Daddy Issues: Men Being Punished For Taking Paternity Leave

What to expect when you ask for paternity leave.

Jack Pearlman* was summoned to see his boss and HR manager at noon on a Monday, days after applying for paternity leave. He’d told his boss he wanted to spend more time at home to care for his children, while his wife launched an online business.

As he took the lift to the board-room on the 16th floor, alarm bells were ringing for a stressed Pearlman. He suspected his application hadn’t been well received because “there was a paternity leave policy in place, but no-one was taking it up. I suspected they would think I wasn’t serious about my job.”

“I had spoken to a lot of guys at the company who had babies and there was much concern about what would happen to their jobs and careers if they took time off,” he remembers. Despite his hesitations, he had gone ahead with the application because he knew his wife needed him at home while she got her venture off the ground.

The meeting took less than 10 minutes. “You haven’t got the skills or the capabilities [for this role] anymore,” his boss told him. Pearlman was made redundant on the spot and given a fortnight to leave his job as commercial manager, despite the fact that only days earlier the same boss had praised his work and assured him his job was secure. But, for Pearlman, the reason for his sudden redundancy was clear.

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“I felt angry and surprised,” he says of his speedy dismissal. “I was shocked at the blatant way it happened.”

Sadly, such prejudice is not so surprising in Australian workplaces. One in four fathers and partners have faced discrimination for taking parental leave – for mothers, it’s one in two, according to a 2014 report on working parents by the Australian Human Rights Commission*.

The penalties for men who put their hand up for paternity leave range from negative attitudes and comments from colleagues and managers, through to missing out on training and promotions, reduced pay and conditions, as well as job loss through redundancy.

Despite rhetoric about gender equality, men are still pigeonholed as workers, while women are cast as the nurturers, the report found. The toll of this prejudice also heavily affects women, who in many cases are left, literally, holding the baby. Simply put, behind every man pushed out of taking paternity leave is a woman, with scant choice but to stay home with the kids or to juggle work with her role as primary caregiver. It’s all very well telling her to “lean in”. But men aren’t being allowed to – or, in some cases, don’t want to – lean out.

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The statistics can be partially attributed to the fact that men who want time off to care for children don’t match the pervasive stereotype of the “ideal worker”: someone who’s male, has no caring responsibilities and is available to work 24/7. And while a quarter of Australian men don’t take paternity leave after the birth or adoption of their child, those fathers who do are typically back at work within just three weeks.

Geoff Canning recalls sitting down in his boss’s office to ask for paternity leave
from his job as a medical engineer in Melbourne. “He was like ‘What! You can’t do that, can you?’ He was sort of stunned,” says Canning.

His wife wanted to return to work, seven months after giving birth to their first child. Canning, now 42, was entitled under his award conditions to claim the balance of his wife’s 12 months’ maternity leave. But his boss struggled to comprehend the situation. “In some ways it is expected that at some point a female employee might be pregnant and have a year off. But it’s not expected that men will do that,” says Canning.

“My boss was just shocked ... he wouldn’t talk to me for a while. He was worried about himself and the business, and who would fill my shoes.”

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Work-life expert Barbara Pocock says some men feel tainted at work by even considering paternity leave and that if “they put their hand up, they are viewed as not serious employees,” she says. “They often don’t need to ask for leave themselves to know how it will effect their future promotion or access to higher duties or new roles, even their long-term job security.”

Employment relations professor Marian Baird, director of the Woman and Work Research Group at the University of Sydney, reckons as few as five per cent of Australian men opt for extended paternity leave. “It is still in the realm of the unbelievable that men might take a long period of leave,” she says. “It’s sometimes met with a joke of ‘Oh mate, you wouldn’t really do that’. Other times, it’s met with comments that ‘Your career will suffer.’”

Career progression is not the only obstacle holding dads back from taking paternity leave. A report by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2013 found that one of the main reasons new fathers don’t take leave is for the simple fact that they can’t afford to.

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Sydney lawyer Simon Quartermaine was back working for Telstra a fortnight after the birth of his daughter, Dyllan, now aged three. “We were saving for a new house so we had financial pressure. I thought I could support my wife best by earning money and being there in the evenings to help with feeding and meals and nappy changes,” he says.

These conflicts continue well beyond the first year of a child’s life. The question of paternity leave might be seen, more broadly, as part of the longer-term issue of working flexibly.

