements for female employees, the same is not true for men. Among the Institute for Women's Policy Research "Working Mother 100 Best Companies" - a set of employers presumably sensitive toward family leave issues - none offered more than six weeks paid leave for new fathers. Nearly 50% did so for new mothers. According to another study, conducted in 2005, 54% of all employers offered some paid maternity leave, while only 12% offered (any) paid leave to new fathers. So long as PLPs remain less generous than MLPs, men will not find leave as attractive an option as do women.

Furthermore, even if PLPs were both universal and as generous as MLPs, men might still be unlikely to utilize them. In Sweden, where all couples have access to sixteen months leave at 80% salary, to be split as a couple sees fit, men only take about 20% of the available leave.**** As each parent earns nearly his or her entire salary while on leave, the reason for this disparity cannot be that husbands earn more than their wives. The operative factor must be that women are expected to raise children, whether because of beliefs about their superior parenting skills or lingering prejudice about their unsuitability for the workforce. Also, whether explicitly or not, employers are likely to reserve coveted positions for the most demonstrably committed employees. So long as most leadership positions go to males, men cannot afford to take themselves out of the running by taking paid leave, even when it is available. And so long as men remain less likely than women to take extensive leave, the problem of female underrepresentation will continue. Something more than merely expanding the availability of PLPs is necessary.

Universal Paternity Leave with Equal Leave Time for Both Parents: A Bold Leap Forward

The rise of PLPs incentivizes more men to take parental leave than otherwise would. However, so long as paternal leave is optional, females, because of powerful economic and social forces, will continue to take the vast majority of leave. In order for paternity leave to dent the problem of female underrepresentation, it must be universal and it must be mandatory.

Immediate implementation is politically unrealistic, but the Swedish system is a workable model and a worthy goal, so long as it is modified to require that couples split their leave 50/50 - either sequentially or concurrently - if they opt into the system at all. The system would be expensive, but at least part of the costs to productivity would be offset by a happier workforce no longer forced to fight the family - career battle. A few couples might be dissuaded from having children altogether because of the burden of required leave by both parents. Other couples might have children later in their careers, after having comfortably moved through the ranks, leading to more parents having children for the first time when older. But these effects, if present, will be on the margins. Most parents will choose to have children, and most parents would opt in to the system of paid leave. The result could be a society of parents who take career breaks of equal lengths in order to raise children.***** Many more children could grow up with two parents involved in their lives from birth. Family, rather than being in constant conflict with career, could be in harmony with it. And the problem of female underrepresentation could be one step closer to being solved.

Notes

*It is true that one reason for the female underrepresentation problem may be that, because women on average hold less powerful (and hence less lucrative) positions than men, many women elect to serve as the parent who takes time off to raise children because it is the rational economic decision in light of the parents' respective salaries. In this sense, the fact that women bear the brunt of the child-rearing burden is an effect of the problem of female underrepresentation, as well as a cause. Regardless of the precise mechanisms at work, however, it is clear that the cycle must somehow be broken.

**At one time, women were frequently fired merely for having become pregnant.

***The study shows that only 8% of American employees, male and female, have access to paid parental leave. Assuming approximately equal numbers of men and women in the workforce, this means that, at most, 16% of women have access to paid leave.

****The statistic might be even more skewed if not for the fact that each parent is required to take a minimum portion of the available leave time - approximately 20%!.

*****Single parents raise different issues which are outside the scope of this paper.