Duncan Fisher

A father's place is in the home - at least some of the time?

So, it’s official.  The extension of paternity leave has been ditched.  The official reason is the recession, but the decision to delay an increase in paternity leave until after the next general election had been taken well before any recession was in sight.

There are two key points about the current situation that no commentators have pointed out.

First, dumping the change to paternity leave is not going to make much difference to families and children because the system was not going to work anyway.  According to the Government’s own research in 2007, only 4-8% of families eligible under the scheme (employed father, mother eligible for maternity leave) were going to use the new right to transfer unused maternity leave to a father. There is copious evidence from around the world that low paid leave that is transferable between parents will stay with mothers.  The reason is mainly financial: for a mother to transfer low paid leave to her partner (who earns more than her in 80% of families) and to impose on both parents in the family the career detriment that any break from work is likely to entail, is simply beyond what most families can afford.  Ditching the system is a good thing: it clears the way to start again and get the basics right.

The second unspoken reality is that the current situation, as analysed by specialist equality lawyers, is likely to be illegal under sex equality legislation.  Two weeks leave for fathers and 39 weeks for mothers is discriminatory.  Perhaps the delay in a change will encourage a legal case, so that the current system can be taken down in the courts.  Everyone pays the price for the inequality - fathers are trapped in working roles, children do not see enough of their fathers, mothers are trapped in domestic roles, family relationships are more unstable, the economy loses access to the skills and knowledge of women who carry the bulk of the role of caring for the next generation.

The business associations rejoice.  They have secured what they wanted - a continued expectation that all men will work without any risk of compromising work for minor things like raising the next generation.  The business associations wanted the same from women, by opposing every move towards maternity leave, but they have admitted defeat on that front.  But they don’t want men to go the same way; life is so much easier if you can tell by a person’s gender whether they are likely to be a top tier committed worker or second tier compromising worker.

Businesses are good at calculating costs and benefits; those that aren’t don’t last long.  Those businesses that depend on women, or most need the kind of men that are now saying and meaning “I want a life as well as work”, or who are working internationally in countries that have balanced leave entitlements, are already far advanced in supporting their fathers and discouraging the emergence of a two-tier workforce.   But why should any individual businesses make short-term sacrifices in order to protect the productivity of an entire economy - they won’t factor in the long-term cost of women forced out of the workforce en masse as a result of having to do the bulk of caring of children, of children who do not see enough of their parents, of families who fall apart under the pressure.

This is a straight conflict of interests between short-term and long-term.  The role of Government is to construct a balance.  The Government’s decision not to construct such a balance precedes the recession.

How has this desire for short-term gain so comprehensively beaten all the other needs?  The main reason, I believe, is that the lobby for families and children has been weak.  The one desire children express more than any other is to have more time with their parents - but who sticks up for this point of view when there is a debate about leave entitlements?  The business associations have the stage to themselves.

The other reason is that the gender equality lobby in UK, defeated by the difficulty of challenging the long-hours working culture of men, has persuaded itself that progress can be achieved by trying to make working life easier for mothers only.  But every time an entitlement is introduced for women and not men, the cost of employing women increases relative to men and the effect is opposite to that intended.

The good news is that the Equality & Human Rights Commission has recently, in its Working Better report condemned the system of leave entitlements, which “entrench the unequal division of labour and caring between the sexes and work against gender equality”.  And the recent Good Childhood Inquiry recently concluded that fathers are as important to children as mothers and pointed the finger at the pressures on parents not to be with their children.  The balancing lobbies are organising themselves.

It is time to articulate the interests of children, of gender equality and of long-term economic productivity and enter the debate head on.  It is time to tackle the extreme imbalance in our system - the biggest difference in leave entitlements between women and men of any country in the world.  It is time to get the balance between short-term gain and long-term investment right.

Fatherhood Fatherhood, paternity leave, work