In April, Quartermaine signed up for the Equilibrium Man Challenge, an online documentary series that follows senior managers trying to commit to flexible working. With the support of his managers, he is trialling working one day a week at home as part of the project, which is being run by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

But Quartermaine questions how successful such measures will be at closing the gender gap. “I would like to move towards more of a 50/50 parenting responsibility at home, but a professional job generally means working fairly long hours under a lot of pressure and it’s hard to be there at home. We all want a perfect world, but I think realistically we are not going to achieve it.”

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More than 75,000 fathers and same-sex partners claimed “Dad and Partner Pay” in the first 12 months of the federal government’s scheme (2013/14), which entitled them to two weeks of government-funded pay within the first year of their child’s life. But the scheme pales against policies in some European countries, such as Sweden – land of the “latte pappas” – where fathers reportedly take on average seven weeks’ leave.

Almost 145,000 Australian parents received paid parental leave in 2013-14, under the public scheme of up to 18 weeks’ at the national minimum wage – currently $657 a week. But fathers make up less than one per cent of those claiming primary carer’s leave.

The predicament faced by parents has been made worse still by the federal government’s decision to slash the number of mothers entitled to publicly funded leave. From July 2016, almost 80,000 women will lose out under the plan announced on Mother’s Day in May this year, to stop parents “double dipping” by claiming paid parental leave from both their employer and the government, despite Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s election promise to provide six months of paid parental leave at a woman’s actual salary.

Notwithstanding the resistance of business and government to support fathers wanting to be at home with their families, there is a strong business case for more men to take paternity leave.

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A 2014 Australian Human Rights Commission report found an increase in gender diversity in an organisation delivers tangible benefits in terms of better efficiency, performance and innovation, along with improvements to business reputation and increased access to talented female workers**.

Women who are relieved from the constraints of being full-time carers are more likely to win promotions to senior positions, which would help to reduce the gender pay gap. The more fathers who opt to take time off work, the more likely it is that employers will see their female workers as assets rather than potential liabilities.

Studies show businesses that retain new mothers enjoy a considerable economic dividend. The Grattan Institute estimated that increasing women’s workforce participation in Australia by six per cent could increase the national GDP by $25 billion.

Other studies show that the more leave men take when their children are young, the more satisfied they become with this relationship, and the more likely they are to remain involved in childcare after returning to work.

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And, there are signs the tide might be turning. While currently only about a third of businesses who report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency offer paid leave to secondary carers, the number of employers adopting paternity leave policies is reportedly increasing, if only slightly.

Among those taking a lead is the National Australia Bank, which extended its paid parental leave policy in March to make it accessible to dads. Primary carers there can now take 12 weeks’ paid leave anytime in the first 12 months of the child’s life.

Professor Baird says the take-up of paternity leave is likely to rise among new generations of fathers, who more readily embrace the importance of caring for their children. The gradual ascent of female professionals will also reduce the financial imperative for men to be the breadwinners.

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick says significant change will come only when senior managers champion the take-up of paternity leave. Peer pressure can work both ways – a 2014 study in Norway, for example, found when a male employee takes parental leave, his co-workers are 11 per cent more likely to take leave when they become fathers.

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“Deeply held beliefs about gender stereotypes and the role of men in home and society takes generations to change,” Broderick says. “It’s a frustratingly slow process, but I feel pretty optimistic about where we’re heading.”

After being made redundant, Jack Pearlman became primary carer of his three young children for five months. He now works part time for his wife’s online business. He says his time outside the office was challenging but invaluable. “You get to see your kids in a way you can’t when you’re working full time,” he says.

“You have much more appreciation of what women go through. If the government was serious, they would mandate that men have to take off three months to look after a baby full time, to figure out it is hard work.”

Michael Chaaya, a 41-year-old partner at law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth, took four weeks’ leave after his wife, federal Labor MP Michelle Rowland, gave birth to their daughter, Octavia, in 2012. “I could have taken longer but for the demands of my practice and being a business owner,” he says. “We are very fortunate that economically we can afford a nanny. Not every family has that luxury.”

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But Chaaya, who is also part of the Equilibrium Man Challenge, is in agreement with Broderick and sees a growing expectation among his younger male colleagues to take off time and help care for their children. Over the past two years, six men at Corrs have claimed paid primary carer’s leave of up to 18 weeks, while 17 have claimed up to three weeks’ as secondary carers.

“We are certainly nowhere near that utopian scenario where things are perfect,” says Chaaya. But he believes organisations are increasingly meeting the challenge of making men feel they can comfortably take paternity leave.

“As employers, whether we like it or not, the generation of men coming after us and working their way up through the ranks will be expecting nothing less.”

This story originally appeared in the October issue of marie claire. Some names have been changed.